How you can resist funding the government → other forms our opposition can take → nonviolent action; “People Power” → theorists

A couple of New York Times articles give an overview of “people power” in light of what’s been going on in the Ukraine. Youth Movement Underlies the Opposition in Ukraine discusses the similarities between the techniques and demographics of the opposition movement in the Ukraine and other recent “people power” movements (though the article doesn’t mention Serbia’s Otpor, that’s the comparison that jumped to my mind first).

Heeding the Roar of the Street gives a run-down of some of the instances of “people power” uprisings over the past twenty-five years or so, and the elements that make for success or failure.

The U.S. government is providing assistance to the nonviolent resistance organizers in the Ukraine, as are some other organizations, for instance George Soros’s Open Society Institute. The Albert Einstein Institution has made available a Ukrainian translation of Gene Sharp’s nonviolent uprising manual From Dictatorship to Democracy.

Reason comments on the situation in the Ukraine and notes that while the demonstrators are certainly being assisted by some deep-pocketed realpolitikers,

Still, the very experience of overthrowing a government this way — of building independent institutions, diffusing power through civil society, and learning first-hand that it’s possible to say no to authority — unleashes something that’s hard for any politician to control. Those tent cities aren’t merely a demand for freedom. They’re acts of freedom themselves: of men and women voluntarily assembled both to defy the old order and to build something new.

Deutsche Welle reports that tax resistance is being used in the Ukraine’s power struggle:

With some powerhouse eastern regions halting payment of taxes to the federal coffers and trade disrupted, [President Leonid] Kuchma said the more than week-long dispute over contested presidential elections was paralyzing the ex-Soviet country.

“Another few days and the financial system could fall down like a house of cards,” Kuchma said in a meeting with [Prime Minister] Yanukovych.

“It is clear today that unremitted taxes have reached a billion hryvnas (€150 million, $200 million). Customs duties have fallen by a quarter,” said Kuchma, according to a statement from the president’s office.

Soj at Flogging the Simian brings us the latest news on “People Power” in Eastern Europe. It seems that the Ukrainian group Pora, which was instrumental in unstealing the election there this winter, is hoping to open some franchises elsewhere — Belarus and Moldova to start with.

This campaign is being encouraged by Dubya and probably underwritten by U.S. intelligence. Would that more of Dubya’s alleged democratization agenda was pursued in an empower-the-people fashion rather than in the blow-them-up style.

The geniuses in the Dubya Squad seem to think that the best path to democracy for Eastern Europeans is to rise up and overthrow their governments nonviolently, while the best path for those in the Middle East is to be bombed into rubble and then to submit to the quasi-democratic constitution we airlift in after the attack (or to forget about the whole democracy thing and patiently submit to those dictators we arm to the teeth).

Gene Sharp’s thoughts on the nonviolent resistance tactic of “revenue refusal” can be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

With the way People Power forced the U.S. to allow for popular elections in Iraq, and with the recent People Powered collapse of the occupation government in Lebanon, there’s a possibility of a democratic renaissance in the Middle East that has no resemblance to democratization via shock-and-awe.

The Albert Einstein Institution, Gene Sharp’s nonviolent resistance think-tank, has been busily translating its how-to guides for nonviolent revolution into dozens of languages. Some of the readers of these booklets will be in the running for covert U.S. aid; others will face soldiers armed with “Made in the U.S.A.” weaponry.

Armchair nonviolent activists who have been following with envy the “People Power” uprisings elsewhere now have a couple of new ways to channel their frustration:

One is by reading Ira Chernus’s book American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea, which is now available on-line.

And the other is by playing a video game, of all things. This new game is in the war gaming tradition, but with a twist:

A pro-democracy group has sponsored a free video game designed to teach political activists how to plan and execute strategic non-violent warfare.…

“It lets them try different things on the computer before they try them in the real world,” said Ivan Marovic, a consultant on the game, and a former Serbian student leader who helped organize the protests that ousted Slobodan Milosevic. “I wish I’d had it.”

Sponsored by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, the game, called “A Force More Powerful,” resembles a cross between a political science model and one of the popular city-builder games. The player represents the chief of staff of a non-violent resistance movement. He gives orders to various characters within the movement, who will attempt to carry out actions such as making speeches and organizing demonstrations.

The non-player-characters are rated for factors such as willpower and ambition. “There is a balancing act between the different egos and wills of the individuals involved,” said Bob McNamara, a producer at Breakaway Games… “They will always attempt to carry out your orders, but if they don’t like the task, the chances of success will be modified. We wanted to capture the dynamic of the fact that you’re in a movement of volunteers, and they won’t always do what you say.”

The game’s artificial intelligence controls the members of the targeted regime, who can be persuaded or bribed to become neutral or even defect.

“Governments are not monolithic,” said McNamara. “Suppose you have a regime character who is intolerant of violence. If that person were to see the regime use violent repression, he might become disgusted. Or suppose the regime is conscious of its international image, whether for aesthetic or economic reasons. If one of the regime members is a businessman with a lot of international business ties, then going to the international community to put pressure on him might work.”

“A general will not shoot demonstrators if support for the regime is too low,” agreed Marovic, who has advised pro-democracy movements in Georgia and Ukraine. “This happened in the Ukraine, where the security forces changed sides.”

While “A Force More Powerful” sounds like a more sophisticated version of political entertainment games such as Tropico, where players impersonate a dictator, or Revolution, where they try to overthrow one, what makes this design unique is its emphasis on methodical military-style planning. Indeed, the process resembles how U.S. military commanders war game a situation by considering various alternatives and their consequences.

When a player begins a scenario, a series of menus force him to create a strategic estimate. First, he chooses his goals from a list that includes regime change, altering specific regime policies such as racial discrimination, persuading security forces not to intervene and gaining the support of the media. “You can devise a strategy based on what you feel is the best way to proceed,” McNamara said.

Next comes choosing tactics that range from strikes to protests. Finally, the player divides his plan into phases and which objectives he’ll try to achieve in each phase. At the end of the game, an evaluation screen will inform him how well he did versus the expectations of the scenario designer.

The game’s extensive scenario editor enables users to tailor the game to their own nations. Scenarios can range from building up support in a single neighborhood to waging non-violent conflict across an entire nation, said the Breakaway designer. The game is designed to be as open-ended as possible, with players able to choose multiple tactics. “We don’t give a player two choices at some point in the game, and say, ‘pick one,’ ” said co-designer Ananda Gupta. “The player has tremendous free-form control over the strategy and options.”

“A Force More Powerful,” which is designed for low-end computers, will be available for free in September 2005. It will be distributed on CDs and on the Internet. Versions are planned for specific regions and languages. While repressive regimes will attempt to suppress the game, McNamara and Marovic are confident that it can be distributed to pro-democracy groups.

But will the activists even want it? Some may dislike it because it’s just too practical, said Steve York, senior producer with York Zimmerman, which produced the award-winning television series also titled “A Force More Powerful.” York said it’s easy for idealists to forget that successful activists such as Gandhi and King devoted a great deal of time to preparation and organization.

“A non-violent movement has to take a lot of time and prepare. They have to know their strengths and weaknesses and those of their opponent. People tend to forget that non-violent resistance has a hard-headed, practical side.”

“This game means they don’t have to learn the hard way,” York added. “It’s very difficult to wage a conflict using these techniques. They can learn without harming themselves,” he explained.

Marovic, the former student leader, said that many of those who planned the toppling of Milosevic played computer strategy games. “Out of 10 people in the leadership, five played strategy games, such as ‘The Operational Art of War,’ ” he recalled.

But lack of experience and expertise in strategic mistakes hampered the protesters. “We weren’t trained at the higher military schools,” Marovic said wryly. “We couldn’t have the structure that the military people could.” This led the Serbian protesters to move too quickly to confront the Milosevic regime in 1996. “We entered the engagement phase too soon, without entering the buildup phase. We should have gotten more public resources, more human resources, more members, more supporters.”

The consequences were more than student arrests. “We lost politically,” Marovic recalled. “That was the main loss. Milosevic managed to avoid the worst scenario for him, which was to step down, and through some legal manipulation, he managed to politically diminish the protest.”

By 2000, the opposition had learned its lesson. “If you look at the media, it looks like people just fill the streets,” Marovic said. “The game will show it’s not like that.”

Well, what can you do when you’re born with a name like Bob McNamara?

But seriously, folks… nonviolent conflict seems to have finally gained some official respectability, and good cash money to go along with it — from private groups like the Soros Foundation and even from the U.S. government, which occasionally finds its motives running parallel to those of “People Power” movements, and gives them a boost.

But though realpolitik is naturally at play here, I can’t be too cynical — it seems to me that “People Power” uprisings have a much greater likelihood of generating long-term positive change, even when funded by self-serving governments from outside, than do the alternative techniques of bombing the bejeezus out of everybody until the dictator finally falls. There’s something very healthy about establishing the precedent of getting together with your neighbors and throwing the bums out.

And on that note, let me recommend Claire Wolfe’s new article: “Twelve Tips for Toppling Tyrants”

Jesse Walker of Reason magazine has an interesting article on the current generation of nonviolent revolution think-tanks, in the form of a review of the new book Nonviolent Struggle — 50 Crucial Points: A Strategic Approach to Everyday Tactics which has just been published by the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, and which is available from their site as a free PDF download.

This sounds interesting: Beyond Ballots or Bullets: Creating a Free America (A workshop to develop freedom strategies).

It looks to be an attempt to get a nonviolent resistance movement of the Gene Sharp variety going in libertarian / anarchist circles. “In this workshop we will explore non-electoral, nonviolent strategies to decrease the state’s ability to coerce us and increase our own powers of resistance. We will also receive training in nonviolent struggle and make plans for action.”

The workshop will be held in Utah this coming March.

Over at Slate, editor Jacob Weisberg tries to explain “why you’re not demonstrating against the Iraq war.”

Support for the Iraq war and the president’s handling of it are significantly lower than comparable polling numbers for Vietnam and LBJ at an analogous point in 1968. Yet since the war began, antiwar protesters haven’t been numerous, visible, or influential.

Weisberg comes up with some plausible reasons: there’s no draft yet, the U.S. death toll is low compared to Vietnam, the media is sanitizing the war for public consumption, the insurgents in Iraq are less sympathetic than those in Vietnam were, and Iraq is seen as an issue in isolation while opposition to the Vietnam War became part of a platform with civil rights, civil liberties, and social justice. Oh yeah, and today’s protest organizers “are inevitably moth-eaten left-wing sectarians.”

To this, I would add that the media and the public have become more jaded and hard-to-impress. In part because the Vietnam protests were part of a major cultural upheaval, they were hard not to watch. Will hippies run naked through the streets? Will dope fiends dose the cops with acid? Will a crowd of wild negroes run rampant through the shopping district? Will the National Guard shoot people? Are they really trying to levitate the Pentagon with a big “Om”?

That “levitate the pentagon” protest, so notorious in the lore of the anti-war and yippie movements, was about a 50,000-person affair. If United for Peace gets twice that many people at their march in Washington next month, how much coverage do you expect? They say they had 350,000 marching in New York City last April. Remember that? If that had happened in 1969, it would have been the biggest anti-war demonstration yet. In 2006 it earned a 521-word article on page 35 of the New York Times the next day.

So even if today’s anti-war movement were every bit as big and active as its counterpart from forty years ago, it wouldn’t seem like it from reading the papers.

Time has been kind to the anti-Vietnam War movement. It has the advantages of having been right and — eventually — having met its goal of getting the U.S. out of Vietnam. But I think its role in forcing the U.S. out is often exaggerated — both by participants who want to trumpet their accomplishments and by opponents who want to explain their failures. The U.S. did not withdraw because the peace movement convinced it to, but because it was defeated by the Vietnamese, and by the rebellion of draftees overseas. This isn’t to say that those protests and other anti-war activities by Americans at home weren’t helpful or important.

Similarly, the recent shift in the political winds over the Iraq war — which has made withdrawal of U.S. forces an almost respectable viewpoint — has come from a shift in popular opinion — in which withdrawal has become the majority view. But this shift has more to do with the reality on the ground in Iraq and the overselling of the glorious victory on the U.S.S. Mission Accomplished to an easily-illusioned and -disillusioned public than it does with efforts at education and agitation by the anti-war movement.

Which is one more reason, I think, why the anti-war movement seems smaller and less-active this time around. It’s stuck in a rut, doing the same old ineffective things again and again (marches, rallies, quixotic lobbying). Smart people with anti-war views know that this isn’t helping much, and they either participate half-heartedly for lack of an alternative or they sit on the sidelines, frustrated.

I have said before that people who feel strongly that they want the U.S. out of Iraq — or that they want to end any of the government’s other ongoing atrocities — should not be protesting but should be resisting in some fashion.

And so I’ve spent some time studying the nonviolent conflict scholarship of the Gene Sharp school that has been so helpful to “People Power” movements elsewhere. If the people of the United States want to actually change government behavior by asserting their own power, this is how it is done. Don’t throw up your hands and say “impossible!” — RTFM.

Now Kevin Van Horn has called my bluff. He’s organizing a “Beyond Ballots or Bullets” conference that will be held in a few months. This conference will, among other things, prepare a Strategic Estimate for nonviolent struggle, based on Gene Sharp’s theories.

This is not a gathering for reporting on the current state of freedom; nor for denouncing the State’s crimes; nor for rhapsodizing wistfully about how wonderful a free society would be. It is a working conference for those who have a burning desire to see a free America and are committed to making it a reality.

I like the sound of that!

I’ve mentioned before the upcoming Beyond Ballots or Bullets conference, which will be trying to lay the groundwork for a “People Power”-style freedom movement in the United States, using the recent advances in nonviolent resistance theory that have proven so useful to liberation movements elsewhere.

If you’d like to help out, whether or not you’ll be able to come to Utah in March, the conference organizer has created a project wiki where folks can help add data for the first stage: the strategic estimate.

I spent some time over the past few days tracking down some of the many on-line resources about modern nonviolent resistance theory & practice, which I compiled at one of the wiki’s pages. That should be more than enough to get you started in becoming familiar with the current state-of-the-art.

When nonviolence advocates recommend their tactics as superior to violent ones, someone inevitably says something like “but of course that would never have worked against the Nazis.” And when they do, the nonviolence advocates point out that nonviolent techniques were rarely attempted in any sustained and organized fashion against the Nazis, and when they were, they had remarkable success, for instance in Denmark.

Hannah Arendt discussed the case of Denmark in Eichmann in Jerusalem and suggested it “as required reading in political science for all students who wish to learn something about the enormous power potential inherent in non-violent action and in resistance to an opponent possessing vastly superior means of violence.” Today, in fact, Nazi-occupied Denmark is a favorite case study in the literature of nonviolent resistance theory.

There’s another side to the story, though, and it’s told in part by an anonymous member of the Danish resistance in one of a set of reflections on Thoreau that were published on the centennial of his death:

What was the special appeal of Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” for some members of the Danish resistance movement during the German occupation of Denmark in the Hitler-war? Here is my personal testimony of what Thoreau meant to me as an individual during that time.

For five years, starting in April 1940, Denmark was occupied by the Nazis, in spite of an old, often renewed non-aggression pact. The occupation, unfortunately, met without appreciable resistance. The Danish government, desiring not to make matters worse, forbade resistance, commanding submission and obedience to the huge, superior German force. It was my resentment against the mean treatment of shot-down, wounded English and Canadian airmen that first forced me into the resistance. With my knowledge of foreign languages and as a former telegraph operator in my youth, I was at once put into a team having direct communication with London for the last three years of the war.

“I lent Thoreau’s books to friends, told them about him, and our circle grew. Railroads, bridges, and factories that worked for the Germans were blown up.”

Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” stood for me, and for my first leader in the resistance movement, as a shining light with which we could examine the policy of complete passivity which our government had ordered for the whole Danish population. The German Wehrmacht behaved well if not provoked, but the Gestapo was boundlessly cruel. Non-violence, as a means of resistance, was completely unfit for this scum of the worst gangsters of Germany from whom they were all recruited. I lent Thoreau’s books to friends, told them about him, and our circle grew. Railroads, bridges, and factories that worked for the Germans were blown up.

Since the Hitler-war, too, “Civil Disobedience” has been of very great interest for us resistance people. We are all disgusted with the seemingly endless expedience of politics, with politicians and statesmen who never have unambiguous attitudes. Integrity makes it impossible sometimes for many of us to even vote in local and general elections.

My teacher of English as an undergraduate had learned English from a considerable philosopher, Aage Werner, the son of a rich businessman in Copenhagen. Werner was an outstanding teacher, the first Dane who used phonographic wax cylinders carrying the voices of teachers and famous actors whom he had met in London during his student years in England. Werner’s textbooks are still used. He died in 1910, only forty-two years old. He was aflame with enthusiasm for Thoreau, took pride in living as simply as possible, so that his pecuniary and physical needs were minimal. He spent his great fortune to relieve the distresses of others. He never charged for his teaching, avoided “society,” but spoke readily to the common man. Like Thoreau, he lived unmarried, because, as he said, “God will not revenge himself on my children unto the third and forth generation.”

Thoreau, during the thirty-seven years I have read his books, has continually influenced very deeply the conduct of my life. He has increased my natural reticence towards the man in the street, whose ravenous materialism I loathe. I like to call on the man of the sea, the sailor and the fisherman. Their occasional life-and-death struggles often show us a religious instinct and a more earnest outlook than the farmer’s and the townsman’s.

All detestation is despicable, but since the Hitler-war I have undergone a daily inward struggle to quell a profound spite against that nation that twice in my days has set fire to the world, and now manages with one of the hardest currencies of all, wallowing in the grossest materialism.

Though I am a bad disciple of Thoreau, rather than visit the Acropolis I would go to Walden and to his grave.

In the course of researching tax resistance in the 19^th century American “non-resistant” movement, I was led to a remarkable pamphlet that I hadn’t heard of before.

The name of the pamphlet is Evils of the Revolutionary War (that is, the American Revolution) and it was written by one Charles K. Whipple and issued by William Lloyd Garrison’s “New England Non-Resistance Society” in 1839. (I haven’t seen the original pamphlet; the version I reproduce below is one that was printed in The Living Age in 1845 and might differ from the original for all I know.)

The text of Whipple’s pamphlet can also be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

The title was meant to be provocative. Most of the pacifist literature of the time intended to build up pacifism as a logical conclusion from examining Christian scripture, showing it to follow necessarily from the teachings of Jesus and therefore to be obligatory, regardless of the consequences (which were, in any case, in God’s hands). More practical and worldly-minded people, unconvinced, would respond by presenting scenarios in which war seemed the best answer, and pacifism a poor one, and would address the question from more of a utilitarian/consequentialist point of view.

And, in the United States, there was no better example scenario for this purpose than the American Revolution — the perfect example of a justified war for liberty and against tyranny. Whipple took the bait.

What he came up with is the first example I know of that makes a detailed and sober case for mass civilian nonviolent resistance as an alternative to war, an alternative that is not only effective but that promises greater gains for fewer costs than the violent alternative.

Nowadays, there are think tanks and even Pentagon working groups devoted to large-scale civilian nonviolent resistance, and researchers have devoted hours to delving into historical examples and testing theories. Whipple had to rely on faith and imagination, but what he came up with, with few changes, could be issued a century later by Gandhi or today by Gene Sharp’s crew.

What, all war wrong?

Yes, says the Peace man.

Then the war which gained American Independence, our glorious Revolutionary war, was wrong!

It was.

Then, sir, tell me this, if you can. Where would our great, prosperous, and happy country have been at this moment, but for that war?

I will tell you. It would have been more prosperous, more moral, and happier than it now is.

You cannot surely believe such an absurdity. Wonderfully prosperous and happy we should be, no doubt, remaining to this hour under the tyranny of Great Britain

There is your mistake, my friend. You take it for granted, without examination, that we could never have freed ourselves from British domination, except by war. Now, I say, that we should have attained independence as effectually, as speedily, as honorably, and under very much more favorable circumstances, if we had not resorted to arms.

Very well: now show me how it could have been done.

Our fathers might have accomplished this object, great as it was, merely by taking the course which the society of Friends took to maintain their rights, and by which, though a small and despised body of men, they compelled the English and American governments to recognize and protect those rights. This course consisted of three things. 1^st. A steady and quiet refusal to comply with unjust requisitions; 2^d. Public declarations of their grievances, and demands for redress; and 3^d. Patient endurance of whatever violence was used to compel their submission.

We have every reason to expect that steady perseverance in a course like this will ultimately succeed, wherever the cause is just. Because “moral might is always on the side of right;” and because governments are composed of men, and not of brutes.

Let us suppose, for a moment, that our fathers had acted in the manner I have mentioned, and see what the various stages of the process would have been. In every part of the contest, they strictly adhere to the principles above stated. They carefully refrain from violence, constantly remonstrate against the oppressive acts, and persevere in passive resistance. — When the taxed tea is brought to their shores, they universally abstain from the use of it. It lies undemanded in the ware-houses, and thus the plan of taxation, as far as that article goes, is as completely defeated as it could have been by violence and robbery. When the stamped paper is taxed, they carry on their business without it. This involves great difficulty, inconvenience, and embarrassment of business. No matter! They are patriots, and willing to suffer for their country; and the evils thus endured are infinitely less than the calamities of war. If direct taxes are laid upon them, they quietly, but universally, refuse payment. Their property is seized and sold to raise the tax. They patiently submit to this evil, for their country’s sake, and rejoice that it is so slight in comparison with war. Imprisonment, insult, and abuse of every kind, are added to enforce the oppressive acts of parliament. Still no violence is used, either for defence or retaliation; but petitions, remonstrances, delegations are multiplied as the occasions for them recur. When all these measures are found to fail of success, they unite in solemn assembly to make to the world a declaration of their wrongs, and pronounce their formal separation from, and independence of the British nation. This movement excites new and more violent demonstrations of hostility on the part of the British functionaries. The signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the officers of the new government, are seized and sent to England to take their trial for high treason. No opposition is made, no defence attempted by the patriot leaders. They are ready to lay down their lives in support of the liberty of their country, and they rejoice to meet the danger in this form, in which they can explain and defend their principles, rather than to submit their cause to the decision of brute force on the battle-field, where their own fall would involve the destruction of thousands of their countrymen. They are tried by the constituted authorities of England, and calmly avow and defend their revolutionary measures. They are found guilty, sentenced to death, and (for we will suppose the worst) actually executed as traitors. But their defence, their bold and clear explanation of the principles of liberty, their new views of the relative rights and duties of a government and its subjects, are in the mean time eagerly read and pondered by all the British nation. And while this good seed is taking root in the hearts of the people, the source of power, let us return to the United States, and see what the revolutionists, thus suddenly deprived of their leaders, are doing.

As soon as that noble band of pioneers is taken from them, they choose others to administer the affairs of the new nation. These, too, are seized as rebels. They immediately elect more. What shall the colonial officers do against such pertinacious, yet unresisting opponents? The whole population avow their determination to be flee. The whole population offer themselves for punishment. The prisons are filled to overflowing with rebels; yet they have accomplished nothing, for every man they meet is a rebel. What is to be done? Shall they send for an army? That is needless, for their present force is unresisted. But suppose an army comes. They can do nothing but take prisoners and destroy property, and perhaps execute a few persons; for I take it for granted that they would not attempt to put to death the great mass of the population. All that they do to enforce obedience renders them more odious to the people, and nothing is effected towards destroying the principles of liberty. Intelligence arrives of the death of their leaders in England. This adds fuel to the fire. Their determination, before strong, is now irrevocable. On the other hand, the news of their measures, their pertinacity, and their non-resistance, is constantly going to the people of England, a people already moved to sympathy by the constancy and heroism of the patriot leaders, and already half persuaded by the arguments of those leaders that their cause is just. Can it be imagined, is it consistent with the attributes of human nature to suppose, that such a persevering and undaunted defence of principles so just would fail of working conviction in the hearts of a people like the English? Even were it possible for parliament to persevere in the attempt to subjugate such opponents by force, the whole English people, the whole civilized world, indeed, would cry out shame upon them, and force them to abandon the design, and finally to recognize the independence of the Americans.

It follows as a necessary inference from the principles before alluded to, namely, that moral might is altvays on the side of justice, and that governors and legislators are never destitute of the feelings and sympathies of men, that firm perseverance in such a course as I have described must have resulted in the acknowledgment of American Independence; and probably that result would have occurred in much less time than was occupied by the revolutionary war. This will be made perfectly clear by looking, for a moment, at the reason why Great Britain at last gave up the contest. Did we conquer that mighty nation? Not at all! Still less did they conquer us! Why, then, did not the war continue? Simply and solely because Great Britain was tired of fighting! absolutely wearied out by contention and its necessary consequences! Would not a similar pertinacity in time produce the same effect without the use of physical force? I say, we should certainly in this way have attained our Independence.

We will now suppose this object effected. Let us see what evils the pacific course has produced, in comparison with the evils actually resulting from the revolutionary war.

1^st. Loss of Life. We will make a liberal estimate, and allow that one thousand persons have been executed as traitors, after deliberate trial and sentence; and that ten thousand (men, women, and children) have been slain, unresisting, by the exasperated British soldiers. Upon this enormously exaggerated supposition we have eleven thousand lives lost. But it is computed that a hundred thousand Americans perished during the eight years of the revolutionary war. We have, then, a direct saving of eighty-nine thousand lives of American citizens by pacific measures. This alone should decide the question in favor of peace. But we have other considerations.

2^d. Expense direct and indirect. Commerce, trade, and manufactures have been to a great extent suspended, and a large amount of property has been wantonly destroyed by the devastations of the enemy. But all this would have happened to a still greater extent in war; and the non-resisting policy has saved us the enormous expense of supporting an army and navy, and of building and equipping fortifications. The direct expense of the revolutionary war to our country is estimated, by Pitkin, at $135,000,000. The same author has stated the direct expense of our military operations since that war, to be more than $300,000,000. All this at least, $435,000,000, we should have saved by the pacific policy.

3^d. The interests of morality and religion. If a whole people have such a sense of their duty to God as to refuse to protect themselves by means which he has forbidden, they will not be likely to neglect either to recognize his hand, or implore his protection, throughout the struggle. The Sabbath has been strictly observed, and the supplications of the nation have arisen more ardently than ever to Him who holds the hearts of kings in his hand. The mass of the people, having their minds intently fixed on the great struggle between liberty and oppression, and anxiously watching the contest of faith, love, patience and hope, against carnal weapons, have been strongly withheld both from trifling amusements and vicious indulgences. At the close of the struggle, therefore, the interests of religion and morality are more flourishing than at its commencement.

But, on the other hand, look at the long train of moral evils which crowd in the track of our revolutionary war. Intemperance, which has now become so extensively the disgrace of our land, unquestionably had its origin in the daily rations of spirit served to the revolutionary army and navy. Sabbath-breaking was abhorred by the descendants of the pious pilgrims, until war, which knows no Sabbath, broke over the appropriate employments of that day, and the reverence due to it. Licentiousness, the proverbial inmate of every camp, and profaneness, a vice almost universal among soldiers, have fearfully increased since their toleration in the revolutionary army and navy. Then the whole spirit and practice of war produce a slight estimation of the value of human life. Habits of plunder destroy that regard which we naturally feel for the sacredness of private property. The absolute and unconditional obedience demanded by military superiors, takes away the sense of individual responsibility to God. In short, war is permitted to suspend all the rules of morality.

The loss of $400,000,000, and even the destruction of 100,000 lives, appear but trifling evils, in comparison with the enormous deprivation of moral habits and religious principles which the revolutionary war has produced in this nation.

The considerations above mentioned entirely satisfy me not only that we should have gained our independence, but that we should have been more prosperous, better and happier than we now are, had there been no revolutionary war.

So much for positive results of the non-resistance plan. It may now be well to look at the subject in another aspect, and see what results would not have taken place, had our ancestors been magnanimous enough, honorable enough, Christian enough, to refuse to fight with Great Britain.

Having gained their independence in the mode above mentioned, most assuredly they would not have continued to hold their fellow-creatures in slavery.

Upon this point we cannot be mistaken. Men who had been led by Christian principle to regard the rights and abstain from the destruction of their enernies, could not have deliberately pursued a system of oppression and fraud against their former fellow-sufferers. Men who had so strongly demonstrated their belief in the doctrine, that the whole human race are alike entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, could not have systematically manufactured and used whips, chains, handcuffs and branding-irons. They would not have kept back the hire of the laborer; they would not have taken away the key of knowledge; they would neither have denied the theory nor shrunk from the practice of immediate emancipation. They would certainly have been, in truth as well as in pretense, a free people.

Again. They would not have proceeded to defraud, corrupt, and exterminate the original inhabitants of this country. They would neither have deprived the Indians of their lands, nor supplied them with liquid fire, nor broken their faith, plighted in solemn treaties, nor expended the revenues of the country in making war upon them. How much treasure, how much blood, how many precious lives, how many immortal souls, might they have saved

Lastly. They would not have admitted the system of violence and retaliation as a constituent part of their own government. Having forgiven their foreign foes, they would have pursued the like Christian course towards every domestic enemy. Having conquered by suffering in the great contest between nations, they would have trusted to the same means for overcoming all minor evils. So far from depending on the gallows, the prison, the stocks, the whipping-post, for peace and quietness, they would utterly have rejected all such barbarous instruments, and substituted for them love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, hope, patience, meekness. And, doing thus, they would have found the word of God a sure reliance; the whole armor of God a safe protection.

Foreign Policy in Focus has reproduced an excerpt from Mary King’s A Quiet Revolution: The First Palestinian Intifada and Nonviolent Resistance titled “Regime Change: The Strategies and Potential of Nonviolent Struggle.”

So lately I’ve been being very urban homesteader — baking bread, brewing beer and sake, making yogurt, weeding the garden, canning soups. I’ve been looking for a paying gig, too, which I think partially explains my sudden explosion of home usefulness: it gives me something productive to do while I wait for résumés and bids to be ignored.

What I haven’t been doing much is writing anything substantial for The Picket Line. Sorry ’bout that.

Meanwhile all sorts of interesting things have backed up in my bookmarks, waiting for me to add some insight or context before passing them on for you to enjoy. I think instead I’ll just let them spill out here and trust you to fill in the blanks:

• Francois Tremblay wonders if taxpayers become complicit in what their tax dollars support. He weighs the arguments for both sides (no, because their participation is legally required; and yes, because their participation is nonetheless voluntary) and then engages in some spirited give-and-take with his readers.
• Steven Schallert writes about his war tax resistance at his interestingly-titled blog shutters slide to unveil fingerprints of angels.
• War tax resisters Phil and Louise Baldwin Rieman died in a car accident shortly after Christmas last year. There have been several remembrances of the couple on-line, such as this one from the Church of the Brethren.
• Murray Rothbard writes about ending tyranny without violence (through withdrawal of consent) and the nearly 500-year-old insights of Étienne de La Boétie.
• Carl Watner takes a fresh look at the Whiskey Rebellion and what it means about the origin and nature of the U.S. government.
• Gene Healy and Benjamin Friedman of the Cato Institute note that the U.S. military is preparing a new occupation, and when they meet the enemy the enemy will be us.
• The Taxpayer Advocate said in its annual report that American taxpayers pay — above and beyond what they actually are charged in taxes — nearly two hundred billion dollars just trying to do the paperwork involved in taxpaying.
• Our local paper did the math and put a number on a conclusion that should have been pretty obvious: it’s much cheaper to take public transit than to drive. According to their figures, it costs Bay Area drivers about $1,000 per month to get where they’re going by car instead of by bus and rail. Hell, we pay that much for rent.
• There seems to be a lot of buzz about a revival of local, alternative currencies during this recession.
• A writer for Rebelión notes that Europe’s public is sick of spending so much on the military and asks, “is tax resistance not therefore justified, an investment in the struggle for what is worth the trouble of defending instead of the military costs that impede this to a great extent?” (en español)
• Finally, U.S. nuclear weapons spending topped $52 billion last year (and that’s only counting what we’re allowed to know about). Compare that to the budget of your favorite government agency, business, or non-profit.

From the 21 May 1966 Milwaukee Journal (excerpts):

Singer Loses War Tax Hassle, Opens School for Nonviolence

The origin of [Joan Baez’s Institute for the Study of Nonviolence] can be traced to a running feud with the United States treasury department over the refusal of Miss Baez to pay a portion of her income tax. She decided she wouldn’t pay taxes to support wars and that the portion of the federal budget that goes for defense would be deducted, proportionately, from the amount she owed.

Uncle Sam disagreed with this notion, and Miss Baez backed down when the internal revenue department threatened to place a lien against her property and income. This got her to thinking she ought to do something more constructive with her money, and the idea of a special school for nonviolence grew out of conversations with [Ira] Sandperl, a close friend who was formerly a teacher.

I remember reading a send-up of the Institute in a collection of Joan Didion’s essays. It was condescending and snarky and still kind of managed to make the project sound appealing.

Some links of interest:

• Waging Nonviolence interviews Alycee Lane, author of Nonviolence Now! Living the 1963 Birmingham Campaign’s Promise of Peace on the subject of why Martin Luther King’s pledge of nonviolence matters today. Excerpts:

  The Birmingham campaign pledge was a commitment card that, according to Martin Luther King, all volunteers were “required” to sign in order to participate in the movement. I came across the pledge in King’s work, “Why We Can’t Wait,” a book in which he talks about the Birmingham campaign. The card consisted of ten commandments, including: “1) meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus. 2) remember always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation — not victory. 3) walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love. 4) pray daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free. 5) sacrifice personal wishes in order that all men might be free. 6) observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy. 7) seek to perform regular service for others and for the world. 8) refrain from the violence of fist, tongue or heart. 9) strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health. 10) follow the directions of the movement and of the captain of a demonstration.”

  With its emphasis on the importance of taking up a daily practice of (for example) courtesy, love, service, meditation and prayer, the pledge really offered to volunteers an opportunity to embrace nonviolence as a way of life. The commandments in effect constitute a daily practice of nonviolence, and as such, it conveys that nonviolent direct action is not merely or solely public protest and organizing. It is also (and perhaps more importantly) speaking, thinking, acting and engaging the world — even at the most mundane level — from an ethic of nonviolence, so that we actually become nonviolence.

  It is strategic, I think, for those who are activated to choose not to emulate the very people whom we hope to disarm, to refuse to exchange tit for tat, to withdraw our cooperation with and complicity in creating our culture of violence. It is strategic to demonstrate by word and deed that there is another way to walk in this world and to engage others. It is strategic, in other words, to disarm ourselves and one another just as surely as it is to disarm the state.

  It saddens me when folk who are doing righteous work to confront, say, police brutality or economic inequality or environmental exploitation, express the kind of venom they themselves receive because of the work that they do. It saddens me when I say belittling and dehumanizing things about folks with whom I disagree. In those moments, we become allies in nurturing an atmosphere of conflict, hate and violence. We also reveal the extent to which our emotional and spiritual lives have been colonized.

• Increasingly in the U.S., traffic enforcement is not about safety but about generating revenue for the government. This makes our roads less safe, our fiscal processes less transparent, our law enforcement more corrupt, and contributes to the criminalization of poverty.
• Americans spend more money on taxes than on food, housing, and clothing combined.
• Another example of a “suspicious package” causing an evacuation of an IRS office.
• The IRS has been defeated in another case in which they stole money from someone on the pretext that they had been depositing the money in the bank in periodic small amounts in order to avoid the bank’s requirement to report large deposits to the agency. A judge further ordered the agency to pay interest to the victim based on how long they held on to his money. Another triumph of the Institute for Justice, which has been doing some great work helping the little guy stand up to government.

I found this remarkable, unsigned article in the 7 February 1846 Leeds Times:

Passive Resistance.

We have been informed that large numbers of the working classes of several districts, have come to the determination of going to gaol rather than serve, if drawn for the militia!

Here is a suggestion which contains in it the germ of a tremendous moral power, — before which, if generally acted on, no bad Government could stand.

Suppose that the people generally, or even a large minority of the people, determine, as the members of the Society of Friends have long ago done — to go to gaol rather than bear arms, — and what is the consequence! That the physical force arm of the Government is paralysed, and it must then either govern by public opinion, or go quietly out of existence.

Fancy our gaols filled with men — torn from their wives and families, and from their industrial avocations, — because they will not fight — because they are wiser than their governors — because they are better Christians. In the early ages of Christianity, when its spirit was fresh, men refused to bear arms, — they refused to fight for any master — because they were Christians.

It would, indeed, be something to live in a time when the working classes were too enlightened to go to war for the benefit of the governing classes.

But suppose the principle were carried out. Suppose the working classes refused to enlist. The reign of oppression, of injustice, of monopoly, of fraud, and of wrong, would at once be brought an end!

It is because the people have been so ready to hire themselves out to force one another to submit to injustice, that they have so long been oppressed. Every wrong is maintained by brute force. If the people refuse to supply the brute force, the wrong would perish.

By passive resistance — by perseveringly refusing to aid or abet the government in its plans of coercion, the whole machinery of oppression would at once fall to pieces. It is because they have been ready to sell themselves to their oppressors, that the people have so long been oppressed.

It is not possible to force resolute people to obey an unjust law, if they be determined passively to resist it. It is not possible to force a people who use no force.

Passive resistance to bad laws has already effected much; but it is able to effect very much more. The Irish people got rid of tithes and vestry cess, simply by refusing to pay them. They resisted passively, and no force that could be employed against them, had the slightest effect. Passive resistance triumphed.

In most of our large towns, church rates have been put down by the same means. The people have gone to gaol sooner than pay them, and the tax became so obnoxious that it could not be levied. Passive resistance gained a triumph.

The Quakers, Moravians, and Separatists, have got rid of oaths, by simply refusing to take them. By passive resistance to a bad law, they overcame it.

And if men, because of a principle, have refused to take oaths, and to pay tithes and church-rates, — and by refusing, have overcome the law; — how much more would all men be justified in refusing to take up arms, for the purpose of mangling and destroying their fellow-creatures, and prolonging the sway of brute force, of physical outrage, of tyranny and oppression of the very worst kind.

Passive resistance could put down the militia law; and not only that, but every other bad law. The people have only to resolve not to support a law, and to go about their business quietly, just as if no such law were in existence, at once to put an end to it. By simple passive resistance, the most oppressive and tyrannous government that exists, can, without violence, be stript of every shred of its power, and reduced to utter impotency.

In passive resistance, the people have an enormous, an irresistible power, — did they but know it. ’Twere full time that they did.

Some links from here and there:

• Erica Chenoweth summarizes the promise of sustained, wisely-conducted, nonviolent resistance in a Guardian op-ed: It may only take 3.5% of the population to topple a dictator — with civil resistance
• Jordan Cooper speculates about the possibility of using blockchain techniques (a la bitcoin) to create a self-enforcing escrow account that people could deposit their taxes into such that the money would only be released to the government when certain conditions / demands were met: Blockchain Based Tax Resistance a.k.a. “Resistcoin”
• There’s a new NWTRCC newsletter out, with content including:
  • war tax resistance in the age of Trump
  • a new campaign focusing on redirecting taxes from the government to “organizing for liberation led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
  • some brief updates on what war tax resistance activists are up to in their communities, and how other activists are looking to tax resistance as a tactic in their battles
  • remembering Ed Pearson, founder of the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign
  • a profile of war tax resister Kayla Starr

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• The gilets jaunes movement in France continues its series of weekend protests. The focus of the movement drifted over time from opposition to increased motor fuel taxes to regime-change, with every other opposition movement in the land seeming to want to try to hitch their wagon to the cause as well (which made it hard for me to get a good grip on things from this side of the language barrier). Recently, the government began to crack down more severely on the protests: bringing in counter-terrorist military units to supplement law enforcement, and banning protesters and protest regalia from certain urban areas. Now the movement seems to be struggling to maintain its momentum and the government is trying to wait it out.
  • In one of the more picturesque protests of the movement, a group of gilets jaunes bricked up the entrance to the tax authority in Montargis last November. Nine of those protesters were sentenced this month to small fines and suspended sentences.
• Goethe-University Frankfurt is hosting a workshop next year on “Not paying taxes: Tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax resistance in historical perspective”.

  [W]e want to examine the different practices and forms of withholding and avoiding personal and financial duties, fees and taxes over time and among different social, professional and other groups. This includes, on the one hand, open and organized tax resistance on moral, economic and political grounds, challenging the existing legal or political order and claiming more or a different form of tax justice and redistribution, or a modification of how taxes are collected. In these cases, personal or financial duties were often seen as a form of humiliation and a marker of subordinated status. On the other hand, taxes and duties were often not resisted publically but rather avoided or evaded in secret. These terms refer to notions that distinguish between legal practices of lowering the intended burden and thus saving taxes or fees, and maneuvers that were classified as illegal or criminal. Such categorizations, though, depend on changing moral and legal perceptions and/or on class-related negotiating power.

  They are accepting proposals for papers until the end of May.
• Citizen Truth reviews the new documentary about war tax resister Larry Bassett: “The Pacifist” and American war tax resister and holocaust survivor Bernard Offen is also featured in a new documentary: “Love, Light & Courage”.
• Every year, the Tax Foundation announces what it bills as “Tax Freedom Day” — the day when Americans have earned enough money to pay their annual tax bill. This year that day comes on April 16^th. Up to now, we’ve all been working for The Man. The calculation and the Tax Foundation’s publication of it is a reasonable attempt at making the tax bite less anesthetic.
• Here’s yet another article about the staffing crisis at the IRS. This one quotes the new Service Commissioner Charles Rettig as saying “the IRS ‘lost an entire generation’ of employees during a hiring freeze that took place between 2011 and 2018.” Their trained, experienced employees are retiring in droves, with no replacements. And they’re trying to fill crucial Information Technology positions at a time when there’s high demand for talent in that industry from the private sector, which is able to make much more attractive offers.
• One of the strategists behind the Otpor movement that helped to topple the Milosevic regime in 2000 has created The Path of Most Resistance: A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Nonviolent Campaigns, which has been released as a free PDF by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
• Amancio Plaza examines The Heroic Tax Resistance of the Suffragettes at the LawAndTrends blog (in Spanish).