He said Vietnam became more of an air war — which led to the question: “Was it right for us to say, ‘No, you can’t have our bodies.
We will not fight this war.
But here, take our money to drop lethal weapons on the people of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos?’ ”
He decided he would no longer pay his taxes.
I did two more radio interviews :
WOR in New York and KIRO in Seattle (I haven’t found podcasts for either yet).
And other tax resisters across the country have been fielding requests from various branches of the news media — mostly print and radio.
It’s “Tax Day in July” for the war tax resistance movement, which usually doesn’t get this kind of attention outside of mid-April.
A profile of J. Tony Serra, the radical defense lawyer and long-time tax resister who is “one of two war tax resisters to have been jailed for ‘willful failure to pay’ federal income taxes.”
A report from Bill Ramsey on his attempt to get the anti-war group United for Peace and Justice to add a one-time war tax resistance campaign to its upcoming nonviolent direct action plans.
Ramsey reports: “I rarely had to explain why we think the time is ripe for a one-time act of war tax refusal.
Instead, I was repeatedly asked, ‘Where do we sign up?’ ”
You can learn more about Ramsey’s one-time war tax resistance campaign proposal at http://www.nwtrcc.org/campaign_proposal_revised.htm: “On , thousands of war opponents publicly refuse to pay a portion of their federal income taxes in order to withhold funds for the war in Iraq and redirect those funds to reconstruction in Iraq and in communities destroyed by Katrina.”
The campaign needs volunteers to get things ready before the roll-out.
I’ve signed up to help, but the more the merrier!
“Inspired by the vision of Dr. King, we want to purposely put a cog in the machine of war tax collection,” said Jodie Evans, Co-Founder of CodePink.
“We believe it will lead to a deepening of opposition as tens of thousands of people say, ‘I can no longer in good conscience pay for these acts by my government.’
The tradition of civil disobedience involves breaking a law in favor of a higher law.
It is time to call for this powerful action.”
“I think that as a movement we can’t expect the war to end and at the same time pay its bills every month.
At some point the bill paying has to stop, and then the war will stop,” said Bill Ramsey of the War Tax Boycott Coalition.
I note also that they’ve added some more groups, including United for Peace & Justice, to their coalition.
I don’t see anything about the campaign on the UFPJ site yet, but if they make an effort to promote the campaign to their members, that could make a big impact.
We have refused to pay war taxes . We will never pay for war. How can we? If you pay for it you will have it.
Rev. Don and Roberta Thrustin Timmerman
I could not stop this illegal war, but I shouldn’t have to pay for it!
June Forsyth Kenagy, Albany, Oregon
I knew it was an illegal war from the start and have looked forward to this moment of resistance.
Jack Heller, Topeka, Kansas
I call upon the American people to Resist War Taxes.
Craig Teichen, Chicago, Illinois
The only thing this rich people understand is the almighty worthless dollar. If they think a majority of us won’t pay our taxes for the killings they want, maybe they’ll think again.
Margie Lindsey, San Diego, California
I have been shamefully ignorant of what my country has been up to over the years with money from me. Now I say ‘no more murder in my name’ because I will not support it anymore.… Never again will I knowingly finance murder. I would rather go to jail.
Cliff McCutchen, Liburn, Georgia
I have been refusing to pay my taxes ever . Clearly, I have far more courage than your average American anti-war protester. It is scandalous that it has taken Americans four years to wake up to the idea of refusing to pay the war taxes.
Nabil Shaban, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
I have not, and will not pay taxes until we are out of Iraq and if we bomb Iran!
Chris Magda, North Port, Florida
I am happy to pay my assessed income taxes for peaceful reasons, but not for the war in Iraq and certainly not for further aggression in Iran!
Stephan Maddy Altschul, Monterey, Tennessee
I have had enough — this seems like the next logical step.
Kathy Ingallinera, Sitka, Alaska
This has been waiting to happen. I have been doing this .
Jesse Crumb, Eureka, California
I will not pay one more cent of my taxes to support killing.
anonymous, Holley, New York
No more taxpayers’ money for this immoral war.
Sandra Taylor, Marlboro, New York
Don’t want my tax dollars to support illegal wars started by this (or any) president.
Bret Vanderberg, Los Altos, California
I consider it an honor, and a service to humanity, to actively resist this most terrorist ongoing criminal syndicate in all of our human history, now lodged in power in the United States, regardless of any of its risks or even actual physical costs. Fulfilling this pledge to pay no tax, in order to end this nightmare, in the name of love, to all humanity, is among the least of the things I can now also do. Come on. Come get me.
David Busch, Los Angeles, California
My taxes will not kill anymore!
Connie Bergen, Kennebunk, Maine
No taxes to be paid, no more war to be funded — the choice is the government’s. I am not paying
Jennifer Suzanne Martino, Dixon, California
I have been trying to do this on my own and have not been able to figure out how to do it & pay the money saved to organizations helping the women of Iraq. With no success. So, I’m with you 2000% of the way. Do it.
Kossia Orloff, Durham, North Carolina
Get out of Iraq or I’ll stop paying taxes! Leave Iran alone or I’ll stop paying taxes!
The conference, a regularly-scheduled business & strategy meeting of NWTRCC, brought together about 20 dedicated members from across the country — some of whom have decades of experience with tax resistance — and also drew some curious locals who are just getting their feet wet.
Our hosts did an incredible job of organizing beds, meals, and transportation, and making us feel comfortable and at home, so that we could keep our minds on a challenging agenda throughout .
, at the national gathering in Santa Rosa, I was the curious local getting my feet wet.
, I was appointed to a term as an alternate on the national administrative committee.
I’d been reluctant to consider taking on a responsibility like this in the past, for one reason because we already had an AdCom member from Northern California, and for another because I thought I might not be sufficiently on-the-same-page with the group as a whole (for instance, not being much of a “progressive” and thinking the “Peace Tax Fund Act” is worse than worthless).
But then the AdCom member from our area resigned, and the more I thought about NWTRCC the more I realized that we’re a wildly diverse lot ideologically and we manage to comfortably fit on the “same page” anyway.
For the most part, we’re pretty good at concentrating on the stuff we agree on and treating the diversity of perspectives on other issues as a strength rather than a nuisance.
During the conference, we heard reports of Tax Day actions and general status reports from local groups around the country.
These varied a lot in tone, with some groups reporting a surge of interest and enthusiasm, while others were discouraged at diminishing membership and activity.
We spent a lot of time reviewing the War Tax Boycott — what worked, what didn’t work, and whether we should continue it in some form or change tactics.
I have mixed feelings about the Boycott.
On the plus side, I think that it provided a good project for us to focus our energies on, and it was a good wedge for publicity and outreach.
I think that it’s very likely that our project inspired, perhaps subliminally, the parallel war tax resistance projects that sprung up last year — Code Pink’s “Don’t Buy Bush’s War” campaign and Christian Peace Witness for Iraq’s “Pledge for Peace.”
Bill Ramsey at the War Tax Boycott press conference
However, these are largely side-effects.
In terms of the goals we explicitly set for the Boycott — which seemed to me to involve creating and maintaining a large-scale mass resistance and redirection campaign — I think the Boycott was mostly a flop.
It was unable to even reach a large percentage of current NWTRCC members to convince them to sign on.
My feeling is that we could use our resources, time, and energy more productively in the future by pursuing more realistic goals or by partnering with other organizations that have the resources to lead the sort of campaign we have in mind.
However, mine was very much a minority position.
And I heard enough about how useful the Boycott campaign had been to people in their local outreach that I became convinced that the campaign should continue in some form.
At the meeting, we agreed to spend some time reassessing and restructuring it, but to commit to continue it for at least.
On , Bill Ramsey, who has been the main organizer behind the Boycott effort, organized a press conference to announce that $325,000 had been redirected by boycotters from the Pentagon to humanitarian projects.
Antor Odu Ndep, executive director of Common Ground Health Clinic, accepts redirected taxes
Antor Odu Ndep, executive director of the Common Ground Health Clinic in New Orleans, was on-hand to accept a check representing donations from tax boycotters and to talk about what the clinic has done and is doing to help people in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Najlaa al-Nashi of Direct Aid Iraq joined the press conference by an audio/video link to talk about how that organization will use the redirected funds to help provide medical care for refugees from the Iraq War.
Tax resister Joffre Stewart speaks with representatives of the Direct Aid Initiative on a videoconference from Jordan
The Birmingham News also had a reporter on site, who fired off a quick note afternoon, and then filed a more complete story for the edition, featuring local resister David Waters:
David Waters’ protest started .
The Vietnam veteran couldn’t support the United States’ first Gulf War, what he calls a “slaughter in the desert.”
So he stopped paying his federal taxes.
“It just went against my conscience,” said Waters, a 61-year-old carpenter who lives in the Avondale community of Birmingham.
Today, he is one of more than 520 U.S. citizens from 44 states who refused to pay some or all of their federal taxes and pledged to redirect the money — more than $325,000 — to humanitarian causes.
On , a New Orleans health care clinic and an Iraqi refugee aid group accepted about $95,000 in gifts and pledges through the anti-war tax boycott.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, the organization that led the boycott, met in Birmingham to award some of the monetary gifts.
The Common Ground Health Clinic, a free clinic in New Orleans, received more than $50,000 in pledges.
The Direct Aid Initiative, or Direct Aid Iraq, got more than $44,400 of the would-be taxes.
Other “tax resisters” gave to local projects or humanitarian causes of their choosing, member Bill Ramsey said.
Najlaa al-Nashi, with the Iraqi refugee organization, said over teleconference afternoon from Jordan that her organization was grateful for the money.
Daniel Woodham put $300 on the table after al-Nashi spoke.
“I thank you so much for putting it to much better use than my government ever would,” said Woodham of Greensboro, N.C.
Woodham said he hasn’t paid his taxes , which he estimates amounts to about $15,000 before penalties.
The 43-year-old farmer and English language teacher files every year with a letter explaining where he is redirecting his money.
Woodham said he questions why his federal taxes should go “to kill people.”
“I don’t think it increases our safety.
I don’t think it increase our integrity around the world,” he said.
“I’m a conscientious objector.”
After the press conference, we returned to the Quaker Meeting house and I facilitated a workshop on how to talk to people about war tax resistance.
Mostly I was concerned with how we should respond when we’re promoting the tactic to activists who aren’t currently tax resisters, and then they throw up one of the dozen or so objections we’ve all heard before.
This was largely an extension of what I discussed here , with a focus on one-on-one communication as opposed to talking to and through the press.
After going on at some length about these theories of mine that I’m so proud of, I opened it up to the group by play-acting a potential resister who is raising excuses (in each of the needs / fears / values categories) as to why they don’t think tax resistance is right for them, and asking how the resisters present would answer the objections.
I thought it went well, provided a lot of food for thought, and could help to make us more persuasive as we go back home, away from the true believers, and have to respond to the old familiar objections again.
That evening we heard David Waters tell the gripping and fascinating story of the path he has taken in his life, from being an Army Special Forces volunteer in the Vietnam War, to being a “revenuer” for a liquor-law enforcement agency, to being a war tax resister.
I’ve left out a lot of nitty-gritty that occupied a lot of our time, but probably doesn’t have a whole lot of interest to those not already elbow-deep in the springs & gears of the organization.
I brought down six copies of We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader, figuring that if this wasn’t a good opportunity to find its audience nothing was.
Of the six, I gave away one to our hosts and sold seven (that is to say, I had to place quick orders for two more to keep up with demand).
I can’t convey, but should certainly mention, one of the most important parts of the meeting, which is just to be able to meet face-to-face and share stories and outlooks and be together in a group where tax resistance isn’t a frightening fringe idea but is the center of discussion.
I’m back from the NWTRCC National Gathering in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
I’ll share some of my impressions and go into more detail in the coming days.
I flew into Charlottesville and was picked up by one of our hosts — who’d be shuttling incoming conferencers all weekend and who did a fantastic job of making sure we all got collected, assembled, fed, and then given a comfortable place to lay our heads at the end of the day.
We passed the new America tombstone on the way back to Harrisonburg where we were holding the sessions of our meeting at the Community Mennonite Church.
After the administrative committee met on morning and afternoon to grease the wheels for the larger coordinating committee meetings, night was devoted to introductions, a viewing of a video on corrupt and insufficiently-monitored government spending on the Afghanistan War, and reports from local groups about how their Tax Day actions went and what they’ve been up to.
Clare Hanrahan shared some stories from the tour she and Coleman Smith have been conducting through Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to meet with peace & justice activists in that area, forge alliances between them, and learn about the state of the regional movement.
They’ve been blogging their adventures on the War Resisters League Asheville site.
Lots of people reported that their tax day protests had been upstaged by the Tea Party demonstrations this year, though a few groups took the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach and partied along with the rest of them.
One person noted that with more people e-filing their tax returns, the phenomenon of the last-minute post office rush has diminished, and there’s less media attention and less of an audience for leafletting and such.
Ruth Benn reported on how in New York they held a viewing of tax resistance related excerpts from Boston Legal and Stranger Than Fiction as a discussion-prompter.
Robert Randall reported that an attempt to focus messaging around the single issue of opposition to the Iraq War had seemed promising at first, as the war became more unpopular even in his red state of Georgia, but that it hadn’t seemed to lead to any noticeable uptick in interest in war tax resistance or in new resisters.
Many people noted the increasing challenge of developing interest in our message in a time when the anti-war movement is suffering from a post-election tranquilization.
Ray Gingerich reflected on the difficulty he is having in trying to reinvigorate the war tax resistance tradition in the Mennonite church.
On tax day, he sends his letter of protest to his church.
He also recalled for us that their local war tax resistance group used to be much more active and at one time they had a mutual aid fund that they used to defray the costs of penalties, interest, and frivolous filing fines incurred by individual members.
morning
After breakfast morning, we discussed what we thought of a rough cut of an upcoming war tax resistance film project, and talked about what we thought would be the best use of the available footage.
Then Bill Ramsey gave us an update on the War Tax Boycott project, and we discussed options for modifying the campaign going forward.
Here are some of the comments from my notes (these are all paraphrased and on-the-fly, so may not represent what these folks actually said or meant to say):
David Waters
I love the palm cards.
Pam Allee
It would be good to keep the campaign going on a low simmer during the sleepy times so that we would be ready to jump in with a flashier campaign when the moment is right.
Bill Ramsey
I recommend a scaled-down campaign in which we keep the website updated but reduce the budget.
Robert Randall
How can we hold on to the new resisters whom we learn about for the first time when they sign up for the boycott?
Ray Gingerich
I’m confused as to whether the boycott is meant only for first-timers or if it’s for everyone; to me it seemed gimmicky and not particularly appealing.
Susan Balzer
Some people might not want to sign on to the boycott because they don’t want to be “on a list” and they might be more comfortable if there’s a way to remain anonymous.
Jim Stockwell
I think maybe “boycott” is a threatening or discouraging word to some people.
Clare Hanrahan
The hard copy boycott sign-on sheets weren’t at all popular when we were tabling.
Daniel Woodham
We should make the palm cards less likely to go stale by removing the year and references to specific wars/issues.
Geov Parrish
The value of the campaign is mainly as a vehicle for publicizing war tax resistance as an option, not so much in getting people to sign on.
Erica Weiland
I wonder if by framing the campaign as a one-year thing we prompt people to make their resistance temporary.
Clare Hanrahan
I do low-income resistance and I redirect unwaged labor, not money.
I think the war tax resistance movement should honor that and recognize that option for boycott participants (not assume everyone has a dollar amount to redirect).
Tim Godshall (and others)
We need to have better follow-up with the people who sign on — by phone is better than by email.
Robert Randall
Maybe we could parcel out some of the following-up to people in our network list.
Next came a discussion of our finances and a report from the fundraising committee, and then we broke for lunch.
afternoon
First thing on afternoon we had a panel presentation and group discussion about the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and about NWTRCC’s relationship with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.
This was the most contentious item on the agenda, and I’m going to leave you all in suspense about it by writing it up in a future blog post all its own rather than putting it here.
After this, we broke up into smaller group sessions.
In mine, a group of maybe twenty resisters just shared some of their recent experiences with resistance and with the IRS.
Sharing our war stories like this is one of the best parts of these meetings, and is also a great way of keeping our fingers on the pulse of how IRS enforcement trends are changing.
I didn’t take notes during that session since it seemed to be a more-intimate sharing of personal information than the general meeting.
I did write down one quote though that was too good to miss, from Clare Hanrahan:
“I used to say that they could boil me in oil before I’d pay any war taxes, but now that I know that they could actually do that…”
One idea I came away with was that it would be nice to have some tips from war tax resistance veterans about how to deal with “mixed marriages” in which one partner is a resister and the other one is not.
There are some tricky questions, especially when finances get tangled up together.
I’m hoping, next time I have some free time, to put some time into collecting some of these stories and tips.
The next full-group session was about “organizing strategies and outreach ideas in the Obama era.”
I didn’t take notes here either as I was facilitating and had to devote all of my attention to that.
What I mostly recall from the discussion is that people were less interested in talking about strategies, techniques, and outreach ideas and more interested in talking about what sort of messaging we should and shouldn’t use.
Before dinner was another set of small-group breakout sessions.
I joined the web team, discussing the nitty-gritty of web site maintenance and design, none of which is really worth relating here.
was our business meeting, in which decisions that require consensus approval of the coordinating committee are made, folks are rotated onto and off of the administrative committee (Erica Weiland is joining us this time), we review the budget and priorities and how the coordinator is doing, check in on the progress of ongoing projects, and plan for the next gathering.
The first half of the meeting was largely taken up by Peace Tax Fund-related discussion, which I’m holding off reporting on until a future post.
For the second half, I was the facilitator and so took no notes.
So you’ll just have to wait until Ruth Benn posts her meeting minutes for a full picture of what took place.
This issue had come up at our last meeting in Eugene because the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund had asked us to formally endorse this legislation.
We were unable to reach consensus on the endorsement at that meeting and didn’t allot enough time to really discuss the matter in detail, so we planned to readdress the issue and devote more time to discussion this time around.
One of the arguments in favor of us endorsing the bill was that in the NWTRCC “Statement of Purpose” is a section that many people interpreted as a built-in endorsement of the bill.
That section reads:
NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals.
These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability.
I’ve heard many perspectives about whether this section endorses the bill or merely indicates that support for it is one of many war tax resistance related activities that our affiliate groups engage in.
But in any case, the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill” doesn’t exist as an active piece of legislation anymore.
The currently-proposed legislation is substantially different in content and has a new name.
So this time around, in addition to debating the endorsement question, we were also trying to come up with a satisfactory way to remove or replace the anachronistic language from our statement of purpose.
On , we had a panel presentation on the bill followed by an open discussion.
Bethany Criss, the executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, presented the case for why we should endorse.
Ray Gingerich and I each gave statements opposing the endorsement.
Ruth Benn shared some of her insights from being exposed to the variety of international peace tax fund campaigns (some of which are promoting legislation that differs in important ways from the U.S. bill) and also recounted some of the history of the close working relationship of NWTRCC and NCPTF.
After these brief remarks from the panel, other attendees addressed the issue.
The following summary is based on notes I was taking at the time, so is only as good as my attention and note-taking were — caveat emptor:
Bethany Criss started out by noting the similarity between legalized conscientious objection to military service and conscientious objection to military taxation.
She also tried to assuage concerns that the “Religious Freedom” part of the bill’s title meant that the provisions of the bill would not be available to non-religious objectors.
She said that she felt confident that Congress would not raid the peace tax fund to pay for military expenses because the RFPTFA would represent a contract between us and Congress and that we could hold them accountable if they were to violate it.
She acknowledged that the bill was imperfect and would not accomplish as much as many people would like, but hoped that we would see it as an initial step in an incremental process.
I went next.
Here’s more-or-less the argument I gave against endorsement:
War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Fund advocates agree that the belligerent militarism of the United States is a grave problem, that individuals must act to oppose it, and that our tax dollars are an important way in which we can move from complicity to opposition.
Because of this, we’re natural allies and have much in common.
The RFPTFA currently being pushed by the NCPTF has some significant problems. So much so that although our groups have much in common in our outlook and our interests, I think it would be a mistake for NWTRCC to endorse the RFPTFA.
Indeed, the problems with the bill are so significant that if the bill ever looked as though it might pass, we would be wiser to actively oppose the bill than to endorse it.
The main problems with the bill are two: 1) it’s no good, and 2) it’s bad.
That is, not only would it not deliver any meaningful benefits, but it would have harmful effects that would be damaging to the war tax resistance movement and dangerous to individual war tax resisters.
The reason why I say the bill is no good is this.
If the bill passes, it would give Congress more taxpayer money to spend and would allow Congress to spend as much money as it likes on war and armaments.
Every dollar paid into the “Peace Tax Fund” would increase taxpayer spending on the military.
This sounds like exactly the opposite of what the NCPTF intends, which may be true.
But sometimes good intentions lead to counterproductive laws and policies.
If you read the NCPTF literature, you’ll see that they admit that the bill would increase government revenue without decreasing how much Congress could spend on war:
So Congress would have more taxpayer money than before and could spend as much as it wants on war.
Why on earth would we want this?
Well, we’re supposed to want this because at least our money wouldn’t be spent on war.
But this is just an illusion.
The basic problem has to do with displacement.
If you pay into the Peace Tax Fund and Congress can only spend “your” money on something nice like the National Park Service, Congress can just take some other money that it had been planning to spend on the Park Service and divert it to the Pentagon.
So Congress spends just like it always has, with a little more taxpayer money than it would have had otherwise, but the people who pay into the Peace Tax Fund falsely believe that they aren’t responsible for the results of that increased spending.
It would be as though I were to pour a cup of sand into a mug full of hot coffee and then claim that I wasn’t responsible for the spillover since my sand sank to the bottom of the mug and it was only someone else’s coffee that spilled over the top.
So that’s why the RFPTFA isn’t any good.
Now here’s why it’s bad.
First: it constructs an illusion through which people can be induced to pay for war and militarism while believing that they are not.
The war tax resistance movement should be working hard to tear down illusions like this, not build up new ones.
Second: it would divide the war tax resistance movement between those people who maintain their testimony against paying for war and those who take advantage of the false moral cover of the RFPTFA.
This would also give the IRS fewer targets to pursue, and make the remaining war tax resisters more likely to be targeted by enforcement actions.
If the war tax resistance movement ever does become a powerful force for social change, you can bet that the government will consider passing such a bill — not as a concession to our movement but as a divide-and-conquer technique against it.
Third: it would give a persuasive rhetorical tool to people who oppose war tax resisters.
They would say that war tax resisters should just pay into the Peace Tax Fund like good, law-abiding, conscientious people.
Imagine what the IRS would say to resisters: “We gave you the ‘Peace Tax Fund’ you wanted — now you’ve got no more excuses not to pay up.”
Those three things are harmful effects the bill would have if it ever became law.
I don’t think this is likely, but there’s a fourth reason not to endorse the bill that doesn’t depend on whether or not it is successful in becoming law: advocacy of such a bill sends the message that the war tax resistance movement is naïve and that our conscientious scruples are superficial.
It tells people that war tax resisters:
are not particularly conscientious at all, but can be easily bought-off by symbolic concessions and simple sleight-of-hand
are conscientious enough to check a box on a form, but not conscientious enough to follow through on the ramifications of our actions
are willing enough to fund war if you can give us a way to deny that we’re doing it
would rather have a certificate from the government recognizing our officially certified conscientiousness than to actually be conscientious
These flaws have been pointed out before, and frequently PTF promoters have responded with an argument along these lines: Sure the RFPTFA won’t reduce military spending and it has at best an ambiguous effect on taxpayer complicity, but it has strong symbolic power: it’s a way to get conscientious objection to military taxation officially recognized, to get a foot in the door, to be able to take a census of conscientious objectors every April 15th, to propagandize for peace with every 1040 booklet, and so forth.
These benefits are not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons, but even if you were to acknowledge them — are they sufficient to justify putting any more energy into a 38-year-old campaign that has gone nowhere at all, currently in support of a piece of legislation that, even as watered down as it is, hasn’t had as much as a committee hearing in over a decade?
I feel strongly about this, and I have not pulled my punches.
Some of you may think I’m being uncharitable and unfair.
I’ll end on this note: I think the advocates of the RFPTFA have their hearts in the right place.
They are temperamentally our allies and I hope they continue to think of themselves that way.
I think that to the extent that we agree, we should continue to work closely and warmly together, and to the extent that we disagree we can agree to disagree.
After me, Ray Gingerich spoke, giving what I interpreted as a Thoreauvian argument against the peace tax fund idea: we shouldn’t wait to act conscientiously until the government gives us its permission to do so.
In addition, he feels from his work in trying to reintroduce war tax resistance into the Mennonite churches that the peace tax fund is an obstacle to this — it creates an excuse that people use: they say they’ll resist taxes but only when there’s a peace tax fund that allows them to do it legally.
After these prepared remarks from the panel, and Ruth’s discussion which I mentioned above, we heard from the other attendees.
Before Eugene, I thought of myself as a real outlier in my skepticism about the peace tax fund bill.
Most of what I heard about the bill in war tax resistance circles was positive, and the way people spoke about it made it seem like NWTRCC enthusiasm for the peace tax fund was a foregone conclusion if not a tautological one.
In Eugene I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few other people shared my misgivings about the bill, though I still felt like we were the minority.
In Harrisonburg last Saturday, though, it was clear that the tide had shifted dramatically.
Even with the executive director of the NCPTF there to pitch the bill, most people had little praise for it, and even the ones who were peace tax fund supporters in the abstract expressed that we probably shouldn’t endorse this version.
Gary Erb noted that most of those present probably wouldn’t qualify as conscientious objectors under the bill’s restrictive language, and so wouldn’t be able to legally avail themselves of the RFPTFA even if they cared to.
He also felt the bill would have a divide-and-conquer effect against the WTR movement, and recommended against endorsement.
Geov Parrish felt that the RFPTFA hadn’t a chance of becoming law, so it should be best seen as an educational vehicle.
That being the case, it was a poor idea to have watered it down so much in an attempt to make it palatable enough to pass through Congress.
Also, he noted that he feels excluded from the RFPTFA and its promotional materials because he is not a Christian.
Joffre Stewart said that as an anarchist resister, begging the state for exemptions and favors isn’t his style.
He thinks that conscientious objection to military service was mostly enacted for the state’s benefit, not for the benefit of the COs, and he thinks the same would be true of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation.
From this, he draws the conclusion that the reason we don’t have legal conscientious objection to military taxation is that war tax resisters have not yet become sufficiently inconvenient to the government.
Daniel Woodham thought that though the RFPTFA wasn’t perfect, it might make for a good first step, and once it was enacted we could work to amend it or correct its faults over time.
Bethany Criss said that in her view the “laundry list” of items in the section (§3b) of the bill that defines spending that falls under the “military purpose” category shouldn’t be seen as excluding other spending from that category, but only as examples of spending that fall under that category.
In her view, once the bill passes, a next step will be to ensure that the “military purpose” definition is interpreted inclusively so that it covers all the stuff we’re worried about.
Greg Reagle gave us some perspective on the reasoning behind watering down the bill to permit Congress to spend the money in the RFPTF on anything in the budget other than things in the military purpose category (previous incarnations of the bill had specified more precisely where that money would go).
He said that potential supporters in Congress had balked at having their spending decisions micromanaged by legislation, and so the changes had been made to mollify them.
Erica Weiland wanted to emphasize the positive working relationship between NWTRCC and NCPTF, though she too was opposed to endorsing the bill.
As an anarchist she doesn’t much favor trying to solve problems via legislation, but as an activist she tries to inspire well-intentioned people to be more active in ways that seem most appropriate to them, so she wants to encourage PTF promoters to keep doing their thing.
Robert Randall said he was impressed at the high plane on which the discussion was taking place.
He thought that the results of passing the RFPTFA might not be all that important, but that there might be some benefits to be had from the campaign to pass the bill anyway.
Pam Allee felt that the bill would help to emphasize that “we are the government” and so we can take control of the budget and change spending priorities so as to emphasize things like education, seat belt law enforcement, and other liberal priorities.
She was concerned that the RFPTFA seemed to lack grassroots support.
Larry Bassett paused to wonder whether it was really appropriate to the mission of a group like NWTRCC to be endorsing legislation or the individual projects of the affiliate groups.
Jim Stockwell felt that there might be a contradiction in that for many WTRs, the fact that tax resistance is illegal civil disobedience is an essential part of their WTR, and so legal conscientious objection would not be helpful to them.
He hoped our two groups would continue to work together.
Hiro (whose last name I didn’t catch, and whose first name I may be misspelling) encouraged us to patiently work at incremental approaches and not reject RFPTFA just because it wasn’t everything we wanted.
That said, she also worried that the government would spend the “peace” tax fund on things based on its warped definition of peacemaking work.
She envisioned Blackwater contractors doing their institution-building mopping-up exercises in Iraq (where she is from) and calling it “peacemaking” activities deserving of RFPTFA funding.
Tim Godshall tried to give us some perspective, noting that WTRs are one of the best arguments for the PTF (that is, the existence of WTRs demonstrates that many citizens have a strong conscientious objection that their government needs to accommodate), and also that although the RFPTFA might not have any effect on the military budget, the same could be said of WTRs. He believes that the RFPTFA is one part of a larger campaign to pressure the government to change its spending priorities.
Peter Smith disagreed with the suggestion that if the RFPTFA were to pass it would divide the WTR movement.
He agreed that we should not endorse the legislation, but hoped we would continue to support the PTF campaigners.
Ray Gingerich responded to a comment from Joffre Stewart by insisting that he was not an anarchist and indeed believed that a strong, active government (for example, one capable of implementing single-payer universal health care) was not incompatible with pacifism.
He plugged nonviolent conflict resolution strategies of the The Unconquerable World / A Force More Powerful school.
He also suggested that Marian Franz (the long-time National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund executive director) had been used by people and institutions who wanted to delay their confrontation with taxpayer complicity by putting it off until some distant future in which conscientious objection to military taxation was a legalized option.
Joffre Stewart noted that the U.S. government had no qualms about raiding the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for its military spending, and that it had stacked its “U.S. Institute of Peace” with CIA folk committed to the government’s violent foreign policy.
He therefore sees no reason to trust the government to administer a “peace tax fund.”
Bethany Criss told us that not only is she committed to seeing the RFPTFA enacted into law, but that she is also a war tax resister and has been since .
She said that although there is an associated “Peace Tax Foundation” with an educational mission, there should be no doubt that the Campaign’s goal is to get the legislation passed into law.
She thinks that the bill will be beneficial to war tax resisters and the war tax resistance movement by making WTR more visible.
She says that if the bill were enacted, it would not take away the opportunity to resist or say no; that resisters could continue to resist as before if they wished.
The goal is to bring more people in to a war tax resistance mindset.
She notes that part of the reason the bill was watered down is that their campaign doesn’t yet have enough supporters to bring enough pressure to bear on the legislators; this is another reason why she’d like our support.
Finally, Bill Ramsey felt that we might be better off not concentrating on the (unlikely) endorsement and instead trying to work on ways the two groups can work better together.
was an open-ended discussion without any decisions to be made on either the endorsement or the statement of purpose wording; on , our “business meeting,” we addressed those decisions.
A number of people who could not come to the meeting sent along their opinions about the RFPTFA, and printouts of these were made available to attendees of the business meeting before we took up the issue.
These were on the whole much more positive about the Act and more in favor of endorsement than the attendees had been, with one person recommending endorsement, another recommending “NWTRCC continuing its endorsement” of the bill (though we had a hard time determining which if any version of the bill our group had originally endorsed), and another conveying the results of a discussion about the issue held by Sonoma County Taxes for Peace which led to that group deciding to strongly support NWTRCC endorsing the bill.
Predictably, we did not reach consensus at the business meeting on to endorse the RFPTFA.
I counted about a half-dozen people in favor of endorsement, maybe half again as many against it.
Unfortunately, although a non-endorsement was pretty clearly the inevitable conclusion, it took a while to get there, and we weren’t able to devote as much time as we needed to the stickier question of the Statement of Purpose and its anachronistic reference to the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
The upshot of that discussion was that there were two replacement phrases with a large amount of support:
“…support of peace tax fund legislation…”
“…support of legislation that would legalize conscientious objection to military taxation…”
While there was broad support for both, neither was able to rally a consensus around it.
My proposal to simply scrap the old anachronistic wording for now and perhaps come up with a replacement at a later date also failed to attract consensus support — with many people feeling that by rejecting the endorsement and also eliminating mention of the PTF from our Statement of Purpose it would look too much like we’d conducted a wholesale purge of PTF sympathy from the group.
So when it came down to it, the Statement of Purpose ended up the same way it began in this area: it continues to pledge our support for supporters of the long-gone “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
This is a little ridiculous, but seems mostly harmless.
was .
NWTRCC regulars were joined by curious locals like Tom Quinn of EcoWatch and Michael Patterson from Dennis Kucinich’s office (our meeting place is in Kucinich’s House district and he was curious enough to send an aide to take notes).
A few things jumped out at me during the opening introductory go-’round:
Jim Stockwell of North Carolina mentioned that after some initial mutual
suspicion there was surprising synergy between the traditional Tax Day
protest his war tax resistance group held
and the Tea Party protests going on
at .
Many of the local groups reported diminishing numbers and less-frequent
activity in the past months, mirroring a general doldrums in the peace
movement.
Bill Ramsey noted that it has become harder to set up alternative funds
in the post-9/11 financial paperwork era.
Ramsey also reported on an interesting and creative tax day protest in his
neck of the woods. A group grabbed hundreds of 1040 forms from public
places where such things are found (libraries, post offices, and the
like), then printed ghostly images of coffins and of children wounded in
war over the forms, and then replaced them where they had originally found
them.
Ginny Sсhnеider noted that in New Hampshire, the notoriety
of the Ed
and Elaine Brown tax protester stand-off fiasco has made it difficult
for her to do outreach in the progressive community. People hear “tax
resistance” and immediately their minds conjure up images of nuts holing
up with their arsenals and their conspiracy theories until the government
locks them up for life.
We watched a near-final cut of a film
NWTRCC is producing about war tax resistance and resisters:
Death and Taxes. It met with great acclaim (and
plenty of suggestions for last-minute edits). Last I heard, it’s due for
release .
Attendees watch a cut of Death and Taxes, an introductory war tax resistance film due to be released next month
Later, Phil Althouse, an election observer in El Salvador, updated us on conditions there, and Mike Ferner of Veterans for Peace talked about how to move from activism to organizing and build bonds between disparate parts of the broader anti-war coalition.
Mike Ferner and Phil Althouse address the gathering
While coalition building always sounds great in the abstract, when it comes
down to actually doing it, it runs into the practical difficulty of finding a
common ground and deciding where to compromise and where no compromise is
possible. Ferner thought that organizing around the larger vision of
real democracy was the way to go. Other folks were skeptical. It can
be difficult to find anything approaching an ideological common ground even in
a small group like
NWTRCC
with an inherently common, specialized and political interest.
In members of
NWTRCC
there’s often a tension between avowed nonviolent principles and promotion of
progressive projects (like universal health care and publicly-financed
elections for instance) that fundamentally rely on a coercive, violent state
to carry them out. The avowedly nonviolent progressives either don’t see the
violent ramifications inherent in such projects or I have failed to understand
the ingenious way they have squared this circle. I usually avoid the
temptation to press the point, but sometimes give in.
Anyway, after this we split up into two groups: a War Tax Resistance 101
discussion group that I moderated, and a larger group that discussed issues of
interest to more experienced resisters. There were other groups that met over
the course of the afternoon as well, but by then I found it hard to be in even
one place at once.
In the evening we heard more in-depth stories of the tax resistance from our hosts, Maria Smith and Charlie Hurst, and from Juanita Nelson and Erica Weiland.
Juanita Nelson told the story of her arrest-in-a-Sears-bathrobe that she also tells in A Matter of Freedom.
Erica described her transformation from a young Dean Democrat to a tax resisting anarchist (a salvation narrative in which, to my delight, The Picket Line plays a role).
“How baffling it is that the anti-war movement is silent on this,” says Greg Bishop of the new war in Libya on his radio show Saturday Session with Bishop.
One person who isn’t silent is war tax resister Bill Ramsey whom Bishop interviews on his show:
Around the middle of April as the federal income tax filing deadline
approaches, tax resistance articles hit the media frequently. Here are some
examples from past years:
War tax resister Irwin Hogenauer hasn’t filed a tax return for 35 years. (don’t miss the ad below the article for a special on the Sony Walkman: only $89.00)
An op-ed piece by Horace G. Davis on personal entanglement with the military-industrial complex includes notes on Raymond Hunthausen and some of the publications of the war tax resistance movement.
Clare Hanrahan is redirecting her taxes to a group that helps the homeless. “We’re not evading taxes. We’re redirecting them and putting them where they’ll do the most good, immediately.” Also quotes Karen Marysdaughter.
Karl Meyer and Ruth Benn are quoted in this piece on the war tax resistance movement.
Around the middle of April as the federal income tax filing deadline
approaches, tax resistance articles hit the media frequently. Here are some
examples from past years:
A post-tax-day wrap-up quotes war tax resister Ed Hedemann, and also Jack O’Malley, one of three Catholic priests in Pittsburgh who were refusing to pay war taxes.
A news report on tax day protests includes a mention of “Seven Pittsburgh priests [who] will refuse to pay about a third of their federal income taxes in a protest against the nuclear arms race” and of war tax resister Ralph Dull, who “drove a truck filled with 325 bushels of corn to the IRS office in Dayton” in lieu of cash payment.
Bill Ramsey, Jenny Truax, Rebekah Hassler, Tom & Suzanne Makarewicz, and Mary Loehr mentioned and/or quoted.
The crew from Northern California War Tax Resistance has been hard at work planning for the upcoming national gathering of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, which will be held from in Berkeley and Oakland. (You can find detailed information and a registration form at the NWTRCC website.)
’s program at the Berkeley Friends Church starts in the evening, with the registration table open at , dinner at , and introductions and orientation starting at .
At there will be a panel on innovations in social justice networking featuring Maritza Schäfer (who specializes in helping activist groups form their outreach strategies, and whom I know from her work with the Abundance League) and Mira Luna, an innovator of alternative local economic models such as the Bay Area Community Exchange.
On we move to the United Methodist Church on the shore of Lake Merritt in Oakland.
Breakfast starts at , and the program at .
At you’ll have a choice of workshops:
Outreach strategies and social justice networking
Techniques of simple living/low-income tax resistance
Confrontational war tax resistance
In the early afternoon we’ll have informal small-group discussions as we take sack lunches outside for a walk around the lake or a picnic in the park.
Then, from we’ll hold our War Tax Resistance 101 and 202 classes.
The 101 is intended for newbies and people curious about war tax resistance, and attendees will get an overview of the various methods of tax resistance and how to choose a method that fits your goals and your lifestyle.
There will be two 202 sessions for experienced resisters to talk shop about the latest developments, current challenges, and emerging techniques in resistance — one for the low-income/simple-living set, and another for the refuse-to-pay or refuse-to-file set.
After this will be a set of afternoon seminars.
You have the choice of attending a presentation by Michael Eisenscher on the New Priorities Network or attending two of the following shorter seminars (which will be repeating back-to-back):
After Dinner our evening program begins, featuring a granting ceremony in which our local alternative fund — The People’s Life Fund — gives grants of redirected tax dollars to deserving local groups, entertainment by musician Francisco Herrera and YouthSpeaks, and a talk from radical lawyer and two-time prisoner of war tax resistance J. Tony Serra.
we move back to Berkeley and have the business meeting of the coordinating committee of NWTRCC (that means anyone who considers themselves part of the group and cares to show up) at Berkeley CoHousing.
If you can make it out to this, it’s worth it.
You’ll meet people who have been resisting for decades and who use a variety of methods.
It’s a great way to learn more about resisting taxes and about the variety of approaches to conscientious activism.
Redirection: Our “Constructive Program” — Bill Ramsey compares redirection (the common practice in war tax resistance circles of giving your due taxes to charity rather than to the government) to the “constructive program” part of Gandhi’s campaigns.
Like us! — Erica Weiland points out the various facets of NWTRCC’s social media presence.
Counseling Notes — how credit rating worries and student debt may discourage war tax resisters; suspicions of an uptick in the underground economy; lots of bad news for the IRS; and war tax resistance counselor training notes
War Tax Resistance Ideas and Actions — a recap of some of the creative outreach and protest actions of the nationwide war tax resistance community
How We Want Our Tax Dollars Used — a look at the granting decisions of a handful of war tax resistance alternative funds, which coordinate the redirection of many war tax resisters
NWTRCC News — a recap of the NWTRCC national gathering in Asheville earlier this month
American Quaker war tax resistance reemerged in the Friends Journal in , with some real live resisters telling their stories and sharing the processes by which they had developed their methods of resistance.
The issue had several mentions of war tax resistance.
Editor Vinton Deming’s lead editorial concerned his annual confrontation of the “agonizing question” of what to do at tax-filing time.
Excerpt:
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
For many years I sought ways to protest.
I started by submitting a letter with my 1040 objecting to the large sums going to the Pentagon and the neglect of other needed programs. No one responded.
At other times I requested a refund so I might send a sum to a human service program not being adequately funded.
Nice idea, I thought, but IRS didn’t think so.
One year they told me the request was “frivolous,” and they tried to penalize me for asking.
My lawyer got them to drop the matter.
Then about 15 years ago I stopped filing a tax return altogether, choosing instead to write a letter to the president explaining why I was not willing as a Friend to pay for things like B-1 bombers, cruise missiles, or Star Wars.
The latter approach clearly got the attention of IRS officials.
Suddenly I was “playing in the big leagues.”
The government took me to court on two occasions and threatened to do the same to my present employer unless my back taxes, interest, and penalties were paid at once [see ♇ ].
Reluctantly, and after much soul searching, the Journal agreed to pay.
I released them to do so, being convinced we had resisted as long as we could and had explored all legal means.
Friends rallied to support us with financial gifts to help pay the large debt.
In I made my last monthly payment to the Journal.
I continue to struggle with IRS on this matter, which dates back to my tax resistance of .
The government disagreed with our math for what we believed was actually owed in back taxes.
My lawyer is maneuvering to try to prevent IRS from seizing my Individual Retirement Account, an argument to be decided by a judge later this year.
In more recent tax years I have filed and paid, trying to claim as many exemptions as possible and to limit the government’s take.
I have lobbied for the Peace Tax Fund Bill and supported others who are resisting.
David Shen also wrote of his war tax resistance in that issue.
Excerpts:
For 12 years, I have withheld a portion of my income tax from IRS.
I refuse to give money to the military to kill people.
There is too much need around us.
For the last three years, I have given this portion to My Brothers’ House, a homeless shelter my Quaker meeting supports in the inner city of Philadelphia.
Each year at tax time, I sigh deeply.
I know IRS may punish me.
And I know I stand on the side of life.
For these 12 years, IRS and I have been corresponding politely.
They send me notices; I write back.
Since I received notices of intent to levy and since they have not levied, I assume I have been lost in their millions of files.
I was surprised, then, when my college employer received the levy on my salary.
My first talks with IRS, lawyers, and F/friends left me feeling depressed and helpless.
IRS would get what they thought was theirs.
Then God intervened.
Inadvertently, my lawyer angered me.
In my anger, I took a position of reducing my wages to a level IRS could not levy.
(By law IRS must leave me a wage to live on.)
I had not considered it before, since doing so would cost me $2,200 — more than the levy’s $1,200.
I think Shen is being too modest here in giving God the credit for a bold decision that came direct from Shen.
I approached the college dean, my superior.
“Reduce my wages,” I said, “so IRS cannot satisfy its levy.”
But the dean shocked me.
Her superior, the vice president, would not allow me to reduce my wages.
I had to quit or pay the levy.
That sounds very familiar.
When I first started resisting, I went in to the human resources department of my employer to ask if reducing my salary below the tax line was an option.
They told me it was out of the question.
My response was to resign and become an independent contractor.
Shen took a different tack:
After a conversation with one of my students, I decided to continue teaching and pay the levy.
I would, however, also continue learning about love and Truth.
Could I reach administrators, I wondered, if I used Gandhi’s principle of selfsuffering?
I would direct suffering to me, and not to the college, by teaching at reduced income rather than quitting and leaving the college with 80 angry students.
I met with the administrator who wrote my paycheck, the department chair, the dean again, and then the vice-president.
Three respected my position (the vicepresident didn’t reveal his stand).
The payroll administrator blurted out, “Isn’t there a legal way you can do this (pay income tax without paying the military)?”
When I met with the president of the college, six weeks had passed and the levy was almost fully paid.
He was busy.
He startled me by agreeing with my right to take my position, and he would seek how I could do so at the college.
Two weeks later, he informed me he could not find a legal way to accommodate me.
I, though, was thrilled.
In our two conversations, the president and I connected.
We talked about my tax situation for 20 minutes and unexpectedly talked about his and my family for 90 minutes.
He was late for one of his appointments.
As I waved goodbye, he asked, “Stop in for coffee again, will you?”
What did I learn?
I am poorer by $1,200, but I am richer in intangible ways.
I feel in the flow of God’s will for me and feel connected to people — F/friends who support me and opponents who respect me.
I am invigorated and happy
It must be comforting to feel that “God’s will” is responsible for all the difficult and fuzzy decisions you make.
Whether you zig or you zag, whether things turn out well or ill, God’s in charge and if you’re willing to give Him all the credit, He’ll be glad to take all the blame.
The same issue published part of an interview that Susan Van Haitsma conducted with Paula Rogge .
Excerpts:
What were the motivating factors in your decision to become a tax
resister?
Deciding to refuse to pay taxes for war was a slow, gradual process for
me… As I grew older and attended Illinois Yearly Meeting, I heard more about tax resistance.
I met two men who had served time in prison for refusing to pay war taxes or resisting cooperation with the Internal Revenue Service.
I saw them as very committed people with a lot of integrity, and I could see that the yearly meeting supported them.
So, at some level I felt that tax resistance was the logical extension of my pacifist views, and I knew there was a community of support for tax resistance among the Friends and the wider peace community as well.…
How did you go about your tax resistance?
That first year, I think I owed one dollar.
I refused to pay the dollar
and sent a letter to the IRS explaining my position.
The next year, I increased the number of withholding allowances on my W-4 form so that I owed the IRS at the end of the year instead of vice-versa.
I began by refusing to pay 40–50 percent of my federal tax money because at the time, that was the approximate percentage being used to fund current and past wars.
Then, over time, I realized that of the 50–60 percent I was paying, 40–50 percent was still being used for military purposes, so I stopped paying the whole kit and caboodle.
I stopped paying all taxes because I had no control whatsoever over how the money was being spent.
In the last several years I’ve also stopped paying social security taxes because the government borrows from those funds to help cover the deficit, indirectly financing the defense system.
So, it’s been a gradual process of taking my tax resistance further and further.
I’ve always filed, and the IRS and I have always agreed about how much I’ve owed (now over $60,000 including penalties and interest).
At this point, I don’t feel led to stop filing.
For myself, I feel better being open about it, but I realize many tax resisters don’t file, and I respect their reasons for going that route.
Have you redirected your tax money?
The first couple of years that I did tax resistance, I put the money
aside in a bank account, assuming it would be seized.
It wasn’t seized right away, however, and I’m afraid the money was spent without having been donated as it should have.
But I learned, and since then I’ve made sure the amount of money owed in taxes and social security is donated every year to charitable groups.
I’ve had a lot of fun giving this money away.
Sometimes when I have sent the contribution, I have included a note explaining that the donation represents refused war taxes, and I have received supportive notes in return.
It’s a very empowering feeling to know that my money is doing some good.
Have there been special ways in which you would say your life has been
affected positively by your practice of tax resistance?
When I finished my residency, I worked in a migrant clinic for two years
in the Rio Grande Valley in Harlingen, Texas: a very conservative community.
The second year I was there, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper explaining that I was a war tax resister and why.
The newspaper editor phoned me to make sure I really wanted the letter printed!
I said yes, and they did print it.
I was afraid of the response I might get from the community, but I felt it was important to be public about my stance.
After the letter was printed, the other doctors in Harlingen actually became much friendlier and began to take a certain interest in me.
I don’t think any of them agreed with the tax resistance, but they seemed to respect my position.
Several nurses and a nuclear medicine technician I hadn’t known before introduced themselves and expressed their support of my war tax resistance.
I didn’t get any negative reactions.
In , I began a medical family practice in Austin, Texas, along with another doctor.
The first year into the practice, the IRS sent notice that my wages would be garnisheed.
I asked that my salary be lowered to $100 per week, as that is the amount exempt from levy.
In order to supplement this reduced income, I began to work moonlighting jobs in various agencies: the city Health Department, Planned Parenthood, and the State Commission for the Blind, for example.
I had to find new moonlighting jobs every two years or so because that was about the length of time it usually took the IRS to catch up and begin attaching wages again.
Something good happened as a result of this.
I’ve had to explain to all potential employers that at some point the IRS would begin to levy my wages and when that happened, I would no longer be able to work for them.
When I explained this to the Texas Commission for the Blind during my interview, for example, they were quite taken aback, and I thought I probably wouldn’t get the job.
But, a few weeks later, they did hire me!
The woman who hired me said she understood why I was doing tax resistance and that she agreed with my convictions.
I came to feel a real sense of support and community there.
In , the
IRS
seized your automobile.
Could you describe what happened?
Well, some time before the car was seized, an
IRS
agent, accompanied by a law officer, came to our clinic to pay me a visit.
I could tell they were nervous and even a bit hostile.
But as we sat and talked, and I explained why I simply could not pay for war, I could see them both soften a little.
Toward the end of the interview, the officer began asking questions about our practice and commented that it was unusual for us to be located in such a poor neighborhood.
As they were leaving, I complemented the officer on his cowboy boots — he had on some kind of exotic boots — and I think he was tickled pink that I had noticed them.
He told me where he had gotten them.
It was kind of a humorous exchange and I felt very good about that.
We had related as people.
I figured that since my wages had become uncollectible and I had no bank account, eventually my car would be seized.
But even so, the morning it happened, it came as a bit of a shock.
My IRS agent came to the bouse and, poor woman, she was just shivering in her shoes, she looked so nervous.
She placed a sticker on the car and then asked if she could use my phone to call the tow truck!
I decided that they were going to tow it one way or another, so I invited her in to use the phone.
I had a sick patient in the emergency room at the time, so I took a taxi to the hospital right away.
Having a patient to worry about took my mind off the car long enough to ease my worry about the situation.
Then friends came forward and loaned me their cars without my having to ask.
A month following the seizure, the car was auctioned.
About 20–30 Quakers and other friends came and protested the auction, asking potential buyers not to bid on the car.
At least one potential buyer was convinced to refrain from bidding, but a used car dealer did, in the end, buy the car.
A week following the auction, a doctor I had once worked with phoned and said that he wanted to buy the car back from the car dealer and donate it anonymously to our practice.
That was such a wonderful surprise.
I was very moved because I respected him very much as a doctor.
I talked the offer over with friends.
Though I didn’t want the money going, even indirectly, to the IRS, I did want this doctor to have an opportunity to support the whole cause of war tax resistance, and this was his way of contributing.
I decided to accept the car.
It came back with new tires, looking much cleaner than it had before it was seized!
A friend of the doctor had also done a tune-up on it — and it was great.
I think the best part of this story is that when I tell it, people chuckle.
You see, it’s such a good example of how limited the power of the IRS is in the face of creative resistance.
It’s also an example of how our needs are often met in unexpected ways when we take a stand for peace.
I think these three experiences in particular — the return of my car, receiving the job at the Commission for the Blind, and the reaction to the letter in Harlingen paper — were all occasions when I felt that speaking out for truth actually opened doors and tore down barriers between other people and me.
When I was willing to take a stand for what I felt was right, I discovered a community of support I hadn’t realized existed.
Perry Treadwell also wrote about his war tax resistance in that issue.
Excerpts:
Today I received another one of those white envelopes from the Internal Revenue Service — the ones that tell me I failed to pay $35 in or $106 in and now I owe a lot more in penalties and interest.
I file them away with the other ones from .
But this time their arrival reminded me of an anniversary of sorts.
It has been .
I refused to pay for people to kill other people.
I resigned my tenured university position [see ♇ ] and drastically simplified my lifestyle so the fruits of my labors would not be used for war.
I still get that little twist in the stomach when those IRS letters come.
Sometimes the IRS actually raids a bank account or Individual Retirement Account.
However, I know that Friends are there should I ever need their support in not cooperating with a government whose only answer to conflict is violence.
I have been able to simplify my life to a point where I am below the taxable level.
Friends’ support has helped.
The richness of my life is proportional to my friendships.
That is what I have learned in , and that is what I pass on to others.
The issue had an obituary notice for Jane Palmer which noted that she “chose to live in accordance with the Quaker peace testimony and purposefully limited her income to avoid paying taxes that supported war efforts,” and one for Mildred Teusler Ringwalt which mentioned “her refusal to pay the portion of her income taxes she believed supported such [war] efforts.”
One of the events at the Friends General Conference Gathering in — the “Henry J. Cadbury Event, sponsored by Friends Journal” — was “an original production in story and song about the war tax witness of Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner from Colrain, Massachusetts.
The stage performance won a favorable review from those who crowded the auditorium (despite the heat and lack of air conditioning!).
A video of the show was made and will be available at a later date.”
At the Illinois Yearly Meeting in (according to a Journal article ), “Sebrina Tingley explained not just the nuts and bolts of war tax resistance but also the spiritual call to do so” and “Bill Ramsey (American Friends Service Committee) told of his personal experiences involving war tax resistance.”
The lead editorial of the issue was all about the Peace Tax Fund Bill and an effort to get 10,000 people to write letters to Congress supporting it.
“The Peace Tax Fund Bill,” according to one supporter’s letter, “when it becomes law, will give us our religious liberty.
We’ll be able to pay our taxes in good conscience since we’ll be allowed to pay for peaceful projects rather than for war.”
Two letters-to-the-editor in the issue reacted to that project: one, by Marge Schier, thanking the Journal for aiding the cause — “We’re even more sure now that we can do it!”
— and the other, by Elizabeth Campuzano, giving the gist of the letter she had sent: “I told them that I voluntarily live below the federal poverty limit in order to avoid paying income taxes for war.
I told them that if this bill passes, I will raise my income in order to pay for education, road and bridge repairs, anti-monopoly enforcement, etc.” She added: “I think this is one of the greatest things FJ has ever done!”
International news
“a Spanish war resistance sticker: peace (paz) and bread (pan), not bombs”
A report about the previous year’s Canadian Yearly Meeting in the issue mentioned that “[t]he ad hoc committee on war tax concerns has found a method which potentially will allow Canadian Yearly Meeting to redirect the military portion of employees’ income tax remittances to the federal government’s Debt Service and Reduction Fund.
This is not an entirely satisfactory solution, but perhaps a first step.”
’s Canadian Yearly Meeting (according to a story in the issue) “reached joyful unity in a decision as an employer to stop remitting to Revenue Canada the military portion of taxes for those employees who request it.”
This decision follows several years of study, prayerful consideration, and the attempt during for use of legal means of expressing our conscientious objection to paying for the military.
The remittance will instead be paid into Conscience Canada, with consideration given to establishing in the future a specific trust fund.
The Fifth International Conference on War Tax Resistance and Peace Tax Campaigns was held in Spain in and was covered in the Journal in a report by Steve Gulick.
Excerpt:
About 70 activists from all over Europe and a number of other parts of the world gathered in Hondarribia, Spain, , to charge our batteries, to compare conditions in our various countries, to get to know each other, and to carry on business.
It was inspiring to meet, get to know, and work with war tax resisters and peace campaigners from all over Europe and from the United States, Canada, Peru, Iraq, and Palestine.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee raised money to make it possible for the Palestinian, Elias Rishmawi from Beit Sahour, West Bank, to attend.
The Iraqi and the Peruvian attenders are currently living in Europe.
One problem with the gathering — similar to the War Resisters International gathering that I attended in — was the difficulty of getting a diverse attendance.
Folks from India were unable to attend, for example, in part because of the distance.
I attended as a delegate from the War Tax Concerns Support Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
Other attenders from the United States were David Bassett and Marian Franz (National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund), Susan Quinlan and Larry Rosenwald (National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee), Cynthia Johnson (Women Strike for Peace), and Gerri Michalska (Pax Christi) — which gave some of us from the U.S. movement the opportunity to get to know each other.
The conference issued a number of public documents — the most important being the bylaw of a new non-governmental organization which will have consultative powers with both the UN and the European parliament: Conscience and Peace Tax International.
The role/goal of the organization will be to espouse the cause of those who take stands of conscience in relation to military expenditures — and also military service and issues of conscience and civil and human rights more generally.
A report back from the Germany Yearly Meeting mentioned war tax resistance matter-of-factly:
In our commitments to projects such as “alternatives to violence,” civilian peace service, war tax refusal, and in our decision to give financial support to the setting up of a Quaker Center in Moscow, Russia, we express that we not only ask ourselves “how do we see God?” but also “how do we do God?”…
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
In long-time Friends Journal editor (and war tax resister) Vinton Deming stepped down.
The amount of coverage of war tax resistance in the Journal had been declining throughout the decade, and was no exception to this trend.
A note in the issue read:
In signing A Call to Noncooperation with the War in Yugoslavia, 55 opponents of the conflict expressed a commitment to refuse to pay taxes for the war.
National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee in released the group’s declaration along with the list of signers.
On releasing the call, Bill Ramsey, a Friend from St. Louis, Mo., and a signer, said, “We oppose this diversion of public money [from the Social Security surplus] to a new war, but most urgently we are refusing to pay for war on Yugoslavia because it is killing people in Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro.
We are choosing to redirect our taxes to heal people.”
The issue included a letter-to-the-editor from Bill and Fran Taber announcing a particularly large war tax redirection:
A few weeks ago we received several phone calls from a Friend who, like us, has long been concerned about how to avoid paying taxes to support the military-industrial complex.
Our friend had recently been in touch with an Olney Friends School graduate who was excited about new governance arrangements being worked out to allow the official control of the school to pass from Ohio Yearly Meeting to a board composed of alumni and friends of Olney.
This enthusiasm and the school’s need for scholarship funds at this time of transition prompted our friend to ask us to be transmitters of an anonymous gift of $100,000 to the Friends of Olney, Inc., (the group responsible for the school beginning ).
Naturally we said we would be glad to do this.
We soon received an express package containing an anonymous $100,000 check from our friend’s financial agency as well as the friend’s letter explaining how this gift was a way of placing money in a worthy cause rather than allowing it to go for destructive purposes.
After we had passed the check and the letter on to the new board, our friend suggested and we agreed that the publication of the letter which accompanied the check would be a good way to continue the ongoing Quaker exercise on how to avoid complicity in war, as well as showing one way to put excess money to good use.
The letter follows.
Dear Friends of Olney —
In the spirit of Isaiah’s prophetic calling that would have us turn our swords into plowshares and in concert with Creation’s own declarations of God’s transforming power as recorded and envisioned in the Bible, I have been led to transfer to you these funds in the amount of $100,000, that they might serve to support your new tenure at Olney School.
It is my wish that this contribution be utilized to provide partial scholarship funding for ten or more students who might thereby be enabled to attend school there .
I offer this gift as one who has long wrestled with and refused payment of military taxes to our government, and has now resolved to cease paying such taxes in light of revelations through written and other sources that our nation has over many years been engaged in the development and testing of “doomsday weaponry” — acknowledged at a recent Pentagon news conference as likely to become a “growth industry.”
By way of sorting out my own personal response to such darkness, I have been endeavoring to turn my daily walk, personal and financial resources, and whatever presence and service I can offer, towards honoring that living Word which would have us dwell together in peace with all our neighbors and ourselves — “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit saith the Lord.”
And in this regard, I have become particularly concerned with some of the problems that our families and children are experiencing, living as we are under the shadow of an increasingly mesmerizing, materializing, and mortifying “high-tech” way of life, dominated and fueled by our nation’s military-industrial complex, which President Eisenhower himself tried to forewarn us of more than 30 years ago.
It is my fervent prayer that we will all be moved by the Spirit and our own lives’ particular needs and concerns to invest ourselves in helping shepherd our young ones back into the fold of that “everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure” which David knew (Ⅱ Samuel 23:5) as his felt experience of God’s rainbow covenant (Gen. 9:12) “which I make between me and you and all living creatures that is with you for perpetual generations.”
Indeed, my own personal experience in recent years persuades me that as we covenant together to re-engage ourselves in more reverently-related interactive ways of living (as early Friends and many native cultures have and do) we will recover that love of life Way of experiential truth-seeking, together with our own “still small voice.”
And hopefully, as we become more attentive to and enlivened through this wider context of God’s creation “in which we live and move and have our being,” we shall realize all the blessings it holds for our own health, balanced living, and well-being.
So I have great respect and hope for your Friends of Olney group and the new course you are charting and pray it will prove an exciting and successful adventure in community learning for all involved.
May the Spirit bless and abide with you!
Yours in good faith,
A Friend
The issue noted:
Lake Erie Yearly Meeting minuted support for David and Miyoko Inouye Bassett as conscientious objectors to the payment of military taxes.
the Bassetts have refused to pay voluntarily the military portion of their federal taxes.
They have actively worked for U.S. Peace Tax Fund legislation, resubmitted this year, that would allow a person to pay full taxes but direct that none of the money be used for military purposes.
The couple worked for years as doctors in India with American Friends Service Committee.
Spencer Coxe attacked the Peace Tax Fund scheme in an op-ed in the issue:
The Peace Tax movement has dangerous implications
David Bassett’s article on the Peace Tax movement, which appeared a couple of years ago [see ♇ ] was of interest to me, for I had long been unclear (and uneasy) about the concept.
As a Friend and a pacifist with a lifelong affinity to dissent and lost causes, my heart sympathized with the movement, but my head warned me it was in error.
Even after reading David Bassett’s article, my head, which writes this essay, has prevailed.
The Peace Tax is meaningless in practical effect.
Congress determines; and will continue to determine, the military budget.
“Earmarking” one’s taxes for non-military purposes will have no influence whatsoever, except in the inconceivable event that so many subscribers signed up that there were not enough non-earmarked funds to satisfy what Congress considered military needs — at which point Congress would repeal the law.
A large number of subscribers would be required to reach this point.
A smaller number of determined lobbyists and agitators could persuade Congress to curb military expenditures, even though the protesters represented a minority of the electorate, just as the gun lobby is effective despite the rejection of its agenda by a majority.
A Peace Tax Fund is not only meaningless, but counterproductive and potentially dangerous.
It would ease the conscience of pacifists by creating the illusion that they are influencing policy, but it would deflect attention from meaningful and essential activity aimed at a) electing sympathetic members of Congress and a sympathetic President and b) lobbying, demonstrating and agitating to persuade the executive and legislative branches to reorder the national agenda.
The movement has dangerous implications.
It undermines representative democracy, the only viable system of government for a huge, diverse nation.
Policy-making is entrusted to democratically elected representatives who can be (but often aren’t) held accountable to the electorate.
On any issue, there are bound to be voters who disagree with a decision of Congress.
Our social contract requires us to accept — with rare exceptions to be discussed below — decisions we dislike.
To allow an end-run around this compact for one group invites other interests to demand equal treatment.
The lumber baron can forbid the use of his taxes to extend national parks.
Rightwing bigots will withhold their taxes from a school lunch program.
Permitting individuals to allocate their taxes as they see fit would probably result in a government agenda worse than what we have now, and it would ultimately lead to chaos.
For several reasons the Peace Tax movement will have symbolic significance of little or no value.
First, the movement will not generate publicity.
It is so low-key and so “legal” that it will be disregarded.
Second, unlike the tax-refuser, the peace-taxer courts no risk of prosecution or penalty.
His or her act will not be seen as brave or noteworthy; it will evoke no admiration, no controversy, no reflection (in fact, it will be invisible).
Third, since the earmarking will be sanctioned by statute, its use will cause the government no embarrassment and almost no inconvenience.
By legally sanctioning the earmarking, Congress is effectively removing the movement’s symbolic significance, and channeling a potentially effective resistance movement into a harmless backwater.
Each of us should, as a general rule, abide by decisions of Congress.
For today’s pacifist — as for last century’s abolitionist — the occasion will arise when an act of government is so repugnant to conscience that one must resort to civil disobedience.
This point is reached when in one’s estimation the issue of conscience transcends the demands that society lays upon us.
The Peace Tax movement boils down to a feel-good means of salving the conscience of those of us distressed by militarism.
It deflects us from hard work within the democratic process, and it absolves us from the penalties inflicted upon those who choose civil disobedience.
This long-overdue criticism of the Peace Tax Fund scheme would provoke a great deal of debate in the letters-to-the-editor column .
The “Comprehensive Disobedience” movement in Spain has developed international ambitions, and as part of this project it has launched a new media platform — RADI.MS — that aims to spread news about allied projects around the world.
The site content is currently translated into English, Castillian (Spanish), and Catalan.
In mid-April, people across the United States struggle to fill out their federal income tax returns.
This shared calamity has created something of an inverted holiday season — with grumbling about paperwork and frustration towards government bureaucracy replacing the “peace on earth, goodwill to men” of the Yuletide.
The money came from a war tax resisters’ “alternative fund” called the “People’s Life Fund” — one of more than a dozen such funds in the United States.
The Fund’s annual mid-April “granting ceremony” brought together representatives from each of the recipient groups, who accepted their checks and briefly summarized their work for the benefit of the other attendees.
The People’s Life Fund (like most other such funds) accepts deposits from war tax resisters of the money they are refusing to pay to the government.
The fund holds the money in alternative financial institutions like credit unions and socially-responsible investments.
If the government manages to seize the resisted taxes from the resister, he or she can reclaim the money from the Fund.
Meanwhile, any investment returns from the deposits are distributed to local groups in these annual granting ceremonies.
“Redirection” has a long history in American war tax resistance. American war tax resister Bill Ramsey says it reminds him of Gandhi’s “constructive programme” with which the commander of the Indian resistance movement worked to strengthen grassroots Indian institutions at the same time he was trying to weaken British imperialist ones:
The spinning wheel was the center of Gandhi’s constructive program.
Redirection is the war tax resistance movement’s spinning wheel.
The “constructive program” is positive action that builds structures, systems, and processes alongside the obstructive program of direct confrontation to or noncooperation with oppression.
When we redirect our war taxes, we invest in imaginative and positive projects in our communities and around the world.
At first, redirection was largely practiced by individuals, and in an ad hoc manner.
For example, in 1968, war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax dollars one at a time by handing them out to passers by.
“I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said.
“Here: go buy yourself a beer.”
But today redirection is frequently coordinated by local or national war tax resistance groups.
Some have used redirection to strengthen the anti-war movement.
One group used its alternative fund to create a scholarship for college students who had been barred from government financial aid because they refused to register for the military draft.
Another made an interest-free loan to a legal defense group that was supporting a group of military draft resisters who were on trial.
Traditional charity and relief organizations have also been recipients of redirected taxes.
In 2008, a national effort called the “War Tax Boycott” redirected $325,000 (approximately €235,000) in federal taxes from the U.S. Treasury to two organizations: a health clinic in New Orleans struggling with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Direct Aid Iraq, which provided medical care to refugees from the American war.
War tax resisters aren’t just redirecting their money.
Many American war tax resisters resist by deliberately lowering their income below the level where the federal income tax applies.
They do this by working fewer hours of paid employment and by simplifying their lives so that they can live on less money.
Such resisters no longer have an amount of income tax to redirect, but they can redirect their time instead.
One low-income resister, Clare Hanrahan, wrote: “I believe that redirection of time and presence provides a personal and potent contribution to the common good, a gift of self that has more dimensions than money alone.
I redirect each time I give my time and energy in support of good work within my community.”
When Erica Weiland of NWTRCC delivered the keynote address at a recent “economic disobedience” conference in Eugene, Oregon, she said:
When we heard about this work in Spain, it was clear to us that war tax resistance is economic disobedience, the refusal to cooperate in an economic system that is built on war, militarism, and the perpetuation of human suffering.
It was also clear to us that a variety of movements that also practice economic disobedience are allied with us in this struggle.
When people refuse to pay debts to ruthless debt collectors, resist foreclosure, set up bartering networks that don’t report bartering as income, set up gift economies that avoid the IRS bartering regulations, organize lending circles for low-income borrowers, counsel high school students on alternatives to military service, squat abandoned houses, organize tent cities for the homeless regardless of bureaucratic and inhumane regulations, and struggle against corrupt landlords and employers, we are engaging in economic disobedience.
The economic system we live under is not set up to support us, so we should withdraw our support from the system whenever feasible.
American war tax resisters are withdrawing from the warfare state and the economic model it enforces and are committing themselves with all of their strength and all of their resources to the creation of a more just system in which we can live with dignity.
In doing so, they are blazing the trail that leads to this better world we all yearn for.
[M]y annual voluntary forfeiture of money to my government pays for
violence around the globe, at astounding levels, and I am not able to
provide any more excuses or rationalizations that paying without protest,
that being complicit in funding war without resistance, is not
contradictory to my faith and to my conscience. Quite simply put, I can
no longer ignore the basic, yet just, wisdom and truth found in the war
tax resisters’ dictum: “If you work for peace, stop paying for war.”
As I have come to accept that I can no longer justify providing money to
my government to pay for the bombs and bullets our forces use to kill
millions abroad, or contribute to the funds that supply and resupply the
arsenals of our allies, such as Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, as they
kill others and repress their own people, my choice to willfully not pay
taxes has crystallized. It has been aided, in great part, by the
testimonies of those who have practiced war tax resistance, in some
cases, for several decades, and who by their courage and dedication to
laws of love and peace have risked the authority of the federal
government to follow what is right. I am also indebted to peers like Rory
Fanning and Logan Mehl-Laturi and old friends, like
Count Leo Tolstoy, who, by
articulating their convictions, have helped not just to educate me, but
to embolden me.
This week, I am saying to the
U.S.
government: No more war with my tax dollars. I am refusing to pay the
$593 I owe in taxes, and have instead donated this money to important
community projects including a youth-led farm, an environmental justice
organization, and two community art projects.
Paula Rogge contributed a column to The Cap Times urging readers to “put tax dollars to work preventing war.” She writes: “Over the last 34 years I have filed my tax returns yearly, but redirected my federal income taxes to organizations that meet basic human needs and promote nonviolent conflict resolution.”
This is the thirty-ninth in a series of posts about war tax resistance as it
was reported in back issues of The Mennonite. Today
we hit 1994.
War tax resistance mentions have slowed to a trickle. It’s hard to be certain
whether this reflects a waning of interest in Mennonite circles generally, or
just a change in editorial focus, but in any case the contrast is stark
between the passion and the quantity of discussion about war tax resistance
just and as we hit
.
Almost all of the war tax resistance material was crammed into a single tax
day issue that year.
Four Mennonites follow their consciences by telling the Canadian and
U.S. governments
they cannot pay for war with their taxes.
Larry Penner
When the Persian Gulf War broke out in , Ed
Olfert protested. “I needed to have a little bit of voice to say that this is
stupid and has to end,” he says. “This is my tax money at work, killing women
and children.”
Ed had considered tax resistance before. He decided to withhold about 9
percent of his tax payment, a percentage that Conscience Canada, a tax
resisters’ group, suggests to represent the amount of taxes that goes to the
military.
Along with withholding, Ed sent letters to government and Revenue Canada
officials voicing his protest. But in the end the effort brought mostly
frustration.
As a self-employed farmer, the amount he withheld was minimal, under $100.
When Revenue Canada officials contacted him, they didn’t know about his
protest. “I wondered if the letters I sent even arrived,” Ed says.
“There was a fear of what I was doing.” ―Ed Olfert
At his church, Superb Mennonite Church in
Kerrobert,
Sask., Ed found
little sympathy. “There was a fear of what I was
doing,” he says. “There was a drawing away, as if people
wondered, ‘Is this what the Mennonite church is moving
toward, that we all have to do this?’ ”
Actually, Mennonite tax resisters are few
and scattered. More support legislative change
that would allow people of conscience to
designate their tax dollars for
nonmilitary ends. Such legislation has
been proposed in both Canada and the United States.
Those who do resist paying taxes find the need to resist more imperative as
technology moves warfare farther from conscription and closer to the
pocketbook. While the draft in the United States has remained inactive
, 28 percent of the
federal budget went to
current military efforts and another 18.7 percent to payments on past military
efforts, according to the Friends Committee on National Legislation. And
although Canada has not conscripted its citizens since World War Ⅱ,
Conscience Canada reports that $12 billion, or 7.5 percent of the federal
budget, went to military spending in
. The Persian
Gulf War proved that with modern technology, full-scale war can be fought
without conscription, but not without dollars.
“Our constitution guarantees freedom of conscience, but if we’re not allowed
to exercise our conscience, it doesn’t mean much.” ―Menno Klassen
Hypocritical: For resister Menno Klassen of
Winnipeg, resisting warfare through his taxes
has become more imperative as he has grown older.
Excused from war as a conscientious
objector to World War Ⅱ, Menno says it would be
hypocritical now to pay to send someone in his
place. “Our constitution guarantees
freedom of conscience, but if we’re not allowed to
exercise our conscience, it doesn’t mean much,” he says.
Like Ed, Menno has received mixed reactions from his
congregation, Fort Garry Mennonite Fellowship in Winnipeg.
“I must admit I don’t receive much support from the church, even though my
church is one of the more tolerant in Winnipeg,” he says. “People [in the
church] are busy with family and inward looking. It’s a family affair.”
In Ontario, Jane Pritchard has found some support. Like Ed, her conscience
condemned the Gulf War, “the first war fought by my country since I became
politically aware.”
“Once I’d done it I didn’t see how I could convince myself to pay before.”
―Jane Pritchard
A physician, Jane faced a higher tax payment. She withheld just
over $1,000. For her the act was a liberation. “Once I’d
done it I didn’t see how I could convince myself to pay
before.” Jane has found support for her decision in
her Bible study group at Toronto United Mennonite Church.
When Revenue Canada called Jane in, she expected the worst.
She was not disappointed.
She was shown into a stark room with nothing but two chairs, a desk, a light and a computer terminal.
“It was like something out of [the book] 1984,” she says.
The Revenue Canada representative kept saying she owed this portion of her taxes.
He didn’t ask why she didn’t pay but said Revenue Canada had to do something.
He did not say what.
Sympathy: At some point partway through the interview, Jane realized
her interviewer was more nervous than she was. When he did not respond to her
questions of what Revenue Canada would do, she suggested possibilities.
“Garnishee my wages?” He nodded yes. “From where?” He did not know. “Raid my
bank account?” Again he nodded. She left feeling sympathy for her inquisitor,
a sympathetic young man caught in a system.
Don Kaufman of Newton, Kan.,
knows that many Internal Revenue Service officers are sympathetic people
caught in a system. He has resisted military tax for 36 years. He recalls one
IRS
representative who said he hoped the government would make it possible for tax
resisters to resist without breaking the law.
“If there were a provision for conscience in giving money for war as there
is in giving body to war, tax resisters wouldn’t have to feel guilty for
following their conscience.” ―Don Kaufman
Partly because
IRS
officials are bound by regulations, Don’s
protest has shifted its emphasis over the years.
“Initially I wrote more to the
IRS,
now I write more to Congress. The
IRS
is just carrying out Congress’ orders,” Don says. “If
there were a provision for conscience in giving money
for war as there is in giving body to war, tax resisters
wouldn’t have to feel guilty for following their
conscience.”
In his many years of resistance, Don has seen interest
in tax resistance wax and wane. But, he says, it has never died
out. The history of war tax resistance in North America dates to the first
settlers from Europe, many of whom left their home country in part to avoid
paying taxes for war. But when the personal income tax was introduced in both
the United States and Canada, funds raised went to pay for war.
Don believes a change will come. “It may be like women’s suffrage, it may take
60 to 80 years before there is a change, but if people keep working and don’t
give up too easily, there will be a change,” he says.
Until the law changes, Don will continue to resist. “It’s enough of a threat
to who I am as a person that I don’t want to give it up. If I quit, I become
schizophrenic at that point — I’m not being honest with who I am. I want my
life to be integrated.”
A sidebar concerned two other Mennonite tax resisters:
Waiting for the tax collector
Pat and Earl Hostetter Martin have been resisting taxes since they returned
from Mennonite Central Committee work in Vietnam in
. As students in Palo Alto,
Calif., they began by
withholding 10 percent of their telephone tax, a sum that totaled about $10
after three years.
For this, Internal Revenue Service representatives drove down from San
Francisco twice and questioned their landlord while Pat and Earl were at work.
Then they received a notice threatening a lien on their property and ordering
an appearance at the
IRS
office. But before the appearance, the
IRS
found the Martins’ bank account and took the money.
“Honest to our conscience”: Earl and Pat Hostetter Martin with their son
Hans
In the Martins went to Akron,
Pa., to serve as
co-secretaries for East Asia for
MCC.
They withheld about 30 percent of their taxes, a figure
representing the amount of tax money going for
current military expenditures.
“After being in Vietnam and having seen a lot of
friends who had suffered because of
U.S. weapons,
we decided we couldn’t pay,” Pat says.
The couple has resisted paying taxes ever since.
At first the
IRS
froze their personal checking account for a couple of
weeks to collect. Pat called it an odd blessing. “You get caught
with checks out and you have to go back to stores and explain. But that also
gave us an opportunity to explain why we are tax resisters.”
the couple began moving its bank
account frequently to keep the
IRS from
finding the money. They now owe between $2,000 and $3,000.
When the
IRS
tried to garnishee the couple’s wages at
MCC,
MCC’s
response was to ask the
IRS to
reconsider, to try to find the money some other way.
MCC,
like most Mennonite organizations, does withhold income tax from employees’
paychecks for the government. The General Conference Mennonite Church is the
only major Mennonite organization that will grant employees’ requests to not
have federal taxes withheld from their paychecks so that employees may resist
taxes.
Last year the Martins were in Vietnam . While they were gone the
IRS
attached a lien to all their property: house, car, real estate. Anything they
own could now be sold to pay the debt.
The couple is part of a Lancaster group of resisters called “Taxes for Life.”
The group meets monthly to support each other. “Anyone who chooses tax
resistance should have a support group because it can be scary,” says Pat. “We
agree to stand behind each other and keep ourselves honest to our conscience.”
In recent years I have joined with Don Kaufman and 20 others in the Newton,
Kan., area to form a support
group concerned with the military use of our taxes. Our refused tax dollars
and contributions build up a “Heartland Peace Tax Fund,” which in
granted $750 to local human needs
agencies and $150 to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund in Washington.
In St. Louis, Bill Ramsey
(staffer for the regional American Friends Service Committee office) spent 30
days in jail in for his prophetic witness.
As a condition of probation, he was ordered by the federal judge to pay his
military taxes, due
. Bill has done as ordered, sending
personal checks to seven life-affirming agencies and asking them to certify to
the court that he has done so. It is unlikely that the federal judge will
agree that Bill Ramsey has paid his taxes in this way. Bill is preparing
himself spiritually for more prison time. But his point is made: We Americans
and Canadians are robbing from the human needs so evident in our societies to
build and sell weapons.
The witness of some among us to this truth goes on. Whether they continue to
stand alone depends upon whether more of us come to incarnate the peacemaking
of Jesus Christ in our own witness.
The edition had
a
brief follow-up that noted the Heartland Peace Tax Fund’s grants for
.
While I’ve been delving through the archives of Gospel Herald, links have been backing up in my bookmarks.
Here are some that concern war tax resistance in the here-and-now:
The Trump administration has decided it enjoys provoking trade wars, which perhaps have the blessing of distracting them from getting their jollies by provoking real wars.
But the prime mechanism — tariffs — is also a revenue source for the government.
Which leads war tax resisters like Lincoln Rice to ask, are these tariffs for war? and if so, what can war tax resisters do about it?
Thirty-Eight Years of Refusal — Erica Leigh, Georgia Pearson, Larry Bassett, and Bill Ramsey review the history of the recently-closed Conscience and Military Campaign Escrow Account, which was responsible for coordinating tens of thousands of dollars in war tax redirection.
Counseling Notes — News about government policies towards war tax resisters, including the use of private debt collectors, IRS summonses, passport revocations, and a sharp decline in levies.
Colrain After 25 Years — A 25th Anniversary celebration of the actions surrounding the Corner/Kehler house seizure, coinciding with the New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters.
War Tax Resistance Ideas and Actions — Including the Maine War Tax Resistance Gathering, and obituary notices for war tax resisters Ray Gingerich and Naomi Paz Greenberg.
NWTRCC News — Including an announcement of the NWTRCC national gathering in Cleveland.
Adrienne Maree Brown writes about her war tax resistance in the wake of a wage levy, and reflects on the disadvantages of going it alone as opposed to resisting as part of a supportive group. Excerpt:
i still deeply agree with the politics that led to this action, but i know now that i didn’t do it the right way.
i acted as an individual, as if my singular act of rage should be respected, as if it could have meaningful impact on the systems of oppression that lead to the military spending i want to divest from.
it helped me sleep well at night, but it wasn’t tied into a collective strategy, a system of accountability around whether it was effective.
someday i hope to be part of larger direct action efforts around debt and taxes, but from this struggle i have learned in a most personal way the importance of the collective.
Is there a war tax resistance movement?
According to a pseudonymous author in a back issue of Conscience (the newsletter of the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign), “War tax resistance is real, but the war tax resistance movement is fiction.”
War tax resistance is a tactic, says the author, whereas movements coalesce around goals, so there will never be a war tax resistance movement, though there may be movements that incorporate war tax resistance.
Erica Leigh looks back at the Beit Sahour tax strike as it was covered at the time, in a two-part series of excerpts from Conscience (part 1 and part 2).
Leigh writes: “The tax resistance in Beit Sahour was due to a high level of community cohesion, organization, education, and solidarity, something that’s missing from our scattered war tax resistance organizing around the United States.
Most of our finest moments in US war tax resistance arose from such concentrated and dedicated efforts in a small geographic region, even when the total number of resisters was small.
Food for thought!”
Last month the statute of limitations erased another year of my taxes.
For the tax year, my 1040 form showed that I owed $1,203 in federal taxes.
I didn’t pay, of course, and the IRS has been nagging me about that ever since.
But now it’s too late for them, as ten years have expired as they failed to collect.
I celebrated by sending a check for $1,203 to our local food bank program.
(Coincidentally, on the same day I sent the check, I got my $1,200 stimulus check from the U.S. Treasury.
I’m not sure how to interpret that, cosmically-like, except that it seemed to rhyme like poetry.)
Governments spend a lot of time and energy—and enlist a host of political scientists and pundits and other such clergy—to try to convince their subjects that paying taxes is not only mandatory, but that it’s honorable, dignified, and even charitable, while failure to pay taxes is underhanded, shady, and selfish.
Governments and other critics of tax resistance are quick to deploy this already-available propaganda lexicon in their counterattacks. They criticize tax resisters as freeloaders who enjoy the benefits of organized society without cooperating in the taxes necessary to fund them—as self-interested, anti-social tax evaders.
One way resisters have countered this attack is by staging giveaways of their resisted taxes. This makes it clear that the resisters do not have merely selfish motives for resisting, and also demonstrates that the money is being spent for the benefit of society (to a greater extent than if the money had been filtered through the government first).
This sort of tax redirection also can forge or strengthen ties between the resisters and the recipients, and can make more people aware of tax resistance as an option.
War tax resisters
This tactic is put to particularly good use by the contemporary war tax resistance movement. Here are some examples:
When Julia “Butterfly” Hill refused to pay more than $150,000 in taxes to the U.S. government in , she made a point of saying “I ‘redirect’ my taxes rather than ‘resisting’ my taxes”:
I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going. And in my letter to the IRS I said: “I’m not refusing to pay my taxes. I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.” They are not directing our money where it should be going, they are being horrific stewards of that money.
NWTRCC organized what it called the “War Tax Boycott” in . It encouraged war tax resisters across the country to coordinate by redirecting their refused taxes to either of two groups: one that provided healthcare in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and one that helped Iraq War refugees. The campaign kept track of how much money had been redirected over the course of the boycott, and then held a press conference to give oversized checks adding up to about $325,000 to spokespeople for these campaigns.
The People’s Life Fund is associated with the group Northern California War Tax Resistance, and holds redirected taxes from resisters. If the IRS successfully seizes money from a resister, that resister can reclaim his or her deposits to the Fund. Otherwise, the money remains there and earns interest and dividends. Every year the group pools these returns on investment and gives them away to local charitable organizations in a granting ceremony. Usually these grants are modest—$500 or $1,000 each—but they give them to a dozen or more groups, which makes their granting ceremonies a good way for local charities to network with each other and helps the word about war tax resistance spread in the local activist community. This same model, or one similar to it, is followed by a number of regional redirection funds associated with war tax resistance groups in the United States.
A war tax resistance group in Iowa used the proceeds from its redirection fund to create a scholarship for college students who had been banned from applying for government financial aid because of their refusal to register for the draft. Another, in Pennsylvania, made an interest-free loan to a legal defense group that was supporting a group of draft resisters who were on trial. These actions helped to forge or sustain ties between the war tax resistance movement and anti-conscription activists and gave war tax resistance a higher profile in the larger anti-war movement.
One family figured out a way to get extra mileage out of their redirection: In they redirected their refused federal taxes to a charitable program called “Childreach.” That year, the U.S. Agency for International Development, a federal government agency, had promised to match private donations to Childreach two-to-one from its budget, so the family’s $211.69 in redirected taxes had the effect of pulling an additional $423.38 from the U.S. government for a good cause.
war tax resister Bill Ramsey redirects $1,000 to charity in a granting ceremony
In , war tax resister Irving Hogan stood outside the Federal Building in San Francisco and redirected his federal income tax dollars one at a time by handing them out to passers by. “I want this money to be used for the delight, not the destruction, of men,” he said. “Here: go buy yourself a beer.”
John and Pat Schwiebert did something similar: They redirected their taxes by handing out five-dollar bills to people standing in line at the unemployment office. Along with the bills, they handed out letters in which they explained their redirection action. To amplify the public relations impact, they notified the media of their plans ahead of time. “Their actions garnered them an interview on NPR,” according to one report, “and they received letters and cards from around the world.”
In a group of war tax resisters in New York redirected their war taxes as nickels that they handed out to people waiting at the bus stops on lines where fare hikes were being proposed, saying “this is where our tax dollars should be going.”
Arthur Evans felt that if redirecting your war taxes to charity was a good idea, redirecting twice your war taxes to charity must be twice as good. In he wrote to the IRS to tell them “I am sending double the amount I am not paying for war to Quaker House at the United Nations for transmission to the United Nations Organization for its technical assistance program.”
In the early 1970s, farmers who were resisting the expansion of a military base onto their land in Larzac, France, found common cause with war tax resisters. Thousands of war tax resisters there redirected their war taxes to help fund the Larzac struggle.
And here’s something kind of similar that doesn’t fit into any of my other categories, so I’ll toss it in here: When the IRS seized back taxes from war tax resister Mary Regan’s retirement account in , she threw a fund-raising party to try to raise an equivalent amount of money—but not in order to reimburse her, but to give away to charities like “the Boston Women’s Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, a homeless shelter for youth, and the peace movement in Israel.”
British women’s suffrage movement
The Women’s Tax Resistance League largely suspended its campaign during World War Ⅰ, but one woman, signing her letter “A Persistent Tax Resister” wrote to the editor of a suffragist paper to suggest that women should redirect their taxes from the government to a privately-run war relief charity “and should send her donation as ‘Taxes withheld from the Government by a voteless woman.’ ” Suffrage activist Charlotte Despard reported that “she had offered to give voluntarily the amount demanded of her by Revenue authorities to any war charity, but her offer had not been accepted.”
Social Security foe
In , Howard Pennington, unwilling to pay an $81 social security tax “for waste by socialistic dreamers,” instead sent that money directly to George Robinett. Robinett was a 72-year-old retiree whose social security had been abruptly cut off for three months, costing him $210, because during one month he had earned 62 cents above the $50 maximum monthly earnings for a social security recipient.
The issue of The Catholic Worker brought an update about the Randy Kehler / Betsy Corner home seizure, sale, and occupation:
Now That April’s Here
By Brian Hynes
Randy Kehler, Betsy Corner and their 13 year-old daughter, Lillian, had not been in their Colrain, Massachusetts home for sixty weeks when I was last up for the vigil in their yard.
They were evicted in , when the IRS finally seized their home as compensation for unpaid taxes.
The house is currently occupied by a couple who “bought” it from the IRS.
The hope is that these folks will come to see the seizure, and subsequent sale and purchase, as illegitimate.
The argument of the War Tax Refusers Support Committee (WTR) is that “It is wrong to take people’s homes to force them to pay for war.”
Betsy and Randy have refused to pay their federal taxes since the ’70s.
Although they file with the IRS every year, they don’t pay what they are said to owe.
Instead they pay that amount to charities — some local, and some for other worthwhile endeavors.
In , the IRS started to take steps to confiscate the Kehler-Corner property, culminating in the auction of their home in .
At this time, the IRS received many non-monetary bids from Randy and Betsy’s supporters but no outside bids, and ended up buying the place themselves.
In a subsequent auction one monetary bid was received, just above the $5400 minimum.
This was the famous bid by the current occupants, who were then given title to the house.
By then, Randy had already been arrested for contempt of court and the whole family had been evicted. ( CW)
The occupation of Randy and Betsy’s home in support of their stand to resist this seizure, began immediately after the eviction.
Despite its around-the-clock presence in the house, the new owners managed to move in when several people were at a war tax resistance demonstration.
Since that time the support vigil has moved to the yard.
Most recently a beautiful trailer, one room and a porch, built especially for the purpose, has been moved on to the property.
There is one additional complexity to the situation.
The house in question is on land owned by the Valley Community Land Trust.
This means that the land itself was never confiscated, and therefore was never “sold” to the family now occupying the house.
Furthermore, the members of the Land Trust, while certainly sympathetic to WTR, also have legitimate claims and concerns about what is happening, as the IRS transferred title to the house while disregarding the stipulations of the land lease.
Pursuant to these concerns, the Land Trust has filed suit against the family who bought the house from the IRS.
At the time of my last visit, lawyers were preparing for a future hearing on this problem.
The vigil has been a time to think about many issues in discussion with people of diverse backgrounds.
The concern and commitment that I have seen there are noteworthy.
It is daunting, in an environment of such diversity, to reach common ground for moral commitment.
In Colrain, however, there is a strong consensus.
The consensus is for active nonviolence in the context of the refusal to pay for war.
It has been argued that taxation is a societal responsibility but the history of carnage is too great for us to avoid the moral issues of militarism and its support through taxation, by claiming that societal responsibility gives it legitimacy.
In fact, societal responsibility is exactly the point, and nonviolence is exactly the confrontation of moral issues by moral methods. (Militarism, instead, confronts moral issues by immoral methods.) The continuing use of military force by our nation is a moral issue that requires confrontation.
This confrontation is the consensus in Colrain.
The consensus proceeds from a long and loving tradition of nonviolent transformation of society.
The question that is worked and reworked there is now to give this living tradition rebirth in the changing situation up at Colrain.
I suggest a visit to lend your strength to theirs.
Please contact War Tax Refusers, c/o Traprock Peace Center, Keets Road, Deerfield, MA 03142.
(413) 774‒2710, or, (413) 773‒7427.
The issue of The Catholic Worker included a book review that again told the story of Saint Hugh of Lincoln and promoted his claim to be the (unofficial) patron saint of war tax resisters. (See ♇ for a previous Catholic Worker article on that topic.)
The issue of that paper carried a statement from jailed war tax resister Bill Ramsey:
No Limits On The Promise Of God
By Bill Ramsey
As I reflect back on the path that brought me to this cell, along with the many points of decision and sharp turns of the legal process, there was one reliable trail mark — the interplay between conscience and community, between risk-taking and relationship building.
Any way I measure it, the trail to this cell is a long one, but never a lonely one.
Most immediately, it began on with an action in the public waiting room of the IRS Taxpayer Information Service in St. Louis.
With other members of the St. Louis Covenant Community of War Tax Resisters, I planned to pass out a federal spending piechart to the steady stream of hundreds of people with taxes on their minds and time on their hands as they waited for service.
No disruption was planned, only an orderly attempt to communicate.
Within an hour, two of us were arrested after refusing an order to leave the waiting room.
In , a federal judge convicted me of unlawful leafleting.
I was acquitted of charges that we disrupted taxpayers and IRS employees.
At the US Attorney’s insistence, a pre-sentencing investigation was conducted.
It displayed my 20 years of public war tax resistance to the judge.
In , he sentenced me to three years of federal probation, with a special condition that required that I file and pay all taxes due.
From this point forward, this court-ordered condition and my conscience were on a collision course.
War tax resisters around the country urged me to consider the potential chilling effect that the probation condition would have if applied to other war tax resisters.
They introduced me to Peter Goldberger, an attorney who specializes in First Amendment appeals, who would take my appeal to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The national war tax resistance network was alerted and offers of support came from around the country.
Meanwhile in St. Louis, a local support committee was formed.
War tax resisters, homeless shelter workers, a survivor of the Nazi holocaust, sanctuary providers, domestic violence counselors, educators, a priest, and a community development planner all came together to provide assistance.
They raised legal fees, set up an emergency response phone tree, served as a clearness committee, and planned a public challenge to my probation.
Two members wrote an op-ed piece published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch proposing that the US government, rather than myself, should be placed on probation for violating international law, refusing to pay dues to the United Nations, and trafficking in arms.
It served as our indictment.
This community of support convened a People’s Tribunal on .
Richard Falk, Professor of International Law at Princeton, presented the case against the government.
Former Secretaries of Defense and Treasury were invited to represent the government but sent letters of regret.
Domestic victims of the arms race testified.
One hundred thirty “jurors” placed the government on probation, listing the conditions which were presented to the St. Louis US Attorney on by a delegation from the Tribunal.
Collective Challenge
As I approached the collision of my conscience with the court-ordered condition, preparing to refuse to pay my taxes on , I was upheld by this community of support I was also inspired and grateful that they had been able to turn the questions around my probation into a collective challenge of the fundamental contradictions underlying US policy.
After a public refusal to pay my taxes on , I was summoned to a probation revocation hearing on .
The national war tax resistance network was alerted and letters from around the country arrived on the judge’s desk.
Locally, the support community planned an overnight vigil at my church for the night before the hearing.
I invited the judge to the opening service. He did not respond.
One hundred thirty people participated in the vigil which concluded an hour before the hearing with a Catholic Mass.
Fifty supporters attended the hearing.
But that night, I had a decision to make.
I felt that the government was using the probation revocation hearing as a way to circumvent the need for a trial in front of a jury of my peers.
I would not get my day in court to publicly explain my reasons for refusing to pay war taxes.
Do I remain in the church, refusing to recognize the constitutionality of the hearing?
The appeal on the constitutional grounds of freedom of speech and religion had failed.
Or do I answer the summons, appearing in court, but remain silent in my own defense — only making a brief statement of my motives which the court had refused to take into consideration?
I was without an answer.
After deliberation with members of the support community, my wife, and war tax refusers in Colrain, Massachusetts, we came to a resolution.
Respond to the summons, make the statement, and direct the public eye to my refusal to pay for death, and not to a refusal to show up in court.
My statement in court cited my responsibilities to Nuremberg principles, knowing that my government used tax money to commit war-crimes in Panama, Nicaragua, and Iraq, and fearing the US military operations in Somalia and Bosnia would soon result in indiscriminate attacks on civilians.
The statement also focused on my religious convictions.
The resources we hold are a divine trust not to be surrendered to war-making.
Looking back on US interventions during my lifetime and on testimony offered in the Bible, it is clear that when nations resort to violent force, it is usually to protect privilege, not people.
No situation or person stands outside God’s transforming work in history.
To kill is to assume that we have the right to place limits on the promises of God.
These are the beliefs I placed before the court.
In return, I received a 30-day sentence, to be followed by another year of supervised release with the same special condition that I pay taxes.
On , the order came for me to surrender to the Williamson County Jail in Marion, Illinois.
My refusal to surrender brought a summons to appear in court.
Again the larger community of support gathered for Mass at my church and then filled the spectators gallery in the court room.
After I refused to sign a bond guaranteeing that I would surrender, I was taken into custody.
Jailed for two days in the overcrowded and violence-laden conditions of the St. Clair County Jail, I discovered another community among the young men from East St. Louis who shared my cell block.
We slept toe to toe, many of us on the floor. We ate inadequate meals shoulder to shoulder.
They were without resources. Many seemed to have no one on the outside who cared about them.
Others were hardened by their life experiences.
Bantering and talk of drugs, guns, and sex resounded through the cell block until the middle of the night.
And yet, as we offered each other a little more space, plotted to get more food into the cell block, and shared our stories and one Bible among us, I began to sense camaraderie and a community forming.
In the blessed silence of the second morning, the faces of my support community on the outside merged with the faces of the young men sleeping all around me.
I knew then that I could do the entire 30 days in that cell block.
Several hours later, federal marshals arrived to take me to a new cell block in Williamson County.
It amazes me that anyone could believe that placing me in these county jails would somehow change my mind about paying war taxes.
Somehow, confined to these jails that expose the obscured violence of the status quo in our society, I am supposed to see the light and admit that the spending priorities are “right enough,” that the system is “just enough,” and that perhaps, after all, force and violence are appropriate ways to correct human behavior and resolve conflict.
The authorities wager that fear of those around me in these cell blocks and my physical separation from my primary communities will drive my conscience underground.
What they don’t realize is that these jails and the people in them are just another opportunity for community and that these walls cannot separate me from the communities of support.
They just don’t get it. Acts of conscience thrive on community!
A longer view of my path to this cell would include the community in Durham, North Carolina, that first challenged me to resist war taxes in .
Down the path would be my colleagues over the last 17 years in the American Friends Service Committee, an organization that not only tolerates civil disobedience, but affirms employees’ acts of conscience.
Add to all these the St. Louis Catholic Worker Community where I lived and worked in and the extended Worker community that remains at my side through everything.
As the path continues, there are members of my inner-city parish, struggling together to understand and act on our faith.
All along the path is the St. Louis Covenant Community of War Tax Resisters, linked to communities and humanitarian efforts throughout the world through alternative gifts from our resisted taxes.
And then there is the beloved community of my family, Cathy and my five children.
As we traveled this summer visiting friends and relatives with the prospect of my imprisonment before us, a more refined closeness grew among us.
We hold each other a little tighter these days, even over the distance that separates us for these 30 days.
As I write from this cell, Cathy and our children are surrounded by acts of kindness as the broader support community assists her with the day to day chores of running our household and caring for our children.
My absence seems to have become the occasion for further experiments in community.
As I look back on all of this, I am convinced that the convergence of heart and will that we call acts of conscience is a gradual slope, with many small steps.
Each risk taken clears the way for the next.
Everytime I raised my foot to take that next step, a community of people was there, prepared to steady my stride and to catch me if I fell.
I am now certain that this journey is impossible, unless one is accompanied.
In the end, it is the collective courage and transforming gifts of community that empower our individual acts of conscience.
“Step by step the longest march, can be won, can be won,
Many stones can form an arch, singly none, singly none.”
