The Waging Nonviolence blog featured a couple of posts recently that touch on tax resistance:
- In “Swipe Back” to protest high transportation costs, Laura Gottesdiener describes a tactic being used by activists in New York City to protest hikes in transit fares: “riders are banding together to use unlimited passes to swipe as many people as possible through the turnstiles, thereby giving people a free ride.”
Through some oversight, this tactic is not yet illegal, according to the “Swipe Back” campaign that is advocating it:
We’ve tried to talk to them. But they won’t listen. So we have to protest. We would boycott the subway, if we could. But since it’s an essential public service, we need it, to get to our jobs and live our lives.
So instead of boycotting, we find ways to express our protest, like this: If you use your unlimited card to swipe someone else in, then you’re effectively helping them boycott the fare hike, sort of like boycotting it forward.
- Ali Issa writes that Egyptian activists are also withholding bus and subway fares as a protest against their government’s continuing repression (which repression, alas, is backed by the U.S. government and arms industry). “We are calling for civil disobedience — not to pay for the metro and buses… They’re taking that money and bringing tools to repress us. They bring bird shot, and tear gas, poison gas even.”
