Some excerpts from a news article on the rebellion:
[Castine] voted again night, by a two-to-one margin, not to pay a state-assessed school funding tax, and thereby risked a contempt-of-court citation.
The special town meeting vote was 125 to 65 not to rescind the town’s action taken at its special town meeting.
At that time, the town voted not to collect the tax.
This is in defiance of a superior court order by Judge Harry Glassman ordering the town to begin paying school taxes to the state.
[T]here were those… who felt they could not afford to pay the additional assessment and could not afford a tax lien on their property if they should individually refuse to pay any tax bill.
If it came to a choice of directing the town not to bill taxpayers, or refusing to pay a tax bill and risking loss of property through a tax sale, most in that position would, and did, vote not to be billed.
The state tax was designed in part to subsidize low-tax-base, high-schoolchild-population school districts at the expense of high-tax-base, low-schoolchild-population ones like Castine.
The town eventually relented in the face of a court order.
A very frequently-used tactic of tax resistance campaigns is to take public oaths or sign public pledges of resistance.
This signals to potential resisters that they will not be alone, and is a show of defiance to the authorities.
I’ve collected dozens of examples, which I’ll summarize here:
When Gandhi launched his first satyagraha-based campaign in South Africa in , a member of the meeting asked everyone present to take a solemn oath of opposition.
Gandhi remarked:
There is no one in this meeting who can be classed as an infant or as wanting in understanding.
You are all well advanced in age and have seen the world; many of you are delegates and have discharged responsibilities in a greater or lesser measure.
No one present, therefore, can ever hope to excuse himself by saying that he did not know what he was about when he took the oath.
I know that pledges and vows are, and should be, taken on rare occasions.
A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble.
But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges, that crisis is surely now.
… Resolutions of this nature cannot be passed by a majority vote.
Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it.
This pledge must not be taken with a view to produce an effect on outsiders.
No one should trouble to consider what impression it might have upon the local Government, the Imperial Government, or the Government of India.
Every one must only search his own heart, and if the inner voice assures him that he has the requisite strength to carry him through, then only should he pledge himself and then only would his pledge bear fruit.
His entire speech, which reflects on vows and the responsibility of vow makers, is worth reading in this context.
In , “98 per cent of the merchants at Stuttgart and… 60 out of 60 merchants at DeWitt,” Arkansas, signed pledges to refuse to collect a new sales tax from their customers or to pay it to the government.
Also in , in Verdun (then a suburb of Montreal), 164 shopkeepers, including the mayor, signed a pledge to refuse to collect or pay a Montreal city sales tax.
, merchants in Gadsen, Alabama followed suit: gathering and voting unanimously to refuse to collect or pay a sales tax.
In Ghana, in , the Akuashongs met and “swore not to… pay any tax, even if the government should fight with them, and to make war with any party breaking the agreement.”
In several French newspapers printed the text of a pledge in which French liberals vowed to resist any taxes that the monarchy instituted without going through constitutional channels.
The newspapers were themselves prosecuted for this.
However, in court, they pointed out that the King himself, before he took the throne, had signed a tax resistance pledge of his own, along with three other members of the nobility, as a protest against republican infringements on their privileges.
In Castine, Maine, in , the pledge took the form of a vote: the town voted 125 to 65 at a specially-convened town meeting, to refuse to collect a school funding tax in defiance of a superior court order to do so.
In , some 5,000 businessmen in Belfast vowed to “keep back payment of all taxes which they can control, so long as any attempt to put into operation the provisions of the Home Rule Bill is persevered in.”
In the Women’s Tax Resistance League, members signed “pledge cards” that indicated which taxes they would be resisting if the government persisted in denying women the vote.
The Reform Act agitation really hit its stride in when a huge rally, 150,000 people strong, vowed as a group to stop paying taxes until the Act’s passage.
One account of the meeting read:
He declared before God, that, if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the reform measure failed, he should and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy upon his goods [tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes].
I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands [an immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering].
I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent [not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated].
In South Africa’s “New Rush” in , a number of miners signed a pledge reading, in part, “I promise on my honour and in presence of the people that I shall not from this day forward — until released from this obligation by the officers of the League — pay any taxes or impositions whatsoever to the Government, id est, for the support and maintenance of the Government of this territory; and that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation; and that I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.
At least 1,000 taxpayers in Elmira, New York, signed a declaration in saying that “The undersigned taxpayers… believing the county, city, and school tax rates as levied are too high, hereby refuse to pay until the budget has been thoroughly examined by the committee of the Taxpayers’ league.
We also refuse to pay penalties until such revision has been made and a lower tax adopted.”
500 taxpayers in Cadillac, Michigan, signed a petition in in which they vowed to refuse to pay taxes for two years unless the local government cut its budget by 20%.
In , 36 New Jersey residents signed their name to a petition to the home country in which they declared that they would refuse to pay any further taxes so long as a Roman Catholic was in charge of tax assessment.
At a “monster meeting” at Castlemaine in Australia in , a group of miners unanimously adopted a resolution to refuse to take out licenses.
Taxpayers in Zeehan, Tasmania, met in an open-air meeting in and passed a resolution stating that they “hereby express our solemn determination to passively resist the payment of the unjust income tax imposed by the late Government.”
A Queensland, Australia stealth tax on rural irrigation improvements, was resisted by the farmers there in , who, organized in groups called “Local Producers’ Associations,” passed motions vowing to resist.
For example, the Association in Rockhampton “unanimously decided that all members pledge themselves to offer passive resistance to the operation of the Act by refusing to make the required applications or to furnish any returns, or to make any payments as demanded by the Act.
Further, it was decided to invite all other LPAs and kindred bodies to adopt a similar attitude.”
, about twenty households near Paddock Wood, England, “signed a declaration to withhold [tax] payments” to protest the lack of government action against vagabonds camping in their neighborhood.
When the Russian Duma-in-exile issued the Vyborg manifesto in , calling on Russians to refuse to pay taxes to the Czarist autocracy, a number of villages responded by voting whether or not to heed the call and then taking the results of the vote as a pledge they were bound to abide by.
In , 149 members of a Catholic War Veterans post vowed to refuse to pay their real estate taxes unless the government dismissed a Communist Party member from his post as an advisor to the Borough President of Manhattan.
At a meeting of the Charleston Board of Trade in South Carolina in , the white supremacist group unanimously passed a series of resolutions declaring that they considered debts incurred by the reconstruction government to be illegitimate and that they would resist the payment of taxes meant to pay them off.
At a mass meeting of white supremacists in Louisiana in , they passed a resolution vowing that “we will pay no more taxes to State or city.”
Some resisters of Thatcher’s poll tax made their resistance dramatically public by burning their “final reminder notices” at demonstrations.
This tactic has been prominent in the American war tax resistance movement.
For example:
In the American pacifist group Peacemakers released a statement, signed by 59 members, in which “the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal taxes.”
In , some 370 people signed a public oath saying “We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily.”
In , more than five hundred writers and editors added their names to a war tax resistance pledge that appeared as a newspaper advertisement.
The names included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Grace Paley, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon, Betty Friedan, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Also in , a letter was circulated largely among academics, and signed by more than a dozen professors, among others, organized as the “No Tax for War Committee” in which the signatories pledged to “withhold all or part of the taxes due” and urged the recipients to join their public pledge.
Some tax resistance campaigns have had their own anthems or fight songs.
Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, mentions such songs on a few occasions:
I paid a visit along with Sjt. Vallabhbhai to one of these [Raniparaj] villages.
… The young women, who had taken the Khadi pledge three years ago in the presence of Gandhiji and shed their trinkets and heavy brass ornaments, were all there in spotlessly white Khadi, brimming over with joy and lustily singing Satyagraha songs.
The mention of the Satyagraha songs reminds me of one or two things that happened during the month.
… Phulchandbhai had already some songs ready, and the atmosphere in the taluka gave him the inspiration for many more.
These friends were posted at Valod, and thanks to their bhajans they were in great demand everywhere.
The plain and homely songs spread the message of Satyagraha in a most effective manner, and men, women, and children had them on their lips.
One cannot speak too highly of the part played in the movement by Phulchandbhai and his songs.
I shall describe one of the scenes.
We visited Nani Phalod, a small village, at about 9 p.m. There was a huge procession of men and women, the former singing Satyagraha songs, and the latter singing a song from an old saint of which the refrain was: “All our sorrows have ended, now that the Master has come.”
There were huge meetings everywhere, attended by hundreds of women, laying heaps of [homespun] yarn before Sjt. Vallabhbhai, as in , and lustily singing bhajans.
The invincible spirit of the people evidenced everywhere was bound to exasperate the officials even more.
The women of Varad… had their own songs, some of them being old songs of the saints and some composed by themselves to suit the fight in which they were engaged, and tacked on to the originals.
One of these songs sung soulfully by them ran:
With full knowledge take up your arms even like a Gnani (seer).
Let Purity and Contentment be your armour and Courage your shield.
The valiant shall rush to the forefront, the laggards will be beaten and will take to their heels.
With full knowledge, therefore, take up the fight like the Gnani.
The path of fight is not strewn with roses.
It is sharp as the edge of the sword, for it is the fight for Truth.
Let us therefore be wide awake like the Gnani.
With full knowledge etc.
The tyrant has run amok and crushed the ryot under his heels.
We slumbered so long, we have now found our Guru and are blessed with knowledge.
With full knowledge etc.
He has taught us to pit righteousness and truth against oppression and injustice.
God is sure to run to the rescue of right and vanquish the wrong.
With full knowledge etc.
Vallabhbhai our leader assures us that ultimately victory is ours.
Let us therefore keep our pledge.
With full knowledge etc.
The boycotts and tax strikes of the American Revolution also had their songs.
When patriots gathered to spin home-spun yarn, the work would be accompanied by “many stirring tunes, anthems, and liberty songs,” such as the following:
Young ladies in town, and those that live round, Let a friend at this season advise you; Since money’s so scarce, and times growing worse, Strange things may soon hap and surprise you.
First, then, throw aside your topknots of pride; Wear none but your own country linen; Of economy boast, let your pride be the most To show clothes of your own make and spinning.
What if homespun they say is not quite so gay As brocades, yet be not in a passion, For when once it is known this is much worn in town, One and all will cry out— ’Tis the fashion!
And, as one, all agree, that you’ll not married be To such as will wear London factory, But at first sight refuse, tell ’em such you will choose As encourage our own manufactory.
No more ribbons wear, nor in rich silks appear; Love your country much better than fine things; Begin without passion, ’twill soon be the fashion To grace your smooth locks with a twine string.
Throw aside your Bohea, and your Green Hyson tea, And all things with a new-fashion duty; Procure a good store of the choice Labrador, For there’ll soon be enough here to suit you.
These do without fear, and to all you’ll appear, Fair, charming, true, lovely and clever; Though the times remain darkish, young men may be sparkish, And love you much stronger than ever.
Then make yourselves easy, for no one will teaze ye, Nor tax you, if chancing to sneer At the sense-ridden tools, who think us all fools; But they’ll find the reverse far and near.
The modern American war tax resistance movement has in recent years managed to collect its own funk anthem (“What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?” by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings):
I was talking to a friend of mine Said he don’t want no wars no more They’re building bombs while our schools are falling Tell me what in the hell we’re paying taxes for
What if we all stopped paying taxes? Now, what if we all stopped paying taxes? Stop paying taxes y’all
Now tell me who’s gonna buy their bombs Their tanks, their planes and all their guns Well, tell me who’s gonna pay for their wars If we all get together and cut their funds
Hey, listen people, listen to what I’ve got to say What if we all stopped paying taxes?
folk song (“Don’t Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons” by Norman Blake):
Don’t send your money to Washington To fight a war that’s never done Don’t play their games don’t be their pawns And don’t be afraid of the neo-cons
and rap (“Uncle Sam Goddamn” by Brother Ali):
You don’t give money to the bums On the corner with a sign, bleeding from their gums. Talking about you don’t support a crackhead — What you think happens to the money from yo taxes?
Shit, the government’s an addict With a billion dollar a week kill-brown-people habit And even if you ain’t on the front line When the master yell crunch time you right back at it
You ain’t look at how you hustling backwards And the end of the year add up what they subtracted: 3 outta twelve months your salary Paid for that madness… man that’s sadness
War tax resister Joan Baez was fond of including the Whiskey Rebellion celebration tune “Copper Kettle” in her concerts.
Get you a copper kettle Get you a copper coil Cover with new made corn mash And never more you’ll toil
You just lay there by the juniper While the moon is bright Watch them jugs a-fillin’ In the pale moonlight
Build your fires of hickory Hickory or ash or oak Don’t use no green or rotten wood They’ll catch you by the smoke
My daddy he made whiskey My granddaddy did to We ain’t paid no whiskey tax Since !
When a youth activist group joined war tax resisters at a recent Tax Day demonstration at the Oakland federal building, they brought their lyrical skills along:
People, People, People, can’t you see? They kill around the world with tax money. Stealing from workers how there money’s made, I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!
People, People, People, can’t you see? They tax the poor more, the rich stay greedy. No money for health or to educate, I guess that’s why we’re broke and they’re so paid!
On-line, you can see some of the rehearsal video showing how they combined the lyrics with pantomime to drive the point home.
At another American “Tax Day” protest, this one in St. Louis in , war tax resisters at the federal building sang a protest song with lyrics like these:
For the cost of cluster bombs that maim and leave to bleed our kids could have more teachers helping them to read
Tax resisters against the British colonial government in Ghana had a fight song for the occasion:
Cannon they have loaded, but couldn’t fire, Cannon they have loaded, but couldn’t fire. Whitemen dishonestly imposed poll-tax on the blacks. The poll-tax we will never pay, the grandees never deliver up, Go tell the white man to come out!
Luzerne County, Pennsylvania is home to an unusually corrupt government culture (or maybe it’s just that they got caught).
Federal authorities charged 23 county residents with various corruption charges, including three judges and a county commissioner.
But then the county government decided to hike taxes by 10%.
Fred Heller said no.
Why fund a nest of crooks?
He recorded a protest song titled “Take This Tax and Shove It” and started a campaign to get county residents to refuse to pay their taxes, at least until the government stables have had all their manure shoveled out.
Excerpts:
Take this tax and shove it We ain’t paying you crooks no more The good ol’ boys stole all our cash And ran out the courthouse door
Residents in Castine, Maine, upset at their local taxes being siphoned off by state politicians, started a tax resistance campaign and accompanied it by protest songs:
Write me a song of the Revolution, ’cause that’s what it’s gonna be. Write me a song of the Revolution, ’cause that’s what’s in store for me! I can’t sit by and watch this country go right down the drain. I gotta stand firm on the Constitution and stay aboard the freedom train.
When Meo farmers killed a tax collector during a tax strike aimed at the British-backed Maharaja in , they commemorated the occasion with a song:
Rebels in the open the Meos did then rejoice They conferred among themselves and spoke in a single voice Your názim’s dead and ever since we aren’t ruled by any prince To London by now you should’ve fled, and do take along your dead.
I just finished Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy.
There were a handful of tidbits about war tax resistance, mostly passing mentions during mostly unflattering gossip about war tax resister Dwight Macdonald, who was in their circle, but nothing notable.
But amusingly, McCarthy was living in Castine, Maine at the time of a tax revolt that took place there in (see ♇ ), and she shared her impressions of it with Arendt, who had a strong philosophical interest in the practical workings of the polis.
Here are some excerpts from McCarthy’s report, dated :
Things have been very quiet here until Jim’s arrival , which more or less coincided with a fearsome heat wave and a village political storm over a property tax voted by the state legislature for the purpose of equalizing Maine’s education.
It is a weird business.
Castine has had sixteen minutes on national television (CBS), it has been in all the papers because it has voted to refuse to collect or pay the tax.
The local people are fired with the Spirit of ’76 and acting like a bunch of minute-men.
Ten days ago a Superior Court judge in Portland (Maine) ordered the town officials to pay the tax or be held in contempt, so last night a town meeting was held to decide what action to take in view of the court order.
Everybody attended, some virtually in wheelchairs, with Bangor reporters and TV cameras watching.
The point is that the legislation was designed to penalize the “rich coastal towns” with high property assessments to favor the poor parts of the state which don’t raise enough money in property taxes to pay for their local schools.
The coastal towns, naturally, are indignant and some have banded together to declare the law unconstitutional and fight it in the courts.
On that point almost everybody here is in agreement; they believe the law is unjust, whether because of the principle involved (that the rich should be soaked for the poor) or because property assessments in the state vary widely, some being fixed too high (Castine’s case) and some too low (a few towns like Camden that are full of millionaires and have property assessments that might be suitable for a trailer camp).
But on what methods to be used to correct the inequity, there is heated disagreement.
The other coastal towns that have joined the legal battle have levied the tax and either paid it over provisionally to the state or are holding it in escrow until the Supreme Court (state) hands down a decision.
Castine, however, stands alone in its mutinous attitude and the five town officials risk going to jail or paying a whacking fine.
Last night’s town meeting was held to decide whether to persist in this open rebellion or pay up temporarily and remain within the law.
The moderate or law-abiding party includes most of our friends and us; Phil Booth has emerged as a leader.
Whereas the immoderates include most of the natives and some transplants like the local retired military (Col. Dodge up the street, Gen. Gillette, who sold us our house).
The situation thus is paradoxical, with the richer, i.e., more educated residents — those who stand to suffer the most from the new law — urging compliance, while the poorer — the bulk of the population — are up in arms. In general the moderate party are liberals, and the few liberals among the natives have either been converted to our view or are trying to stay out of it — especially, as you can imagine, the shopkeepers, anxious not to offend anybody — and have found various pretexts for not voting (“Well, you see, I don’t think I ought to vote, because I’m on the school board”).
Another complication is that the moderates are mostly summer residents and therefore can’t vote, though they were allowed to speak last night, they weren’t allowed to cast a ballot.
At the same time they pay a high share of the property taxes.
By a freak of circumstance, Jim and I are on the town rolls as residents and can vote.
…Last night was comical, also depressing, as an example of village democracy.
I said to Jim at one point “I do hope the polis wasn’t like this.”
The atmosphere was so inflamed that anybody who didn’t want to see the town officials go to jail was treated as a public enemy, and this morning it was being said — by extreme elements — that Phil Booth was “socialist,” even a “communist.”
There have been numerous references to “Russia,” now identified with Augusta, Maine.
Of course the natives have good reason in a way to be angrier than we are, because they can’t afford, many of them, to pay the additional tax, while we can.
So that there is a class division, though the leadership elements of the locals are, naturally, the illiberal rich and propertied.
It is easy to pick out, looking at the tense excited faces, the fascists in embryo in the village, who are carrying the more conservative and frightened innocents along with them.
Well, it’s a microcosm.
And where “Russia” was much invoked by the minute-men, Watergate, though not mentioned by name, played an obvious part in swaying those natives who moved over to the moderate position, mentioning the necessity for “respect for the law” on the part of public officials.
In the town meeting of course we lost but did much better than anybody expected — 125 to 65.… I have a feeling that despite the victory and the jubilation all is not over.
There may be another town meeting, when people have started to notice that they will be paying heavy fines and legal costs as well as — probably — the jacked-up property tax in the long run.
This prospect, quite realistic, I fear, was not even mentioned last night.
This morning, to cap the story, Jim and I saw a large tourist bus from Brunswick, Maine, drive down Main Street and pause to look at Emerson Hall, the scene of ’s action.
A hankering for publicity has a good deal to do with ’s vote.
The eye of television has hypnotized these poor people.
