Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → religious groups and the religious perspective → Catholic Worker movement → Ammon Hennacy

I found a peek at the birth of the modern American tax resistance movement hidden away in a 1948 edition of the MANAS Journal which features the article “No Compromise:”

These articles can also be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

Among those taking a decisive position are a number of men calling themselves the “Peacemakers,” who met in Chicago last April and pledged themselves (1) to refuse to serve in the armed forces in either peace or war; (2) to refuse to make or transport weapons of war; (3) the refuse to be conscripted or to register; (4) to consider to refuse to pay taxes for war purposes — a position already adopted by some; (5) to spread the idea of peacemaking and to develop non-violent methods of opposing war through various forms of non-cooperation and to advocate unilateral disarmament and economic democracy. (Reported in the Spring 1948 Politics.)

The idea of non-payment of taxes has been put into practice by Ammon Hennacy, a Tolstoyan of Arizona, and by Mrs. Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio (see MANAS, March 31), and possibly by others. Milton Mayer, of the University of Chicago, who writes regularly for the Progressive and has contributed to Harper’s, the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines, has frequently written and spoken of this form of protest against war. Walter Gormly, of Mt. Vernon, Iowa, finds the payment of taxes for war a violation of the principle established by the International Military Tribune which conducted the Nuremberg Trials. The Tribune Charter identifies as a crime against peace, the “planning, preparation, initiating or waging of a war of aggression,” and in a letter to the Bureau of Internal Revenue Gormly asserts that the United States is doing just that “by maintaining bases, subservient governments and military forces from Korea to Turkey, by intensive research on methods of mass slaughter and by maintaining a huge military organization.” As Section Ⅱ, Article B, of the Charter declares that “the fact that the defendant acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility,” Mr. Gormly feels obliged, to avoid possible prosecution as a “war criminal,” to refuse to pay a federal income tax, a large part of which goes for preparation for war, and he has so informed the Federal Government.

The story of “Mrs. Caroline Urie of Yellow Springs, Ohio” is given in an earlier edition:

The determination of Mrs. Caroline Urie, social worker and widow of an American naval officer, to pay no taxes for war purposes will probably strike many Americans as an irrational attitude. On March 14 (the day before income tax payments were due), Mrs. Urie wrote President Truman announcing that she had deducted 34.6 per cent of her tax — the proportion she estimates is earmarked for war. “If they want to send me to jail,” she said, “that’s all right with me… I’ll never pay any more money for war.”

Democracy, it will be argued, is a rational process. Nobody likes war, and nobody likes income taxes, but we have to put up with both. We have a Congress to decide these things, and if everyone could question the decisions of the Congress whenever he pleased, soon there would be no Government, no order, no national defense, no anything.

So Mrs. Urie is irrational. But what, exactly, is she to do, feeling the way she does? From where she stands, paying for a war is irrational. Maybe she has read Morgenstern’s Pearl Harbor. Maybe she is convinced that democracy means the right to have no part of killing anybody, for any reason, and to take the consequences of this position. In her case, the consequences might be a jail sentence, although this may be doubted. Mrs. Urie once worked with Jane Addams at Hull House. For five years she was director of the School for Immigrant Children. The Government may feel a little silly trying to put her in jail. Maybe it should.

A week or so ago a leading news magazine blandly announced that a war with Russia is “in the cards,” not now, but later, when both nations are “ready.” This was followed by a page of explanation telling why the war would be delayed. Nobody wants a war, but there it is, and all the man-in-the-street can do is wait around …or so it seems. The news magazine also told what the war would mean — compulsory labor, compulsory financing, compulsory everything. Compulsory death for millions was not mentioned — that is taken for granted, we suppose. The news magazine said nothing about stopping the war. It was just a nice, objective account for the American business man — what to expect, and when.

A visit to a large aircraft factory here on the Pacific Coast adds considerable local color to one’s sense of doom. One plant, at least, seems to be making no commercial planes at all. In the plant in question, 10,000 men working two shifts are turning out jet fighters and bombers as fast as they can. The plant has Government contracts. It’s all official, according to schedule, and absolutely democratic and rational.

But from Mrs. Urie’s viewpoint, it’s not rational at all. She objects to buying death for somebody on a cost plus basis. Thoreau had a similar idea, about a century ago. Actually, there are two rationales in this problem: there is the rationale of a great nation getting ready for war, and the rationale of a lonely individual getting ready for peace. So far as Mrs. Urie and her income tax are concerned, the democratic process is 34.6 per cent irrational, and she won’t go along. This is her way of trying to be a good citizen and a good human being at the same time. It is beginning to take some imagination.

A 1960 edition has a letter to the IRS (and an amusing recollection of a telephone conversation with an IRS agent) by tax resister Richard Groff. Other issues of the journal include a review of Edmund Wilson’s The Cold War and the Income Tax, and a great deal of discussion of the work and thought of Gandhi and Thoreau. I plan to spend some time browsing their free archives on-line in the coming days.

Hennacy and Thoreau each have contributions in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

In an issue of MANAS that I ran across in the middle of last month, I noticed that the pacifist tax resister Ammon Hennacy trod a similarly-annotated though much more frugal path:

Ammon Hennacy, militant pacifist, one-time Tolstoyan, and now, as he says, a “Catholic” anarchist, is a man who likes to make things simple. He is also a vegetarian, which contributes to simplicity of diet. Here is his budget for May, 1945 (with his comments):

Total	$10.00
Whole wheat flour, 25 lbs. (could grow own wheat)	$1.25
Vegetable shortening, 3 lbs.	.68
Cornmeal, 5 lbs. (could grow own corn)	.46
Oleomargerine, 2 lbs.	.38
Rice, 4 lbs. (price is too high)	.58
Raisins, 2 lbs.	.23
Syrup, 5 lbs.	.47
Yeast, salt, sugar, etc.	.50
Total	$4.55
Electric light bill	1.00
Bundle of CO and CW’s	2.40
Postage stamps, haircuts, etc.	2.05

At this time, Hennacy was making about seventy-five cents an hour as a farm laborer in Arizona. His theory, then, and ever since, was that if he worked by the day, no withholding tax would be taken from his pay by his employer. In this way Hennacy frustrates the government’s plan to use some of his earnings for the preparation for war, for the design and manufacture of H-bombs and similar devices. Hennacy is bound and determined that none of his labor will contribute to the military program of the United States, and he is probably the most successful man in the country in carrying out this resolve. He calls himself a “one-man revolution,” and if someone asks him if he thinks he can change the world, he admits to some uncertainty, but replies that he is making sure that the world won’t change him!

…Incidentally, while working as a day laborer in Arizona, he put his daughters through college, living on ten dollars a month, himself.…

And of course, there’s the example of Thoreau, who began his experiment in Walden with an accounting:

The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them:—

In all	$28.12½
Boards	$8.03½	mostly shanty boards
Refuse shingles for roof and sides	4.00
Laths	1.25
Two second-hand windows with glass	2.43
One thousand old brick	4.00
Two casks of lime	2.40	That was high
Hair	0.31	More than I needed
Mantle-tree iron	0.15
Nails	3.90
Hinges and screws	0.14
Latch	0.10
Chalk	0.01
Transportation	1.40	I carried a good part on my back

These are all the materials, excepting the timber, stones, and sand, which I claimed by squatter’s right. I have also a small woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house.

I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one.

I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.

I became curious about this need to fill in a ledger that Hennacy & Thoreau & I had. Although this is the third year that I have published an accounting of my budget, I still have to overcome an inhibition that discourages me from doing so.

In part, I think this inhibition comes from a taboo about discussing detailed money matters with others — it would be easier for many people to blog about the follies of their sex lives than about the line items in their budgets. In part also, I worry that it is a particularly boring form of exhibitionism (people would probably rather read about your sex life than your checkbook, too).

But there is also a sort of lingering feeling that matters of money and economics are themselves shameful. In the same way that everyone has bowel movements but it isn’t polite to bring it up in conversation, everyone has a budget but nobody is supposed to really talk about it. If you pay too much attention to money it must be because you’re poor, or stingy, or greedy, or obsessed with money in a vulgar way, or something shameful like that.

This is too bad, because the part of our lives that we hide in this way is a big part of the lives we live. Somehow in the course of history, while we were acquiring tools like money and credit and capital and commerce to supplement and amplify our ways of living, we were also shoving a lot of how we live behind a veil.

The irony is that these same tools give us a convenient notation for quantifying and reconciling much of our incomes and outgoes, the heartbeats of our economic health — it’s as if someone has handed us binoculars and we responded by putting on a blindfold.

This taboo has some big disadvantages — it means that we don’t compare notes and learn from each other’s experiences, and also it means that we often do not look at our own economic behavior very closely, even by ourselves from behind the veil. We wander around, spending money with our eyes closed, stumbling into debt, wondering why things don’t quite work out according to plan but ignoring that we’re blinding ourselves.

And because we hide our true economic health from each other, we evaluate each other very superficially — we judge someone’s well-being by sizing up their bling because we know no better and aren’t supposed to ask. We envy people whose sparkling debts are crushing them and pity people who would rightly fight tooth and nail not to trade places with them.

It’s hard not to entertain conspiracy theories when confronting this. After all, it’s easier to make a profit off of customers who can’t tell whether or not they’re being ripped off, and it’s easier for a government to tax people who won’t bother to translate that lost money into lost time and energy because they don’t know any better. There are powerful people who benefit from this money taboo.

But whether the wool was pulled over our eyes or whether we put the blinders on ourselves, we can’t expect someone else to come along and restore our sight. We have to, and we ought to, do that ourselves.

I had a fantastic vacation in Veracruz, but vacation though it was, I couldn’t leave The Picket Line behind entirely. Between adventures I’ve been reading The Book of Ammon — Ammon Hennacy’s autobiography, much of which seems to have been cobbled together without much editing from his journals, correspondence, and dispatches for the Catholic Worker and other publications.

Hennacy was a rare bird — a “One Man Revolution” of one man in a million. He wrote:

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. Therefore one who has love, courage and wisdom is one in a million who moves the world, as with Jesus, Buddha and Gandhi.

Hennacy’s writings on tax resistance fill a chapter of the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

Hennacy aspired to be this one-in-a-million. When he was held in solitary confinement for several months as a conscientious objector during World War Ⅰ, he had little but a bible to keep him occupied. He ended up taking the Sermon on the Mount much more seriously than Christians typically recommend, and he decided to make that creed the North Star of his life.

He called himself a “Christian Anarchist” — “one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the money-changers, and who does not need a cop to tell him how to behave.”

Despite the popular idea of anarchists as violent men, Anarchism is the one non-violent social philosophy.… The function of the Anarchist is two-fold. By daily courage in non-cooperation with the tyrannical forces of the State and the Church, he helps to tear down present society; the Anarchist by daily cooperation with his fellows in overcoming evil with good-will and solidarity builds toward the anarchistic commonwealth which is formed by voluntary action with the right of secession.

A Christian Anarchist does not depend on bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused and dying world.…

To not pay taxes is not my whole message but it is a part of the life of a rebel which I chose to act upon. For despite all talk you either pay taxes or you don’t.

The tax resistance bit is how I came to learn about Ammon Hennacy. He practiced voluntary poverty as his tax resistance method for the most part, although he did earn enough to owe money, which he then refused to pay. When the government instituted paycheck withholding, Hennacy quit his job and began working as a farm worker, being paid daily and usually in cash, in order to stay out of the grip of the tax collector:

…I explained the principle of voluntary poverty and non payment of taxes as I had learned them from Tolstoy and the CW. When I was working a man asked me “Why does a fellow like you, with an education, and who has been all over the country, end up in this out-of-the-way place working for very little on a farm?” I explained that all people who had good jobs in factories, etc. had a withholding tax for war taken from their pay, and that people who worked on farms had no tax taken from their pay. I told him that I refused to pay taxes. He was a returned soldier and said that he did not like war either, but what could a fellow do about it? I replied that we each did what we really wanted to.

He’d file accurate returns each year, “not wishing to have my non-payment of taxes confused by any other issue,” but “[i]n the space listed ‘AMOUNT OF TAX DUE’ I wrote ‘not interested.’ ”

Hennacy relates an amusing story of how the tax collector did catch up with him once. Hennacy was picketing the revenue office, and…

Mr. Schumacher, my tax man, came up and handed me a card which read:

Seized for the account of the United States on 8-7-50 by virtue of warrant for distraint issued by the collector of internal revenue, district of Arizona, Deputy Collector… One poster for picket line.

Hennacy got some new signs printed up and continued his protest, but Schumacher later “good naturedly said that he had a bid of $5 for my signs from someone who wanted them as a souvenir.”

The farm work was hard, paid poorly, and workers were often cheated. Hennacy doesn’t much complain about his lot, though, as to him hard work is a virtue of its own. People who don’t earn their bread by the sweat of their brows — and this includes most clergy, capitalists, “salesmen, lawyers, bankers, politicians, policemen or soldiers” — he derides as parasites.

It’s sometimes hard to tell where Hennacy’s Christian Anarchism leaves off and his own personal eccentricities begin. There are many aspects to his philosophy, and not all seem either Christian or Anarchist.

Hennacy preferred action to theorizing, though while some of his actions (such as opening “Joe Hill Houses” or tax resistance) were “direct actions,” other favorites of his (such as picketing and fasting) seem more indirect and symbolic.

He saw welfare capitalism — big agriculture and war profiteers especially — as spectacularly shameful and as dooming capitalism entirely. But he had no love for socialists, one-world global federalists, or any of that nonsense. He once admitted some sympathy for the communists, though not because of their program or their tactics but simply because whenever he would picket against war and for justice, or hand out copies of the Catholic Worker or Conscientious Objector, people would curse him by calling him a “communist.”

He was a vegetarian — a term he defined to also exclude alcohol and tobacco. He opposed the payment or earning of interest. He distrusted doctors & medicine. He was a partisan for the traditionalist Hopi and derided those who compromised with the U.S. culture and government bureaucracy. He disapproved of cities and felt that decentralization and family farms were part of the solution to what ails the world.

He said “I love my enemies but am hell on my friends”:

[I]t has seemed that those with whom I have the most controversy are those who claim to accept the ideals of peace and brotherhood, and even at times, anarchism, yet who follow from such a distance when it comes to practicing these ideals that I feel it is my duty as one who goes a long way to call the bluff of those who say “Lord, Lord” and “peace, peace” in exultant tones which mean very little.… At times those who do not want to have their inconsistencies pointed out say in a super-sweet voice to me “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” I reply “O.K., judge me, then.”

He valued honesty and openness over secrecy and subterfuge — he’d write to the police chief ahead of time and say he’d be coming to town to picket “subversively.” Often, they’d tell him that he couldn’t, or that it wouldn’t be safe, or that he’d need a permit. He’d always do it anyway. “I’m not disturbing the peace,” he’d say, “I’m disturbing the war.”

Orthodox anarchists who like to hide in alleys, whisper in saloons about the great damage they will do to the capitalist, or get social security checks which are not due them and think they have done something, do not like my Gandhian frankness in dealing with officialdom. The idea is I am not “asking” the officials anything. I am “telling” them what I am going to do.

The most focal value of Hennacy’s was his “One Man Revolution:”

[T]he only revolution worthwhile was the one-man revolution within the heart. Each one could make this by himself and not need to wait on a majority.

We really can’t change the world. We really can’t change other people! The best we can do is to start a few thinking here and there. The best way to do this, if we are sincere, is to change ourselves!

Too many of us dissipate our energy by being “for all good causes,” attending meetings and passing resolutions, organizing and presenting petitions — all this effort to change others, when if we really got down to it we could use this energy to change ourselves… We become tired radicals because we use our weakest weapon: the ballot box, where we are always outnumbered, and refuse to use our strongest weapon: spiritual power.

A reporter once asked him: “Hennacy, do you think you can change the world?” He shot back: “No, but I am damn sure it can’t change me.” That personal victory, the one-man revolution, at times seemed to be all he was aiming at. The other book I brought down to Mexico with me was William Hubben’s Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzche, and Kafka, and there’s a passage in it that seemed to pinpoint the sort of person Hennacy was driving himself to become:

Like Kierkegaard and Tolstoy, Nietzsche neither expects nor wants to find disciples. He wants new “single ones” at a time when the average mass man no longer counts.

(Hennacy does not refer to Nietzsche or to Kierkegaard in his autobiography, but does quote extensively from Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” and writes of Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You that “I felt that it must have been written especially for me, for here was the answer already written out to all the questions that I had tried to figure out for myself [while imprisoned] in solitary. To change the world by bullets or ballots was a useless procedure.”)

Hennacy never aimed for mass appeal, and he specifically criticized radicals who would try to water down or frame their messages to appeal to a wider audience. But he wrote a lot, and he lectured and debated a lot, and he picketed a lot, and this all was for some audience. Although he said, “I sure don’t want any Ammonites following me around,” he did title his book The Book of Ammon and he did seem at times to be a prophet in search of disciples. (His young daughters once responded to a question about him by saying “We are very proud of our Daddy because he did not go to war and kill people, but we get tired of hearing him brag about it.”)

Over time, the tone of his explanatory leaflets changed from “Why am I doing this?” to “Why aren’t you doing this?”

WHY AM I PICKETING? Well, why aren’t you? Do the A-Bomb and the H-Bomb make you sleep any better at night? Do you trust our politicians to protect us from destruction in an atomic war? Does it make good sense to foot the bill by paying income taxes?

I am not paying my income tax this year, and I haven’t done so for the last seven years. I don’t expect to stop World War Ⅲ by my refusal to pay, but I don’t believe in paying for something I don’t believe in — do you?

Do you believe that anyone ever “won” a war? Or that any good can come from returning evil for evil? I don’t believe it! And I don’t believe I need preachers or policemen to make me behave, either.

I do believe in personal responsibility, and that’s why I am picketing. Why aren’t you?

Do you pay your income tax because you are afraid of the sacrifice that trust in God and opposition to the state may involve? I decided long ago that, while all of us must die, I could choose something worthwhile to live and die for. You might as well die for what you do believe as for what you don’t believe. Remember that Johnson said to Boswell, “Courage is the greatest virtue, for without it you cannot practice the other virtues.

If you want a better world you will not get it by trying to make men out of Congressmen through writing them letters, by voting for any politician since they all believe in war, or by expecting very much of a World Government composed of these same ignoble politicians. Neither will the mocking of God by saying prayers for peace while making munitions and paying taxes for war be of much avail. That kind of prayer bounces back!

If you want to think a little further about this, here are the first steps (you will know in your heart what is right for you); Study the Sermon on the Mount, and the lives of such dedicated men as St. Francis, George Fox, Tolstoy and Gandhi. Try to make whatever you do coincide with Christ’s teachings. Ask yourself whether returning evil for evil in courts, legislatures, prisons and war is not denying Christ. If your answer is yes, then stop doing it.…

To sum up: REFUSE to register for the draft or military training! REFUSE to buy war bonds! REFUSE to make munitions for war! And when you get around to it, REFUSE to pay taxes for war!

Reading this book isn’t a bit like reading Mother Jones or Reason or watching a Michael Moore documentary or reading 99% of the political blogs out there. It’s no exposé of the evils They are perpetrating, but instead it’s the story of one man who is trying to turn his back on those evils and start walking the other way. The challenge Ammon Hennacy makes is not to “the system” or “the government” or to any particular politicians or evildoers, but to those of us who read his words and who haven’t turned our backs on evil yet.

As a follow-up to my review of Ammon Hennacy’s autobiography from Thursday’s Picket Line, here’s the text of a leaflet he handed out while picketing the revenue office in 1951:

Ammon Hennacy’s writing on tax resistance fills a chapter in We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

How do I get by with it?

I don’t know for sure.

I have picketed thirteen days in the last three years here in Phoenix against war, the draft, and paying taxes for all this. I have been detained by the police and released four times, and been called to the tax office often.

I was a conscientious objector in both World Wars. In 1942 I refused to register for the draft and resigned from a civil service job in Milwaukee where I had been a social worker for eleven years. As I do not believe in shooting I have since then worked on farms where no withholding tax is taken from my pay, so I do not buy a gun for others to shoot. The tax man has tried to garnishee my wages; now I work by the day for different farmers and if necessary am paid in advance in order that no garnishee is effective.

I believe in the idea of voluntary poverty somewhat after the pattern of St. Francis, Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi. I have no car or anything the tax man can get. I make a true report of my income but openly refuse to pay a cent of tax.

I am a non-church Christian. I believe in the Sermon on the Mount, especially because it is more revolutionary than opportunistic Communist tactics. I do not put my trust in money or bombs, but in God.

I am an Anarchist who believes that all government exists not to help people but to continue in power exploiters, bureaucrats and politicians who keep us on the run with their continual depressions and wars.

If you believe in capitalism and war and think you get your money’s worth in paying taxes that is your business. My message is to those who are beginning to question the idea that preparing for war brings peace. It is also to those who believe somewhat as I do but who are afraid to stand up and say so.…

…If you are ready for my message here is a starter:

REFUSE to become a soldier
REFUSE to make munitions
REFUSE to buy war bonds
REFUSE to pay income taxes

STUDY the Sermon on the Mount
STUDY Gandhi’s non-violent methods
STUDY Jefferson’s idea of life on the land
“STUDY war no more.”

“Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” A Christian Anarchist does both.

Most of the examples in today’s Picket Line can be found in greater detail in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

A while back, I started looking for examples of ways tax resisters have organized mutual aid pacts to help diffuse the effects of government retaliation. In the course of doing the research, though, I started collecting examples instead of a larger variety of collective projects resisters and their sympathizers have used in support of tax resistance.

Here are some of the examples I found:

1. Tax resister “insurance”

   For instance, the Breton Association in 19^th century France, which organized to “form a common stock or fund… to indemnify the subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any illegal contributions imposed upon the public.”

   Another example was the Association of Real Estate Taxpayers in 1930s Chicago, which formed a cooperative legal fund to fight an offensive legal battle against the tax.

   American war tax resisters today can use the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund to defray penalties and interest seized by the IRS. The fund is raised as-needed by asking subscribers to contribute an equal amount.

   The oath of the Regulator tax resistance movement in the North Carolina colony bound its signers to “bear an equal share in paying and making up [the] loss” if “any of our company be put to expense or under any confinement.”

2. Communes, collectives, and co-housing projects.

   Some tax resisters have formed mutual support communities. Whiteway Colony was founded to try to live up to Tolstoyan ideals. The members of the Bijou and Agape communities live below a taxable income so as to avoid paying taxes.

3. Supporting resisters as an employer

   Some members of the Restored Israel of Yahweh ran a construction business and agreed not to withhold federal taxes from the wages of those employees who were fellow-members and who were resisting taxes.

   Vivien Kellems refused to withhold taxes from her employees’ wages, saying: “They are all free American citizens, thoroughly capable of performing all of the duties and responsibilities of citizenship for themselves. And so, from this day, I am not collecting nor paying their income taxes for them.”

   Charles Kanjama recently urged Kenyans to begin a tax resistance campaign, and said that to foil pay-as-you-earn withholding, “participating employers and employees can enter into a voluntary contract to convert monthly employment into quarterly or half-yearly employment, thus effectively delaying tax liability for several months.”

4. Disrupting auctions of seized property

   Earlier this year I recounted a dramatic and successful example of the American group “Peacemakers” blocking the sale of Ernest & Marion Bromley’s seized home.

   British nonconformists and women’s suffrage activists a century ago also used this tactic. Auctions became rallies, with speeches and banners and crowds that could number in the thousands. Supporters would pack the auction house and refuse to leave their seats. On some occasions, violence broke out. In some cases, auctioneers refused to handle goods that had been seized for tax refusal.

   Simply boycotting the auctions and refusing to buy seized goods is one way communities offer support. It was part of the Quaker “Discipline” to refuse to buy seized goods. When Valentine Byler’s horse was seized for non-payment of the social security tax, “no Amish came to bid on the horses and, due to a lack of bidders, they went for a good price, with the harnesses ‘thrown in’ by the auctioneer.”

5. Pay cash so as not to leave a paper trail

   Jessica Ramer and a Claire Files contributor brought this idea up. If you pay in cash whenever you can, you give the recipient the opportunity to decide whether or not to declare the income.

   Cash tips are easy to under-report. I asked about that recently and was told that most people pay with credit card/debit card and that the government now uses a percentage method for tips. They look at the charged meals, look at the number of total meals served, and then look at the charged tips to figure out how much cash tips you received.

   (100 meals served. 50 paid with card, tipping 15%. the government calculates 15% from 100 meals even if cash tips are only 10%)

   You can help out by tipping more when paying with cash or better yet, when you pay with card, put 1% tip on it and put the rest out as cash. I even leave a note for the server saying “this is your money, don’t tell your boss, or the government. share it with the buss boy if that is the policy.” This will help lower the average tip figures, but still give the nice server what they have earned.

6. Use barter to avoid taxable/seizable transactions

   Karl Hess found people willing to barter with him as he was dodging IRS seizures:

   The other day I welded up a fish-smoking rack for a family in Washington, D.C. It will earn me a year’s supply of smoked fish. At about the same time, I helped a friend dig a foundation. He’ll help me lay the concrete blocks for a workshop. Part of my pay for a lecture at a New England college was the use of the school’s welding shop, to make some metal sculptures. Three such sculptures have paid my attorney’s fees in maintaining the tax resistance which is the reason barter has become such an integral part of my life.

7. Manufacture and sell goods as alternatives to taxed products

   Before the American Revolution, colonists who opposed Britain’s economic control boycotted British products and began to produce homespun cloth, alternatives to tea, and so forth. Gandhi’s independence campaign in India made the wearing and production of homespun cloth central to the opposition, and the Salt March was focused on the illegal production of untaxed, non-foreign-monopoly salt.

   An example today is home-brewed beer (which beats the excise tax on alcoholic beverages).

8. Buycotts and boycotts that favor resisting businesses

   One report from World War Ⅰ-era America noted that this was a technique used by those who opposed the “Liberty Bonds”:

   Efforts to prevent banks from handling the bonds have centered chiefly in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Missouri and Oklahoma. The President of a Wisconsin bank has advised the Treasury that his depositors, mostly Germans, or of German parentage, have withdrawn many thousands of dollars from his bank because he aided the First Liberty Loan.

   These depositors, he added, had taken their accounts to two rival banks on the understanding that those banks would not aid the second Liberty Loan. The two banks, he reported, were not aiding the loan in any way.

   Many banks have felt the pressure of German influence in this propaganda, reports indicate. So pronounced was the movement that the States of Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana recently decided that they would withdraw State funds from any bank which did not support the loan.

9. Social boycotts / shunning / noncooperation with tax collectors
   • Adolf Hausrath writes of Roman-occupied Judaea,

     The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their moral indignation. In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and half Gentile.… among the Jews the words “tax-gatherers and sinners,” “tax-gatherers and Gentiles,” “tax-gatherers and harlots,” “tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were accepted as theocratically identical in meaning. Thrust out from all social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of the Jewish world. With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose, and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated. Their testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals. It was forbidden to sit at table with them or eat of their bread. But their money-chests especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic regulation. To exchange their money or receive alms from them might easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and necessitate many purifications. From these relations of the tax-officials to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the refuse of Judaism undertook the office.

   • A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before the American revolution. John Adams wrote:

     At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes, the stamp man for that colony. The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland, have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains, in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to “have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.” So triumphant is the spirit of liberty everywhere.

   • Harassment of tax collectors was a signature action of the Whiskey Rebellion. An early published resolution of the rebels read in part:

     [W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty:

     Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.

10. Violently resist tax collectors, disrupt trials/auctions, intimidate collaborators

    Tax collectors were tarred-and-feathered in America, both before and after the revolution — the violent expulsion of tax collectors was a frequent technique of the Whiskey rebels. Tax collectors have been the targets of violent reprisal at many times and in many places. Because of this, governments have often had to pay high salaries — or, frequently, percentages of the take — to convince collectors to take on the job, which only increases the resentment of those being collected from.

    During the French Revolution and its aftermath, customs houses were burned by mobs, tax rolls were destroyed, excise collectors were made to renounce their jobs and then were run out of town — or in some cases killed.

    The first Boer War was triggered when an armed group of Boers seized a wagon that was being auctioned after it was distrained for resisted taxes.

    The Whiskey rebels threatened to destroy the stills of those distillers who complied in paying the excise tax.

11. Boycotts / social boycotts of non-resisters

    If a tax resisting movement is large enough, it may be able to dissuade people from paying taxes through boycotts or social boycotts of people who are tax compliant. In Massachusetts, a group enforced a boycott of taxed British imports by declaring that

    …we further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public, shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer: and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence, with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer; and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country, and infamous, who shall break this agreement.

12. Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics

    In mid-19^th century Germany, the government attempted to break a tax resistance movement by offering to moderate its enforcement efforts against people who could show that they had limited means. Karl Marx, who was promoting the resistance at the time, saw this as a divide-and-conquer tactic:

    The intention of the Ministry is only too clear. It wants to divide the democrats; it wants to make the peasants and workers count themselves as non-payers owing to lack of means to pay, in order to split them from those not paying out of regard for legality, and thereby deprive the latter of the support of the former. But this plan will fail; the people realizes that it is responsible for solidarity in the refusal to pay taxes, just as previously it was responsible for solidarity in payment of them.

13. Keep a record of the “sufferings” of resisters

    The Quakers responded to persecution by keeping careful records of individuals who had suffered thereby. In the archives of Quaker meetings, you can find lists of people who had resisted militia taxes or tithes for establishment church ministers, and what property was distrained by which tax collector.

14. Sign petitions and public advertisements, engage in public protests

    When the American Amish were trying to resist compulsory enrollment in the social security system, 14,000 of them signed a petition to Congress.

    During the Vietnam War, public advertisements were taken out by tax resisters. In early 1968, for instance, 448 writers and editors put a full-page ad in the New York Post declaring their intention to refuse to pay taxes for the Vietnam War. The signatories included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Betty Friedan, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Paul Krassner, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Thomas Pynchon, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, Norman Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Howard Zinn.

    This year’s 2008 War Tax Boycott, Don’t Buy Bush’s War, and Pledge for Peace campaigns also have a public-signing component.

    Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many large-scale tax resistance campaigns.

15. Hold resisters’ property as an informal trustee

    Some resisters who are vulnerable to property seizure find sympathetic friends who are willing to hold the resisters’ property in their names as a way of foiling seizure. Some war tax resister alternative funds function partially as “warehouse banks” that hold deposits of war tax resisters.

    When a frustrated tax collector seized Ammon Hennacy’s protest signs as he was picketing the IRS office — claiming that he planned to auction them off to pay Hennacy’s tax debt — a friend of Hennacy helped him make new signs, each one marked “this sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”

16. Keep in contact with resisters and express support

    After the press reported that Valentine Byler’s horse had been seized by the IRS as he was plowing his field, he got letters of support from all across the country.

17. Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making

    Here there are too many examples to list.

18. Give financial aid to evicted rent strikers

    When the Irish Land League launched its rent strike, it claimed that “The funds will be poured out unstintedly to all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may be relied on to contribute, if necessary, as many millions in money as they have thousands, to starve out the landlords and bring the English tenantry to its knees.”

19. Comfort and aid imprisoned resisters

    The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real needs and desires. When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”

    Juanita Nelson tells of the support she received in jail, where she had been taken in her bathrobe from her home. Her supporters took the time to learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:

    Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted to come to me, since I would not go to them. I asked them what was uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed? They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself. I sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me to be dressed for my appearance in court. They were more concerned about the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was. They were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and readiness. I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them. The older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the clothes in a taxicab.

    They left, and on their heels came another visitor. She had been told that in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more courtesy than I was according them. It was her assessment that the chief deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me and was willing to make concessions in that hope. But he had misjudged the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the men. She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I had started.

    And she said. “You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe. You look, well, dignified.”

    That was my first encouragement. Everyone else had tended to make me feel like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that score. My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was deep. And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to try to emulate a more becoming state of mind. I reminded myself, too, that I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to greet kings and statesmen with ease. I need not be unduly perturbed about wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.

20. Support the families of imprisoned resisters

    When Gandhi was preparing the groundwork for a tax refusal campaign in India, he noted that the Indian National Congress “should undertake to feed the wives and families of those who may be imprisoned.”

21. Study the law, give legal support

    When Elizabeth Cady Stanton was contemplating a tax resistance campaign for women’s suffrage in the United States, she noted, “One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loopholes of retreat.”

22. Combine redirected taxes for dramatic charity giveaways

    Larry Rosenwald wrote, of this technique, “To sit on the Grants and Loans Committee of New England War Tax Resistance, and to dispense the interest on refused taxes to a youth group in Chelsea, a video for cable television on United States involvement in Central America, and a people’s garden in Roxbury is to be reminded of the ideal community, however blurred and fragmented, that war tax resistance is done on behalf of, in the hope of helping to make it clear and whole.”

Can you think of any I’ve missed?

Here’s another documentary available on-line: A Peace of the Anarchy: Ammon Hennacy and Other Angelic Troublemakers in the U.S.A.

The life and work of Ammon Hennacy is the thread that runs through the documentary, but it does a good job of covering the breadth of 20^th century American anarcho-pacifism. It includes segments of interviews with several tax resisters including Karl Meyer, Juanita Nelson, and Kathy Kelly.

And here’s a bonus video from last year of Utah Phillips sharing a story of his encounters with Ammon Hennacy:

Ammon Hennacy was a rare bird — a “One Man Revolution.” He wrote: “Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. Therefore one who has love, courage and wisdom is one in a million who moves the world, as with Jesus, Buddha and Gandhi.”

Hennacy aspired to be this one-in-a-million. The challenge Ammon Hennacy makes is not to “the system” or “the government” or to any particular politicians or evildoers, but to those of us who read his words and who haven’t yet turned our backs on evil.

These works can also be found in the book We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader.

Today I’ll share some of his writings on tax resistance.

Christian Anarchism

Christian Anarchism is based upon the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees when He said that he without sin was to cast the first stone; and upon the Sermon on the Mount which advises the return of good for evil and the turning of the other cheek. Therefore when we take any part in government by voting for legislative, judicial and executive officials we make these men our arm by which we cast a stone and deny the Sermon on the Mount.

The dictionary definition of a Christian is: one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian Anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek; overturns the tables of the money-changers, and who does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian Anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused and dying world.

(In [The Book of Ammon] this message is repeated many times. It is worthwhile repeating and studying. At the Catholic Worker in New York City in 1952 I met a Columbia graduate holding prospects of a fine job; and doing post graduate work. He praised my anti-tax articles. In conversation a few minutes later he said, “why everybody pays taxes; they are withheld; you pay taxes; Dorothy [Day] pays taxes.” He had read my non-taxpaying articles for years and still didn’t know what I was doing. Likewise in Phoenix an educated woman had read my leaflets and articles for years and did not know that I really paid no taxes. So, if I repeat myself time after time please remember that I think it is necessary. I have never paid a federal income tax.)

There are indirect taxes that everyone pays. As the saying goes I live in this man’s world and if I am going to travel and do propaganda I have to pay tax on the bus. I do not use tobacco or liquor so pay no taxes. I buy Indian articles from the Indians rather than from stores and thus need not pay a tax. To not pay taxes is not my whole message but it is a part of the life of a rebel which I choose to act upon. For despite all talk you either pay taxes or you don’t.

My First Fast and Picketing

Before the Korean War I had told my tax man, a Catholic who thought the Catholic Worker was a Communist paper, that I was going to picket his office on Aug. 6^th — the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945.…

According to the Gandhian technique of goodwill and frankness I wrote to the City Manager and to my tax man, telling them of my extended plans; also to the chief of police asking for a permit and telling him if he did not give me one I would picket anyway.…

Rik and Ginny and I had spent hours getting a leaflet out which was headed:

The One Man Revolution

Why do you, a sensible person, now believe that war and the A Bomb are necessary?

Why are poor Oriental peasants who have seldom eaten a square meal in their lives choosing to fight us?

Why does Communism appeal to so many people? Is it because we have failed as Christians?

Why are we in this mess? Because you have sought security outside of yourself instead of accepting responsibility. Because you left matters to the politicians, took their bribes of pensions and subsidies, and their impossible promises of prosperity.

My guilt — For seven years I have refused to pay income taxes for war and bombs. I am fasting for these five days as a penance for not having awakened more people to the fact that the way of Jesus and Gandhi is not the way of the atom bomb. This war, like the last two will not bring peace and freedom.

What can you do now? We made a revolution against England and are not free yet. The Russians made a revolution against the Czar and now have an even stronger dictatorship. It is not too late to make a revolution that will mean something — one that will stick: your own one-man revolution. It is not too late to be a man instead of a pipsqueak, who is blinded by the love of money.

Are you a producer or a parasite? Why not cease voting for all politicians? Why not refuse to make munitions or to go to war? Why pay income taxes for your own destruction?

After 4 p.m. Mr. Schumacher, my tax man, came up and handed me a card which read:

Seized for the account of the United States on 8-7-50 by virtue of warrant for distraint issued by the collector of internal revenue, district of Arizona. Deputy Collector.… One poster for picket line.

Actually there were three posters but I handed them over saying that I would get some new ones made and picket the next day. I continued handing out leaflets and Catholic Workers without my signs until Rik met me at 5:30 p.m.

Rik made new signs that night and marked them “This sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle” but the tax man did not try to take them. The Arizona Republic had a good picture of myself and signs on the page opposite the editorial page. The picture showed my large sign which read:

75% Of Your Income Tax Goes for War And the Bomb.

And on the reverse side—

I Have Refused to Pay Income Taxes For the Last Seven Years

In the afternoon the tax man came along and good naturedly said that he had a bid of $5 for my signs from someone who wanted them as a souvenir. (I did not ask him if he was the bidder) I had given him Catholic Workers before and had shown him Dorothy [Day]’s telegram. Now he was friendly and asked about my life, my daughters, my ideas, and said that he understood my opposition to the status quo. Like the tax man before him he was a Catholic. He felt, as I did, that there was nothing personal. He had his duty to do. He had tried to garnishee my wages, and had taken away my signs so he could report some activity on his part. He said I had a right to peacefully picket and departed in a friendly spirit. We met several times later as I picketed. He did not like my reference to himself as a servant of Caesar in a letter I had written to him. I told him this was perhaps a poetic way of saying it, but I meant it.

How do I get by with it?

I don’t know for sure.

I have picketed thirteen days in the last three years here in Phoenix against war, the draft, and paying taxes for all this. I have been detained by the police and released four times, and been called to the tax office often.

I was a conscientious objector in both World Wars. In 1942 I refused to register for the draft and resigned from a civil service job in Milwaukee where I had been a social worker for eleven years. As I do not believe in shooting I have since then worked on farms where no withholding tax is taken from my pay, so I do not buy a gun for others to shoot. The tax man has tried to garnishee my wages; now I work by the day for different farmers and if necessary am paid in advance in order that no garnishee is effective.

I believe in the idea of voluntary poverty somewhat after the pattern of St. Francis, Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi. I have no car or anything the tax man can get. I make a true report of my income but openly refuse to pay a cent of tax.

I am a non-church Christian. I believe in the Sermon on the Mount, especially because it is more revolutionary than opportunistic Communist tactics. I do not put my trust in money or bombs, but in God.

I am an Anarchist who believes that all government exists not to help people but to continue in power exploiters, bureaucrats and politicians who keep us on the run with their continual depressions and wars.

If you believe in capitalism and war and think you get your money’s worth in paying taxes that is your business. My message is to those who are beginning to question the idea that preparing for war brings peace. It is also to those who believe somewhat as I do but who are afraid to stand up and say so.…

If you are ready for my message here is a starter:
REFUSE to become a soldier
 REFUSE to make munitions
  REFUSE to buy war bonds
   REFUSE to pay income taxes
    STUDY the Sermon on the Mount
     STUDY Gandhi’s non-violent methods
      STUDY Jefferson’s idea of life on the land
       “STUDY war no more.”

“Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” A Christian Anarchist does both.

Not Interested

It is March of 1949 and I have sent in my tax report. I did not work Sundays this year. I worked for nineteen different farmers and made $1,569. With free rent and often free meals where I work and with simple one dish vegetarian food my actual living cost has been less than $200. I filled out my report accurately, not wishing to have my non-payment of taxes confused by any other issue. In the space listed “Amount of Tax Due” I wrote “not interested.” The tax man told me six weeks ago he would have me arrested for continual non-payment of taxes, but would wait until the last minute as he disliked to cause trouble. I told him that he should do his duty; that there was no hard feelings on my part, for he had always treated me courteously. Now with Truman calling for universal conscription and the U.S. winking at Dutch imperialism in Indonesia there is less reason than ever for paying an income tax. If I am arrested I am doing time for a good cause, for, paraphrasing Thoreau, a prison is the only house in a war mad world where a Christian pacifist can abide with honor. If I am left free I will continue to be a non-tax payer, sell Catholic Workers, and aid my daughters. I win either way.

What Could a Fellow Do About It?

When I was working a man asked me “Why does a fellow like you, with an education, and who has been all over the country, end up in this out-of-the-way place working for very little on a farm?” I explained that all people who had good jobs in factories, etc. had a withholding tax for war taken from their pay, and that people who worked on farms had no tax taken from their pay. I told him that I refused to pay taxes. He was a returned soldier and said that he did not like war either, but what could a fellow do about it? I replied that we each did what we really wanted to.

Why Am I Picketing?

Well, why aren’t you? Do the A-Bomb and the H-Bomb make you sleep any better at night? Do you trust our politicians to protect us from destruction in an atomic war? Does it make good sense to foot the bill by paying income taxes?

I am not paying my income tax this year, and I haven’t done so for the last seven years. I don’t expect to stop World War Ⅲ by my refusal to pay, but I don’t believe in paying for something I don’t believe in — do you?

Do you believe that anyone ever “won” a war? Or that any good can come from returning evil for evil? I don’t believe it! And I don’t believe I need preachers or policemen to make me behave, either.

I do believe in personal responsibility, and that’s why I am picketing. Why aren’t you?

Why Did You Pay Your Income Tax?

Is it because you think that taxes, like death, are inevitable? I know the decision to pay taxes is a voluntary one, because I have openly refused to pay my tax for the past nine years. This year alone I owe $192.

Is it because you feel that you are protecting yourself against war with Russia? Certainly there is a definite connection between war and taxes, for from 80% to 90% of your income tax goes to pay for war, past, present and future. As a conscientious objector to both World Wars I believe that war is destroying us, and has actually created the Russian Communist threat. The poverty and misery of the Czarist Empire culminated in the First World War (with Russia on the side of the Allies), and brought the Communist state into being. The world wide destruction, poverty and totalitarianism of the Second World War (with Russia on the side of the Allies) made the Soviet Union a world power and a real threat to our military machine and our capitalist aspirations.

The Marshall Plan and our attempt to arm the non-Communist world has directed the hate and distrust of our allies towards us. By trusting in our own armed power instead of trusting in God we have created the very conditions which are helping promote Communist Russia: the conditions of insecurity, fear and hate. The poor of Europe are tired of fighting. The wealthy classes there have used our money to retain their Asiatic possessions and to fill their own pockets. The “Voice of America” tells those behind the Iron Curtain to revolt, and boasts of the freedom in capitalist America. But with our loyalty oaths and with the building of new concentration camps (two of them in Arizona), we are rapidly becoming a Police State like Russia. Here in Arizona even druggists must now sign loyalty oaths… next it’ll be undertakers and corpses!

This nation was settled by many folks from Europe who sacrificed everything to escape religious despotism and the tyranny of military conscription. While we have achieved separation of church and state, we are more in danger of a military despotism than ever. The early Christians refused to be soldiers, and some of them are official saints of the Catholic church for this reason. When they were thrown to the lions in the Roman arena they died singing. Truly “the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church.” Today most Christians join the Lions Club, or Rotary, sing “for he’s a jolly good fellow,” and die respectably of ulcers. They bless war, and their churches are built out of the profits of an unjust economic system. If we continue in this manner, war and income taxes will be the death of us yet.

Do you pay your income tax because you are afraid of the sacrifice that trust in God and opposition to the state may involve? I decided long ago that, while all of us must die, I could choose something worthwhile to live and die for. You might as well die for what you do believe as for what you don’t believe. Remember that Johnson said to Boswell, “Courage is the greatest virtue, for without it you cannot practice the other virtues.”

If you want a better world you will not get it by trying to make men out of Congressmen through writing them letters, by voting for any politician since they all believe in war, or by expecting very much of a World Government composed of these same ignoble politicians. Neither will the mocking of God by saying prayers for peace while making munitions and paying taxes for war be of much avail. That kind of prayer bounces back!

If you want to think a little further about this, here are the first steps (you will know in your heart what is right for you); Study the Sermon on the Mount, and the lives of such dedicated men as St. Francis, George Fox, Tolstoy and Gandhi. Try to make whatever you do coincide with Christ’s teachings. Ask yourself whether returning evil for evil in courts, legislatures, prisons and war is not denying Christ. If your answer is yes, then stop doing it. But be honest with yourself. Don’t alibi by saying you have to do this evil for your family’s sake, or, blasphemously, for Christ’s sake. Ask yourself whether you are a producer or a parasite. A third of us lead parasitical lives as salesmen, lawyers, bankers, politicians, policemen or soldiers, or else make a living out of the weaknesses and vices of our fellows. Most of the clergy give a very counterfeit return for their money. In a society based on a return of evil for evil, these jobs may be necessary, but they wouldn’t exist in the society envisioned by Jesus where evil is repaid with good.

Do you give your children an example of honesty and Christian conduct? Aren’t you really coercing your children into un-Christian practices when you boast of your “within the law” business deals, and when you indoctrinate them into giving their first allegiance to the state in such militaristically motivated organizations as the Boy Scouts, and by banning any textbook that doesn’t praise capitalism and war? If you teach your children to conform at any price, how can you ever expect them to stand upright and self-reliant before men or God?

To sum up:
REFUSE to register for the draft or military training!
 REFUSE to buy war bonds!
  REFUSE to make munitions for war!
   And when you get around to it,
    REFUSE to pay taxes for war!

Here’s another, similar leaflet Hennacy passed out in 1950 but that wasn’t included in The Book of Ammon:

What’s All the Shooting About?

It’s about men who put money ahead of God. It’s about young men on both sides misled into dying and killing each other.

It’s about rationing, inefficiency, dictatorship, inflation, and politicians stealing a little more than usual.

War is what happens when one nation prepares to defend itself against another nation that prepares to defend itself.

World War Ⅰ and World War Ⅱ did not end war nor make the world safe for democracy. Neither will this one.

There just isn’t any sense to war!

What can we do about it? If the politicians think one person is important enough to become a soldier, a munition maker, a bond buyer, or an income tax payer, then one person is important enough to:
REFUSE to become a soldier,
REFUSE to make munitions,
REFUSE to buy bonds, and
REFUSE to pay income taxes.

War does not protect you — it will destroy you!

You cannot overcome communism with bullets. It can be overcome by each person doing what he knows in his heart to be right. The way of Jesus, of St. Francis, of Tolstoy, and of Gandhi teaches us to love our enemy, to establish justice, to abolish exploitation, and to rely upon God rather than on politicians and governments.

If you are a Christian why not follow Christ? You might as well die for what you believe as for what you don’t believe. If you must fight, fight war itself. Don’t be a traitor to humanity! Wars will cease when men refuse to fight!

This morning was the first of two workshops I’m helping to put on at the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair with Northern California War Tax Resistance.

After the workshop, I browsed the tables a bit. There was a bit of everything you could ask for in terms of radical literature and punk rock aesthetic clothing, and plenty of amusements of other sorts. Outside I caught part of a shouting match between two Marxists one of whose factions had collaborated in the repression of the other at some point in some place. Inside, you could find carefully preserved relics of such infighting going back a hundred years or more. There was a “bargain bin” dedicated to miscellaneous works of, by, and about Lenin for a buck a pop. There were old pamphlets with titles like The People Will Quickly Extinguish the Imperialist Running Dogs and Their Lackeys for Making Fun of Our Glorious Tin-Eared Verbiage.

At one of these tables I found a 1959 Catholic Worker pamphlet called Two Agitators: Peter Maurin — Ammon Hennacy. Here’s Dorothy Day’s description of Ammon Hennacy from the Introduction:

Ammon… will tell you the story of his life at the drop of a hat, because he feels that so much of it illustrates what he is trying to convey in the way of ideas. I may be crediting him with a virtue which he does not possess, but it seems to me that there is a profound humility too, in Ammon’s talk of himself. Like all prophets, he has a keen sense of the emergency — “now is the time” and what each man does now is going to have its effect on history. With Peter Maurin this meant constant repetition and great terseness of expression in the written word. With Ammon this humility meant, “What I can do, every man can do, if he will put fear far from him.” Ammon often says that he has the virtue of courage and knowledge, but lacks love; he knows how critical his attitude is about others. It is true he judges, but without malice.

The context of Hennacy’s self-criticism here is his belief that the “one in a million who moves the world, as with Jesus, Buddha and Gandhi” is someone who combines equal and generous portions of love, courage, and wisdom. He very much wanted to be this one-in-a-million.

Hennacy’s first essay in the pamphlet concerns the time he spent in prison in 1917 for speaking out against U.S. participation in World War Ⅰ. It includes this delightful anecdote:

The editor of the prison paper, Good Words, asked me to give him something to print. I told him that was what I got in for, printing things in papers, and that my ideas were too radical for him. He insisted so I gave this quote which, believe it or not, appeared in a box underneath the editorial caption of the Department of Justice on April 1, 1918: “A prison is the only house in a slave state where a free man can abide with honor.” Thoreau. This had the o.k. of the warden and was not sneaked in. The ignorant official thought it praised prisons.

The second of Hennacy’s essays is “Tax Refusal and Life on the Land,” some excerpts from which I reproduce below:

Before World War Ⅱ income taxes were not paid by those in the lower brackets so it was not a problem to think about. I was still too nervous from jail to work steadily, so to get the jail out of my system my wife and I started from New York City on June 21, 1921 (the anniversary of my entrance into solitary in Atlanta in 1918) with packs on our backs and $100 in our pockets. We never asked for rides but took them if offered and went 22,000 miles in every state in the union distributing pacifist propaganda, with stickers “Stop the Next War Now.” We stopped to work most of the time, but on my birthday, July 24, 1925, we bought 10 acres with $100 down near Waukesha, Wisconsin, built one room in the woods, and another next year. I helped Carmen get born there June 17, 1927, and Sharon on Oct. 23, 1929. (The very day the depression started) I had led in a strike in a dairy where I worked and lost my job. Friends suggested that I become a social worker in Milwaukee. I thought this work was too bourgeois, but for me it was either take relief or hand it out. I told my examiners for the job that I was an anarchist and would break rules when I thought it best to do so. They needed male social workers badly it seemed and I got a job with the county of Milwaukee. I organized a union and was active in pacifist circles.

In 1938 a client locked me up in a room and came after me with a butcher knife because I would not give him something that he didn’t have coming. After a time I dared him to knife me (I didn’t double dare him) and I shook hands with him. He put the knife away and we became friends. My boss was a Catholic and head of the American Legion in Wisconsin. He wanted me to take this man to court. I refused for he had been in jail twice for knifing social workers and had done time for it, and had not learned anything. My boss thought I should get acquainted “with those crazy Catholics in New York.” I asked Father Kennedy in the same block, editor of the Herald-Citizen about the Catholic Worker and he gave me a copy. Then I became acquainted with Nina Polcyn and Dave Host and worked with the CW House formed there the next year, where my daughters sang Christmas carols, and I took Muriel Lester, the English pacifist to bless our CW house. I met Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin that same year as they spoke in Milwaukee. I liked their pacifism and radicalism but not their church. In fact I sold CW’s every Sunday in front of churches but would not go inside except to get warm.

When World War Ⅱ came the American Legion wanted to have me fired from my job because I sold CW’s on the street. I had a private hearing for an hour with a court stenographer taking notes before the Corporation Counsel. I told him that I would not quit my job nor would I cease selling CW’s on the street, and that I would insist on a public hearing. They dropped the charges that week. However, when the time came for me to register for the draft on April 27, 1942 I openly refused to do so and resigned my job. I thought I would get 5 years but the government had secretly made a rule that those over 45 would not be prosecuted. I was 48, and was only in jail a few hours. My wife and daughters were in the west at that time so I went to Denver and got a job at a dairy. Selling CW’s on the street I was imprisoned incommunicado for 4 days for not carrying a draft card, and I was rearrested a week later for selling CW’s at the same place.

On Jan. 1, 1943 the withholding tax went into effect. About the only place where a person could work without paying taxes for war was on a farm. For here the tax was to be paid at the end of the year. The brackets had been lowered so that even a dishwasher in a restaurant had to pay about a dollar a day for war. The New York Times in a recent editorial declared that 83% of the income tax went for past, present or future wars.

I found work on a farm near Albuquerque with a farmer whose wife was a Quaker and at the end of the year when I refused to pay my tax I was fired but got a job with another farmer. I also sold CW’s on the streets in Albuquerque for 4½ years and the police never bothered me.

I moved to Phoenix in July of 1948. Here the tax man was a Quaker and I was at once arrested for picketing the tax office in 1949. Again in 1950 on August 6^th I picketed the tax office and fasted for 5 days because it was 5 years since we had dropped the bomb at Hiroshima. I turned in a report to the tax office, not as my duty or their right, but as a courtesy to my enemy, the State, saying: “This is my name, this is where I live, this is what I made. Try and get it.” I had sent all of my money to my daughters who were taking music at Northwestern University.

Finally in 1953 I came to New York City and the Catholic Worker as my daughters had graduated, and since then I have not earned enough by speaking to owe any tax. The tax men have been here several times to investigate my income and have called me into the tax office when I have been picketing them. I can get 5 years for each of the 12 times that I have refused to pay my income tax. Young toughs have threatened me at times as I have picketed in New York City. Now on August 6, 1959 I will fast 14 days until the 20^th as it is 14 years since Hiroshima. I do this as a penance for the sin of our country in continuing atomic testing and warfare.…

Today, May 15, I received a notice that I owe $2.15 interest and penalty on my $192 tax bill for 1951 and unless paid within ten days my property and wages will be attached. This is an old runaround and I am not worrying. Today I ate the first Irish potatoes from our garden, which is more important in the life of man than paying taxes. The persimmon tree which the Old Pioneer’s daughter-in-law gave me last winter now bears premature fruit. Watermelon, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, peppers and onions are doing fine.

One day when I was soapboxing at Broad and Wall Streets a man asked me what came first with me: Catholicism or anarchism? I replied that Catholicism came First and daily Mass and Communion. Second, to live poor as we did at the CW. Third, to love your enemy, for as Dorothy quotes some saint: “You love God as much as you love the person you love the least.” Fourth, to bring this out in some association with others. Fifth, Don’t be a parasite, which of course cuts out all Wall Street. Sixth, to be an anarchist for if one lived a dedicated life and put first things first, to vote for one millionaire or another whose business was to return evil for evil in courts, prisons and war, was a poor way of being a Christian. Seventh, in order to be effective in the spiritual and radical life I do not smoke, drink, eat meat, or take medicine.

Selling CW’s at 43^rd and Lexington a cop arrested me for selling papers without a license. I told him that according to the Supreme Court decision in the forties the Jehovah Witnesses had won the right to sell papers without a license. He said to tell it to the judge. The magistrate let me out on my own name for trial in three weeks. I went back next Friday and another cop said I had to have a license but I talked him out of it. The next Friday Eileen Fantino and Birtha Tisius stood on one corner and I was on my regular corner when the first cop arrested me when the girls were not looking. Dorothy came up to help and finally discovered that I was in jail. They sold CW’s all afternoon and Jackson MacLow, an anarchist friend came along and helped also. They were not arrested. I got 5 days in jail or a $10 fine and as I never would pay money to the state I did the time on Rikers Island. The American Civil Liberties Union wanted to use me as an example to provide freedom for those who always moved on when told to do so. After six months, although losing the first appeal, the highest court in the state affirmed my right to sell the CW and my book as I was not doing it for profit.

Across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral a policeman told me that I should not sell “that Communist paper.” I told him it was not a Communist paper, and if it was I had the right to sell it there, and I showed him a press clipping of the court decision.

“I don’t care anything about the law. If I don’t want you here I’ll have you pinched, and you’ll be in jail, you won’t be here. If the judge lets you out as you say, I’ll arrest you again, and if he frees you, I’ll arrest you again. I’ll wear you out.”

“What if I wear you out?” I replied.

He shrugged his shoulders and walked away. You have to be ready to die or you are not ready to live. I was never bothered again on that corner.

In 1955 there came the first air raid drill in New York City. The state law says that if you do not take part you can get a year in jail and $500 fine. I called up Ralph DeGia of the War Resister’s League and other pacifists and we told the authorities that we would openly refuse to take part in their war game and would sit in the City Hall Park. Television and radio gave our message as we handed out our leaflets. 29 of us were arrested. Dorothy, being a better basic radical than I, persuaded me to plead guilty instead of not guilty. We Catholic Workers and some atheistic anarchists pled guilty and the others carried the case on appeal and it is still in the courts. We all got suspended sentences. The next year we had our demonstration in Washington Square and 19 of us got 5 days in jail. Those of us who pled guilty served them. In 1957 there were only 12 of us in the demonstration in the park across from our house on Chrystie Street and we got 30 days in jail from a Catholic judge who told us to read the Bible. Dorothy spoke about the terrible conditions in the woman’s prison on NightBeat on television, and I spoke twice on the same program later. So in 1958 when 9 of us were arrested while picketing the Atomic Energy Commission near Columbus Circle during the air raid drill our sentence was suspended. In 1959 five of us who had been demonstrating annually were accompanied by 14 others at City Hall Park during the drill and we got 10 days in jail, after waiting 5 days in jail for our trial. The newcomers got a suspended sentence. This time when the judge asked me about “rendering unto Caesar” I answered that Caesar was getting too much and God was getting very little so I would render unto God by disobeying Caesar as St. Peter did.

“All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.”

Today we’ll dive into the archives and take a look at an episode from the life of “one man revolution” Ammon Hennacy, as filtered through the press. From the 28 May 1954 Eugene Register-Guard, which clearly put a lot of stock in eye-catching headlines:

Ammon Hennacy Visits; About as We Expected

Some readers may remember that last February we wrote a report on a book which found its way to the desk — “The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist,” by Ammon Hennacy. Now we have been visited by the Hennacy himself. He has been speaking to Quakers and others in this vicinity on his way back from a Canadian tour where he called on the radical Dukhobors.

Mr. Hennacy is just about as we expected he would be — a slender, wiry, gray haired little man with the merry blue eye of the Irish to brighten the fervor of the zealot. Maybe it requires a sense of humor to be a successful zealot. He told us a little bit about his techniques:

“I’m going to New York pretty soon to participate in a retreat. After that I shall fast for nine days, and after that I shall meet some speaking engagements with various pacifist groups. After the fasting I won’t be so loud, but fasting comes easy once you get the hang of it.

“Before I leave Phoenix, I always send a little note to the tax collectors and tell them just what money I have received and where I can be found, but that I’m not going to pay a penny of tax on it. I always tell them that the worst people in the world are the hangmen, and the taxpayers come next.”

Hennacy is full of little anecdotes about his amusing adventures with vigilante squads and ordinary police:

“When a cop asks me, please not to sell The Catholic Worker on his corner, I just grin and move on and so we get along.”

Crusading is a way of life with some people. Hennacy displays pictures of his two beautiful, musician daughters like any other “proud pappa.” He boasts of the friends he has found in his rambles through all parts of the United States. He seems to have found something which conformists often fail to find — happiness. We fumbled for the old Quaker saying, but Mr. Hennacy finished it:

“All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer.”

A couple of other mentions of interest:

• Reading Eagle 31 May 1917: “Gigantic Plot Against Conscription Law is Unearthed” — briefly notes Hennacy’s “arrest for distributing anti-conscription literature” at the end of an article about government suppression of anti-draft agitation.
• Vers Domain 1 November 1954 “Inébranlablement fidèle à ses convictions” — wish I could read French…

Here is an excerpt from Scott H. Bennett’s Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America concerning the origins of the modern American war tax resistance movement:

In 1948 a small tax resistance movement emerged when several tax refusers learned about one another and began to correspond. Many of these early tax resisters were WRL members. Abraham Kaufman, the League’s executive secretary, facilitated many of these contacts. At its founding conference in 1948, Peacemakers established a Tax Refusal Committee. League members formed a majority on this committee, which was chaired by Ernest Bromley, a Methodist minister and the nation’s leading proponent of tax resistance.

For the next two decades, Bromley championed tax resistance and publicized examples from three continents to demonstrate its power. American examples included Quaker tax resistance during both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, the popular tax protests by colonists during the American Revolution, and Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay the Massachusetts poll tax to protest the Mexican War. He also cited England’s Wat Tyler (fourteenth century) and John Hampden (seventeenth century). Finally, he invoked Gandhi and the Indian independence movement; both resorted to tax resistance in the struggle against British rule.

For both moral and pragmatic reasons, tax resistance appealed to Peacemakers and to radical pacifists. Most important, it enabled absolutists to express their total commitment against militarism and war. The Peacemakers’ literature underscored this uncompromising position. One publication explained that tax resistance “is not merely a protest. It is an act.” Aware that modern, technological warfare required huge expenditures, tax resisters were seeking to cripple war preparation — and war — through nonpayment of taxes. Other literature asserted that nearly 35 percent of the national budget was earmarked for the military and that 80 percent paid for past, present, and future wars. The “new push-button type warfare,” Bromley declared, would require “more drafted dollars than drafted men.” Tax resisters were hoping to influence American policy by publicly repudiating military preparedness and weapon stockpiling before conflict broke out again. Unlike COs and nonregistration, tax resistance was both age and gender neutral. By enabling men and women of all ages and occupations to participate, tax refusal expanded the sphere of war resistance and promoted solidarity with draft-eligible men.

Ernest and Marion Bromley, whose Wilmington, Ohio, home served as unofficial headquarters of the Tax Refusal Committee, embodied the spirit of tax resistance. “The time has now come,” Ernest exclaimed in his 1948 IRS tax statement, “when men ought no longer to depend solely upon their spoken witness against war or preparation for it. They ought to prepare themselves for an outright resistance by a thorough-going dissociation with the war-making system.” In her March 1948 letter to the tax collector, Marion charged that “this country did not turn to peace at the end of World War Ⅱ, but instead sought to protect and expand an American Empire,” declaring “I want to dissociate myself as completely as possible from these tragic, suicidal and evil policies… and to do all I can to convince my fellow citizens that we must completely renounce the way of war and violence.” The Bromleys believed that radical pacifist individuals and organizations must assume risks for war resistance. Anticipating the New Left, Ernest asserted: “Pacifists believe… that there is a… time and place where they as individuals must simply come to a stop, and ‘clog [the system] with their whole weight.’ Perhaps that time and place have come.”

Four months after its formation, Peacemakers’ Tax Refusal Committee published the statements of active tax resisters. Many of these people were WRL members. These statements illustrate the total commitment and absolutist nature of Peacemakers and of a section of the League. Writing in a different venue, Caroline Urie similarly declared:

In a time of crisis like the present it is our duty as sovereign citizens to defend our country not only with protest but with our lives, if necessary, against military enslavement and the possible annihilation implicit in atomic and bacterial warfare. In the brief time at our disposal, protest is not enough; if we are to assume real responsibility, we must act in a manner simple enough and clear enough to be understood and to arouse public conscience.

As justification for tax resistance, several WRL members pointed to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which had established the principle of individual responsibility for wartime actions, even in the face of wartime orders. In his 1948 letter to the IRS, Walter Gormley declared that he was “refusing to make any federal income tax payment, because they money would be used mostly for ‘crimes against peace.’ ” “The U.S. is preparing for a shooting war of aggression by maintaining bases, subservient governments and military forces from Korea to Turkey, by intensive research on methods of mass slaughter and by maintaining a huge military organization,” he charged. “I must refrain from supporting such a government.” Likewise, Valerie Riggs explained that “if our government… at Nuremberg could hold individuals responsible to stand against crime… I feel thoroughly justified by my own government in not paying this part of my tax.”

Perhaps A.J. Muste best expressed the compelling logic of tax resistance. “World War Ⅲ has already started,” he exclaimed in May 1948:

I cannot support a government in these war-measures, which I deem insane, wicked and suicidal. I must withdraw support from such war-measures in every possible way. The two decisive powers of government… are the power to conscript and the power to tax. Pacifists recognize that to be consistent they must refuse to be conscripted for military service or training. I have come… to the conviction that I at least am in conscience bound… to challenge the right of the government to tax me for waging war, and in particular for the production of atomic and bacterial weapons… The need for getting our pacifist teaching off the level of talk and writing and onto the level of action is, I believe, imperative.

Peacemakers was highly critical of pacifist organizations — the WRL included — that collected withholding taxes from their employees. By withholding taxes these pacifist groups were effectively barring tax refusers from working for them, or forcing them to resign. Both the WRL and the FOR paid a lot of attention to this issue. A special committee of the FOR examined the problem for a year before recommending that the FOR withhold taxes, even though most FOR employees had indicated that they wanted to make individual decisions about tax refusal. Staff member Marion Coddington (Bromley) resigned over the policy. The WRL also decided to withhold taxes. In justifying this policy, a member of the League’s executive committee declared: “The life of the organization is at stake.” The Peacemakers’ Tax Refusal Committee, which characterized the WRL and other pacifist groups as “tax collectors for the government,” was scathing in its denunciation. “If pacifist organizations, whose business is to create a warless world, are not ready to risk something for war resistance now,” the committee asked, “when will they be ready?”

Tax resistance took various forms. Total refusers paid not tax. Since most workers could not avoid withholding tax, total refusers were often self-employed. Miriam Keeler and Marion Coddington Bromley resigned from the Labor Department and the FOR staff in order to avoid the withholding taxes. Percentage refusers withheld that portion of taxes corresponding to the percentage the federal government would spend on war preparation and the military (calculations ranged from 35 to 80 percent). Finally, some tax resisters chose to live on an income below the taxable level or to work at several part-time, low-income jobs to preclude employers from withholding taxes. Some tax resisters refused to submit tax returns; others explained their action in letters to local tax collectors and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Some tax resisters, instead of remitting taxes to the government, contributed the money to WRL and other peace and justice organizations.

As a result of Peacemakers’ activism, tax resistance became a major issue for the WRL. The League sold stickers that tax resisters could attach to their tax forms. “This tax goes chiefly for war purposes, as a pacifist I pay under protest.” In the spring of 1948 the League passed several resolutions commending those, members or not, who practiced tax resistance. Beginning in 1948, several tax resisters began donating a portion of their unpaid income tax to the League, an act consistent with their willingness to pay taxes for nonmilitary social programs. The League established a special literature fund for these donations to ensure that they did not go to pay staff salaries, which were subject to withholding taxes.

Ammon Hennacy, a WRL member most often associated with the Catholic Worker movement, was a pioneer tax refuser praised by the League. A “Christian anarchist,” he first practiced tax refusal in 1943, when the tax withholding system was implemented. Each year at tax time he prepared a statement and mailed it to the IRS. Hennacy’s 1945 tax statement reflected the direct action and civil disobedience impulse that would shake the League over the next half-decade. “We can refuse to put our trust in Princes and Presidents,” he declared. “With Thoreau and Gandhi we can start our own campaign of Civil Disobedience by refusal to buy war bonds… and… pay taxes for war or conscription.” In 1950, Hennacy began expanding his protest; each year, on 6 August, he fasted and picketed the local IRS office for as many days as years had passed since Hiroshima. While picketing, he distributed tax statements and leaflets that repudiated war, advocated anarchism, and declared his tax resistance. When threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace while picketing, he retorted: “I’m disturbing the war.”

In a letter to Hennacy, [Abraham] Kaufman expressed his disagreement with tax resistance. But then he added: “I admire your guts and want you to know that I am with you, for each of us must use the methods he feels to be effective in bringing the world out of its present insanity. Your method may prove most effective in the long run.” Although he did not delude himself that his “One Man Revolution” would change government policy or transform the world, Hennacy insisted on the moral imperative of individual resistance to the militaristic state.

By mid-1949, radicals had succeeded in raising the issue of the WRL’s payment of withholding taxes, especially for members like Roy Kepler who supported tax refusal. In October the WRL endorsed CCCO assistance for tax resisters and authorized a review of the issue. Although they extended moral support to tax refusers and publicized their actions, most League members did not support tax resistance, and the WRL did not officially endorse it. Kaufman, in particular, insisted that it would be “unethical” for a small minority to “coerce” the League into accepting such a policy. With minor revisions, the League accepted its subcommittee’s Withholding Tax Report. Concluding that its survival as an organization took priority over tax refusal, the League decided to continue to withhold income taxes from its employees.

The WRL eventually changed its policy on withholding, and stopped withholding income taxes from the wages of one of its tax-resisting employees, Ralph DiGia, in 1956.

I wrote an article for the latest issue of New Escapologist. I haven’t seen the magazine yet (sending out contributor copies seems often to be far down on the publishing to-do list, alas), but I think my article made the cut. Here it is, anyway:

Escape from Collaboration

The ethical escapologist wants to escape not just from the stultification of mainstream life, but from the moral burden of collaboration.

The tactics of the escapologist and of the conscientious objector dovetail — the same techniques that make us more self-reliant, independent, frugal, and skeptically ornery are ones that make us less likely to be bullied or bribed into being useful cogs in a brutal machine.

To other people, ethical escapologists sometimes seem deprived and reckless — renunciates, vagabonds, roustabouts — but the reason we’ve not sold out is because of the high price we put on our values: assets more valuable than whatever it is other folks are willing to trade their values for. Escapologists want not only to escape but to smuggle their values out with them — intact.

Christian anarchist Ammon Hennacy took up itinerant farm work as a mode of escape. One day someone asked him, “Why does a fellow like you, with an education, and who has been all over the country, end up in this out-of-the-way place working for very little on a farm?”

I explained that all people who had good jobs in factories, etc. had a withholding tax for war taken from their pay, and that people who worked on farms had no tax taken from their pay. I told him that I refused to pay taxes. He was a returned soldier and said that he did not like war either, but what could a fellow do about it? I replied that we each did what we really wanted to.

That’s what it amounts to: not sacrificing for our principles, but just looking at the big picture and making sure that we’re doing “what we really wanted to.”

As Swiss conscientious objector Pierre Ceresole put it: “You have no right to be moral if it is not your joy, your highest form of artistic expression. Wrestle for the good life exactly as the poet wrestles to create a beautiful verse, in the same spirit, for the love of the thing itself.”

Not everybody writes verse, but everybody lives a life. Ethical escapologists really want to live good ones.

Maybe what you really want is to be the hero, not the villain, of the story your life tells; the one who hid Anne Frank, not the one who dropped a dime on her. Or maybe you don’t have any interest in being a hero — maybe you’ve got something else you really want to do with your life — even so, as Thoreau put it when he explained his escape route:

If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

The ethical escapologist recognizes that many of the established ways of doing things involve the privileged sitting on the shoulders of the dispossessed — that first world citizenship and the opportunities it permits (including, in some cases, the opportunities to escape) are part of a package deal and that you can’t just absorb the personal benefits and pretend you aren’t responsible for the rest.

Escapology is not evasion — not a denial of responsibility, but acceptance of it: both gratitude for the wider horizons of life it gives to us and acceptance of the project of living our values in the bounds of these new horizons.

I spent some time today scanning through the Google News archives for more mentions of Ammon Hennacy. Here is some of what I found:

Gigantic Plot

Against Conscription Law Is Unearthed

Columbus, O., May 31 [1917]. — A gigantic propaganda plot with national headquarters in this city organized to induce young men of military age all over the United States to refrain from registering for conscription next Tuesday has been uncovered by state and government secret service agents, according to announcement today by Gov. Cox.

The article explains that U.S. marshals raided a print shop where the propaganda was being produced and distributed, arresting the proprietor, Harry E. Townsley. (The Evening Independent of Massillon, Ohio has a more in-depth article on the raid and arrests, which made their front page-spanning headline for the day.)

The New York Times adds that “A great stock of brilliant posters, each four feet wide and ten feet long, was confiscated at Hennacy’s home. It was reported that the posters were printed in Washington, D.C., and sent to Hennacy by express.”

The Eau Claire Leader goes further than other papers, calling Hennacy “the alleged leader of the plot.”

Police also arrested Albert Valnisper (other accounts say this was Olb Wulnestro), Cecil W. Bailey, John Lewis Hammond, and Ammon Hennacy for distributing the literature. Hennacy, Townsley, and Bailey were charged with treason. The Times again: “None of the three charged with treason winced when reminded at arraignment that conviction on the charge of treason may mean death.”

Hennacy and Townsley were convicted on other charges and sentenced to about three years behind bars.

The next news I find about Hennacy is in 1930, when the government brought up his conviction and anti-draft agitation to try to deny him a job as a social worker.

Violation of the draft act during the World war has been ruled by the state’s attorney general as not affecting a man’s qualifications for civil service in Wisconsin. ¶ …it was held that Ammon Hennacy, Waukesha, could not be disqualified for a position of field and case worker for the juvenile court of Milwaukee county, although he was sentenced in 1917 to nine months in jail and two years in Atlanta penitentiary on two counts of violating the federal statutes pertaining to army drafts.

Hennacy took examinations for the position, passed them, but stated that at Columbus, O., he had opposed the war on the theory that it was a capitalistic conflict.

Hennacy’s anti-conscription activism got him in trouble with his boss again in 1940:

“Objector” Relief Aid Not to Be Prosecuted

Oliver L. O’Boyle, county corporation counsel, Saturday said that no charges would be preferred against Ammon Hennacy, relief department investigator, for distributing pamphlets on conscientious objection to the draft.

Some county employes, members of the American Legion, had complained to O’Boyle about the activities of Hennacy and urged that charges be preferred against him before the civil service commission.

Hennacy, who is now above draft age and calls himself a “Christian anarchist,” has told O’Boyle that he does not believe in the draft or war. He was sentenced as a draft dodger during the World war. He assured O’Boyle that he would not voice his views on county time or when making relief investigation calls.

The Calgary Herald in 1951 printed a picture of Hennacy picketing. His picket sign read “Hiroshima was atom bombed just six years ago. I am fasting these six days as a penance,” and the front of his sandwich board read “Why pay for war when you want peace? I owe eight years back income taxes!” The newspaper’s caption put it this way:

Ammon A. Hennacy believes in publicizing not only his virtues but his faults as is evidenced by placards he carries through streets of Phoenix, Ariz. Income tax officials probably will not consider his six-day fasting spree as even partial repayment for eight years back income tax he owes.

The following year, the Associated Press sent out a more detailed article on Hennacy’s picket:

Fast, Picket Grind Begins

Phoenix (AP) — A work-hardened, wiry man of 59 began today a seven-day picketing vigil before the U.S. Postoffice Building in which is housed the office of the Internal Revenue Bureau.

Ammon A. Hennacy, who earns his living by hard manual labor on farms in Phoenix and vicinity, is also fasting during his days of picketing.

Hennacy carries a placard on one side of which are the words:

“Voting is UNFAIR to Voters — Read Leaflet.”

On the other side he has printed:

“Lest We Forget — Hiroshima A-Bombed Just 7 Years Ago.”

To those who ask for it, Hennacy gives a four-page leaflet, multigraphing of which was completed in the early hours of this morning. Hennacy and a friend spent most of the night doing that job.

“I had only two hours sleep last night,” Hennacy said before starting his picketing this morning, “and I feel tired.”

As he will do daily during the period from today through Aug. 12, Hennacy, who describes himself as a “Christian anarchist,” attended mass in a local Roman Catholic Church before taking up his picket-line duty. He plans to picket daily except Saturday and Sunday when the Internal Revenue Bureau office is closed.

The only nourishment he will take is distilled water.

When he started picketing this morning he weighed 140 pounds. He expects to lose about 20 pounds. Last year, on a six-day fast and picket period in commemoration of the sixth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, he lost 17 pounds. He said he gained it back in a few days following his fast.

At income-tax paying time Hennacy also pickets the bureau. He refuses to pay an income tax and states he has not paid one for nine years.

He explains his picketing and fasting is “in accordance with the Gandhian principle of open opposition to the state and its war-making functions.”

The AP also covered a fast and picket of Hennacy’s in 1957:

Las Vegas, Nev. (AP) — A New York editor, picketing the Atomic Energy Commission’s headquarters, has begun a fast in protest against continued American testing of nuclear weapons.

Ammon Hennacy, associate editor of the Catholic Worker in New York, said Monday he will not eat until June 28, the date scheduled for the testing of one of the biggest nuclear devices ever exploded in the United States.

Hennacy said that every year since 1950 he has fasted Aug. 6, anniversary of the drop of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Wikipedia has an article on the Operation Plumbbob tests that Hennacy was protesting, including the detail that the radioactive iodine released into the atmosphere by the tests could statistically be expected to cause “between 11,000 and 212,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer, leading to between 1,000 and 20,000 deaths.” Well, you’ve got to break some thyroids to make a fiery holocaust of your enemy’s cities, as the saying goes.

Finally, a note from 1958:

“Peace Pickets” Planning March

Cape Canaveral, Fla. (INS) Seven “peace pickets[”] Tuesday planned a seven-mile walk from Cocoa Beach, Fla., to Patrick Air Force Base in their protest over rocket launchings.

The sign-carrying group paraded outside the gates of the Cape Canaveral missile test center Monday but were ignored by base personnel.

Ammon Hennacy, 65, of New York, who heads the group, said he and his followers are refusing to pay federal income taxes. Tuesday is the final day to file returns.

Some years back I noted Dorothy Day’s remarks on visiting a group of tax resisters in New Hampshire. Today I’ll try to track down some more information on them.

Arthur Harvey, then an organic farmer from Hartford, Maine, was profiled in Samuel Fromartz’s book Organic, Inc. because of his legal battle to make sellers who use the “organic” buzzword adhere to the genuine standards of that variety of food production. In the course of this, Formartz also mentions Harvey’s war tax resistance:

It was not the first time Harvey had gone up against the federal government. As a tax resister opposed to military spending, “especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world,” Harvey had refused to file or pay federal income taxes since 1959. His wife, Elizabeth Gravalos, hadn’t paid federal taxes since the 1970s. Instead, they donated time and money to social service and environmental organizations. The IRS had come knocking at their door a couple of times, then seized the family’s property in 1996 and demanded $62,000 in back taxes and penalties — about three times the annual income of the farm. When they did not pay, the IRS took the rare step of auctioning off the property at a town office across the street from their house, with protesters outside. They initially lost the blueberry field to a bidder, though luckily no one bid on the house, perhaps because it had only rudimentary plumbing and no electricity. Eventually, Gravalos’s mother bought the house, and the couple’s daughter successfully bid on another parcel of the land, which she later swapped for the blueberry field. They were back in business.

Harvey, an affable and intelligent man with a wiry physique, perhaps owing to his vegetarian diet, said the lesson he learned from that fight was not to stop being a tax resister, but to avoid owning property in his own name that could be seized by the government. “We own a couple of cars, so I guess they could go after those, but they aren’t worth much,” he told me.

Aaron Falbel wrote about the blueberry-growing couple for the War Resisters League’s magazine in 1996:

War Tax Resistance and Blueberry Fields Forever

Arthur Harvey has not filed a federal tax return or paid income tax since 1959. His partner, Elizabeth Gravalos hasn’t filed or paid since 1972. Until recently, the Internal Revenue Service gave them little trouble.

“They visited us twice, once around 1965 and again around 1978, back when we lived in New Hampshire,” Harvey says. “Probably they concluded we had nothing much worth taking and perhaps were not subject to much tax anyway,” he adds. But after the Gravalos/Harvey family moved to Maine ten years ago, earned a bit more money, acquired a house, two wood lots and a blueberry field and started paying state taxes (New Hampshire has no state income tax, but Maine does), the IRS began to take notice. This past April 4, the IRS seized their properties in lieu of tax payments assessed at $62,000 (including interest and penalties) for the six years from 1987 to 1992 an astonishing figure, considering the family’s annual income from their blueberry and flower business averages about $16,000.

Going Once…

The IRS held an auction June 19 at the town office across the street from the Gravalos/Harvey home. “I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted. But she was far from alone. About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur. To demonstrate the power and the good that can come out of war tax redirection, Harvey, Gravalos and their family and friends raised over $3,000 to pay off the local property tax liens of seven Hartford residents.

The auction didn’t last long. When Gravalos and her family emerged stoically from the town office, she announced, “The good news is that no one bid on the house.” Emily Harvey, Arthur and Elizabeth’s daughter and a sophomore at Wellesley College, bid on (and won) the small half-acre wood lot on behalf of her younger brother Max. (Max, at age 16, was legally too young to enter a bid.) The town selectman and town clerk teamed up to buy the larger 21-acre wood lot, and another Hartford resident bought the blueberry field.

Harvey speculated that the reason no one bid on the house was that the minimum bid was too high: $21,000 for a house with no electricity or indoor plumbing. At the conclusion of the auction, the IRS declared that they would reevaluate the minimum bid and hold another auction July 16.

Going Twice…

The minimum was eventually set at $7,900. Gravalos and Harvey had originally discouraged friendly bids on their house, feeling that the price was too high. “We really did not want the IRS to get that much money,” Harvey said. But for the second auction, with a lower minimum bid, they didn’t discourage people who would buy the house back for them, even though that meant surrendering money to the IRS.

Harvey explained that what matters most for him is making a strong public statement, bearing witness to the government’s violence: “Our reason for non-cooperating with the IRS is a reluctance to support war preparations, especially nuclear weapons, and the export of arms and military forces to many places around the world. Others have gone a lot further in their war tax resistance than we have, and we honor and respect those people. For [them], the most important thing is to withhold money from the IRS at all costs.”

That, he acknowledged, is not his style of war tax resistance. “There are and there have been war tax resisters who have gone that far. My friend Ammon Hennacy [the legendary pacifist connected with the Catholic Worker movement] was one. Our approach is more complicated to describe and more flexible in practice.” He scoffed at a news article that described him as “unwilling to pay one penny to the IRS.” “We have three cars,” he noted, referring to the federal tax on gasoline that he pays every time he fills up at the pump.

About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine. Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction. (As at the first auction, money was given away, this time to groups doing the kind of work tax dollars could fund: $500 to the local Abused Women’s Advocacy Project and $500 to a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity.)

Still Here

In the end, Elizabeth’s mother entered the winning bid for the house at $15,633. The town clerk and town selectman, who bid at the first auction, entered the only other bid of $8,000. The latter two were clearly miffed at having lost such a “bargain.” (One war tax resister described them as “a picture of greed thwarted.”) The clerk, clearly irate, asked, “Why was it okay for her [Elizabeth’s] mother to bid, but not for me?”

A week later, Arthur Harvey reflected on the clerk’s comment, questioning in turn the propriety of the town officials’ taking advantage of a family in a weakened financial position. “That does not seem to me to be a proper thing for a town official to do,” he said.

Elizabeth Gravalos thinks the answer to the town clerk’s question is obvious: “The two of them were trying to take our house from under us, whereas my mother was trying to help us out, to help us continue our way of life here.” Though Gravalos had dissuaded her mother from bidding at the first auction, she did not try to stop her at the second. “It was harder to lose the blueberry field [at the first auction] than I thought. I just didn’t feel I was ready to lose the house,” she admitted.

Harvey and Gravalos calculated that the house was worth somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 and suggested that $13,000 would be a reasonable bid. Max and Emily were in favor of a friendly bid; Max especially did not want to have to move. “The alternative,” Arthur noted, “would be to go the Randy and Betsy route and not countenance a friendly bid and then risk eviction. We, as a family, decided not to go that route.” (He was referring to Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner, war tax resisters from Colrain, MA, whose supporters maintained an 18-month-long occupation/vigil after Kehler was arrested in 1991 and his and Corner’s house was auctioned off by the IRS.)

In the end, Arthur admitted, the auction “was something of a letdown.” The IRS got a fair amount of money, $39,460 in all more money, he speculated, than it would have gotten if the family had filed and paid taxes all along. Gravalos reflected, “Betsy and Randy did a better job at resisting the IRS than we did. But each family has to draw its own line. I really did not want to stage an occupation [as they did].”

So what does it mean for war tax resistance when the IRS manages to walk away with such a considerable sum? Interestingly, Gravalos and Harvey do not think of themselves as having failed. Along the spectrum of war tax civil disobedience, they are tax resisters rather than tax refusers. (War tax resisters do not willfully hand over money to the Pentagon, but if the government nonetheless forcibly seizes money from them, they take those lumps, as it were; war tax refusers tend to put up more of a fight and are unwilling to let the government collect any money or assets whatsoever.) But they believe both resisters and refusers provide witness to the backward priorities of the federal government. “When it comes to war tax resistance,” Gravalos adds, “anything is better than nothing.” Their 51 years (between them) of resistance to military spending and the redirection through the years of those war tax dollars is not to be scoffed at. And what of the future? Gravalos and Harvey do not hesitate when they are asked whether or not they will continue their war tax resistance. Says Arthur, “We will continue our stand of non-cooperation, but we will certainly make sure not to find ourselves in such a position where we own so much property.” And Elizabeth adds, “I do feel that the risks of paying taxes are greater than the risks of refusing to pay them.”

Philip Devles Broughton’s Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School includes a few more notes of interest about Harvey:

• “He almost failed to graduate from high school after refusing to sign a loyalty oath to the laws and constitution of the United States. ‘I could support the Constitution,’ he said, ‘but I certainly wasn’t going to support all the laws. They told me I was failing the rest of the students in my home room. But I didn’t have much loyalty to my home room.’ Eventually the school gave him his diploma anyway.”
• “In Michigan, a man who had recently returned from India lent him a book by Gandhi. He was immediately struck by Gandhi’s arguments in favor of self-reliance and against excessive consumption. In the late 1950s, Harvey spent six months in prison in Sandstone, Minnesota, for invading a missile base in Nebraska with a group of fellow peace activists. ‘Prison was a blast. I was in there with one of my very best friends [Ammon Hennacy] and we played horseshoes and Scrabble and spent lots of time in the library.’ His tenure as library clerk ended when he refused to compile a list for the prison authorities of the books each prisoner was borrowing.”

A 1960 newspaper article on educational outreach efforts by the pacifist non-violent action group Peacemakers, quoted Harvey on the nature of the group: “We are a radical pacifist organization. We are against war preparation and against use of income tax for war purposes. Our members also oppose mandatory registration for the draft. However, we are not communists. We believe the best defense is a strong spiritual one, in the tradition of the Indian leader Gandhi.”

The Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Maine, covered the 1996 tax auction in a pair of articles:

“Hands off our homes”

Couple protests on day before auction

by Mary Lou Wendell
Sun-Journal Staff Writer

Auburn — The message on one of the placards held by many of the 50 or so protesters marching down Center Street Tuesday morning was simple: “Honor family values. Hands off homes.”

Accomplishing their goal for the day was not going to be so simple, however. They were on their way to Lewiston to convince the Internal Revenue Service to halt the sale of property seized for nonpayment of taxes.

Arthur Harvey, who, before it was taken, owned the house and land in Hartford Center together with his wife Elizabeth Gravalos, led the march. In his pants pocket was a letter the group eventually hand-delivered to the Lewiston IRS office on Main Street after walking there from the Auburn Mall, which took about two-and-a-half hours. The note detailed the couple’s reasons for not paying federal taxes.

Funds collected by the federal government will “support war preparation of all kinds,” the typewritten letter read. “This is not acceptable to our moral and religious beliefs.”

In early April, IRS agents served Harvey and Gravalos with a seizure notice for their property, which includes a small home and out-buildings, a 13-acre blueberry field, and 21 acres of two combined woodlots. Selling blueberries and pansies, which is how the couple earns their living, brings in a total of $18,000 a year, Harvey said.

Based on those earnings, the government calculated Harvey and Gravalos owe $62,000 in unpaid taxes and penalties for a six-year period starting in 1987, according to the couple. A spokeswoman for the IRS in Boston said she would not confirm the amount owed because of disclosure and privacy laws.

Furthermore, the couple wrote in their letter to the IRS, “it is inconceivable that a family could be subject to a 49 percent tax rate, especially a low-income family including two children.”

Harvey and Gravalos have a daughter in college and a teen-age son, Max, who also marched on Tuesday.

IRS spokeswoman Peggy Riley did say the sealed-bid auction will go on as scheduled at 11 a.m. Wednesday morning at the town office in Hartford Center. And if minimum bids were offered, the house and property will be sold, she said. The minimum bid for the single family home was $20,476.98, Riley said. The total minimum bid for everything else, which is divided into three properties, is roughly $16,000.

Against a backdrop of car dealerships, retail outlets and quick-change oil places, the protesters, who came from as far away as Chicago, walked in groups of three and four down Center Street. Some came from New Hampshire and Vermont. Most were from Maine.

Many of the protesters were also war-tax resistors and friends with Harvey and Gravalos. Some had never met the couple but were marching to support their cause.

Sheila Dormody, a member of the 800-member organization, Peace Action Maine, pays her taxes, she said. But she had sympathy for Harvey and Gravalos because she opposes disproportionate military spending, she said.

As the group hiked along, making their way across the Longley Bridge and around downtown Lewiston, Dormody passed out red fliers decrying the practice of “bloating the Pentagon… starving our communities.”

“This year Congress will give the Pentagon $7 billion more than requested,” the filer stated. Education, mass transit, housing programs, job training and environmental spending are all the things that will be cut in order to pay for increased military spending, it said.

If the property is indeed sold Wednesday, “we’ll have to find some place we can rent,” Gravalos said as she walked. “I have a friend in Buckfield who has offered land so I can plant my pansies.”

Her husband thought it was a mistake to buy land, Gravalos said, adding he may have been right.

In hindsight, Harvey said, he would have preferred renting over owning property, which can be taken away.

But, while he and his wife have always paid their state and local taxes, he’s not sorry for not paying federal taxes, he said.

“We both understood the risk and we accepted it,” Harvey said. It’s a matter of “personal responsibility.” Withholding federal taxes is “a job that we can do,” he said.

Home survives IRS sale

Some of tax protesters’ Hartford property sold

by Judith Meyer
Special to the Sun-Journal

Hartford — As sealed bids were opened Wednesday morning, Arthur Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos heard an Internal Revenue Service employee award three pieces of their property to others, but their home was spared, at least temporarily.

The couple, who are vocal about their resistance to paying federal taxes to a government that they say is spending irresponsibly, were served a notice of seizure on their property in April. That property was offered at a public sale in a sealed bid process inside the Town Office while a large crowd of supporters from throughout New England and reporters waited outside on the lawn Wednesday morning.

Harvey and Gravalos, who say they earn about $18,000 a year growing blueberries and pansies, owe the IRS $48,555 in unpaid taxes from 1987 to 1992. Their properties were seized to satisfy that debt.

Attending the bid opening were dozens of other tax resisters, including one couple who carried a large painted poster proclaiming their nonpayment of federal taxes since the 1950s.

The properties offered for sale included the couple’s home, which is not equipped with running water or electricity and which uses an organic compost septic system, a small house lot, a 21-acre wood lot and a 13-acre blueberry field.

No bids were submitted for the house, and a second sealed bid opening has been scheduled for July 16 at the IRS office in Lewiston. If the property is not sold at that time, said IRS agent Diane Santoro, who conducted the sale, the federal agency will re-evaluate the $20,476 minimum bid established for the property.

Bids were opened inside the Town Office, which was restricted to bidders, the property owners, town and federal officials and five media representatives chosen by Capt. James Miclon of the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department from a pool of reporters standing in the side yard.

The couple’s children, Emily and Max Harvey, purchased the small house lot for $727, using money 16-year-old Max had earned raking blueberries, beating out a $600 bid from the town of Hartford. Gravalos was visibly upset that the town bid on the property.

The Town Office stands directly across the street from Gravalos’ house on Route 140, and the piece of property the town bid on was being considered as a new Town Office site.

The couple’s wood lot was sold for $10,000 to Kathleen Hutchins and Linda Rowe, both of Hartford, beating out a $9,560 bid for the land. Hutchins is the town’s tax collector, clerk, treasurer and administrative assistant, and Rowe is a selectman, but both women said they bought the land as private citizens.

The third piece of property, the blueberry field that has been cultivated for the past eight years by Harvey and Gravalos, was sold to Alan Noyes of Hartford. Noyes, who left immediately after the bid opening, indicated that he liked the view at the property and would be willing to talk to Harvey and Gravalos about some kind of arrangement to continue farming the land.

Harvey said after the sale, which lasted less than 10 minutes, that he and his family intended to remain in Hartford, would continue to live in their home and would continue farming blueberries on fields they planned to lease from other property owners.

“The good news is that nobody bid on our house,” Gravalos told the crowd after the sale was finished, and Harvey expressed his pleasure at seeing so many people supporting their cause.

“This is not a victory or defeat for anyone,” Harvey said. “It’s just a part of life.” That observation drew a large round of applause from the crowd.

And although the IRS seizure is nearly complete, Harvey said his views on tax resistance haven’t changed and he has no plans to pay any money to the federal government. Harvey has not paid federal taxes since 1959, and Gravalos hasn’t paid since 1972.

Supporter Jim Stockwell of Albion said, “I think (Harvey and Gravalos are) very proud of what they’re doing.” Stockwell praised their resolve to stand firm for their beliefs against increased military spending and decreased spending for education and health care.

Lee Holman, a supporter and neighbor of Harvey and Gravalos, said the couple’s commitment to paying local and state taxes and resisting paying federal taxes comes from their desire to “redirect tax dollars to build real security in this town instead of investing in a false sense of security” with the federal government.

The couple can redeem their properties in the next 180 days if they pay the bid price, plus another 20 percent, and any costs associated with the sale to the IRS.

IRS agent Santoro declined to talk to reporters before or after the sale.

Along with that second article was this sidebar:

Anti-tax group pays off liens of five families

Hartford — The tax resisters who demonstrated in support of Arthur Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos say they are not against America’s tax system in itself and support payment of local and state taxes to help their own communities. What they protest is the federal government’s use of the tax money, a use that they claim they have no control over.

In an effort to show support for the local property tax system, the group of resisters, who are calling themselves Spears into Pruning Hooks, walked into the Hartford Town Office just before the public sale of the Harvey/Gravalos property and paid off outstanding tax liens for five local families.

Harvey said the group paid nearly $2,200, choosing the liens to be paid off based on whether the property owner had children and actually lived in Hartford, rather than being a part-time resident. The tax resisters did not have contact with the property owners; the payoffs were arranged through the Town Office.

The group originally offered to pay seven liens, but only five were paid because two of the families declined the group’s offer. Tax Collector Kathleen Hutchins said the payment retired tax liens for property owners Joseph Bedard, Ann Carro, Penny Stubbs, Matthew Piantone and James Guilmet.

According to Hutchins, the property owners who declined the resisters’ offer of payment said they did not agree with Harvey and Gravalos’ stand on tax resistance.

Hutchins, who said the town has never seized any property for nonpayment of property taxes, indicated that there are others in Hartford who oppose the stand taken by the Harvey-Gravalos family.

Speaking for the group, which still has $800 in an account reserved for payment of other tax liens, Harvey said Spears into Pruning Hooks plans to continue raising funds and making goodwill gestures for struggling local taxpayers.

Harvey and Gravalos were still at it a decade later:

Federal income tax

Resisters keep incomes below filing threshold

by Kelly Morgan
StaffWriter

Hartford — While many people across the country will be rushing to meet today’s deadline for filing federal income taxes, Arthur Harvey will more likely be home binding books or working on the mowers he’ll soon use to cut his blueberry fields.

It’s not that the 72-year-old organic farmer, inspector and book seller has filed early this year. Instead, Harvey, who lives with his family across from the town office on Main Street, has not paid federal income taxes since about 1959. He won’t pay because he is opposed to where his dollars would be spent.

“My fundamental objection is to nuclear weapons,” he said Thursday while seated at a small table off his kitchen, surrounded by copies of the collected works of Mahatma Gandhi. “And also to sending U.S. military forces to other countries.”

Harvey and his wife, Elizabeth Gravalos, 61, have joined as many as 200 Mainers and 10,000 people nationally who refuse to pay their federal income taxes in protest of military spending.

“We say about 8,000 to 10,000 people,” said Ruth Benn of the Brookly, N.Y.-based National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee on Thursday, “but it’s really hard to count.”

Benn said many, like Harvey and Gravalos, keep their incomes low so they won’t have to pay. Many others protest by refusing to pay federal taxes on their phone bills, another action that’s difficult to track.

According to information from IRS spokeswoman Peggy Riley, who’s based in Boston, the federal government faces what it calls a “gross tax gap” of $300 billion a year. The gap, Riley explained, “is the difference between what taxpayers should pay and what they actually pay.”

Riley said the IRS does not track those who refuse to pay on the grounds of opposing military spending.

Personal property seizures and deductions from paychecks are tools the IRS uses to collect unpaid tax dollars. In 1996, Harvey and Gravalos nearly lost their home and 13 acres of blueberry fields they farm in Hartford. At an auction after the properties were seized, Gravalos’ mother bought back the house. Their daughter Emily later received back the blueberry fields in a trade after the man who had purchased them found farming difficult, Harvey said, laughing.

Harvey, Gravalos and their son Max continue to farm the fields today. They use wood heat and kerosene lamps and drive old Volvos. Harvey sells books on the teachings of Gandhi, which he purchases from India, through the on-line marketplace Amazon.com.

The only electricity in the house comes from a small solar panel that runs a laptop computer and, on sunny days, a copier in a back room.

Because Gravalos now works as a part-time massage therapist, she does pay Social Security taxes, Harvey said. But she hasn’t paid income taxes since 1972.

The two file separately, each having to earn less than $3,100 in order to fall below federal tax filing requirements.

Harvey and Gravalos have taken part in efforts of the War Tax Resistance Resource Center of Maine. People affiliated with the organization often hand out fliers at IRS centers on tax deadline day.

Larry Dansinger, a Monroe-based representative of the group, said Thursday that people are expected to be handing out fliers today from Portland to Ellsworth

He himself doesn’t pay federal phone taxes.

“In our calculations, about 50 percent of every (federal income) tax dollar that people pay is going either directly or indirectly for military purposes,” he said.

Not paying, he added, “is not a nice, easy thing to do.”

I’ve many times mentioned Ammon Hennacy’s tax resistance hereabouts, but have only less-frequently commented on his more-well-known Catholic Worker comrade Dorothy Day’s stance.

The site catholicworker.org now has a search engine with which I have been able to recover some of her writings on the subject, which I’ll excerpt here today.

from “If Conscription Comes For Women” The Catholic Worker January 1943

“Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.” Yes, and we have heard too much of that.

Let E.I. Watkin, founder of the Pax movement in England, author of The Catholic Center, Men and Tendencies, and The Bow in the Clouds, answer as he did in his pamphlet, “The Crime of Conscription.”

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. This is a favorite text with the hosts of Christian clerics, Protestant and Catholic, who both in the present and in the past, have abused and still abuse religion to enslave men’s consciences to the unjust bondages of a usurping state. They omit to notice the context. Our Lord has just asked for a coin, and having obtained the admission that it bear’s Caesar’s image and superscription, bids his questioners render to Caesar what is his. This is obviously the coin payable in taxation which bears Caesar’s stamp.

The body and soul of man, however, do not bear Caesar’s image. Whose image they do bear we are told in Holy Scripture. It is the image of God. Obviously, therefore, as we are to render to Caesar what bears his image, namely, money, we are to render to God, not to Caesar, what bears not Caesar’s stamp, but God’s; namely, human beings. Thus the same text which justifies, indeed, imposes the obligation of paying taxes, denies any right of the state to take a toll of man. All forced labor, for example, is implicitly declared unlawful. And still more does the principle here enunciated forbid military conscription. Whether a war be just or unjust, no government may without grave injustice compel me — bearing as I do the divine image which marks me as God’s bondman, but a freeman in respect to my fellows — to slay and be slain in its quarrel unless I freely consent. If a government unlawfully outsteps its prerogative and imposes conscription, any one who, from whatever motive, refuses to serve, is whether he intend it or not, fighting for human dignity and freedom, as also is anyone who abets and supports his resistance.

But now in these days it would be desirable to go even further, as did Thoreau, to refuse even the taxes which were to be used to pay for the means to kill our fellow man. In many cases, however, it is all but impossible to separate the tax from the cost of the commodity needed to maintain life.

from “More About Holy Poverty, Which Is Voluntary Poverty” The Catholic Worker February 1945

We believe that social security legislation, now balled as a great victory for the poor and for the worker, is a great defeat for Christianity. It is an acceptance of the Idea of force and compulsion.

[The people] pay taxes, and it is the city and the state and the federal government that is robbing them and pilfering them, too, They are taxed for every bite they eat, every shoddy rag they put on. They are taxed on their jobs, there are deductions for this and that, there are the war bonds, eighteen dollars for a twenty-five dollar war bond, paid on the Installment plan. And they are not only being taxed, but they are being seduced. Their virtue is being drained from them. They are made into war profiteers, they are forced into the position of usurers. The whole nation, every man woman and child, is forced to become a profiteer — hideous word — in this war.

from “Poverty Without Tears” The Catholic Worker April 1950

If you cry aloud for land and home and tools and the good natural life for the poor without which a good supernatural life is impossible, then you are either an escapist and an inhabitant of an ivory tower, or you are a Communist in disguise trying to do away with property.

And you are a communist also if you cry out for peace and against increased armaments — against the making of the hydrogen and atom bombs and the paying of federal taxes for the making of those bombs. We know, who picketed March 15 before the tax offices up on 45^th street, because we heard these jibes as we walked to and fro with our signs.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker September 1950

We will have more to write about taxes later. We believe in paying our local taxes but not federal. Maybe this is quibbling, but the benefits of hospitals, fire department, street cleaning and health department, etc. make us firm in our decision to always pay our local taxes though we will not pay income tax.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker February 1953

I can scarcely list all the people Ammon [Hennacy] introduced me to, all the friends he has made through his constant protest against war and taxes for war, and his distribution of the Catholic Worker. But I can give a little glimpse of Ammon’s living quarters, in his little three room bungalow on Lin Orme’s place some five miles out of town [Phoenix, Arizona].

Ammon likes to call our Lord the Celestial Bulldozer to indicate that ones way is smoothed for one, the rough ways made plain and the crooked straight. He arrived in Phoenix broke, he said, as he came further south out of the dairy region to the farming section of the country where he could work by the day and not by the month and so avoid the withholding tax. He slept all night on an anarchist’s floor (one of the readers of the CW) and got up at daylight to go to the slave market, as the corner is named in every town in every state, Calif., Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona, where immigrant workers are employed. Some times there are as many as 200 trucks, sometimes only 25. They go as far as seventy miles away for the day’s work. Mexican trucks take only Mexicans. He got on the second truck, owned by the Arena brothers, a corporation which owns land in California, Colorado, and Arizona, and specializes in lettuce, melons, cabbage, celery. This was October 7, 1947, the year the withholding tax began. At the end of his day’s work he asked if there was a shack on the place where he could sleep, and a fellow worker told him of one down the road and he took his sleeping bag and camped out there for the night. He stayed there for some months and as it was on land rented by Mr. Orme to the company, he became acquainted with that old gentleman who later invited him to occupy the vacant shack on his own land. There is one room and two porches, rather than three rooms, really, and before Ammon lived there, twelve Mexicans had camped out there. I sat on the porch one afternoon with Ammon and drank strong black coffee, brewed on a little kitchen stove, stuffed with mesquite which burned fragrantly while we talked.

from “Poverty Is to Care and Not to Care” The Catholic Worker April 1953

How does property fit in, people ask. It was Eric Gill who said that property is proper to man. And St. Thomas Aquinas said that a certain amount of goods is necessary to lead a good life. The recent popes wrote at length about justice rather than charity, that should be sought for the worker. Unions are still fighting for wages and hours, and it is a futile fight with the price of living going up steadily. They are fighting for partial gains and every strike means sacrifice to make them, and still the situation in the long run is not bettered. There may be talk of better standards of living, every worker with his car, and owning his own home, but still this comfort depends on a wage, a boss, on War. Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty. If the comfort one has gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will be have to be atoned for. the argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort. If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war. If one raises food or irrigates to raise food, one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops. If you ride a bus you are paying taxes. Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war which is “the health of the state.”

The argument may go this way, but we still can choose what seems to us the most honorable occupations, which have to do with human needs. We can choose the kind of work most necessary to do, and if possible where there is no withholding tax for war. Ammon Hennacy in working by the day, at hard farm labor, has not paid income tax for years. One can so cut down one’s standard of living that no income tax is required; families with many children pay no income tax. One can protest in many ways this contribution to the atom and hydrogen bomb. If one owns property the government then can take a lien on it. If one has money in the bank, the government can confiscate it. So truly such protest as this calls for the most profound poverty and a voluntary doing without property.

from “The Pope and Peace” The Catholic Worker February 1954

How obey the laws of a state when they run counter to man’s conscience? “Thou shalt not kill,” Divine law states. “A new precept I give unto you that you love your brother as I have loved you.” St. Peter disobeyed the law of men and stated that he had to obey God rather than man. Wars today involve total destruction, obliteration bombing, killing of the innocent, the stockpiling of atom and hydrogen bombs. When one is drafted for such war, when one registers for the draft for such a war, when one pays income tax, eighty per cent of which goes to support such war, or works where armaments are made, one is participating in this war. We are all involved in war these days. War means hatred and fear. Love casts out fear.

from “Are the Leaders Insane?” The Catholic Worker April 1954

St. Augustine in his City of God says that God never intended man to dominate his fellows. He was to dominate the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, what crawled upon the earth, but men were not to dominate each other. He preferred shepherds to kings. It was man himself who insisted on having a worldly king though he was warned what would happen to him. God allowed the prophets to anoint the kings and once men had accepted their kings they were supposed to show them respect, to obey the authority they had set up. To obey, that is, in all that did not go against their conscience. St. Peter was ordered by lawful authority not to preach in the name of Jesus, and he said he had to obey God rather than man, and he left prison to go out again to the market place and preach the Gospel. Over and over again, men had to disobey lawful authority to follow the voice of their conscience.

This obedience to God and disobedience to the State has over and over again happened through history.

It is time again to cry out against our “leaders,” to question whether or not, since it is not for us to say that they are evil men, they are sane men.

It is all very well to say we must go to the source of all strength, to drink at the living fountain of Christ, but can we go from that fount of Love to a factory where nerve gas and incendiary bombs are manufactured?

When we have talked of a general strike it is of such work and of such evil that we are thinking; when we talk of non-payment of taxes it is of the money which is going to Indo-China in the form of these incendiary bombs and the planes to drop them that we are thinking. It is not thus that we can love God and our brother; it is not in this way that we can love our enemy.

When it is said that we disturb people too much by the words pacifism and anarchism, I can only think that people need to be disturbed, that their consciences need to be aroused, that they do indeed need to look into their work, and study new techniques of love and poverty and suffering for each other. Of course the remedies are drastic, but then too the evil is a terrible one and we are all involved, we are all guilty, and most certainly we are all going to suffer. The fact that we have “the faith,” that we go to the sacraments, is not enough. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” with napalm, nerve gas, our hydrogen bomb…

Each one of us must make our decisions as to what he should do, each one must examine his conscience and beg God for strength. Should one register for the draft? Should one accept conscientious objector status in the army or out of it, taking advantage of the exceptions allowed, but accepting the fact of the draft? Should one pay tax which supports this gigantic program?

I realize how difficult this is to decide. If one is unmarried and strong physically, it is easier to make a decision to do only day labor or work without pay. But there are many whose mental and physical strength is not equal to this decision and there is a withholding tax taken from even the smallest salary. Sometimes one can only make a gesture of protest. It is not for any one to judge his fellow man on how far he can go in resisting participation in preparation for war. In the very works of mercy which we are performing, we at the Catholic Worker are being aided by those who earn what they do only because they pay income tax for war. Oh yes, the editors of The Catholic Worker know only too well how far we too are involved in the city of this world. Perhaps Bob Ludlow, who left us much against our will, felt that he was being more honest in permitting a withholding tax to be taken from his meager wage as hospital attendant that working for nothing for the Catholic Worker. Who knows the heart of another? The temptation is always there to go out on one’s own, to walk the lone path of a St. Francis rather than the community way of a St. Benedict.

from “Mid-Summer Retreat at Maryfarm” The Catholic Worker July–August 1954

[Ammon Hennacy] has had to abandon his life at hard labor and to replace that discipline of work he is fasting Fridays; during our recent retreat he fasted, and again in August for nine days he will picket and fast in reparation for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the cruel weapons of destruction which we have made. All men are responsible, but Ammon by not paying income tax, and by penance, is doing reparation.

from “What is Happening?” The Catholic Worker November 1955

And the other trouble? It was Federal income taxes and investigations for Ammon Hennacy, Charlie McCormick, Carol Perry and me. Charlie has had no income for all the years he is with The Catholic Worker, but the rest of us could acknowledge having earned money on which we did not pay taxes, and which we refuse to pay because eighty per cent of the money so gathered goes for wars past and present. The others were treated with great courtesy, but one of the revenue agents made a coldly insulting remark to me based on my past, which was entirely uncalled for. But perhaps he was only stupid so I acted as though I did not hear it.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker December 1957

I would like to urge upon the bishops the idea of the non-payment of taxes by Catholic parents for school taxes, when they are sending their children to Catholic schools and so are paying double for their education.

from “The Pope is Dead. Long Live the Pope / Viva John ⅩⅩⅢ” The Catholic Worker November 1958

Yes, we must set ourselves with all the force we possess, against war, and the making of instruments of war, and our means are prayer and fasting, and the non-payment of federal income tax which goes for war.

from “Month of the Dead” The Catholic Worker November 1959

The message of The Catholic Worker is that simple one for all the rank and file, for the masses, that we have free will, we can make our choice, that our personal responsibility which we exercise is what matters. Ammon [Hennacy], in his non-payment of taxes for war, and his civil disobedience, is bringing that message to countless thousands of people.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker March 1960

When we got home from our little tour of the neighborhood and I had explored the view from the eleventh floor, Ammon came for supper and brought us up to date on his journeyings as well as on the news of our own workers in Chicago. He had no sooner arrived in town on Saturday when he was called on to picket in front of the courthouse for Roseanna Robinson. They are keeping up a vigil night and day, people joining for a stint of three hours at a time. I certainly hope to join them sometime these next few days. Roseanna is a young colored woman who had refused to pay any income tax 85 per cent of which goes for war, or to file any returns. She had been given an indeterminate sentence and she is now for two weeks on hunger strike. I suppose they will forcibly feed her. The newspapers are paying little head to this, so it is necessary to have the picket line, and Karl Meyer has gotten out a leaflet which is signed by The Catholic Worker, 164 West Oak street and the War Resisters League which takes in all those who are not Catholic who wish to participate but might hesitate if it were only under Catholic leadership.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker April 1961

There is much to be done in these small Indian schools throughout the country [the United States South-West], and a peace army could be at work there right now, without waiting to be drafted. There would be no pay besides a living, and so no bother about income tax, and so no contributing to war in this way.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker June 1966

I could not help but think of Don Milani’s statement in his defense against the charges made against him of advocating resistance to conscription for war. He said that even those who cooked for troops contributed to war. How involved we all are, what with the hidden taxes we pay for war, the high standard of living all of us enjoy, even when we refuse to pay income tax, so much of which goes for war, and when we build prisons for draft refusers.

“Tribute to the Nelsons” The Catholic Worker February 1968

Every summer for the past three years a Peacemakers training program has been held at our Tivoli farm for the last two or three weeks of August. The old mansion and the Peter Maurin house are filled with guests, and campers come and set up their tents on the lawn facing the river. The organizer of the Peacemakers’ school is Wally Nelson, who has been in the workhouse in Cincinnati for the past two weeks, fasting. He and several others were arrested during a vigil for DeCourcy Squire, an 18 yr. old Antioch student who had been hospitalized after fasting since her arrest Dec. 7 and subsequent sentence of 9 mo. for participating in a peace demonstration. (DeCourcy has since been released.)

A psychiatric examination was ordered for Wally when he refused to co-operate with his arrest and trial. Found by court psychiatrists to be “sane,” he was sentenced for “loitering” to ten days in the workhouse, $25 and costs. Again refusing to co-operate with legalized injustice, he was dragged from the police van by his legs, an action that caused his wife Juanita to follow him, cradling his head in her hands. When they arrived at Wally’s cell, Nita bent over to kiss him, was arrested for “disorderly conduct” and fined $25 and costs. This she refused to pay, and was ordered to the workhouse.

Detailed stories of these arrests are given in the February 10^th issue of the Peacemaker, (10208 Sylvan Avenue, (Gano) Cincinnati, Ohio 45241). I hope that many of our readers will subscribe to the Peacemaker, since news of the conscientious objectors who are in prison and much other war-resistance news can be obtained there. Peacemakers have led in direct action for many years.

Wally and Juanita have both refused to pay income tax for many years, and it is of them particularly I wish to write, with the most heartfelt sympathy for their suffering and the greatest admiration for their dedication. It is their vocation to realize and to lead others to realize the horror of the times through which we are passing. Wally has explained that his fasting during the jail sentences he has undergone was the result not of willful refusal but of a total inability to swallow food while imprisoned. Simone Weil, the French woman whose brilliant writings on man and the state, work and war, were widely published after her death, suffered during the second world war in the same way. She was literally unable to swallow enough food to keep her alive, in the face of world starvation.

In the stories of the saints, one reads of such sensitivity, such penances undergone, such fastings endured and they are little understood by the secular world. I am convinced that this vocation, this calling, to give oneself to one’s brother, in loving communion, in loving understanding of the heinous crimes that are being committed today was at the root of Roger La Porte’s immolation in front of the United Nations two years ago. It is as though such men said, “We will suffer with you, since we have no way of stopping the bombing, the burning, the napalm, the defoliation, the destruction of homes and an entire countryside. There is no act of ours extreme enough, no protest strong enough, to deal with this horror.”

Wally Nelson was in prison for thirty-three months during World War Two and fasted for a hundred and eight days (with forced feeding by tube) as a protest against racial segregation of prisoners. He had had time to think out his position while in Civilian Public Service camp, as forced labor camps which were set up for conscientious objectors were called. These very camps were a concession to pacifists, who had been imprisoned and brutally treated during World War One. But Wally decided to walk out and did so and was arrested and jailed. His example and that of other absolutists led to further concessions. In this present undeclared war in Vietnam, to which ten thousand more men were shipped off yesterday, the conscientious objector position is recognized, and paid employment is offered in home hospitals as “alternative service.” To accept this is still to submit to the draft, hence the continued protests against war, and the drafting of youth to wage this hideous struggle.

from “Ammon Hennacy: ‘Non-Church’ Christian” The Catholic Worker February 1970

[To Hennacy,] Obedience, of course, was a bad word. Authority was a bad word. In vain I pointed out to him that when the retired army major for whom he worked in Arizona told him to do a particular job, he did it, and he did it as he was told to. He admired the army officer because he knew farming. And he cooperated with Ammon in paying him by the day and thus evading the federal income tax which the tax man was trying to collect from Ammon.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker May 1971

I visited Art Harvey of South Ackworth, New Hampshire who has a mail order book shop handling a great number of books by and about Gandhi. Art and Ammon Hennacy served six month terms in Sandstone Prison in Minnesota for trespassing on a missile base some years ago. He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal (see article in this issue) by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the year. They work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war. Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves. Considering the New England climate, no small achievement! It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.

from “On Pilgrimage: Russia Ⅱ” The Catholic Worker October–November 1971

The other young man who visited Russia was Karl Meyer, who at present is serving his sentence of a two-year term (and thousand dollar fine) at Sandstone Federal Prison, for obstructing the income tax system by refusal to pay taxes for war. He had made the San Francisco-to-Moscow walk some years before, joining the march at Chicago. The walk ended at Moscow University, where the students, though not agreeing with the American visitors, demanded that the time of their talks be extended. He also distributed leaflets in Red Square!

from “We Go On Record: CW Refuses Tax Exemption” The Catholic Worker May 1972

The Catholic Worker has received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines, penalties, and unpaid income tax for the last six years. As the matter stands right now, there might be a legal battle with delays and postponements which may remind us of Dickens’ Bleak House. Or, since we will not set up a defense committee to campaign for funds, it may terminate swiftly in the confiscation of our property and our bank account (never very large). Our farm at Tivoli and the First Street house could be put up for sale by government agents and our C.W. family evicted.

One of the most costly protests against war, in terms of long-enduring personal sacrifice, is to refuse to pay federal income taxes which go for war. The late Ammon Hennacy, one of our editors, was a prime example of this. He earned his living at agricultural labor, always living on a poverty level so as not to be subject to taxes, though he filed returns. Another of our editors, Karl Meyer, recently spent ten months in jail for what the I.R.S. called fraudulent claims of exemption for dependents. He ran the C.W. House of Hospitality in Chicago for many years, working to earn the money to support the house and his wife and children. Erosanna Robinson, a social worker in Chicago, refused to file returns and was sentenced to a year in prison. While in prison she fasted and was forcibly fed. It will be seen that tax refusal is a serious protest. Wars will cease when we refuse to pay for them (to adapt a slogan of the War Resisters International).

The C.W. has never paid salaries. Everyone gets board, room, and clothes (tuition, recreation included, as the C.W. is in a way a school of living). So we do not need to pay federal income taxes. Of course, there are hidden taxes we all pay. Nothing is ever clear-cut or well defined. We protest in any way we can, according to our responsibilities and temperaments.

(I remember Ammon, a most consistent, brave, and responsible person, saying to one young man, “For the love of the Lord, get a job and quit worrying about taxes. You need to learn how to earn your own living. That is most important for you.”)

We have to accept with humility the fact that we cannot share the destitution of those around us, and that our protests are incomplete. Perhaps the most complete protest is to be in jail, to accept jail, never to give bail or defend ourselves.

In the fifties, Ammon, Charles McCormack (our business manager at the C.W.), and I were summoned to the offices of the I.R.S. in New York to answer questions (under oath) as to our finances. I remember I was asked what happened to the royalties from my books, money from speaking engagements, etc. I could only report that such monies received were deposited in the C.W. account. As for clothes, we wore what came in; my sister was generous to me — shoes, for instance.

Our refusal to apply for exemption status in our practice of the Works of Mercy is part of our protest against war and the present social “order” which brings on wars today.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker June 1972

In the May issue of The Catholic Worker I wrote of the crisis The Catholic Worker found itself in when we received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that we owe them $296,359 in fines and penalties and unpaid income tax for the tax years, 1966 through 1970. This was a very impressive bill, and we wondered what it would be if they started figuring out what they thought we owed them from the years 1933, when we began, up to 1966!

The New York Times, in a story signed by Max Seigel, with a four column head and a picture of a few of us at lunch in our headquarters at 36 East First Street, brought our situation to the attention of a vaster group of readers, and followed up the story with an editorial [“Imagination, Please” 24 May — excerpt: “Surely the IRS must have genuine frauds to investigate. Surely there must be some worthwhile work this agency could be doing instead of obstructing acts of corporal mercy for the poor.”]. The New York evening Post also editorialized on our situation. The National Catholic Reporter and the Commonweal editors also registered their protest and other papers followed suit. Letters come in daily from our friends, reassuring, comforting, indignant at the government, a few of them indignant at us, that we cause them so much worry. We certainly are grateful and must apologize that we cannot keep up with the mail and get them all answered.

There is not any real news for them at the moment, nor will be until our July–August edition of The Catholic Worker. I will have to appear before a Federal Judge on July 3 to explain why the CW refuses to pay taxes, or to “structure itself” so as to be exempt from taxes. We are afraid of that word “structure.” We refuse to become a “corporation.”

We repeat — we do not intend to “incorporate” the Catholic Worker movement. We intend to continue our emphasis on personal responsibility, an emphasis which we were taught from the beginning by Peter Maurin who used to quote Emmanuel Mounier’s Personalist Manifesto, and his Personal and Communitarian Revolution, Peter was our teacher, and being a Frenchman, a peasant, he emphasized decentralization, manual labor, voluntary poverty.

Voluntary poverty meant that everyone at the CW worked without salary, and contributions came from them, and from our readers, which kept the work going.

Rumblings first came from the Internal Revenue service after many on the CW staff, together with other peace groups, demonstrated against war in the Fifties and Sixties and were jailed for Civil Disobedience. Writing about jails and courtrooms resulted in much publicity. But it was Ammon Hennacy and Karl Meyer who wrote most consistently on Tax Refusal, and its importance. “Wars will cease when men refuse to pay for them.”

…And while you are at it, write to TAX Talk, published by War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., N.Y., N.Y. 10012 which contains letters from all over the country from individual tax resisters, telling what is happening to them. Stimulating and invigorating. Good make up and good format. First Rate.

While I write, Arthur J. Lacey comes in to hand me my mail and it contains a notice from one of our two lawyers. “Please be advised that I have been contacted by the Conference Section of the Internal Revenue Service and we have arranged for the hearing on September 7, 1972.”

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker July–August 1972

Good news first! On July 11^th we received absolution from the U.S. Government in relation to all our tax troubles. In the May Catholic Worker this year we told of the notice we had received — that we owed the government nearly $300,000 in back income taxes which included penalties for “late filing and negligence.” The examining officer of the Manhattan District had arrived at these figures through the reports we had obediently made to Albany on our appeals for funds, which we send out once or twice a year. We accept this compromise with our local state because we are decentralists, personalists, anarchists (in addition to being pacifists). When we first thought about Federal income taxes, most of which go for war or “defense,” we simplistically considered ourselves exempt because we had no income; no salaries are paid at the Catholic Worker, nor ever have been since we started in 1933. I myself have been questioned because of my writings, and lecture fees which were not really fees but offerings made to the work which covered all expenses of travelling and supported the work besides. A crowd of people living together as we do, in houses of hospitality, has to give something of an account to each other as to how well we are living up to our profession of voluntary poverty. We are always bound to have healthy guilt feelings about that, and keep trying to do better. Certainly a number of us do work on the side to provide what we need for books or rent on cheap apartments in the neighborhood, since our house at 36 East First Street is always so crowded.

But with the growing tax resistance throughout the United States, the government has become concerned. Telephone calls and official visits made us realize that trouble was impending. And we have been having it and have reported on it in both the May and June issues of our paper.

Now we are happy to report the outcome. In a conference in late June with William T. Hunter, litigation attorney from the Department of Justice, one of the Assistant Attorney Generals of the United States, we reached a verbal settlement couched in more human and satisfactory terms than the notice we later received.

“They” were willing to recognize our undoubtedly religious convictions in our conflict with the state, and were going to drop any proceedings against us. They had examined and looked into back issues of the Catholic Worker, and they had noted the support we had from the press (the New York Times news story and the editorials of the Times and the New York Post), and had come to this conclusion that ours was a religious conviction. They had come to the conclusion also that it was not necessary that the Federal Government seek for any other kind of a “conviction” against us.

The conference took place in a law office in Manhattan, 9:30 of a Monday morning. John Coster, our lawyer, Mr. Hunter and Ed Forand, Walter Kerell, Patrick Jordan, Ruth Collins and I attended. There were no hostilities expressed. As peacemakers we must have love and respect for each individual we come in contact with. Our struggle is with principalities and powers, not with Church or State. We cannot ever be too complacent about our own uncompromising positions because we know that in our own way we too make compromises. (For instance, in having a second-class mailing privilege from the government we accept a subsidy, just as Mr. Eastland does in Mississippi! [This refers to Senator James Eastland, who was a beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in federal cotton subsidies, overseen by a Senate committee he sat on.])

It was Jesus who said that the worst enemies were those of our own household, and we are all part of this country, citizens of the United States and share in its guilt.

Yes, we would survive, I thought to myself, even if the paper were eventually suppressed and we had to turn to leafleting, as we are doing now each Monday against the I.B.M. Wall-Street offices, trying to reach the consciences of all those participating by their daily work in the hideous and cowardly war we are waging in Vietnam.

I must not forget the beautiful young ghinkgo tree which we purchased from the city last year, and which we planted in honor of Carmen Mathews, herself a great lover of the countryside (and of drama). She rescued us from a foreclosure when a first mortgage fell due and so has become part of this house on First Street, and of the bits of greenery back and front of it. The fact that prisoners on Riker’s Island so I have been told, grow these trees which brighten our streets makes that tree especially dear to me. When I pass it, I make the sign of the cross on its bark, to encourage it to grow fast and strong. Maybe we can plant another this year in gratitude to God for saving us from the hands of the tax gatherers. Fr. McNabb, the French Dominican, said that when Jesus left his apostles, “Peter could go back to his nets, but Matthew could not go back to his tax gatherings.”

Letter from the Internal Revenue Service:

From: District Director, Internal Revenue Service, Department of the Treasury, PO Box 3100, Church St. Station, New York, N.Y., 10008

To: The Catholic Worker Movement, 36 East 1^st Street, New York, N.Y. 10003

July 11, 1972

Gentlemen:

After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years, we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of January 17, 1972.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely yours,
District Director
Form L-259

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker January 1973

…of our own conflict with the IRS. We live in what we can only regard as a temporary truce. We have not applied for or received tax exemption. The letter we received (and published) from the N.Y. State Offices of the IRS stated:

After examining your financial records and reviewing your activities for the above years (1966–1970), we find that you are not required to file annual returns for the years shown, and no further action is necessary regarding the proposals in our letter of January 17, 1972.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely yours,
District Director
Internal Revenue Service

The Washington official representative who met with us conveyed to us the respect they held for our religious principles and assured us that the presented bill for almost $300,000 could be ignored. The matter would be dropped, it was indicated (but, “for the present” was the qualifying clause in my own mind).

Mr. Nixon’s first statement that he would attack the problem of “permissiveness” was a warning note. The jailing of newspaper reporters, the Ellsberg trial — in fact, any criticisms of government policies or actions was going to meet with repressive measures.

The tax refusal movement all over the country grows. The conflict between State and people is coming out into the open here in the United States. The Totalitarian State is not just Germany (Hitler), Italy (Mussolini) and the USSR (Stalin), but is here and now with the “all encroaching State” as our Catholic bishops once called it, involving China and ourselves, as well as Russia.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker February 1974

We assure our readers that we try to get rid of our gifts as fast as they are given to us. But the threat still hangs over us of prosecution for not paying income tax. We are not tax-exempt. On principle we refuse to pay income tax, because so great a portion goes for wars, preparation for wars (defense, it is termed), and providing other countries with billion of dollars to buy our instruments of war and material and plants to make their own. There is a sizable movement truly the foundation of the peace movement which is based on tax refusal. (Contact Robert Calvert, War Tax Resistance, 912 E. 31^st St., Kansas City, Mo. 64109.)

Our refusal goes deep. Our motivation is fundamentally religious. We are told by Jesus Christ to practice the works of mercy, not the works of war. And we do not see why it is necessary to ask the government for permission to practice the works of mercy which are the opposite of the works of war. To ask that permission to obey Christ by applying for exemption, a costly and lengthy process, is against our religious principles. It is an interference of the state which we must call attention to again and again. A father who educates a young man or woman other than a blood relative is taxed for his generosity. A poor family who takes in another poor family (as many of them do in time of unemployment or crisis), cannot count that as tax deductible. Of course the poor suffer from the withholding tax which is taken from their weekly pay. To understand their rights, they must plough through booklets and forms put out by the government (which I am sure I could not manage to do) before they are able to collect money at the end of the year which is owing to them due to some change of circumstance. To get the advice of the Internal Revenue Department means standing in lines, paying excessive fares by bus or subway, with generally little redress of their grievances.

(A cheering note for us, with our very large family, which seems to increase day after day, is that when confronted by the government forces not long ago, Washington representatives from the Department of Justice were willing to concede that we were not making profits out of the poor, that we were motivated by religious principles, and that they would so notify the New York offices of the Internal Revenue Dept. which had handed us a awful bill for taxes due, along with penalties and fines, over a space of four or five years. The New York office then sent us a brief notice concluding that our income did not obligate us to file returns.)

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker May 1974

To talk economics to the rich and Jesus to the anarchists gathered in convention [a conference at New York’s Hunter College] these two days (and have to write this column) is a job. Besides, I did not “talk Jesus” to the anarchists. There was no time to answer the one great disagreement which was in their minds — how can you reconcile your Faith in the monolithic, authoritarian Church which seems so far from Jesus who “had no place to lay his head,” and who said “sell what you have and give to the poor,” — with your anarchism? Because I have been behind bars in police stations, houses of detention, jails and prison farms, whatsoever they are called, eleven times, and have refused to pay Federal income taxes and have never voted, they accept me as an anarchist. And I in turn, can see Christ in them even though they deny Him, because they are giving themselves to working for a better social order for the wretched of the earth.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker June 1974

Proceeded to the Kansas City, Mo. House of Hospitality and War Tax Resistors’ Center in adjoining buildings and run by Bob and Angela Calvert who are gardening every inch of the land in their front and back yards. It is much to the edification of the city block families and we hope their imitation.

Spent a Sunday afternoon with Karl Meyer and Jean and their three beautiful children, and all happy in the life of voluntary poverty where he receives an income low enough to be untaxable and so will not anticipate any more jail terms. His work is with the retarded in sheltered workshops.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker February 1975

Some of the best all around accounts of this ferment which is going on, among the young especially, is in The Peacemaker, 1255 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229. This small packed newspaper deals extensively and specifically in works for peace, listing all those imprisoned for conscience — refusing conscription; one valiant woman is confined on Terminal Island for refusal to pay taxes (Martha Tranquilli, Terminal Island, San Pedro, Ca. 90731). All those activities which we Catholics call “works of mercy,” are also performed by many Protestant, Quaker, and other groups in the country.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker March–April 1975

I remember a young woman who came to help us years ago, who, after her first, early enthusiasm had worn away, used to sigh wearily and say — “What’s it all about?” I am sure many of our friends and readers also pose, more seriously, the same question. For instance, what are Ernest and Marion Bromley all about? Why is this frail, elderly man in jail right now for “disorderly conduct,” that is, for distributing leaflets about the nefarious workings of the Internal Revenue Service and their ways of penalizing people for advocating tax refusal. Remember, it is the Federal taxes paid by each of us that supply arms that are keeping wars going, I cannot go into the important discussion of Tax Refusal now. (Subscribe for The Peacemaker, 1225 Paddock Hills Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45229 or write to War Tax Resistance, 339 Lafayette St., New York, N.Y. 10012.)

What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds are like that. Going to jail, as Ernest Bromley has done, short though his stay may be, causes a ripple of conscience among us all. And of remembrance too.

Did they search him and list every item contained in every pocket? Did they strip him and search every nook and cranny of his body, as they did the young women arrested during the protests against air raids drills (psychological warfare) in the 50’s? As they are doing now to Martin Sostre in Dannemora prison even after every visit from friends or lawyers. What sadistic impulse is it that causes guards to continue these searches?

Ernest Bromley is sharing, in his (we hope) brief jail encounter, the sufferings of the world. And we hope, like the apostles, he rejoices in having been accounted “worthy to suffer.”

The Peacemaker, every issue, has a list of those imprisoned for conscientious objection to war. I was happy to see that Martha Tranquilli was due for release March 3.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker July–August 1975

The Peacemakers discussed, among other subjects like voluntary poverty, life styles, etc., the kind of demonstrations to show our determination not to pay income tax which goes for building up monstrous implements of war. Wally Nelson and his wife Juanita were there, both of whom are familiar with arrests and jailings. I got acquainted with them years ago when Koinonia, in Central Georgia, was literally under fire from the small-towners all around them.

Next issue, I will try to write more about federal income tax which is providing the weapons for war — why we pay local taxes and not the federal income tax. We recognize the seriousness of this and the risks involved for families. The Bromley case is an example. Their house was sold from under them in Cincinnati but they have not yet been evicted. The price paid was excessively above its value. It looks like the government is trying to make an example of them. (It was not bought by friends and given back to them — an erroneous rumor; the Bromleys would not have put up with a connived sale which would mean still more money going to the government for war.)

This is a good and historic case, involving as it does, simple, plain and powerless (?) people.

from “On Pilgrimage” The Catholic Worker October–November 1975

I’d like to call special attention to a story in this issue of the paper — it is Peggy Scherer’s story, on the front page, of the Peacemaker victory [the IRS surrendered in their attempt to seize and sell Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home]. (It is the completed story of the news box which appeared on page three of the last issue.) It is a story of gentle persistence, the power of Truth — faith in Truth (remembering that Christ is our Truth). He is the Way, the Truth, the Life.

Chuck Matthei had told me the story of his interviews with the head of the Internal Revenue Service, the almost daily dialogue that went on between them, and the frank and “manly” admission, made finally by the IRS chief, that a mistake had been made, that the Peacemakers had Truth on their side. I felt a great sense of joy and thanksgiving, a sense of hope too, that our officials in Washington D.C. could be approached in this way — with dignity and perseverance, with courtesy, with the recognition that we are all, each one of us, whether government official or radical (one who gets to the roots of things), children of God. We do believe that we are all brothers and sisters. We believe, too, that we can only show our love for God by our love for our brothers and sisters. So we share our joy with you, our readers, and hope we all have a sense of renewed strength and energy to continue our opposition to all violence, to all wars.

We point out that one way not to have to pay income tax, so much of which goes to the military, into stockpiling, into sales of weapons to other countries, is to seek more ways of living a life of voluntary poverty, to follow our Lord Jesus and his loveable servant St. Francis.

[Speaking of Pentecostal Christian groups on the Mexican border:] I could tell of other works these groups have done, but there is no space here. I only wish that the cause of peace, the rejection of war and service in the armed forces, and refusal to pay income tax could be part of their way of life. Jesus told us to love our enemies and St. Francis’ followers made a rejection of feudal service to the war lords of the time part of their religious commitment.

In 1972 the Catholic Worker organization itself was targeted by the IRS for failure to pay income tax. Eventually the IRS backed down in the face of public ridicule and Catholic Worker resistance. Some of the Catholic Worker articles about this were written by Dorothy Day and I’ve already excerpted them in an earlier Picket Line post focusing on her writings.

The June 1972 issue published a couple of reader reactions to the kerfluffle:

Dear Dorothy,

Ho, you are on the right track. I just read your tax exemption article in the May issue. You are absolutely correct.

I don’t know how you will do it. But you owe to all those you help, not the money represented, but the faith and steadfast purpose for which you stand — the guiding light. I pray for you. I hope some way you can make it — somehow.

Love,
Dick Mayer
409 West 11th St.
Newton, Kansas 67114

Dear Friends at CW,

I just read the 39^th Anniversary issue and am tremendously excited by the article: “If the Present Is Different…”

We are in a bit of a “predicament,” between seizure of our car and auction by the IRS. The IRS has adjourned the open auction and declared an auction for sealed bids; peace people around here are ready to rise to that challenge also.

We are starting a peace action center in this area. We’d be interested in literature lists of books and pamphlets written by CW people.

We read that the CW has to appear in court to justify its tax refusal and its refusal to ask for exemption — as if mercy had to ask permission! We are in a three-family intentional communlty of Mennonite background. War tax resistance is one of our pillars and we’ve not yet found our way out of tbe maze of incorporation into some status that gives us the kind of freedom we seek. But our existence together, our resistance and service, are dally victories. So we keep on.

Peace and Joy be with you,
David Jansen of the Bridge

On this date in 1967, just a few days after Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his powerful “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Eric Weinberger, the national secretary of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, wrote to to ask if King would publicly sign on to their war tax resistance campaign:

I don’t know how (or if) King responded to this request. I have seen no indications that he participated in the war tax resistance of the period.

King had been targeted by politically-motivated tax prosecutions in areas where he had been active. Because of this he had been under particular pressure to keep to the straight-and-narrow when it came to tax filing, so as not to give his enemies a potentially fruitful avenue of attack. This may have discouraged him from making war tax resistance part of his protest against U.S. militarism and the Vietnam War. It is also possible that, since King was killed a little less than a year after this letter was written, he just didn’t have time to put any possibly-intended resistance into practice.

The CNVA letterhead as shown on this letter is a clue as to who was associated with the emerging war tax resistance movement of the time. Many of these names are familiar to me, but some others are not:

I’ve been re-reading Ammon Hennacy’s autobiography in preparation for something I hope to write about the “one man revolution” theory as he and Thoreau sketched it out. Along the way, I noted the mention of a handful of war tax resisters from that first generation of the modern American war tax resistance movement (roughly 1948–1962) whom I haven’t otherwise had opportunity to mention at The Picket Line:

Dorothy DaPonte

“About this time [early 1950] I had a letter from a teacher in Fairhope, Ala. where I had taught in 1924. Her name was Miss DaPonte and she had refused to pay taxes. She told of some boys, Quakers whose parents I had taught when I was there, who had refused to register. The judge in Mobile told the boys: ‘Well, you pay your taxes, don’t you? And a large amount of our taxes goes for war purposes. If you were consistent in carrying out this belief, you would also refuse to pay your taxes.’ ”

“I had the address of Dorothy DaPonte, a tax refuser in Mobile. She had moved but when we drove into Fairhope across the bay where I had taught history in the high school 26 years before we found that Miss DaPonte was a teacher there. She came of an old southern family and nearly caused her father to have a nervous breakdown last year when she refused to pay taxes and had bravely escorted a young Negro girl to the front seat with her in a Methodist Church. By now her father was getting used to her, only deploring that there were no others in the community who also refused to pay taxes. Two teachers at the school planned to fast with us [during Holy Week 1950, when some nuclear disarmament activists were fasting at the White House] although they had to stay there and teach. Miss DaPonte would have liked to have come along but had to stay as a witness in some trial about segregation. As many do who are new in a movement she asked why I did not fast-to-the-death on the White House steps against the H-Bomb.…”

Margaret Dungan

Among the fasters in 1950: “Margaret Dungan was an elderly, smiling lady who taught in a high-class girls school. She is also a tax refuser with whom I had corresponded. She was a good sport in picketing and stood up in fasting much better than the super-vegetarians whom I expect watched their loss of weight too morosely.”

“Miss Dungan felt that if a person led a life of voluntary poverty he would miss the aesthetic values: music, beauty, etc.…”

Kenneth Patton

“One Sunday morning [in 1952 I think], waiting at the Fairgrounds [somewhere in Arizona] for a bus I was talking to a man who was the brother of a Universalist preacher by the name of Kenneth Patton, who had refused to pay taxes for war but had had the tax taken from his bank account. I gave this man extra copies of the CW to send to his brother.”

Ned Richards

[Also 1952, in Philadelphia] “I also spoke to the War Resisters League and met Ned Richards and family, COs and tax refusers from away back.”

George Yamada

[1951] “George Yamada, Japanese CO who did time in Civilian Public Service and in Danbury Penitentiary visited me for a week. Aside from Scott Nearing, and my friend Max Heinegg of New Zealand, George is the only vegetarian I have met who is a good worker. Likely this is because he is Japanese and not because he is a vegetarian. George cleaned ditches ten hours a day that week. He kidded and said it was not such hard work for him because he did not have far to stoop as he was built close to the ground. ¶ George had a print shop on the Coast but gave it up rather than pay income taxes for war. He is an expert linotype operator, but will not take the excellent pay this occupation gives, for a withholding tax for war is taken. He has been visiting the Hopi and helping them plant corn. Never a harsh word of Hopi parents to their children he reports. He feels that the Hopi represent a way of life that is an oasis in the world of gadgets. He did not mind my wood stove, oil lamp, and lack of an icebox or air conditioning, for the Hopi cannot afford these things either.”

[1951] “The night before we were to make the signs George Yamada came over and we discussed the content of the signs.”

[1951] “I needed a little rest so we took half an hour off and drove to the ranch where George Yamada was working and told him of the events of the week. Each time I fasted and picketed because of Hiroshima I had sent my leaflets and an air mail to the Mayor of Hiroshima. This year George mailed the letter for me with his own greeting in Japanese.”

“My Hopi friends brought along a copy of Jan. 1952 CRISIS which had an article on the Hopi by our mutual friend George Yamada. Here the land question is discussed…”

Many other war tax resisters from that era also get mentions, for example: Ernest & Marion Bromley, Horace Champney, Lloyd Danzeisen, Dorothy Day, Ralph DiGia, Saunders Dixon, Richard Fichter, Walter Gormly, Art Harvey, George Houser, Emily & Walter Longstreth, Bradford Lyttle, Milton Mayer, Karl Meyer, A.J. Muste, Juanita & Wally Nelson, James Otsuka, James Peck, Eroseanna Robinson, Max Sandin, Ralph Templin, and George Willoughby.

I give excerpts from the book for the above five only because they have otherwise been as yet unsung here.

You see the beauty of my proposal is
it needn’t wait on general revolution.
I bid you to the one-man revolution —
The only revolution that is coming.

—Robert Frost
from Build Soil

Today, instead of dredging up something from the archives about historical tax resistance campaigns and movements, I want to spend some time looking at individual tax resistance in service of what Ammon Hennacy called the “one-man^* revolution.”

Whether Hennacy got the name from Frost’s poem, or Frost from him, or whether each came up with it independently, I don’t know. The idea goes back much further than either, and in particular is especially pronounced in Thoreau’s thinking.

This idea is that, contrary to what the organizers of the world are always telling us, the key to curing society’s ills is not necessarily to organize at all. You don’t need a majority, or a critical mass, or a disciplined revolutionary vanguard. Just get your own house in order and commit yourself to your own personal revolution — that’s the most crucial and practical thing you can do.

“One-man revolution” is the answer to the question posed by radicals and reformers who feel overwhelmed by the task ahead. “What can one person do?” they ask (half-hoping, I suspect, that the answer will be “nothing, so don’t sweat it”). They think the revolution that will finally put things right is scheduled for later — when the masses see the light… when a crisis comes… when we find a charismatic leader… when we unite the factions under one banner… when… when… when…

The one-man revolutionary says: no, the revolution starts here and now. Your first task as a revolutionary is to overturn the corrupt, confused, puppet governor of your own life and to put a more responsible sovereign in its place.

As to what the policies of this new sovereign ought to be, well, that’s up to you. I’m not going to cover the details of how Hennacy’s and Thoreau’s one-man revolutions played out and what specific decisions they made along the way. Today instead I’m going to look at the reasons they gave for why the one-man revolution is practical and effective, in answer to the “What can just one person do?” skeptics.

These reasons can be roughly divided into five categories:

1. With the one-man revolution, success is in reach. It may not be easy, but you can win this revolution with your own effort. Furthermore, whether or not you succeed, the struggle itself is the right thing to do.
2. You don’t need to wait for a majority. You don’t need to water down your message to try to win mass appeal or group consensus. You can start immediately from a firm platform of integrity and honesty. This also makes you more self-reliant so that you can endure challenges better, which makes you more effective and far-reaching than those revolutionaries who always have to check to see if the rest of the pack is still with them.
3. Political revolutions that are not also accompanied by individual revolutions don’t make enduring radical change — they just change the faces of the clowns running the circus while leaving the corrupt structure intact.
4. The world sometimes is changed radically and for the better by the efforts and example of a single, one-in-a-million character. But the first step is not to set out to change the world, but to develop that character.
5. By fighting the one-man revolution, you are not as alone as you may think you are: you “leaven the loaf” and cause all society to rise, you attract other one-man revolutionaries to your side, and you sow the seeds that inspire others.

You can win the one-man revolution

Ammon Hennacy’s theory of the one-man revolution crystallized, appropriately enough, while he was being held in solitary confinement. He’d been sentenced for promoting draft evasion during World War Ⅰ and then thrown in “the hole” for leading a hunger strike of prisoners to protest awful food. Because he refused to name names, he was kept there for several months.

Locked up alone in a cell 24/7, unable to communicate with his comrades in the prison or outside, given the silent treatment by the guard, and overhearing the day-in day-out torture of the inmate in the adjoining cell — this was not the most promising situation for a revolutionary.

The only book they allowed him was the Bible (and they even took this away and replaced it with a smaller-print version for no other reason but to inflict another petty torment in the dim light of his cell). In the course of reading and reflecting on what he read — particularly the Sermon on the Mount — he decided that the revolution could be fought and won even where he stood.

To change the world by bullets or ballots was a useless procedure. …the only revolution worthwhile was the one-man revolution within the heart. Each one could make this by himself and not need to wait on a majority.

(A few days back I saw a bumper sticker that read “Jesus was a community organizer.” But if you read the Sermon on the Mount, you won’t see any organizing going on there at all — Jesus is urging people individually to get their lives in order so that their deeds will be like a light shining before others to inspire them. Do you see any “we must,” “we ought to,” “we should work together to,” or “once there are enough of us” in that sermon? Jesus isn’t addressing an organization but an assembly.)

You can start now, with full integrity

Lloyd Danzeisen expressed one of the advantages of the one-man revolution in a letter to Hennacy: “You are lucky and of course very wise to be a ‘one man revolution,’ for you do not have to discuss your action over and over again (with committees) but can swing into action.”

The advantage of organizing and working together is superior numbers, and, in theory anyway, greater force. But there are many disadvantages. It takes a lot of time and negotiation to get a bunch of people to take action together, and usually this also involves finding some lowest common denominator of principle or risk that they can all agree on — which can mean watering down the core of what you’re fighting for until it seems less like a principle than a petty grievance.

What such a movement gains in quantity it may lose in quality, and the force it gains from numbers it may lose from the diffuse, blunted, half-hearted effort of the individuals that make it up, or from the fact that much of their energy is expended in the organizing itself rather than the ostensible goals of the organization.

The advantage of drawing a large crowd of half-hearted followers is rarely worth the effort. It is not too hard to sway a crowd of wishy-washy people by appealing to the half-truths they already believe and being careful not to attack any of the nonsense they adhere to. But what does this get you? A crowd of wishy-washy people who are just as vulnerable to falling for the next demagogue who comes along with patronizing speeches. Instead, Hennacy recommends, we should “appeal to those about ready to make the next step and… know that these are very few indeed.… We can live and die and never change political trends but if we take a notion, we can change our own lives in many basic respects and thus do that much to change society.”

Thoreau wrote of how when he was invited to speak he refused to water down his message to make it most palatable to his listeners. He wasn’t aiming for the sympathy of the crowd, but hoped to reach that one or two who were ready to be challenged: “I see the craven priest looking for a hole to escape at — alarmed because it was he that invited me thither — & an awful silence pervades the audience. They think they will never get me there again. But the seed has not all fallen in stony & shallow ground.”

Thoreau noted with approval that the abolitionist revolutionary John Brown had not gathered around him a large party of well-wishers and collaborators, but instead had been very selective about whom he let in on his plans:

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came? — till you and I came over to him?

The very fact that [Brown] had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. He would have no rowdy or swaggerer, no profane swearer, for, as he said, he always found these men to fail at last. He would have only men of principle, & they are few.

He quotes Brown as saying:

I would rather have the small-pox, yellow-fever, and cholera, all together in my camp, than a man without principle.… Give me men of good principles, — God-fearing men, — men who respect themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose any hundred such men as these Buford ruffians.

A one-man revolutionary is more effective and harder to defeat

A one-man revolutionary — a “man of good principles” — is individually more effective and harder to defeat than that same person would be as part of a movement. This may seem paradoxical to people who are used to thinking in terms of “strength in numbers” or “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

This is for two related reasons:

First, because as a one-man revolutionary you are self-motivated, you do not get thrown into confusion if the lines of communication down the chain of command are disrupted, and you don’t lose momentum by looking about to check if your comrades are still with you or if they have retreated or surrendered.

And second, because this makes it difficult for your opponents to get a foothold in trying to persuade you with threats or with bribes to give up the fight.

For example, Hennacy tells of one of his captors trying to trick him:

Detective Wilson said that the young Socialists arrested with me for refusing to register had all given in and registered. (Later I found out that he had also told them that I had registered.) [But] I felt that if they gave in, someone had to stick, and I was that one.

The detective assumed that Hennacy valued his belonging more than his integrity, and so made a completely ineffective attack. Thoreau similarly noted that his captors had failed to understand his motives, assuming he valued his freedom from confinement more than his freedom of action:

It costs me less in ev­ery sense to in­cur the pen­alty of dis­o­be­di­ence to the State, than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.

I saw that, if there was a wall of stone be­tween me and my towns­men, there was a still more dif­fi­cult one to climb or break through, be­fore they could get to be as free as I was.… In ev­ery threat and in ev­ery com­pli­ment there was a blun­der; for they thought that my chief de­sire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.

People often draw the wrong conclusion from the success of the “divide and conquer” tactic when used by governments against opposition movements. The lesson proved by this is not that unless we stay united we are weak, but that to the extent that our strength depends mainly on our unity we are vulnerable.

Without the one-man revolution, no other revolution is worth the trouble

The problem with the mass, popular, peasants-with-pitchforks sort of revolution is that it’s so unreliable. You put everything on the line, shed buckets of blood, endure betrayals and unfriendly alliances and hard compromises, and finally (if you’re lucky) cut off the king’s head and take charge… and then what? As often as not, you end up with something as bad as before.

Political revolutions, says Hennacy, “only changed masters.” — “We made a revolution against England and are not free yet. The Russians made a revolution against the Czar and now have an even stronger dictatorship. It is not too late to make a revolution that will mean something — one that will stick: your own one-man revolution.”

Tyranny is not something that only infests the top of the org chart. The tyrant doesn’t cause tyranny, but is its most obvious symptom. Tyranny lives as tenaciously in the tyrannized as in the tyrant. This is why Thoreau was careful to say (emphasis mine):

“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

Not, “when the workers seize power” or “when we get money out of politics” or anything of that sort, but “when men are prepared for it.” We must prepare ourselves, one one-man revolution at a time, and when we have, we will get the government we deserve (self-government, if Thoreau is right and if we ever do deserve such a thing).

The revolution is not accomplished when the last faction still standing wipes the blood from its hands and sits down behind the presidential desk to issue its first decree, but “when the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office” — that is, when tyranny is purged from the bottom of the org chart.

Define success and failure carefully

Be careful how you define “success.” You can do everything you set out to do, but if you haven’t set out to do anything worth doing, you still fail. Even in mundane things, you’d be wise to keep your eye on a bigger picture. Thoreau mused in his journal:

If a man has spent all his days about some business by which he has merely got rich, as it is called, i.e., has got much money, many houses & barns & woodlots, then his life has been a failure, I think. But if he has been trying to better his condition in a higher sense than this — has been trying to be somebody, to invent something — i.e., to invent and get a patent for himself — so that all may see his originality, though he should never get above board — & all great inventors, you know, commonly die poor — I shall think him comparatively successful.

Success and failure have superficial and deep components that may contradict each other. John Brown set out to launch a rebellion that would end American slavery; the government stood its ground and defended slavery against the rebellion and had Brown hanged. Who was successful? Who won? A victory for evil is just a triumphant form of failure.

And a year and a half after Brown’s execution when Union troops set off to crush the confederacy of slavers, they were singing “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave — his soul is marching on!”

At the time of the Harpers Ferry raid, Brown was called insane by the pulpit, popular opinion, and the press (even — especially — the liberal, abolitionist press). Some gave as evidence for his insanity the most extraordinarily sane thing about him:

It is mentioned against him & as an evidence of his insanity, that he was “a conscientious man, very modest in his demeanor, apparently inoffensive until the subject of slavery was introduced, when he would exhibit a feeling of indignation unparalleled.”

You’d think with the example of Jesus hovering over Western Civilization, people would be skeptical of traditional notions of success: being captured and tortured to death by your enemies and having your followers scorned and scattered throughout a hostile empire doesn’t seem much like a victory. But Thoreau thought the response to John Brown proved that even after centuries of Christianity, “[i]f Christ should appear on earth he would on all hands be denounced as a mistaken, misguided man, insane & crazed.”

You don’t have to believe that history will eventually smile on you and turn your seeming defeats and setbacks into obvious victories. You don’t have to believe the nice-sounding but unlikely sentiment that Hennacy attributed to Tolstoy: “no sincere effort made in the behalf of Truth is ever lost.” You just need to remember that the seemingly small victories in an uncompromising one-man revolution can be more worthwhile (when seen from the perspective of what is worthwhile, not just what is expedient) than huge triumphs rotting within from compromise and half-truths.

Slavery in particular was such an unambiguous evil that it was one of “those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply,” Thoreau said. He made this comparison: if the only way you can save yourself from drowning is to unjustly wrest a plank away from another drowning man, you must instead do what is just even if it kills you. If you are “victorious” in wresting away the plank, and thereby save your own life at the cost of another, you lose.^✴

But even in cases not as extreme as slavery, he says, compromise and expediency are overrated: “there is no such thing as ac­com­plish­ing a right­eous re­form by the use of ‘ex­pe­di­ency.’ There is no such thing as slid­ing up hill. In morals the only sliders are back­sliders.”

The one-man revolution is more about doing the right thing daily than achieving the right result eventually, so even if it seems that everything is going against you, you can be confident you’re on the right track. “[B]e as unconcerned for victory as careless of defeat,” Thoreau advises, “not seeking to lengthen our term of service, nor to cut it short by a reprieve, but earnestly applying ourselves to the campaign before us.”

“Hennacy, do you think you can change the world?” said Bert Fireman, a columnist on the Phoenix Gazette.

“No, but I am damn sure it can’t change me” was my reply.

If you want to change things you have to get 51% of the ballots or the bullets. If I want to change things I just have to keep on doing what I am doing — that is: every day the government says “pay taxes for war”; every day I do not pay taxes for war. So I win and they lose. The One Man Revolution — you can’t beat it.

Do not let your opponent set the norm. Generally a minority is jeered at because they are so small. It is quality and not quantity that is the measure. “One on the side of God is a majority” is the perfect answer which I have given dozens of times with success.

(In this last quote, Hennacy is paraphrasing Thoreau, who wrote that “those who call them­selves ab­o­li­tion­ists should at once ef­fec­tu­ally with­draw their sup­port, both in per­son and prop­erty, from the gov­ern­ment of Mas­sa­chu­setts, and not wait till they con­sti­tute a ma­jor­ity of one, be­fore they suf­fer the right to pre­vail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, with­out wait­ing for that other one. More­over, any man more right than his neigh­bors con­sti­tutes a ma­jor­ity of one al­ready.”)

One-in-a-million can move the world

Sometimes, a single one-man revolutionary really does change the world. Maybe the world was already ripe for changing, but it still needed a one-man revolutionary to break from the pack and make the change happen.

Hennacy says the self-transforming doers like Christ, the Buddha, Gandhi, or Joan of Arc, were far more radical than theorizers like Marx or Bakunin. Thoreau would agree (though his list — “Minerva — Ceres — Neptune — Prometheus — Socrates — Christ — Luther — Columbus — Arkwright” — was a little more ethereal):

I know of few radicals as yet who are radical enough, and have not got this name rather by meddling with the exposed roots of innocent institutions than with their own.

We don’t progress by passively absorbing the inevitable bounty of history grinding away unconsciously on the masses, as the Hegelians might put it. Rather, says Thoreau, “The great benefactors of their race have been single and singular and not masses of men. Whether in poetry or history it is the same.” We should not be content to admire these heroes, or to await their arrival, but should be inspired by their examples to be heroic ourselves.

The gods have given man no constant gift, but the power and liberty to act greatly. How many wait for health and warm weather to be heroic and noble! We are apt to think there is a kind of virtue which need not be heroic and brave — but in fact virtue is the deed of the bravest; and only the hardy souls venture upon it, for it deals in what we have no experience, and alone does the rude pioneer work of the world.

Ac­tion from prin­ci­ple, — the per­cep­tion and the per­for­mance of right, — changes things and re­la­tions; it is es­sen­tially rev­o­lu­tion­ary, and does not con­sist wholly with any thing which was. It not only di­vides states and churches, it di­vides fam­i­lies; aye, it di­vides the in­di­vid­ual, sep­a­rat­ing the di­a­bol­i­cal in him from the di­vine.

There is something proudly thrilling in the thought that this obedience to conscience and trust in God, which is so solemnly preached in extremities and arduous circumstances, is only to retreat to one’s self, and rely on our own strength. In trivial circumstances I find myself sufficient to myself, and in the most momentous I have no ally but myself, and must silently put by their harm by my own strength, as I did the former. As my own hand bent aside the willow in my path, so must my single arm put to flight the devil and his angels. God is not our ally when we shrink, and neuter when we are bold. If by trusting in God you lose any particle of your vigor, trust in Him no longer. … I cannot afford to relax discipline because God is on my side, for He is on the side of discipline.

We can’t all be Christ, Buddha, Gandhi, or Joan of Arc. (Steve Allen said that Ammon Hennacy fulfilled more of the role of a Lenny Bruce; Hennacy’s wife suggested Don Quixote.) It is only one-in-a-million who moves the world. But despite the odds we all should aspire to be this one in a million.

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. Therefore one who has love, courage, and wisdom is one in a million who moves the world, as with Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi.

Even if we fall short of this goal ourselves, by choosing this goal we not only choose the only goal worth choosing, but we adjust our standards so that if we are ever lucky enough to meet this one in a million, we will be more likely to recognize her or him. Most people are incapable of recognizing or comprehending the hero in real life — they lionize the dead martyred heroes of past generations, while joining the lynch mobs to martyr the heroes of their own.

It only takes a little leavening to leaven the loaf

By aiming at this standard, you also raise the standards of those around you, and so even if you cannot detect a direct influence, you improve society. The way Thoreau put it — “It is not so im­por­tant that many should be as good as you, as that there be some ab­so­lute good­ness some­where; for that will leaven the whole lump.”^†

By being virtuous in an out-of-the-ordinary way you encourage people to call ordinary vices into question and you force the devil’s advocates to show themselves by coming to the devil’s defense. Thoreau was convinced that one person was enough to leaven the loaf:

[I]f one thou­sand, if one hun­dred, if ten men whom I could name, — if ten hon­est men only, — aye, if one hon­est man, in this State of Mas­sa­chu­setts, ceas­ing to hold slaves, were ac­tu­ally to with­draw from this co­part­ner­ship, and be locked up in the county jail there­for, it would be the ab­o­li­tion of slav­ery in Amer­ica.

Hennacy said that his “work was not that of an organizer but of a Sower to sow the seeds.”

We really can’t change the world. We really can’t change other people! The best we can do is to start a few thinking here and there. The way to do this, if we are sincere, is to change ourselves!

When they are ready for it [my emphasis again — ♇], the rich, the bourgeois intellectual, the bum, and even the politician and the clergy may have an awakening of conscience because of the uncompromising seeds of Christian Anarchism which we are sowing.

You have a plan to reform the world? As the saying goes: “show me, don’t tell me.” Thoreau:

The Reformer who comes recommending any institution or system to the adoption of men, must not rely solely on logic and argument, or on eloquence and oratory for his success, but see that he represents one pretty perfect institution in himself…

I ask of all Reformers, of all who are recommending Temperance, Justice, Charity, Peace, the Family, Community or Associative life, not to give us their theory and wisdom only, for these are no proof, but to carry around with them each a small specimen of his own manufactures, and to despair of ever recommending anything of which a small sample at least cannot be exhibited: — that the Temperance man let me know the savor of Temperance, if it be good, the Just man permit to enjoy the blessings of liberty while with him, the Community man allow me to taste the sweets of the Community life in his society.

Too many reformers think they can reform the rottenness of the system the people are sustaining without changing the rottenness of the people who sustain the system. “The disease and disorder in society are wont to be referred to the false relations in which men live one to another, but strictly speaking there can be no such thing as a false relation if the condition of the things related is true. False relations grow out of false conditions. … It is not the worst reason why the reform should be a private and individual enterprise, that perchance the evil may be private also.”

So often we hear of a Big Plan that, were it enacted as designed, would solve the Big Problems. But the problem with the big plans is that they never seem to get enacted, or if they do, they never seem to work as designed, as the same problems show up in new guises. Meanwhile the planners waste their time and energy and don’t change what is changeable. Tolstoy put it this way:

If a man drinks, and I tell him that he can himself stop drinking and must do so, there is some hope that he will pay attention to me; but if I tell him that his drunkenness forms a complex and difficult problem, which we, the learned, will try to solve in our meetings, all the probabilities are that he, waiting for the solution of the problem, will continue to drink. The same is true of the false and intricate scientific, external means for the cessation of war, like the international tribunals, the court of arbitration, and other similar foolish things, when we with them keep in abeyance the simplest and most essential means for the cessation of war, which is only too obvious to anybody. For people who do not need war not to fight we need no international tribunals, no solution of questions, but only that the people who are subject to deception should awaken and free themselves from that spell under which they are. This means for the abolition of war consists in this, that the men who do not need war, who consider a participation in war to be a sin, should stop fighting.

An alcoholic who spoke with Hennacy had much the same sentiment: “the AA fixed me up. You are right in not wanting to change the world by violence; the change has to come with each person first.”

The present American peace movement, stubbornly paying for the imperial armies it says it opposes, reminds me of drunks meeting in a tavern at happy hour to organize a prohibition movement that will solve their alcohol problem.

Your one-man revolution isn’t as lonely as it may seem

Hennacy and Thoreau also had faith that if you begin the one-man revolution, this will attract like-minded souls to you and you to them, and that you will find yourself working in concert with comrades you never knew you had:

Thoreau: “Men talk much of cooperation nowadays, of working together to some worthy end; but what little cooperation there is, is as if it were not, being a simple result of which the means are hidden, a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will cooperate with equal faith everywhere. If he has not faith he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to.”

Hennacy: “In reading Tolstoy I had gained the idea that if a person had the One Man Revolution in his heart and lived it, he would be led by God toward those others who felt likewise.… This was to be proven in a most dramatic way, and was to usher me into the second great influence of my life: that of the Catholic Worker movement.”

The One-Man Revolution

So what do you have to do to be the exemplar and sow the seeds?

1. Accept responsibility, and act responsibly.
2. Build yourself a glass house and start throwing stones.

Accept responsibility, and act responsibly

Most political action amounts to “who can we find to take responsibility for this problem” — the One Man Revolutionary asks “what can I do to take responsibility for this problem?”

Not that everything is your responsibility, or that the world is looking to you personally to solve all of its problems. But you should at the very least examine your life to see what problems or solutions you are contributing to with it. Can one person make a difference? You are already making a difference — what kind of difference are you making?

It is not a man’s duty, as a mat­ter of course, to de­vote him­self to the erad­i­cat­ion of any, even the most enor­mous wrong; he may still prop­erly have other con­cerns to en­gage him, but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it prac­ti­cally his sup­port. If I de­vote my­self to other pur­suits and con­tem­plat­ions, I must first see, at least, that I do not pur­sue them sit­ting upon an­other man’s shoul­ders. I must get off him first, that he may pur­sue his con­tem­plat­ions too.

A man has not ev­ery thing to do, but some­thing; and be­cause he can­not do ev­ery thing, it is not nec­es­sary that he should do some­thing wrong.

In Thoreau’s time, the evils of slavery and of wars of conquest were sustained by the active allegiance and support of the ordinary people around him, many of whom nonetheless congratulated themselves for their anti-war, anti-slavery opinions.

I quar­rel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-op­er­ate with, and do the bid­ding of those far away, and with­out whom the lat­ter would be harm­less.

I have heard some of my towns­men say, “I should like to have them or­der me out to help put down an in­sur­rec­tion of the slaves, or to march to Mex­ico, — see if I would go;” and yet these very men have each, di­rectly by their al­le­giance, and so in­di­rectly, at least, by their money, fur­nished a sub­sti­tute. The sol­dier is ap­plauded who re­fuses to serve in an un­just war by those who do not re­fuse to sus­tain the un­just gov­ern­ment which makes the war…

Those who, while they dis­ap­prove of the char­ac­ter and meas­ures of a gov­ern­ment, yield to it their al­le­giance and sup­port, are un­doubt­edly its most con­sci­en­tious sup­port­ers, and so fre­quently the most se­ri­ous ob­sta­cles to re­form. Some are pe­ti­tion­ing the State to dis­solve the Union, to dis­re­gard the req­ui­si­tions of the Pres­i­dent. Why do they not dis­solve it them­selves, — the union be­tween them­selves and the State, — and re­fuse to pay their quota into its trea­sury?

If a thou­sand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a vi­o­lent and bloody meas­ure, as it would be to pay them, and en­able the State to com­mit vi­o­lence and shed in­no­cent blood. This is, in fact, the def­i­ni­tion of a peace­able rev­o­lu­tion, if any such is pos­si­ble.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that because the one-man revolution is in your heart that it can just stay there, locked up inside, without leaking out into the world around you.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course. Do not let your right hand know what your left hand does in that line of business. I have no doubt it will prove a failure.

The one-man revolution doesn’t necessarily require living in opposition to society and the status quo, but it does require holding fast to justice and virtue. When society and the status quo are opposed to justice and virtue, as they so often are, this puts them in opposition to you as well.

Build yourself a glass house and start throwing stones

Your friends and even your enemies will come to your aid when you try to hold yourself to a high standard. All you have to do is to make yourself vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. People love to point out hypocritical moralists, in part because some hypocritical moralists are hilarious, but also in part because it helps people excuse their own failures to hold themselves to high standards. If you build yourself a glass house and throw stones from it, everyone will volunteer to keep you on the straight-and-narrow.

Hennacy:

I have… put myself in a glass house. If so I must needs take whatever stones come my way. I have the right by my life of integrity to criticize, but I must also take whatever criticism comes my way in all good humor.

[A] spoiled and arrogant priest wanted to know if I was “holier than thou.” I told him I hoped by Christ I was, for if I wasn’t I would be in a hell of a fix. I used this blunt method to deflate his spurious piety.

At times those who do not want to have their inconsistencies pointed out say in a super-sweet voice to me “judge not, lest ye be judged.” I reply, “O.K., judge me, then.”

When your standards for yourself rise, so do your standards for other people (otherwise you really are being arrogant). Thoreau, criticized for demanding too much from people, said he could not “con­vince my­self that I have any right to be sat­is­fied with men as they are, and to treat them ac­cord­ingly, and not ac­cord­ing, in some re­spects, to my req­ui­si­tions and ex­pec­ta­tions of what they and I ought to be.”

While both Thoreau and Hennacy strike me as stern with others, and maybe not always fun to be around (as Hennacy would say: “I love my enemies but am hell on my friends”), they were anything but joyless. Thoreau’s vigorous, enthusiastic love of life and the world are legendary, and Hennacy’s character too was eager, life-affirming, and generous (even in its criticisms).

Utah Phillips came home from the Korean war a drunken brawler, checked in to Hennacy’s Catholic Worker hospitality house in Salt Lake City, and eight years later checked out again, sober, a pacifist, and an anarchist. He remembered Hennacy this way:

He was tough without being hard — tough without that brittle hardness that some tough men have that would shatter if you struck it too hard. “Love in Action,” Dorothy Day called him — Dostoyevsky’s words: “Love in action is harsh and dreadful compared to love in dreams.”^‡

Neither Thoreau nor Hennacy had any tolerance for bliss-bunnyishness, but both were cheerful; both knew how to be dutiful without being dour. Thoreau:

To march sturdily through life, patiently and resolutely looking grim defiance at one’s foes, that is one way; but we cannot help being more attracted by that kind of heroism which relaxes its brows in the presence of danger, and does not need to maintain itself strictly, but, by a kind of sympathy with the universe, generously adorns the scene and the occasion, and loves valor so well that itself would be the defeated party only to behold it; which is as serene and as well pleased with the issue as the heavens which look down upon the field of battle. It is but a lower height of heroism when the hero wears a sour face.

A great cheerfulness indeed have all great wits and heroes possessed, almost a profane levity to such as understood them not, but their religion had the broader basis of health and permanence. For the hero, too, has his religion, though it is the very opposite to that of the ascetic. It demands not a narrower cell but a wider world.

In conclusion

I’ve tried here to put forward the strongest affirmative case for the practical effectiveness of the one-man revolution, at least as it can be found in Hennacy’s and Thoreau’s writings.

They make a strong and persuasive argument, I think, but not an airtight one. I wish more evidence was preserved of them in dialog with incisive critics of the one-man revolution, to hear how they would respond to the best arguments against it.

But what keeps the argument for a one-man revolution from persuading people is not, I think, the strength of the counter-arguments, but just the fact that to accept the argument is not enough — it demands much more than a “Like,” and much more than most people think they have to give. To be persuaded is to be overwhelmed, to take the first step off the path and into uncharted territory, and only a few of us have the courage to take that step.

Here are some additional quotes that I cut from earlier drafts of my “one-man revolution” post, but that you might find interesting or inspiring if you enjoyed the quotes that did make the cut:

Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czars is but a petty state… And, O ye Reformers! if the good Gods have given ye any high ray of truth to be wrought into life, here in your own realms without let or hindrance is the application to be made.

―Thoreau

If organizing thousands of people into a group promising to do good, or pledging themselves to revolutionary action is practical, then I am not practical… I did not need a committee to coordinate or regulate me, for I can organize myself. This is what a one-man revolution is supposed to do.

―Hennacy

I told my young friend that he could always get a crowd to applaud mild criticism of war and for the lowering of taxes and raising of wages, but that this same crowd would really follow the blazing torch of super demagogues… Yes, men by themselves are not so bad, but in a crowd or in a political campaign where they wear “labels” they are only suckers. I pointed out that spiritual power was the greatest force in the world, and that beside it all the two-penny political victories did not mean a thing. Too many of us dissipate our energy by being “for all good causes,” attending meetings and passing resolutions, organizing and presenting petitions — all this effort to change others, when if we really got down to it we could use this energy to change ourselves. This can be done by spiritual means and it does not wear one out but is invigorating. We become tired radicals because we use our weakest weapon: the ballot box, where we are always outnumbered, and refuse to use our strongest weapon: spiritual power.

―Hennacy

I admit at the start that myself and those like me are not going to win, for the whole trend is toward the welfare state and bigger and better churches. The trend is not toward individual responsibility and the voluntary poverty and simple life of the early Christians — all the more reason we should keep on trying, though.

―Hennacy

[W]hen you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up.

―Thoreau

What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend my­self to the wrong which I condemn.

―Thoreau

Last year at this time I excerpted some articles about the tax resistance of Utah governor J. Bracken Lee. I’ve since found a more complete version of one of the articles that includes the following details:

Lee elaborated on his tax-fighting plan in an interview after he announced it at a meeting of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. At the meeting, he put it this way:

“I shall put my tax in the bank here in Salt Lake City. Not a dollar of it will they (the federal government) get until legality of the case is tested in the United States Supreme Court.”

Lee said he is taking his tax action to “awaken the American people.”

“My main thinking,” he said, “is if I can get this before the public I can get some people to thinking about this thing. I’m interested in having the American people awakened to what’s occurring in this country.”

Lee’s announced plan recalled the cases of two women whose defiance of the federal income tax laws drew considerable attention not many years ago.

One involved Miss Vivien Kellems, a Stonington, Conn., industrialist and critic of government tax policy. The other concerned Mrs. Caroline Foulke Urie, a Quaker widow from Yellow Springs, Ohio, who objected to government expenditures for war. Mrs. Urie died last April at the age of 81.

Early in 1948, Miss Kellems stopped withholding income taxes from employes of her cable grip firm, contending the tax law was unconstitutional and claiming the government couldn’t require her to serve as an unpaid tax collector.

The government paid no heed to her requests to be indicted to provide a test case. Instead, it levied penalties totaling $7,819 and seized the money from the Kellems company’s bank accounts. However, Miss Kellems and her brother David sued to recapture the money. In January 1951, a Federal Court Jury in New Haven decided she had not acted “willfully” and returned a verdict entitling Miss Kellems to recover most of the money the government had seized.

Mrs. Urie’s case arose in the late 1940s when she decided to withhold part of her income tax because she believed it would be spent for war purposes. The amount so withheld she donated to organizations she felt were promoting peace.

The government never sought to prosecute.

When I was going through Ammon Hennacy’s writings as part of the research that led to my “one-man revolution” post back in June, I kept an eye out for mentions of J. Bracken Lee. Though they were not particularly ideologically compatible, the two were both tax resisters and Hennacy spent a good deal of time in Salt Lake City, Utah, as the organizer of a Catholic Worker house there. And sure enough there’s a mention or two:

I had received several notices from the health department to close down the Joe Hill House. An article in the paper said that I was not allowed to sleep more than 10 people on the floor. I asked the inspector what he would do if I had 11. He said he would padlock the door. I told him I would break the padlock and beat him like Brigham Young beat the army, and in mock anger I led him to the door and told him “to get the hell out of here.” I spoke to Commissioner Smart and he asked me to present my appeal to the City Commissioners. I did so and Smart said I was saving the city money by putting up tramps. And Mayor Brack Lee said that they would go easy on the regulations for I was doing good work; they didn’t want to put me in jail for disobeying their regulations, and he said facetiously that they would have to make an ordinance allowing me to do just what I was doing.

When I was selling CWs at 43 and Lexington a woman told me of a Sister Mary Catherine, a Carmelite nun, whose folks were polygamists and whose relatives are the Romneys, Apostles in the Church. I corresponded with her and she read my book and she reads the CW, and I visited her in Salt Lake City. A Jewish man by the name of Herbert Rona became a convert to the Mormons. An atheist gave him a CW and he wrote to us saying that he was a pacifist. He had me speak at his home and ex-Gov. Bracken Lee, LeGrande Richards (one of the 12 Apostles), Professor Bennion, and Judge Anderson, all Mormons, came to a meeting at Rona’s house where I explained my radical ideas.

In May 1963, upon motion of non-Mormon Mayor “Brack” Lee, the City Commissioners passed a resolution unanimously favoring the serving of Negroes in all restaurants and public places. This was taken because a Negro reported that he had been refused service in a restaurant, but this is a recommendation, not a law.

A typical government gambit in its battle against tax resisters is to say, “okay, if you won’t pay us taxes, we’ll seize your property instead.”

Some tax resisters have responded to this by taunting back: “you’ll have to find it first.” And one way they have made good on this is by arranging to have other people hold their property in their names. Here are some examples:

• Some war tax resistance “alternative funds,” into which resisters pay their taxes into rather than submitting them to the government, have a dual purpose: they serve as ways to redirect tax money to causes the resisters find more palatable than government expenses, and they serve as a holding tank for funds that the resisters can later reclaim if back taxes are ever seized from them.



• The tax collector was so frustrated trying to seize anything at all from tax resister Ammon Hennacy that, when Hennacy was picketing the IRS office one day, the agent assigned to his case walked up to him and seized his picket sign — telling him he planned to auction it off! The next day, Hennacy was picketing again with some new signs that he and a friend had hastily made the night before… each one carefully marked “this sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
• In the Irish Tithe War, farmers would give temporary pasturage to the livestock of people when seizures were impending:

  An organised system of confederacy, whereby signals were, for miles around, recognised and answered, started into latent vitality. True Irish ‘winks’ were exchanged; and when the rector, at the head of a detachment of police, military, bailiffs, clerks, and auctioneers, would make his descent on the lands of the peasantry, he found the cattle removed, and one or two grinning countenances occupying their place. A search was, of course, instituted, and often days were consumed in prosecuting it.

• Observers noted that during the resistance by British nonconformists against the taxes for sectarian education included in the Education Act, “they are taking the precaution of putting their property out of their own names, so that the collectors will not have anything to levy on.” Resister John Clifford said, “In the hope of preventing the authorities from getting their money in this way I made over all my household effects to my wife, but the collectors seized them just the same.” Another resister, Thomas Watson, foiled the collectors for at least eight years with the same technique.
• Tax resister Karl Hess sold the rights to royalties from his book to a community organization he worked for, so as to get a more easily-concealable lump sum of cash instead of a more-seizable royalty stream.
• War tax resister Aleck Dodd transferred his property into his wife’s name when he began to resist, in order to “protect my family from the possible results of my action, and not to evade the collection of my tax by due process of law.”

Pickets and other such public demonstrations commonly accompany tax resistance campaigns. Here are some examples that caught my eye:

• During the Tithe War in Ireland, one parliamentarian noted with some panic a news account of a mock funeral held in Ireland, attended by 100,000 people “who assembled to carry in a procession to the grave two coffins, on which were inscribed ‘Tithes’ and ‘Rent’.”
• The Women’s Tax Resistance League used signs, banners, handbills, chalked-slogans, and sandwich boards to help get their “No Vote — No Tax” message across at their public demonstrations.
• The Benares hartal of 1810–11 was in part a strike, but in part a huge demonstration, the duration and peaceful discipline of which pointed out the determination of the demonstrators.
• When the Rebecca Rioters came to Carmarthen, they came en masse and during the daytime, almost as a parade. They were “preceded by a band of musicians playing popular airs, and men bearing placards with the following enscriptions in large printed letters:” “Justice and lovers of Justice are we all.” “Freedom and better food.” “Free tolls and Freedom.”
• The tax strike in the French wine-growing region in 1907 was preceded by huge demonstrations and parades. Wrote one observer:

  All observers were struck by the extraordinary perfection of the organization. It was not necessary once for the troops or police to interfere with the multitude which was variously estimated was made up of from 400,000 to 600,000 persons. A feature of the parade was the large proportion of women participating. Groups from various cities bore banners with various inscriptions and carried coffins, guillotines, &c.

  Another wrote:

  …all night long trains entered the station every quarter of an hour with crowds, many of whom had been travelling fifteen and twenty hours. Looking worn and dishevelled, they formed in serried battalions, and, headed by bands and trumpets and drums, young and old, men, women, and children, marched to their quarters…

  This morning five huge columns, approaching from various quarters, welded at the Arch Peyrou into one procession nine miles long, and the march through the streets began at 11. Placards threatened, “The day of reckoning is at hand,” “We will take up arms,” “Down with the deputies.” Here were 200 handsome Norbannese women in mourning, there 500 young girls robed in white muslin, with tricolor robes.

• In 1906 in Turkey, mass tax refusal was backed up by mass demonstrations of as many as 20,000 people, demanding the repeal of the taxes.
• In 2003, anti-Chavez protesters launched a tax strike by tearing up their income tax forms in a demonstration in which thousands of demonstrators marched on the tax offices in Caracas.
• Farmers in New Zealand threatened to drive their farm equipment onto the highways to jam the roads in protest against a new greenhouse-gas-targeting “flatulence tax” on livestock in 2003.
• When the authorities tried to impose a tax on dogs in Breslau, Germany, in 1925 5,000 dogs (and their owners) descended on city hall to protest.
• One of Gandhi’s first experiments with satyagraha was a strike in South Africa to protest against a tax on Indian immigrants there. The culmination of that campaign was a massive protest march of striking workers that deliberately violated laws restricting the right of travel of Indians.
• Ammon Hennacy was fond of accompanying his solitary tax resistance with periodic fasts and picketings at IRS headquarters, typically around the time of the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. He would hand out to passers-by copies of the Catholic Worker as well as leaflets that described his own particular protest — while also carrying a sign and wearing a sandwich-board that put things more concisely.
• The previously-untaxed caste of Bhats in India responded to being subjected to the income tax in dramatic fashion: “Two thousand men turned out to remonstrate with the Superintendent of Police who appeared on the scene. He remained firm, whereupon they cut themselves with knives, cursed the Assessors, bespattering them with their blood, and declared they would rather die than surrender their birthright. When several were apprehended, their wives began to hack their persons, and so severely that several have since died. Up to the last intelligence the Bhats still gloried in their refusal.”
• American war tax resisters frequently hold rallies, pickets, street theater, and other such actions around “Tax Day” (the date when federal income tax returns are due). This among other things helps make sure that their message is one of those represented in the obligatory tax day news stories. Here is an example:

  The group then left for the federal building, in which the IRS and a number of other offices are located, at which 75 people burned tax forms and blockaded the street for a bit. There were no arrests. In conjunction with the tax form burning, they used a banner with the quote: “Pardon us, friends, for the fracture of good order, for burning paper instead of babies,” sent from prison during the Vietnam War by Daniel Berrigan… They offered their apologies for burning tax forms instead of Colombian villages, Palestinian schools, Iraqi hospitals, Filipinos’ mosques and Afghan homes.

  In another case:

  After a mock President Clinton bragged to onlookers about the many areas in which the U.S. was #1 - military spending, arms sales, violent gun deaths, etc. — he drove home the point with an 8-foot Patriot missile tossed into a group of students, parents, nurses and other ordinary people.

  Mass dying ensued, followed by an appearance by the grim reaper himself. Ostensibly there to collect bodies, he assented to an interview with M.C. Daniel Woodham. Death was the only one at the rally willing to even attempt an explanation of the maniacal logic of a still-bloated U.S. military budget.

  Here are some street theater tips from war tax resister Steve Gulick.
• Some war tax resisters in Wales brought their tax payment to the tax office in a bucket of blood. When the payment was refused, they poured the blood over the steps of the building.
• In 1997 members of the Magdalene House Catholic Worker held a demonstration at the IRS office in which they “laid out a cloth altar with candles, flowers, and health care items to represent life, and tax forms with their blood poured on them to represent death. They held a worship service and talked about why they were there.” This was enough for several of them to get arrested.
• During the rebellion against Thatcher’s poll tax, there were several demonstrations.
  • The Scottish Trade Union Conference organized a number of rallies, including a 30,000-person march in Edinburgh, but then it put its weight behind a strange 11-minute-long general strike at which people all over Scotland were supposed to briefly stop working to engage in some short anti-poll-tax activism. That protest didn’t go anywhere and the Union Conference lost some credibility as a movement organizer.
  • Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to demonstrations in England, with some of these rallies and marches turning into riots (or being attacked by police, depending on whose stories you believe). On such occasions, the riots became the message of the demonstrations, whatever the intentions of the organizers were. This had mixed consequences for the movement.

Here are a handful of artifacts relating to the American war tax resistance movement circa 1967.

First, some relics that were filed alongside a letter from Herbert Sonthoff to W. Walter Boyd (though I think this filing may be arbitrary and that the letters are not related to each other):

An Open Letter ^*

At this late date it is pointless to muster the evidence which shows that the war we are waging in Vietnam is wrong. By now you have decided for yourself where you stand. In all probability, if you share our feelings about it, you have expressed your objections both privately and publicly. You have witnessed the small effect these protests have had on our government.

By April 15^th, every American citizen must decide whether he will make a voluntary contribution to the continuation of this war. After grave consideration, we have decided that we can no longer do so, and that we will therefore withhold all or part of the taxes due. The purpose of this letter is to call your attention to the fact that a nationwide tax refusal campaign is in progress, as stated in the accompanying announcement, and to urge you to consider refusing to contribute voluntarily to this barbaric war.

Signed:

Prof. Warren Ambrose	Mathematics, M.I.T.
Dr. Donnell Boardman	Physician, Acton, Mass.
Mrs. Elizabeth Boardman	Acton, Mass.
Prof. Noam Chomsky	Linguistics, M.I.T.
Miss Barbara Deming	Writer, Wellfleet, Mass.
Prof. John Dolan	Philosophy, Chicago University
Prof. John Ek	Anthropology, Long Island University
Martha Bentley Hall	Musician, Brookline, Mass.
Dr. Thomas C. Hall	Physician, Brookline, Mass.
Rev. Arthur B. Jellis	First Parish in Concord, Unitarian-Universalist, Concord, Mass.
Prof. Donald Kalish	Philosophy, U.C.L.A.
Prof. Louis Kampf	Humanities, M.I.T.
Prof. Staughton Lynd	History, Yale University
Milton Mayer	Writer, Mass.
Prof. Jonathan Mirsky	Chinese Language and Literature, Dartmouth College
Prof. Sidney Morgenbesser	Philosophy, Columbia University
Prof. Wayne A. O’Neill	Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
Prof. Anatol Rapoport	Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan
Prof. Franz Schurmann	Center for Chinese Studies, University of Calif., Berkeley
Dr. Albert Szent Gyorgy	Institute for Muscle Research, Woods Hole, Mass.
Harold Tovish	Sculptor, Brookline, Mass.
Prof. Howard Zinn	Government, Boston University

^* Institutions listed for informational purposes only

P.S. The No Tax for War Committee intends to make public the names of signers, hence if you wish to add your signature, early return is desirable. Contributions are needed, and checks should be made payable to the Committee.

The following page, dated 11 March 1967, shows a mock-up of the intended public advertisement showing the signers’ names:

The committee will publish the above statement with names of signers at tax deadline — April 15.

Send signed statements to: NO TAX FOR WAR COMMITTEE, c/o Rev. Maurice McCrackin, 932 Dayton St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45214.

For additional copies of this form, put number you will distribute and name and address on the following lines:
No. _____ Name ____________________
Address _________________________

Signers So Far

• Meldon and Amy Acheson
• Michael J. Ames
• Alfred F. Andersen
• Ross Anderson
• Beulah K. Arndt
• Joan Baez
• Richard Baker
• Bruce & Pam Beck
• Ruth T. Best
• Robert & Margaret Blood
• Karel F. Botermans
• Marion & Ernest Bromley
• Edwin Brooks
• A. Dale Brothington
• Mrs. Lydia Bruns
• Wendal Bull
• Mrs. Dorothy Bucknell
• John Burslem
• Lindley J. Burton
• Catharine J. Cadbury
• Maris Cakars
• Robert and Phyllis Calese
• William N. Calloway
• Betty Camp
• Daryle V. Carter
• Jared & Susan Carter
• Horace & Beulah Champney
• Ken & Peggy Champney
• Hank & Henry Chapin
• Holly Chenery
• Richard A. Chinn
• Naom [sic] Chomsky
• John & Judy Christian
• Gordon & Mary Christiansen
• Peter Christiansen
• Donald F. Cole
• John Augustine Cook
• Helen Marr Cook
• Jack Coolidge, Jr.
• Allen Cooper
• Martin J. Corbin
• Tom & Monica Cornell
• Dorothy J. Cunningham
• Jean DaCosta
• Ann & William Davidon
• Stanley F. Davis
• Dorothy Day
• Dave Dellinger
• Barbara Deming
• Robert Dewart
• Ruth Dodd
• John M. Dolan
• Orin Doty
• Allen Duberstein
• Ralph Dull
• Malcolm Dundas
• Margaret E. Dungan
• Henry Dyer
• Susan Eanet
• Bob Eaton
• Marc Paul Edelman
• Johan & Francis Eliot
• Jerry Engelbach
• George J. Etu, Jr.
• Mary C. Eubanks
• Arthur Evans
• Jonathan Evans
• William E. Evans
• Pearl Ewald
• Franklin Farmer
• Bertha Faust
• Dianne M. Feeley
• Rice A. Felder
• Henry A. Felisone
• Mildred Fellin
• Glenn Fisher
• John Forbes
• Don & Ann Fortenberry
• Marion C. Frenyear
• Ruth Gage-Colby
• Lawrence H. Geller
• Richard Ghelli
• Charles Gibadlo
• Bruce Glushakow
• Walter Gormly
• Arthur Goulston
• Thomas Grabell
• Steven Green
• Walter Grengg
• Joseph Gribbins
• Kenneth Gross
• John M. Grzywacz, Jr.
• Catherine Guertin
• David Hartsough
• David Hartsough
• Arthur Harvey
• Janet Hawksley
• James P. Hayes, Jr.
• R.F. Helstern
• Ammon Hennacy
• Norman Henry
• Robert Hickey
• Dick & Heide Hiler
• William Himelhoch
• C.J. Hinke
• Anthony Hinrichs
• William M. Hodsdon
• Irwin R. Hogenauer
• Florence Howe
• Donald & Mary Huck
• Philip Isely
• Michael Itkin
• Charles T. Jackson
• Paul Jacobs
• Martin & Nancy Jezer
• F. Robert Johnson
• Woodbridge O. Johnson
• Ashton & Marie Jones
• Paul Jordan
• Paul Keiser
• Joel C. Kent
• Roy C. Kepler
• Paul & Pauline Kermiet
• Peter Kiger
• Richard King
• H.A. Kreinkamp
• Arthur & Margaret Landes
• Paul Lauter
• Peter and Marolyn Leach
• Gertrud & George A. Lear, Jr.
• Alan and Elin Learnard
• Titus Lehman
• Richard A. Lema
• Florence Levinsohn
• Elliot Linzer
• David C. Lorenz
• Preston B. Luitweiler
• Bradford Lyttle
• Adriann van L. Maas
• Ben & Sue Mann
• Paul and Salome Mann
• Howard E. Marston, Sr.
• Milton and Jane Mayer
• Martin & Helen Mayfield
• Maurice McCrackin
• Lilian McFarland
• Maureen & Felix McGowan
• Maryann McNaughton
• Gelston McNeil
• Guy W. Meyer
• Karl Meyer
• David & Catherine Miller
• James Missey
• Mark Morris
• Janet Murphy
• Thomas P. Murray
• Rosemary Nagy
• Wally & Juanita Nelson
• Marilyn Neuhauser
• Neal D. Newby, Jr.
• Miriam Nicholas
• Robert B. Nichols
• David Nolan
• Raymond S. Olds
• Wayne A. O’Neil
• Michael O’Quin
• Ruth Orcutt
• Eleanor Ostroff
• Doug Palmer
• Malcolm & Margaret Parker
• Jim Peck
• Michael E. Pettie
• John Pettigrew
• Lydia H. Philips
• Dean W. Plagowski
• Jefferson Poland
• A.J. Porth
• Ralph Powell
• Charles F. Purvis
• Jean Putnam
• Harriet Putterman
• Robert Reitz
• Ben & Helen Reyes
• Elsa G. Richmond
• Eroseanna Robinson
• Pat Rusk
• Joe & Helen Ryan
• Paul Salstrom
• Ira J. Sandperl
• Jerry & Rae Schwartz
• Martin Shepard
• Richard T. Sherman
• Louis Silverstein
• T.W. Simer
• Ann B. Sims
• Jane Beverly Smith
• Linda Smith
• Thomas W. Smuda
• Bob Speck
• Elizabeth P. Steiner
• Lee D. Stern
• Beverly Sterner
• Michael Stocker
• Charles H. Straut, Jr.
• Stephen Suffet
• Albert & Joyce Sunderland, Jr.
• Mr. & Mrs. Michael R. Sutter
• Marjorie & Robert Swann
• Oliver & Katherine Tatum
• Gary G. Taylor
• Harold Tovish
• Joe & Cele Tuchinsky
• Lloyd & Phyllis Tyler
• Samuel R. Tyson
• Ingegerd Uppman
• Margaret von Selle
• Mrs. Evelyn Wallace
• Wilbur & Joan Ann Wallis
• William & Mary Webb
• Barbara Webster
• John K. White
• Willson Whitman
• Denny & Ida Wilcher
• Huw Williams
• George & Lillian Willoughby
• Bob Wilson
• Emily T. Wilson
• Jim & Raona Wilson
• W.W. Wittkamper
• Sylvia Woog
• Wilmer & Mildred Young
• Franklin Zahn
• Betty & Louis Zemel
• Vicki Jo Zilinkas

Following this was a page explaining how to go about resisting:

Some Methods of Nonpayment

1. For those owing nothing because of the Withholding Tax.
   
   Such persons write a letter to the Internal Revenue Service, to be filed with the tax return, stating that the writer cannot in good conscience help support the war in Vietnam, voluntarily. The writer therefore requests a return of a percentage of the money collected from his salary.
   
   Note: Of course, the IRS will not return the money. However, the writer has refused to pay for the war voluntarily and has put it in writing. This symbolic action is not to be belittled since anybody who does this allies himself with those who will withhold money due the IRS.
2. For those self-employed or owing money beyond what has been withheld from salary.
   
   Such persons write a letter to be filed with the tax return, stating that the writer does not object to the income tax in principle, but will not, as a matter of conscience, help pay for the war in Vietnam. The writer is therefore withholding some or all of the tax due.

Note: In all cases, we recommend that copies of these letters be sent to the President and to your Senators.

Remarks:

The Internal Revenue Service has the legal power to confiscate money due it. They will get that money, one way or another. However, to obstruct the IRS from collecting money due (by not filing a return at all, for example) seems less important to us than the fact that each is refusing to pay his tax voluntarily. With this in mind, many of us are placing the taxes owed in special accounts and we will so inform the IRS in our letters.

Willful failure to pay is punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to a year in jail, together with the costs of prosecution. So far, the IRS has prosecuted only those who have obstructed collection (by refusing to file a return, by refusing to answer a summons, etc.). Usually, the IRS has collected the tax due plus 6% interest and possibly an added fine of 5% for “negligence”. The fact that the IRS has rarely, if at all, prosecuted tax-refusers to the full extent of the law does not mean they will not do so in the future.

Finally, an article from the December 1967 edition of The Capitol East Gazette:

Tax Refusal Urged by Group

Two thousand anti-war leaflets on telephone tax refusal were distributed in Capitol East on Saturday, Nov. 18, by members of CHOICE, a group of local residents who are withdrawing their support for the Vietnam war.

The leaflet explains that the 10% phone tax was enacted in April 1966 specifically to raise money for the Vietnam war.

According to CHOICE, the phone company will not remove a person’s telephone if he refuses to pay the tax. The company asks refusers to state why they are withholding the tax and then turns the matter over to the Internal Revenue Service.

According to CHOICE, there are presently 25 known tax refusers in the Capitol Hill area.

Those desiring CHOICE’s leaflet are asked to call LI 6‒9836.

I’ve speculated before about the extent to which the Catholic anarchist tax resister Ammon Hennacy and J. Bracken Lee, the right-wing paleocon tax resister, may have crossed paths and mixed pollen while the former was running the Catholic Worker hospitality house in Salt Lake City and the latter was Utah’s governor. (See ♇ 7 October 2012.)

Here’s another interesting data point, found in the Socialist Labor Party’s Weekly People of 11 May 1957:

The Extremes

In his April 16 column, Mr. [Murray?] Kempton had an item on Ammon Hennacy, a Catholic anarchist who likes the IWW bummery and who doesn’t dislike the Stalinists, but who can’t stand the SLP. Hennacy, noted Kempton, is a Catholic pacifist (as well as an anarchist) and thus a conscientious objector to contributing taxes to an arms budget. “The last time I saw Ammon, he reported he had gotten a letter of support from Governor G. [sic.] Bracken Lee of Utah, a [Republican] conscientious objector to all advocates of a strong central government since Nicholas Biddle. Lee is also litigating with the Internal Revenue Service [he thinks the income tax is as “communistic” as “Modern Republicanism”!] and his expression of solidarity amused Ammon. ‘That’s how it is,’ he said, ‘the right anarchists and the left anarchists meet in the end.’ ”

And that was undoubtedly the only sensible political remark ever made by the Catholic anarchist!

The SLP was sore at Hennacy after reading his account of a panel he had been on with a Communist Party member and an SLP member. His verdict: “I would not care to waste my time in any discussion with such unrealistic and humorless radicals as those of the SLP.”

The Weekly People hit back: “[T]he charge that the SLP is ‘humorless’ is a false charge. It is given the lie by the Party’s frequent and deft use of humor and satire to point up Socialist lessons.”

I haven’t been able to find the original of Murray (I think) Kempton’s op-ed.

At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).

Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about how the Quaker practice of war tax resistance began to reemerge after the Great Forgetting period.

The Thaw (1943–1959)

In the Great Forgetting period, Quakers endeavored to overlook that war tax resistance had been an important part of putting the Quaker peace testimony into practice.

But during World War Ⅱ and the opening decade of the Cold War, a largely Christian pacifist war tax resistance movement began to coalesce, which included Quakers, but the most prominent members of which belonged to other denominations. This movement set the stage for the coming renaissance of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends.

A few of the earliest tax resisters of this period were Quakers. I’ve already mentioned Mary Stone McDowell, who carried on her resistance from the World War Ⅰ period (the only such example I’m aware of). There was also Arthur Evans, who was resisting perhaps as early as 1943, making him one of the earliest adopters of war tax resistance in this Thaw period.

But institutionally, the Society of Friends still had little interest in the subject. In 1955 the American Friends Service Committee, a major voice of the practical side of the Quaker peace testimony, put out an influential booklet: Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence. It mentions war tax resistance only once, and in an 18^th century historical overview context, not as an example of a contemporary method of speaking truth to power in search of alternatives to violence. This is in spite of the fact that the committee that produced the booklet included among its members the war tax resisters A.J. Muste and Milton Mayer.

Instead, the leadership in advocating for war tax resistance and in organizing the fledgling modern war tax resistance movement largely came from outside the Society of Friends. Some of the more prominent war tax resistance promoters in this important period were Dorothy Day (Catholic) & Ammon Hennacy (often Catholic), A.J. Muste (sometimes-Quaker, but bounced around a lot), Maurice McCrackin (Presbyterian), Ernest Bromley (Methodist, later a Quaker), Ralph DiGia (not religious as far as I could tell), and Milton Mayer (Jewish, later a Quaker).

The work of this emerging group of resisters helped to encourage the remaining Quaker war tax resisters and to remind Quakers that war tax resistance wasn’t only something of the legendary past but was an available testimony to them in the present. The thaw in the Society of Friends had begun.

One of the first examples of this thaw was a particularly dramatic one. When four Quaker conscientious objectors in the United States were put on trial for evading the Korean War draft, the judge told them: “If you are not willing to defend this country, you should leave.” They took that advice seriously, and began to look for an alternative. They chose Costa Rica, a country that had abolished its standing army in 1948. “We wanted to be free of paying taxes in a war economy,” recalls Marvin Rockwell, one of the emigrants. Seven Quaker families left the U.S. to found the community of Monteverde, Costa Rica, in 1959. Rockwell later told a Friends Journal reporter: “I do not feel bad at all paying taxes in Costa Rica. The largest item in the tax budget is for education.”

I dug up some additional newspaper mentions of Ammon Hennacy’s work. This one comes from the 19 April 1956 Gazette and Daily of York, Pennsylvania:

A-Bomb Is Viewed As ‘One Great Sin’

Ammon Hennacy, associate editor of Catholic Worker, tells Lancaster meeting atomic bomb is ‘the one great sin’ since 1945, says he won’t pay taxes to support warlike governments.

The atomic bomb last night was described as “the one great sin” since 1945 by Ammon Hennacy, associate editor of the Catholic Worker.

Hennacy, an anarchist, pacifist, vegetarian, and Catholic, spoke on “Why As a Christian I Refuse to Pay Taxes” at a meeting at the Evangelical and Reformed seminary in Lancaster sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Hennacy said one has to have been in jail to have been a radical. He has been in jail many times.

His first experiences in prison were during World War Ⅰ when he refused to register for the draft. It was there that he was put in solitary confinement (at the time he was a Socialist and atheist) with only the Bible to read.

It was in the Atlanta prison that he became a convinced pacifist. Later he became a Catholic “out of steady osmosis with Dorothy Day,” managing editor of the Catholic Worker and outspoken pacifist.

Hennacy said he refuses to pay taxes or vote because they are used to support governments which as a whole are warlike.

People who support the government by paying taxes, he said, are guilty of the atomic bomb

Pickets Revenuers

Last week Hennacy picketed the bureau of internal revenue office to protest the payment of taxes. He said he writes the “tax man” and tells him how much money he has made and how much he owes and that he is not going to pay. He has not been imprisoned yet for refusal to pay.

Dorothy Day does not pay taxes, either, he said, but she doesn’t even bother sending in a tax form stating her earnings.

Beginning Aug. 6 he plans to fast for 11 days as penance for his country’s having dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. It was eleven years ago on that date that the bombing took place, so he will fast one day for each year since then.

Hennacy was a social worker in Milwaukee for 11 years until the early 1940’s. He quit his job then because he refused to register for the draft and thought he would get a five year prison sentence.

But he had been jailed during World War Ⅰ and was not bothered.

It was near that time that income taxes were first withheld from salaries. In order that he would have nothing withheld, Hennacy did yard and farm work in the Southwest.

“Tax men,” Hennacy said, have no malice but are just stupid.

He said they stole Daily Worker property and tore things up. His own paper also pays no taxes and the “tax men” could do the same thing, but “we won’t give them a list of contributors who help us make up the deficit.”

The hierarchy of the Catholic church has not tried to do anything about the radicalism of those associated with the Catholic Worker because they live “in voluntary poverty like Gandhi did,” according to Hennacy.

They have incurred the wrath of the “Cadillac Catholics,” and a monsignor who had petitions signed for McCarthy had Hennacy arrested for selling the Catholic Worker on New York streets, he said.

The Catholic Worker’s circulation now is 65,000, he said. Before the paper opposed Franco’s government in Spain it was 170,000, he said.

As the ethical background for his beliefs and actions, Hennacy cited the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ teachings to “turn the other cheek” and to “love your enemy.”

An Associated Press wire photo from June 1957:

In the 6 September 1960 version of Don Dedera’s “Coffee Break” column in the Arizona Republic, was this note:

A few weeks ago Colleague Bud DeWald was hurrying down bustling Lexington Avenue in frantic New York City when he spied Anarchist Ammon Hennacy, Phoenix’s One-Man Revolution, placidly picketing the Internal Revenue Service.

“I refuse to pay income tax,” the Hennacy placard read.

“I have just about conquered New York,” Ammon told Bud. “Next fall I am going to Salt Lake City and go to work on the Mormons.”

Dedera was back, in the 4 April 1961 issue, to report that Hennacy wasn’t kidding:

Mormons, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You

Phoenix’s One-Man Revolution, flushed with its conquest of America’s largest town, soon will lay siege to Salt Lake City.

Ammon Hennacy means to save the Mormons.

Since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has never experienced a Hennacy siege, a public warning may be in order. The struggle should start on even terms.

Opponents are forever granting Hennacy the weapons of surprise and secrecy, by no wish of his own.

For example, the other day when he returned to rest and visit friends in Phoenix, his first act was to contact the Phoenix FBI office and announce:

This is Ammon Hennacy, a subversive. I am a Christian Anarchist, and I don’t believe in any government at all. I am against war and the bomb, and I never pay income taxes. I’m going to give you my address and schedule, in case you want to watch me.

Indeed, the FBI likely has a fat dossier on Hennacy. He served time for dodging the World War Ⅰ draft. Although he now damns communism as moral and economic fraud, he was a card-carrying member for years.

It was as a picketer of the Phoenix Internal Revenue office that Hennacy earned the nickname, One-Man Revolution. He worked on farms which deducted no taxes. At tax time, he would fill out a form, taking care to change the wording, “U.S. non-Taxpayer.”

Across the bottom he would write:

“This is how much I made last year. This is how much tax I owe. Come and get it.”

He said he never had to pay taxes. Once in New York City a pair of T-men interviewed him and warned, “We have to make our report, and you’ll probably be charged within six months.” Hennacy said he didn’t hear from them again.

Hennacy also has fasted 40 days in front of the Atomic Energy Commission. Every April 28 he appears in New York City to disobey the Civil Defense drills. Usually he is arrested.

“Every year the state makes New York crawl underground for eight minutes,” he said. “There is no safety in the subways. A New Yorker can do nothing in an atomic war but pray.”

At 78, Hennacy is rosy and unwrinkled. His hair is gray, thick and shiny. But he has mellowed from the day when he would bait a banker for breakfast.

“I shall make my mission into the land of the Mormons because no one has worked with them, and I find them an admirable people. They are hard-working, responsible — people of integrity.

“My only hope is to out-Mormon the Mormons. I will open a Joe Hill house, named for the IWW martyr, and feed the bums and maybe put out a newspaper.

“I hear the Mormons work in the fields for their charities. I’ll work with them. They fast once a month; I’ll fast every week. I don’t drink or smoke, but I’ll have to give up coffee and tea. I’ll go to Mass every day, and as a demonstration, I’ll give 10 per cent of my income to my own church, which I call the Bingo Catholic Church.”

Salt Lake. Man the walls.

Erne Linford of The Salt Lake Tribune was on the scene when Hennacy arrived (from the 24 April 1961 issue):

Hennacy’s Coming

Salt Lake City was quietly minding its own business last week when Ammon Hennacy blew into town.

You may have lived such a sheltered life that you don’t know about this one-man revolution, but you likely will soon know him by reputation, if not personally.

Of all the places on the globe, Mr. Hennacy has decided to make Utah his future home. He is aware that peace officers and some residents will not consider this a blessing.

Ammon, gray-haired and wiry at 65, is a self-proclaimed “Christian Anarchist.”

He doesn’t believe in any government. He is against war and the bomb. He never pays income taxes (and claims he gets away with it, Brack [J. Bracken Lee, Utah governor, who had his own tax resistance crusade]). Though he once carried a Communist Party card, he now damns communism as a fraud.

Hennacy pickets institutions and projects he objects to. In fact he cut short his Salt Lake visit last week to hurry to New York for his annual refusal to comply with the civil defense bomb shelter regulations there. He expects to go to jail for refusing to retreat to the subway when the sirens wail. But having been to jail many times, he considers it a mere nuisance, no deterrent.

In questioning the genial libertarian we deliberately used such terms as “publicity-seeker,” “professional troublemaker,” and “police-baiter,” but Ammon’s clear eyes never flickered.

“I’ve been called most everything,” he explains. “But at 65 I’ve outgrown being affected by headlines. I just work for what I believe in — or against what I don’t believe in. I’ll never stop till I die.”

Hennacy plans to open in Salt Lake City a Joe Hill House, named for the Utah IWW martyr, to feed and bed transients. He may even put out a paper. For funds he will do day labor on nearby farms. (He works only on a daily basis, in order to avoid having taxes deducted).

Well, don’t say you weren’t warned about Hennacy’s imminent invasion of Utah.

Hennacy returned to Arizona for a visit later that year, and was interviewed by a reporter for Flagstaff’s Arizona Daily Sun (2 June 1961):

One-Man Revolution

The “one-man revolution,” Ammon Hennacy, 68, visited Flagstaff this week.

He has spent a lifetime espousing the doctrine that the only way the world can be improved is for the individual to improve himself.

“One person on the side of God is a majority,” he says with an Irish grin.

Hennacy calls himself a Christian anarchist. He says he is so far left politically that he makes “the right-wingers of the Republican party look like communists.” He adds that if people would behave themselves, there would be no necessity for any government. He has no use for any political group. He believes, literally, and in every aspect of life, in the Golden Rule.

“The political parties are all going at this thing backwards,” he says. “You have to start with the individual.”

His aim is to live as closely as he can by the teachings of Christ as exemplified and codified in the Sermon on the Mount. He believes in turning the other cheek, in going the second mile. He works at it.

“Possessions are trash,” he says. “If you want to be really free, don’t own anything. Things you think you own actually own you.” Hennacy carries his few belongings in a small suitcase — some articles of clothing, pictures of his two daughters, a Bible and a couple of other religious books, and a memo book. “If I lost the whole business it wouldn’t hurt me any,” he says.

Hennacy has staunch friends in many unexpected places. Among these are Frank Brophy of Phoenix, banker and philanthropist, who by no stretch of the imagination could be considered a radical.

Hennacy doesn’t believe in taxes, hence doesn’t pay any. Years when his income necessitates the filing of a tax return, he files it. But he never pays the tax bill. He is cheerfully ready at any time to go to jail for his beliefs, and has done so many times.

Hennacy is a slight, wiry Irishman whose eyes twinkle with humor and love. He loves everybody including the wardens he has met in what he calls “a professional capacity.” He has been arrested more than 30 times and served sentences many times. He served eight months in solitary confinement in Atlanta Federal penitentiary more than 40 years ago. He had nothing to read but the Bible. He read it six times. When he came out, he says, he had not only retained his sanity by reading, but had become a Christian, and he has been working hard at it ever since.

Among his friends are U.S. agents who have tried in vain to make him pay his taxes.

Hennacy is on the way to Salt Lake City where he will work as a farm laborer. He can always find a job because he doesn’t argue over wage scales or fringe benefits, and works harder than anybody else; but he insists on being paid in cash each day, without deductions for taxes.

His aim is to establish a mission in due time, “without preaching.” He is a member of the Catholic church.

He says he has no idea of converting the Mormons to his beliefs. “They are good people, who live the Christian life as they see it,” he says. “I enjoy being with them. To them, religion is not something to be saved for Sunday.”

“If the Mormons want my ideas, they’ll get them, but I do not expect to make many converts, in Utah or anywhere else. Living by the Golden Rule is pretty strong fare for most people.”

He is frequently asked if he expects to change the world.

“No,” he smiles, “and the world isn’t going to change me, either.”

When you look at his stubborn chin and smiling blue eyes, you can believe it.

Hennacy was back at the Atomic Energy Commission headquarters for a picket the following year, as seen in this Associated Press article, as found in the Albuquerque Journal of 20 April 1962:

Pickets Protest Nuclear Tests At Nevada Site

Las Vegas, Nev. (AP) — Nuclear explosions at the Nevada test site 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas were protested Thursday by two pickets.

Ammon Hennacy, 68, and Mrs. Carol Gorgen, 40, carried signs, which stated:

“Easter Message — Peace Not Scare War.”

“Every Test Kills.”

“Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

The two picketed the Atomic Energy Commission headquarters in what Hennacy said was a one-day stand.

Hennacy, who said his life has been marked by jail terms because of various crusades, said he also has picketed air raid drills, income tax, and capital punishment.

Hennacy said he was a mission operator in Salt Lake City. Mrs. Gorgen said she was a housewife from San Francisco.

Both said they opposed income tax because it supports “war efforts.”

Here’s one way Hennacy tried to get his message across while in Salt Lake City (from the 18 May 1962 Salt Lake Tribune):

Lectures Tonight

“Thoreau’s Message for Today,” will be the subject of a lecture by Ammon Hennacy at the Joseph Hill House of Hospitality and St. Joseph’s Refuge, 72 Post Office Pl. (340 South), Friday at 8 p.m.

The Daily Independent Journal of San Rafael, California, published this note in its 24 February 1964 issue:

Bruce Sloan of Kentfield informs us he has just had a visit from Ammon Hennacy, a Catholic anarchist, of Salt Lake City. Asked what that is, Sloan said, he’s a Catholic and he’s an anarchist. Hennacy runs the Joe Hill House of Hospitality and St. Joseph’s Refuge, where he gives free meals and beds down sober transients. He was in Marin to look for a Dominican priest and confer with people who are tax refusers.

United Press International sent this dispatch out over its wires in July 1965:

Man Pickets To Protest War Tactics

Salt Lake City (UPI) — For one hour each day, July 18–Aug. 6, a grey-haired man, looking younger than his 72 years, pickets in front of the U.S. Post Office.

Ammon Hennacy, director of Joe Hill House of Hospitality and St. Joseph’s Refuge, is carrying on his protest against U.S. military intervention in Viet Nam. A sign he carries clearly announces he is against payment of taxes for war.

Opposing Communism and welfare state capitalism, Hennacy has many friends who stop to say help as he marches each work day from noon to 1 p.m. A few people are antagonistic when they question what he’s doing, while others read his pamphlet and discuss the protest.

Monday he started 20 days of fasting for his personal penance in the 20 years since the United States dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Each year since 1945 he has added one day of fasting, taking nothing but water for subsistence.

In the first three days he lost 10 pounds, he said, but anticipates he will lose no more than a pound a day for the next 17 days.

“We have tried the ‘illusion of violence’ long enough,” his pamphlet says, “let us try the power of love.”

The Salt Lake Tribune also covered this protest in its 24 July issue:

Protestor Plans Fast Birthday

Ammon Hennacy, director of Joe Hill House of Hospitality, 1131 S. 1^st West, will celebrate his 72^nd birthday Saturday by completing a week of fasting in protest of “paying taxes for the war in Viet Nam.”

The white-haired pacifist said Friday he will continue his noon-hour picketing in front of the Post Office on Main Street Monday through Friday during a planned 20-day period of fasting through Aug. 6. The 20 days mark one for each year since the World War Ⅱ atom-bombing of Hiroshima.

“I’ve lost 13 pounds this week,” Mr. Hennacy said.

In 1969 Hennacy competed for attention with “an acid-rock band” at an Arizona State University anti-war rally. An Arizona Republic article briefly summarized his contribution:

Ammon Hennacy, 75, of Salt Lake City, who identifies himself as a Christian-pacifist-anarchist, said persons who believe in war should enlist and fight and those who are against war should resist the draft.

Hennacy told the students, “I don’t believe in government any place. I believe in self-government.”

He also said the students should be more radical so they could become anarchists, too.

Hennacy died the following January. The Associated Press obituary read:

“One-Man Revolution” Dies Of Heart Ailment in Utah

Salt Lake City (AP) — Ammon Hennacy, an unsinkable individualist who called himself the “one-man revolution” and spent a lifetime protesting war and capital punishment, is dead at 76.

Hennacy died of a heart ailment Wednesday after suffering a heart attack last week while picketing against the scheduled execution of two murderers.

He cut a uniquely personal path through life, proclaiming principles that sometimes seemed at odds.

Hennacy refused to pay tax, or to accept Social Security benefits. But almost daily he would trundle through Salt Lake City with a grocery cart, collecting donated food.

The food went back to his Joe Hill House of Hospitality, where transients could find a meal and a bed.

He was a “christian-anarchist-pacifist,” Hennacy said. He urged revolution; but it was to be peaceful, where a man changed himself before trying to change society.

An anarchist, Hennacy once said, was a person “who doesn’t need a cop to make him behave.”

He was born in Negley, Ohio, in 1893 and bounced across the country at a variety of jobs before ending up in Utah.

For many years he picketed and fasted in front of the Salt Lake Post Office each summer to protest the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. As each year passed, he added one day to his fast. His final vigil, in 1969, lasted 24 days.

The Arizona Republic responded to the news in an editorial:

A Gentle Anarchist

A friend sent us a clipping from the New York Times obituary columns the other day. He wrote on it, “You remember Ammon, the pure in heart anarchist.” That’s an apt description for Ammon Hennacy, who used to spend his winters in Phoenix.

Unlike most winter visitors, Ammon had no letters of credit or travelers checks, and very little cash. He would work as an irrigator, back in the early ’50s before the citrus groves were turned into housing developments. On Sundays he would sell copies of The Catholic Worker while discussing “Christian Anarchy” with the priests and clergymen of the various churches in the Valley.

The pay wasn’t particularly good, but Ammon was sure of one thing — none of it could be withheld by an employer who followed the instructions of the Internal Revenue Service. However, he wasn’t a tax-evader, in the sense of doing anything fraudulent. He filed a carefully audited income tax return each year, and then challenged the government to try to collect the amount due.

Ammon usually accompanied his ritualistic filing of the federal income tax return by picketing the Post Office Building, which used to house the IRS. He obviously wanted to get arrested, but someone at IRS knew better.

So then Ammon would go on hunger strikes, which didn’t impress the carnivorous among us because even on his regular diet he was a vegetarian who wouldn’t even drink carbonated beverages. He also fasted on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima — atomic and nuclear bombs were his own particular devils.

One of his favorite foods, when he allowed himself the luxury of eating, was bread made from a flour that he claimed came from cereals grown by the Hopis 100 years ago. He insisted the cereal had been preserved in Hopi pots because of the unequaled climatic conditions on the mesas.

Ammon Hennacy was 77 years old when he died in Salt Lake City on Jan. 15, according to the N.Y. Times. He was running the Joe Hill House of Hospitality for Migrants and Migrant Workers, and was a contributing columnist for The Catholic Worker, edited by Dorothy Day in New York. He was the author of several books, including “The One Man Revolution in America,” slated for publication in the spring.

During World War Ⅰ he went to prison for pacifist activities, but claimed he was unlike most pacifists because he could see the funny side of things. He was locked up 30 times for various protest activities, including five times for refusing to participate in civil defense exercises in New York during World War Ⅱ.

At one time or another he was a Socialist, a pacifist, a Quaker, an anarchist, and finally a Roman Catholic. He protested about nearly everything on the contemporary scene, but unlike most of today’s protesters he didn’t try to avoid punishment for breaking the law. He’d never dream of burning the records in a draft board, locking up a university dean, or disrupting a court by using profanity on the judge.

Ammon knew Marx and Engels, but his radicalism sprang from the heart of history’s most radical experiment in government — the continuing revolution under which Americans rule themselves.

We don’t know where the “pure in heart anarchist” is today, but we’ll bet he is protesting without venom, and that he is able to find something funny in the lurches that the locomotive of history is making as it goes around one bend after another.

I haven’t yet visited any archives that hold material from the Peacemakers, that group that coordinated the early modern American war tax resistance movement beginning in the late 1940s. But while I was following another thread, I found the following article which gave the most complete membership run-down of the tax refusal committee of Peacemakers that I have yet seen:

43 Pacifists Won’t Pay U.S. Tax in Arms Protest

Special in The [Philadelphia] Inquirer and New York Herald Tribune

New York, March 13 [1949]. — Forty-three pacifists throughout the United States declared today that they would refuse to pay all or a part of their Federal income taxes this year as a protest against the Nation’s military expenditures.

The group, including a number of Quakers, conscientious objectors, and several who have refused payment of taxes before, issued a statement through Peacemakers, [a] national pacifist group with headquarters here, in which they said:

“Believing that men are accountable for their actions, and that laws requiring immoral acts should not be obeyed, we have after serious consideration determined upon a course of civil disobedience with relation to the income tax laws of the United States.”

Headed by Pastor

Forty-one of the tax refusers acted under a tax refusal committee of Peacemakers, headed by Rev. Ernest Bromley, of Wilmington, O. Their statement was issued by Rev. A.J. Muste, secretary of the organization, and also secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Mr. Muste, former director of the Presbyterian Labor Temple, and one-time president of the defunct Brookwood Labor College at Katonah, N.Y., has long been known in the labor movement, and as a pacifist and campaigner against military conscription.

Two additional persons were listed as tax refusers in a statement issued on behalf of 11 Philadelphians by Walter C. Longstreth, Philadelphia lawyer. The other nine were all included in the Peacemakers list.

Some Withhold 36.4 Pct.

Mr. Muste, who said he personally would refuse to pay any income taxes this year, as he did last, declared that some of the signers would follow his course of action; while others will withhold the 36.4 percent estimated by the Bureau of the Budget as that portion of tax money expended for military purposes.

Others on the list issued by the Peacemakers were:

Ross Anderson, of Portland Ore.; B. Bargen, of Newton, Kas.; Marilyn Blaise, religious education director, New York City; Marion Bromley, of Wilmington, O.; Lindley Burton, of Bryn Mawr, Pa.; Horace Champney, of Yellow Springs, O.; Miriam Keeler Cornelius, labor economist, Washington D.C.; Aleck D. Dodd, clergyman, of Toledo, O.; Margaret E. Dungan, of Wallingford, Pa.; William Bacon Evans, of Morrestown, N.J.; Caleb Foote, of Arden, Del.; Hope Foote, of Arden, Del.; Marion C. Frenyear, clergyman, of Plainfield, Mass.; Robert C. Friend, religious education director, of Schenectady, N.Y.; Walter Gormly, of Mt. Vernon, Ia.; J. William Hawkins, of Winters, Calif.; Ammon Hennacy, of Phoenix, Ariz.; George M. Houser, of New York City; Sander Katz, of New York City; Raymond E. Kinney, of Los Angeles; Emily Longstreth, of Philadelphia; Walter Longstreth, of Philadelphia; Mary Bacon Mason, of Newton Center, Mass.; Milton Mayer, of Chicago; Mary McDowell, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Wallace Nelson, of Cincinnati; James Peck, of New York City; Paula Beck, of New York City; Caroline Philips, of Wilmington, Del.; Lydia Philips, of Wilmington, Del.; Grace Rhoads, of Moorestown, N.J.; Francis B. Riggs, of Cambridge, Mass.; Valerie Riggs, of Cambridge, Mass.; Igal Roodenko, of Bronx, N.Y.; Max Sandin, of Cleveland; Laurence Scott, of Kansas City, Mo.; Ralph Templin, of Yellow Springs, O.; Louise Thomas, of Cherry Valley, N.Y.; Mrs. Caroline Urie, of Yellow Springs, O.; Beverly White, of Wichita, Kas..

Many of these names I’ve encountered before, but several were new to me.

There were fewer than 3,000 people living in Yellow Springs, Ohio at the time, and three of them were among the 43 public war tax resisters in the United States. I wonder what that was all about.

Some notes from here and there:

• The 31^st annual New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters and Their Supporters will be held from October 14–16 in Ware, Massachusetts. A focus this year will be how to better coordinate with other activist groups and concerns:

  While movement folks talk about the intersectionality of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, war, climate change, and economic exploitation, too often we do not go beyond the rhetoric. We are inviting people involved in resisting these serious problems to make time to engage in dialog with those involved in other issues and movements. We need to explore how we can work together.

• There have been some interesting posts on the NWTRCC blog in recent weeks:
  • Tax Collection Phone Call Cons — international grifter call centers are siphoning money from gullible Americans by impersonating the IRS. War tax resisters may be particularly vulnerable as an angry call from the IRS is almost expected. Here’s what you need to know to keep from getting scammed.
  • Understanding common IRS collection letters — the IRS doesn’t tend to call you. They prefer to send you letters. Here’s a field guide to some of the variety of letters war tax resisters tend to see.
  • Join NWTRCC at the SOAW border convergence! — NWTRCC will be among the groups represented at a protest of U.S. border militarization and its treatment of new immigrants, migrant workers, and refugees in October.
  • Reasons to Celebrate — NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn celebrates another year of refused taxes sliding off of the statute-of-limitations 10-year limit and forever out of the IRS’s reach.
  • Ammon Hennacy and other early modern war tax resisters — Erica Weiland discusses some of the personalities and actions of the war tax resistance movement that began to coalesce in the United States around the end of World War Ⅱ, as found in Ammon Hennacy’s writings.
• The Wealthy Accountant lists 10 ways to legally stop paying taxes — basically a list of varieties of income that are not taxed. You may find this useful food for thought.
• The Keene, New Hampshire government has thrown all sorts of resources into trying to get a restraining order against the “Robin Hoods” who follow their parking enforcement officers around time, feeding the meters ahead of them and preventing them from writing lucrative tickets. So far, no luck, but they’re making one more desperate appeal to the state supreme court.
• “A tenant said he was refusing to pay rent arrears or council tax until Cornwall Housing repairs his home. Ryan Shilson said there were cracks in the walls, the windows leaked and that on one occasion wood worm caused so much damage to roof joists that he fell through the ceiling.”
• The tactic of paying your taxes in wagonloads of pennies or other small-denomination money, as a way of protesting and of obstructing the tax bureaucracy, is usually the one-off protest of a single fed-up person. But lately in Illinois, it’s become an organized and ongoing tactic:
  • New anti-tax group forms from dollar-bill property tax protest — “Frustrated homeowner Dan Aylward, whose gesture made national headlines, and several other high-profile local tax fighters banded together to form Illinois Tax Revolution, which has scheduled several local protests…”
  • Residents have to stick around if they pay property taxes in dollar bills — “Treasurer Glenda Miller announced a policy requiring people who pay their tax installments in large sums of cash to be physically present while the money is being counted. Miller said in a news release that the policy is for the protection of both the taxpayer and her staff.… ‘The five hours that it took for my staff to count the cash prevented her from continuing her regular office duties,’ Miller said.”
  • Tax protest group rallies, pays McHenry County property taxes in $1 bills — “Because Illinois has more units of government than any other state — property tax bills easily can have 10 or more bodies on them — attending all or most of their meetings to ask for tax relief is a huge undertaking for a taxpayer.”
  • Tax Protest Group Holds Demonstration at McHenry County Treasurer’s Office — “At least three McHenry County property owners packed thousands of singles into suitcases and briefcases and hauled them to the treasurer’s office in order to pay their property taxes.”
• Google Translate is only giving me a hint of what’s going on here but it included what sounds like an hours-long sit-in to block a tollgate, followed by arrests, in India.

Today I’m very excited to announce the release of ebook versions of Ammon Hennacy’s autobiography: both his original The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist and his later, revised The Book of Ammon.

Hennacy, in keeping with his anarchist principles, released both books free from copyright protection. Honoring this decision, these new ebook versions are free of charge and in the public domain.

Click on the book covers below to go to a page where you can download these ebooks. Here are instructions for how to transfer the books to your ebook reader of choice.

Months of work have gone into these new editions: polishing up the syntax of Hennacy’s roughly-edited originals, improving the typography, adding metadata and convenient navigation, and so forth. Thanks in particular to Ken Freeland, who went over the book sentence by sentence, stubbornly fighting against Hennacy’s comma-aversion.

If you’d like a refresher about who this Ammon Hennacy character is, try these Picket Line entries:

The “One-Man Revolution” of Ammon Hennacy

I took Hennacy’s autobiography to Mexico with me and read it while camping there, and more than any other book I can remember reading in recent years, it’s changed my attitude and the way I live my life.

The One-Man Revolution (The Only One That’s Coming?)

I analyze the theory of the “one-man revolution,” in particular as it was developed by Hennacy and Thoreau.

Newspapers Interpret the Work of Ammon Hennacy

I reproduce some contemporary newspaper accounts of Hennacy’s protests and other activities.

While I wasn’t paying attention, someone scanned in many back issues of Friends Bulletin, the journal of the Pacific Yearly Meeting and Pacific Coast Association of Friends. This has allowed me another window onto the state of American war tax resistance, Quaker war tax resistance in particular, in the last half of the 20^th century.

Here, for example, from the April, 1951 issue, is an article on an early Peacemakers tax refusal pledge that includes a complete list of signatories, including several I hadn’t heard of before:

Tax Refusal

On March 15 there were among those who did not pay their Federal income taxes the following 59 persons who joined together to support a statement distributed by the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, 2013 Fifth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. Reverend Ernest Bromley is chairman of this subcommittee of Peacemakers: A.J. Muste is secretary of Peacemakers. A part of their statement is: “Feeling that war must inevitably come unless something drastic is done by individuals to show their unwillingness to go along with war-making policies of their governments, we the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal income taxes due March 15. For some of us this means that we will not pay that percentage which corresponds to the nation’s outlay for militarism; for others of us it means we will not pay even the first cent for the maintenance of a government whose main business is preparation for annihilation…”

The signers were: Ernest and Marion Bromley, Golay Rd., Gano, Sharonville, Ohio; Lindley and Emma Burton, Low Buildings, Bryn Mawr, Pa.; Horace and Ava Champney, 512 Phillips St., Yellow Springs, O.; Sara Chase, 1525 Sutter St., San Francisco, Calif.; Samuel and Clarissa Cooper, 214 Eastbourne Terr., Moorestown, N.J.; Dorothy DaPonte, Rte. 4, Box 374, Mobile, Ala.; Margaret E. Dungan, Wallingford, Penna.; Arthur Evans, Awbury, Penna.; Rebecca Winsor Evans, Radnor, Penna.; Fyke Farmer, Bellevue Dr., Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. Marion Frenyear, So. Hartford, N.Y.; Henry and Beatrice Dyer, Yellow Springs, O.; Walter Gormly, 412 N. 3^rd St., W., Mt. Vernon, Iowa; Konrad Halle, 76 Pinehurst Ave., New York 33, N.Y.

Gerald Haynes, R.R. No. 3, Freeport, Maine; Ammon Hennacy, Rte. 3, Box 227, Phoenix, Ariz.; Rev. George Houser, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Woodbridge O. Johnson, Jr., 106 W. 3^rd St., Parkville, Mo.; Sandy Katz 232 W. 29^th St., New York 1, N.Y.; Ruth C. LaBarrer, 6 Nutt Ave., Uniontown, Pa.; Sarah B. Leeds, 28 E. Main St., Moorestown, N.J.; Walter and Emily Longstreth, 140 N. 15^th St., Philadelphia 2, Pa.; Mary Bacon Mason, 31 Pleasant St., Newton Center, Mass.; Rev. Maurice F. McCrackin, 1111 Dayton St., Cincinnati 14, O.; Mary S. McDowell, 555 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn 26, N.Y.; Rev. A.J. Muste, 21 Audubon Ave., New York 32, N.Y.; Ax Nelson, 501 Benvenue, Los Altos, Calif.; Wallace and Juanita Nelson, Golay Rd., in Gano, Sharonville, O.; Ray and Jean Olds, Yellow Springs, O.; Raymond F. Olds, Monterey, Mass.; Storrs F. Olds, Monterey Rd., Great Barrington, Mass.; Jim Otsuka, Rte. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Mrs. Gordon Parker, 1401 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.; Mabel G. Parker, 1804 Wood Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo.;

James and Paula Peck, 552 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y., Miriam Pennypacker, 6420 Drexel Rd., Philadelphia 31, Pa.; Grace Rhoads, Box 90, Moorestown, N.J.; Elizabeth and Edward C.M. Richards, Nur Mahal, R.D. 3, West Chester, Pa.; Francis and Valerie Riggs, 23 Coolidge Hill Rd., Cambridge 38, Mass.; Margaret Schauffler, 100 S. Cedar St., Oberlin, O.; Robert and Marjorie Swann, R. 1, Cloverdale, Mich.; Ralph and Lila Templin, Box 125, Yellow Springs, O.; Caroline F. Urie, 128 S. Walnut St., Yellow Springs, O.; Ellen Winsor, Radnor, Pa.; Abraham and Jean Zwickel, P.O. Box 232, Pismo Beach, Calif.

And here’s an early example of a plea for a “peace tax”-style accommodation for conscientious objectors to military taxation, from the January, 1951 issue:

Tax Petition

On Saturday, December 9, in Whittier, Calif., there was combined with the annual meeting of the southern California office of the Fellowship of Reconciliation a program sponsored by the Peace Board of California Yearly Meeting. One of the results of the day is the following petition:

To the Congress of the United States of America

We the undersigned citizens of the United States of America believe:

That present tensions between the free enterprise and communist group of nations are the result of reliance upon military force as an instrument of political determination;

That the threat or use of such force can never result in a just or mutually satisfactory resolution of these tensions;

That the labor and material expended in building up military might would have and still might lead to a peaceful and mutually satisfactory solution if used instead indiscriminately to rebuild the homes and industries destroyed in the last war.

We further believe:

That the military way violates the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and the Golden Rule by which a Christian must live.

That to supply the means to induce of compel another to do that which we cannot do is equally a violation of those Commandments.

Therefore relying on our Constitutional Bill of Rights which our nation is this week honoring, and the Right of Petition thereby guaranteed, we humbly pray your august body that you pass legislation exempting all of like religious belief from income tax to be used in support of military establishment and substitute the use of that portion of our tax which is to our total tax as the amount used for military is to the national total, to that committee of the United Nations seeking a peaceful abatement of these tensions, thus giving the citizens of the United States the opportunity of paying taxes for the support of war or peace according to the dictates of their own conscience.

Some tabs that have passed through my browser in recent days:

• Two limericks I wrote, inspired by current events, were selected for the Center for a Stateless Society’s Fall 2020 poetry feature.
• Milwaukee’s WUWM profiled war tax resister Don Timmerman.
• The IRS looks unlikely to be able to comply gracefully with the terms of the Paperwork Reduction Act as it rolls out its 2021 income tax forms. This might give taxpayers some creative avenues for gumming up the system.
• On the 300^th anniversary of the birth of Quaker war tax resister John Woolman, FEE gave an overview of Woolman’s abolitionist work.
• Traffic ticket robots continue to suffer attacks, lately in France, Germany, & Italy, yet more in France, France again, and France & Italy.
• In the New York Times, economist Robert H. Frank explains how tax evasion can balloon quickly when tax enforcement falls below a tipping-point.
• Ruth Benn, at NWTRCC’s blog, takes aim at the “All or Nothing Syndrome” in which some people give up on doing war tax resistance at all because they don’t feel capable of going all-in and resisting everything.
• David S. D’Amato, at libertarianism.org pens an admiring look at the life of Christian anarchist tax resister Ammon Hennacy.
• The number of Americans declared to be renouncing their U.S. citizenship hit an all-time high this year and only three quarters into the year, too.
• Peace activists in Ireland who broke into Shannon Airport to decommission U.S. military aircraft stationed there have been found not guilty by a jury, who apparently agreed with the defense argument that they were lawfully justified in their actions.

The Catholic News Archive has a pretty good catalog of issues of the Catholic Worker. Today I’ll present transcriptions of some of the material on tax resistance from the 1951–70 span.

These include several essays by Ammon Hennacy (these formed the raw material out of which he composed his autobiography, so if you have read that, you’ll see some familiar phrases and stories), as well as other writings by and about conscientious tax resisters, including long works by Ernest Bromley, Eroseanna Robinnson, and Karl Meyer. The articles fill in some interesting details about the evolution of the American war tax resistance movement during this period.

First, Ammon Hennacy, in the January 1951 edition:

Picketing

“How are you going to get people to put up the sword? My son died in Korea. I know you didn’t kill him. God bless you,” said an elderly woman as I was picketing the post office in Phoenix, Dec. 18, in response to Truman’s “emergency” declaration. The woman had seen my big sign which read:

“Put up thy Sword.
He that taketh the Sword
Shall Perish
by the Sword”

Jesus’ words.

On the reverse of this sign was a picture of a pot colored green with a sign on it—Capitalist. Opposite was a red kettle—Communist. Underneath was the caption: “The Pot Calls the Kettle Black.” I carried my old tax refusal sign as a sandwich in front. It read:

75%
of your Income Tax
Goes for War.
I have refused
to pay Income Taxes
for Seven years.

The reverse sign hanging on my back read:

Reject War.
Use Gandhi’s
Weapon of
Non Violent
DIRECT ACTION.

I attended mass at St. Mary’s before picketing and prayed for wisdom during my day which I feared would be more disturbing than my previous marches. In another church that morning a CW priest said mass for the success of my witness for peace. I had notified the City Manager and the tax man that I would picket against the war emergency. Ginny Anderson, whose C.O. husband Rik varityped my leaflet and made the above signs, stood on one corner to hand me extra literature and be my “lookout” for trouble. Byron Bryant, Catholic anarchist, home on Christmas vacation from his duties as professor of English at a western university, stood on the other corner. There was an unusual amount of people going and coming. Ne one advised me to go back to Russia or called me a Communist. As is usual in picketing most people were afraid to be seen taking a leaflet. If one person took a leaflet all others in line took it and if the first one refused so did all the others. Negroes and Mexicans and Indians always took the leaflet and many times a Catholic Worker. My leaflet read as follows:

What’s All The Shooting About?

It’s about men who put money ahead of God. It’s about young men on both sides misled into dying and killing each other. It’s about rationing, inefficiency, dictatorship, inflation, and politicians stealing a little more than usual.

War is what happens when one nation prepares to defend itself against another nation that prepares to defend itself. World War Ⅰ and World War Ⅱ did not end war nor make the world safe for democracy.

Neither will this one.

There just isn’t any sense to war! What can we do about it? If the politicians think one person is important enough to become a soldier, a munition maker, a bond buyer, or an income tax payer, then one person is important enough to

REFUSE to become a soldier,
REFUSE to make munitions,
REFUSE to buy bonds, and to
REFUSE to pay income taxes.

War does not protect you—it will destroy you!

You cannot overcome Communism with bullets. It can be overcome by each person doing what he knows in his heart to be right. The way of Jesus, of St. Francis, of Tolstoy, and of Gandhi teaches us to love our enemy, to establish justice, to abolish exploitation, and to rely upon God rather than on politicians and governments.

If you are a Christian, why not follow Christ? You might as well die for what you believe in as for what you don’t believe in. If you must fight, fight war itself. Don’t be a traitor to humanity!

Wars will cease when men refuse to fight.

(No “Johnny come lately" to the peace movement, I served 2½ years in prison for opposing World War I, 8½ months of it in solitary confinement in Atlanta Penitentiary. And since more than three-fourths of one’s income tax goes for war purposes, I have refused to pay my income tax for more than seven years. Nor did I register for the draft in either world war. I am a Christian Anarchist, a follower of Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Gandhi, and invite your serious consideration of their examples.)

“Extra, extra, all anarchists to be shot at sunrise,” shouted the good-natured news man stationed in front of the post office as I passed by. The one who had led the fight against me in August and later became my friend had left town. When a later edition told of a bank robbery in Tucson he shouted as I passed: [“Extra, extra, Gandhi robs a bank.” (missing from this article, but included in a later reprint —♇)]

A woman looked at my sign and asked if I did not know that Jesus told Peter to sell his clothes and buy a sword. I answered: “yes, but when Peter showed him the sword which he had Jesus answered ‘that is enough,’ and when Peter used this sword to cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest Jesus did not say to cut off the other ear but said ‘put up thy sword. He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword’.” As the woman walked on she shouted back: “Jesus called for a sword so he could perform a miracle. He never said ‘put up thy sword.’ You better read your Bible.”

Somewhat different was a teen age boy who pointed to an ad of the Marines and said that meant more to him than my sign or my leaflet which he had just read. I told him that if he believed that way—and he was to leave next month—that he should do what he thought was right. He refused to take a CW although he was a Catholic and went to St. Mary’s. I hoped that he would return safely and could then confer with the priest as to the possibilities of being a pacifist Catholic. It was not his fault that he had never heard the pacifist message before. We parted in a friendly spirit.

One gruff fellow asked, “What have you got there?” I answered, “It’s either very good or very bad; depends on how you look at it; better read it and see.” He smiled and went his way reading the leaflet.

A Catholic anarchist woman walked with me for a bit and was going to come after 3 p.m. and take Ginny’s place. While Byron and I went for lunch the Catholic banker whose bank had been robbed spoke to Ginny. Although the CW says “Starve the Bankers and Feed the Poor” he reads the paper and has visited me before on the picket line. Another Catholic anarchist woman came and missed us because of the following incident.

The Cops

We had only brought along 500 leaflets and now at 3 p.m. they were nearly all distributed. Many had stopped with kind words and no one had openly insulted us. Two good natured policemen came up in a squad car and said they were having too many complaints about my picketing. They read my signs and leaflet. I told them that what I was doing was clearly subversive and that the FBI and the tax man had priority over them in my case and they ought to confer with them. One cop did so while the other asked me questions. Meanwhile people crowded around and watched my signs. I saw my tax man as he came near, and an FBI man. The police wanted to know what had been done when I had been arrested for picketing before. I told them that I had been released and had picketed 7 more days without being bothered. They conferred with headquarters and suggested that Ginny and I accompany them to the police station. Here we waited about an hour while detectives and police looked over the signs and leaflet and asked questions. I offered a CW to one police captain but he refused it saying that no Catholic paper could support such unpatriotic actions as mine. I asked him if he knew Father Dunne and he said he did. I advised him to call him up and see what he said about myself and the CW. (Later Fr. Dunne told me that the man had called him.)

Byron had phoned a Catholic attorney, friend of the CW, who spoke to Chief Clair. The latter told us we could go but I had better not picket for I might cause a riot and then charges of disorderly conduct, loitering, or other charges would be proferred against me. I told him that I had been able so far to handle individuals and crowds. He shrugged his shoulders inferring that I would be on my own. I said that I had been on my own all my life and another half hour (it was now 4:30) was not much to worry about. Before I left I told him that I would picket again on March 14^th. He replied, “That is another day.”

We went back and gave away our few remaining leaflets. Postal employees looked out of the windows and saw that the police had not stopped us. (One of the calls had come from an ultra-patriotic postal employee, although another employee to whom I had offered a leaflet early in the morning had refused it and about 2 p.m. had asked for one, and after reading it praised me for my stand.)

Ammon Hennacy, in the June 1951 edition:

Life at Hard Labor

“I don’t wear a label; I’m for all good causes,” replied the young ex-conscientious objector who, passing through Phoenix, had called the local paper to find my address, and had found me this evening as I was caretaker of Jersey cows at the sale of purebreds at the State Fair grounds. Many write to me or come to visit me who are drawn by different phases of my philosophy, so to save time I try to find out if their bias is Catholic Worker, I.W.W., pacifist, anarchist, vegetarian, life on the land, or tax refusal. This slogan of not wearing a label is fine, I told my new friend, for a young person in search of the truth, but at his age of 31 he ought to begin to have ideas that led to some definite belief and action. I admitted that for the average person of bourgeois tendencies to look at the Republican and Democratic parties and to think that wearing their labels was meaningless was a sign of progress. Like the housewife in the days when women did the baking at home who put the initials “T.M.” on the top crust of one pie, meaning “Tis Mince”; and the initials “T.M.” on another pie crust, meaning “Taint Mince,” labels surely do not have any meaning.

The thought behind my friend’s no label attitude seemed to be a desire to approach as many people as possible, on the street, in buses, at dances, etc., and to make friends and influence people by not scaring them with such words as pacifist or anarchist, but to rattle half-truths and half criticisms as a build up for “all good causes” and as a monkey wrench toward the status quo. This is a mass approach; mine has been to get the individual in this mass, if possible, to think. I remember forty years ago when well meaning friends told me that to use the word “Socialist” was defeating my purpose, and that some word such as “Progressive" that did not have such ill omen should be used. My reply then was that whatever word was used to designate a belief that word would always have a bad meaning to those who were being denounced. Today the word Socialist only means collaboration with war and has lost all its class conscious meaning. Even many timid anarchists whom I know prefer the word “Libertarian” for fear they will be called bomb throwers. I go on the principle of never being on the defensive, so when I am called a bomb throwing anarchist I tell the accuser that the government is the biggest bomb thrower with its A and H bombs.

I told my young friend that he could always get a crowd to applaud mild criticism of war and for the lowering of taxes and raising of wages, but that this same crowd would really follow the blazing torch of super demagogues who spoke of “the great native intelligence of the common man,” and who never meant to catch the bird but were adept in the case of putting salt on its tail. I pointed out that spiritual power was the strongest force in the world and that beside it all the two penny political victories did not mean a thing. Too many of us dissipate our energies by being “for all good causes” and never develop or use this spiritual power. And then we wonder why we become tired radicals and why warmongers rule the world. We refuse to use our strongest weapon, but at the ballot box where we are invariably outnumbered a million to one, we choose our weakest weapon.

As I was helping a farmer polish the horns of his cows he said he had heard that I was an educated man and implied wonderment as to my being a day laborer. I explained my plan of working at day work on farms in order that no withholding tax for war should be taken from my pay. He wanted to know more about these ideas and for the next hour he heard the words anarchism and pacifism undiluted by “all good causes” and departed with the current CW and my promise to mail him future copies. In contrast another farmer wanted me to go back to Russia if I didn’t like this country.

The cows for sale were listed in a catalogue with pedigrees and a record of their production of butter fat. The manager of the sale was discussing with one farmer about certain unregistered and non pedigreed cows which are called “grades,” and many times these cows give more and richer milk than the purebred stock. But there is no guarantee that a heifer from such a cow will be a good producer; more than likely a throwback of scrub stock.

Culls

In Albuquerque I worked for two men who specialized in extra fancy chickens. At one place I gathered eggs each hour from a trap nest, and marked the number of the chicken, taken from a leg band, on the egg she had just laid, and also in the record book. Those who did not produce a great number of eggs were thus culled out. “Why feed the culls?” my boss said. Each day a dozen or more hens would die of “blow-outs”; which meant that the very efficient egg producing machine had overstepped itself. The mediocre hens lived longer and did not blow-out. At a dairy in Albuquerque where I worked, my job was to go to any of the eight corrals and in the mud and manure drive the next string of cows to the barn to be milked. Nearly every night a calf would be born in this wet and cold discomfort and my job was to carry it to a warm stall after the milking was done. Very few of these calves, coming from cows that were “grades,” died. Later I worked for a multi-millionaire who had highly priced purebreds. My job was to keep a fire in a stove in the barn at night and to feed these calves egg with specially prepared milk. Yet the death rate among these purebreds made my boss groan. Tuberculosis and Bangs Disease (premature birth of calves) seems also to be more prevalent among the inbred purebreds. Super efficient bankers jump out of windows when red ink instead of black ink records their business schemes. Efficient assembly line workers go berserk and often a supposedly steady bus driver leaves his route and drives right on to Florida to escape his treadmill of efficiency. At its best our system is efficient only in turning out quantity and at its worst it is trying to bomb us to death. Very expensive garden tools these days are held together only by the paint on the handle and are of very inferior design and workmanship.

When I was a social worker in Milwaukee in the thirties we were often derided by well to do Republicans for “coddling the culls” when we helped the poor. And from time to time I have heard radicals who were especially scientific and eugenic minded look upon the ideals of Jesus and Gandhi as perpetuating the life of the unfit and the misfit. Although I helped in the formation of the CW House of Hospitality in Milwaukee in 1937 I will admit that my interest in the CW was limited then to its pacifist and anarchist slant and that I felt this coddling of the bums was not so important. Since, however, my study of Tolstoy and acquaintance with Peter and Dorothy, and my ten years as an actual laborer, rather than a radical theorist with a good job, I have come to view this whole matter in different light. The conversation about grades and purebreds that night and my meeting with the young rattle-brain who was “for all good causes” helped me to clarify my ideas along this line.

In this age of the assembly line, of super-markets and super advertising schemes; and of Service Clubs to put a little holy oil of goodness on this theft, the illusion persists that this is a scientific and efficient age. Yes, we produce, but for what? If somehow we do have bums, poor housing, ill-health, new diseases, and poverty these can only be attended to by Community Funds, Heart, Cancer, and Give a Dime Campaigns; pensions and social security payments by the state. Charity Incorporated has no room for Houses of Hospitality where there is no record of aid given or even the name of the recipient. “They won’t work if you keep on feeding them! They sell the clothing you give them around the corner for booze!” say the well fed parasites who also neither work nor help the poor except perhaps in a very dim and distant contribution to a fund, much of which goes for overhead. The idea of these professional do-gooders is to “give coals and treacle” to the poor, as Shaw said, and to keep them out of sight in order that the rich may not be reminded of the filth and degradation which is the foundation of their wealth. Good social workers are told not to “become emotionally involved” with their clients. Again, the mechanistic approach.

The CW breaks through all this sham. Instead of living in fine apartments to which we can repair after witnessing the other side of the tracks, we who accept Lady Poverty have given up worldly goods, insurance, and much of our privacy. This cull in the breadline; this drunk or prostitute; this maladjusted and perhaps lazy man—all of these may not be improved a bit by our help. Ours is not a success story; the Way of the Cross was also a failure. He at least might have led a rebellion against the Roman State instead of dying on the Cross and forgiving His enemies.

Where are we to look for those who are going to bear the Cross today? It is true that St. Francis, Tolstoy, Malatesta, Kropotkin and Gandhi left their inheritance and choosing voluntary poverty were able to accomplish much. We also print the word and deliver the lecture to the purebreds. We make no mistake in thinking that because a man is ragged that he is holy, for if he is avaricious he is as much a slave to money as is the rich man. (My banker friend Brophy jokingly told me that he would have to write a defense of the rich for the CW. I told him that he would end up contradicting himself and that the best defense of the rich could be obtained by giving a couple of drinks to a poor man on the street.) The Old Pioneer [Lin Orme, Jr.] tells of stopping at a stand in the desert recently and being charged 15¢ for a soft drink. “This is 300% profit for you” he told the proprietor. “I’m not in business for my health” said this greedy and seedy defender of the capitalist system. The Old Pioneer also tells of 25¢ being charged for one common needle in the old days when everything coming into Phoenix had to be hauled from Maricopa Wells station beyond South Mountain. “The freight is what costs” was the alibi of the greedy merchant. Neither do we consider the product of the purebreds. Tommy Manville, the dear old DAR ladies, the useless royalty of Europe, and our own inbred Duponts and intellectuals who have nearly without exception prostituted their talents toward the making of bombs. There is some hope that among the bums we may find a John the Baptist to carry on the work when we have gone, but there is little hope from politicians whose integrity has already been purchased and from the super educated to whom a doctors degree, a deep freeze and a television set mean more than fighting for a lost cause.

How will we then come to a sensible way of life? Without war work we would have a terrible depression. Hardly a person but whom will gladly earn this blood money! Hardly a person but whom will pay taxes for more bombs! The rich will not give up their riches and the poor will not give up their pensions; (the young will not help the aged; preparing to “keep up with the Jones’.”) The froth at the top has little right to scorn the scum at the bottom; meanwhile we who do the work of the world support them both. The Old Pioneer remarked recently that Jefferson’s plan of not having great wealth inherited was the right idea. This reminds me of the old Russian proverb: “Do not lay up your money for your son, for if he is any good he can make his own money; and if he is not any good he will lose it.” So in our writing, our picketing, our speaking, our help to the poor in Houses of Hospitality, we must need show our sincerity by our voluntary poverty. No one would think of bribing us for by our lives we have established the fact that we need nothing. We need not fritter our time by building up “all good causes,” which accept the tyranny of the state. When they are ready for it the rich, the bourgeois intellectual, the bum, and even the politician may have an awakening of conscience because of the uncompromising seeds of Christian Anarchism which we are sowing. To all of these we make our appeal and from all it is not impossible to gain a few adherents for that time “when each shall give according to his ability and receive according to his need.” For what does all our bookkeeping mean but a denial of this ideal?

Johnny Olson came back from a sojourn in Texas. In a splurge of affluence he bought five mouse traps and set them around our house. He caught the whole population which consisted of three mice. While I as a pacifist vegetarian would not cause the death of Brother Mouse yet as an anarchist I have no right to deny Johnny the right to catch them… The old mules, belonging to a neighbor, which I have used for plowing the garden these five years are now muleburger. They were not killed in time for the new government regulation which allows equine meat in weiners.

My friend Joe Craigmyle, nonregistrant, and one-cylinder vegetarian and anarchist, runs a fruit stand and at times I have helped him pick oranges and grapefruit in groves where he has purchased the crop. Even in the month of May when the new fruit is on the trees the last year’s crop is still sweet and juicy. As with apples the fewer fruit on the tree the larger. There is not generally time to thin out the fruit but many drop off before maturity. An orange or grapefruit may look fine but if it is light in weight it is pithy and is discarded right there at the tree. The load is graded as to size when we return to the stand. Coming home from work the other night in Joe’s truck we were discussing the idea of responsibility and of my reference in a recent CW article to the woman who called on every one else to remove the dead cat from the road. I remarked that I had seen a dead cat on the lateral that Sunday morning but being in a hurry to catch a bus did not practice my anarchist idea of responsibility in removing it. However, in the evening upon my return it was still there despite hundreds of cars and dozens of people on the road that day, so I took care of it. Just then we both saw to the right of us a two-by-four with four spikes sticking up. I said that this would soon give someone some trouble. By that time we were a quarter of a mile beyond it. “I’ll back up and you can throw it in the ditch,” said Joe. In my mind, then, Joe, who has not been much of a man of action, rose from a one-cylinder to a two-cylinder anarchist.

Molokons

Recently I went to the federal court as a young Molokon who lives a few miles down the lateral had been out on $5,000 bail for refusing to report to the army. Dozens of other young Molokons in the vicinity had been given CO status. Whether the draft board lost his CO questionnaire or thought they ought to get hardboiled I do not know. I had phoned a local lawyer who had handled Craigmyle’s refusal to register case and he promised to come to court but did not do so. His excuse being that he couldn’t do anything about it. Judge Ling set Oct. 7^th as date for a trial and the Molokon will get a lawyer from Los Angeles. The Old Pioneer tells of in 1917 when he went to the court commissioner with about fifteen Molokons who had refused to register. Two of them worked for him and he arranged for bail. They asked him if they could sing and pray. The Old Pioneer doubted if they could but asked the commissioner about it. “Hell no, this is a court,” was the answer. “You’d better let them sing and pray and not look foolish for they’re going to do it whether you give permission or not,” said the Old Pioneer to the commissioner. So they sang and prayed. Now they register and do not sing or pray in court.

Today, May 15^th, I received a notice I owe $2.15 interest and penalty on my $192 tax bill for 1951 and unless paid within ten days my property and wages will be attached. This is an old run-a-round and I am not worrying. Today I ate the first Irish potatoes this year from our garden. The persimmon tree which the Old Pioneer’s daughter-in-law gave me last winter now bears fruit. Watermelon, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, peppers and onions are doing fine. I am irrigating tonight and soon will come irrigating maize.

An excerpt from “Poverty is to Care and Not to Care” by Dorothy Day, from the April 1953 issue:

Our whole modern economy is based on preparation for war and that is one of the great modern arguments for poverty. If the comfort one has gained has resulted in the death of thousands in Korea and other parts of the world, then that comfort will be have to be atoned for. The argument now is that there is no civilian population, that all are involved in the war (misnamed defense) effort. If you work in a textile mill making cloth, or in a factory making dungarees or blankets, it is still tied up with war. If one raises food or irrigates to raise food, one may be feeding troops or liberating others to serve as troops. If you ride a bus you are paying taxes. Whatever you buy is taxed so you are supporting the state in the war which is “the health of the state.”

The argument may go this way, but we still can choose what seems to us the most honorable occupations, which have to do with human needs. We can choose the kind of work most necessary to do, and if possible where there is no withholding tax for war. Ammon Hennacy in working by the day, at hard farm labor, has not paid income tax for years. One can so cut down one’s standard of living that no income tax is required; families with many children pay no income tax. One can protest in many ways this contribution to the atom and hydrogen bomb. If one owns property the government then can take a lien on it. If one has money in the bank, the government can confiscate it. So truly such protest as this calls for the most profound poverty and a voluntary doing without property.

All this is by way of saying that poverty is no longer voluntary, no longer a counsel, but something which is laid upon us by necessity.

Ammon Hennacy, in the October 1953 issue:

Hiroshima Fast

“I got a letter from one of my sons in Korea this morning. My three other boys will go to jail before they go to another foolish war. God bless you for your sign about war; that’s just what it is: murder,” said a woman to me as I was on my 8-day picketing and fasting. She referred to my sign:

DRAW THE LINE AT MURDER
REFUSE TO GO TO WAR.

In contrast a man went by with his wife and said: “Drop dead!”

“Can’t do it, Mister,” I replied.

Rik had done a beautiful job on my leaflet, printed in the July/Aug. CW, on blue paper. I was nearly out of Feb. CW’s containing my tax statement so did not give out any unless people asked for them.

Now for the first time in my fasting I went to Mass and Communion each morning. I had worked until after dark for several nights in order to finish work that I had planned, and up until Wednesday noon. I had eaten my last full meal Tuesday noon and only toast bread until I commenced my fast at 4 p.m. Wednesday. I had written the following note, enclosing my blue leaflet, to 165 of the clergy in and around Phoenix. And as usual I had notified the police, the FBI, and the tax man, of my picketing, telling them that what I was doing was clearly subversive, but no worse than it ever was. “Please pray for the success of my fasting and picketing in this the 10^th year of my open refusal to pay income taxes for war, if you can in conscience do so. My attitude may appear too radical but I feel that something as radical as the Sermon on the Mount is needed in this wicked world. I too believe in a personal religion but if in matters of social concern I act just as unbelievers act, then I am a fraud. If you have time stop and say hello to me as I fast and picket in front of the old YMCA.”

I had sent my leaflet air mail to the Mayor of Hiroshima and to Manalil Gandhi in Phoenix, South Africa. I received but one answer which was from a leading Methodist minister, who did not agree with my ideas but who praised my stand. I knew beforehand of the approval of the half dozen priests who appreciated the CW. As usual the Associated Press sent a favorable factual message on the wire about my activities and the local radios reported it each day, one announcer even reading my entire leaflet. But the local dailies, per their policy, refused to “dignify” themselves by mentioning my name.

I started the fast weighing 142 pounds. The scales also poured forth a slip with the dubious information that read, “Don’t always follow the line of least resistance.” The first day I lost 2 pounds and the second day which was exceptionally hot I lost 5 pounds. I slept that night for 14 hours and awoke refreshed.

One friend who was an usher in a Catholic Church and also a veteran, had always been cordial to the CW, but he felt that the plan of the American Legion to take the profit out of war and make the big shots who make war go to war was a better method than my tax refusal and picketing. I told him that I was winning my battle against the government each day and while this was only a step forward, his way was no more than conversation about it. I said that this method stood as much a chance of succeeding as a butcher putting vegetarian signs in his window. That those who make money and fame out of war would never stop. It was up to us to refuse to take part in war.

Fasting

Now on the third day I was weak but never a bit hungry. Several people on park benches nearby told me of a young man who had gone on a 62 day fast. They said he ate his lunch at the park. That day I introduced myself to him and found he had suffered from arthritis, stomach ulcers and chronic nightmare. He went to my friend Dr. Shelton in San Antonio and after 40 days of nothing but water to drink, all of the accumulated toxic poisons had been washed out of his body and he commenced to get stronger. He was entirely cured at the end of 62 days. Of the 25,000 people taking fasts there in 30 years only one person had endured a longer fast; that being 68 days. A priest in Phoenix had taken a 30 day fast there and had been cured. My friend had lost 57 pounds but had gained it all back again. I visited with him each noon and envied his vegetarian diet of pears and grapes. He had been raised a Catholic but believed in no religion at present. He was interested in my ideas and felt he would never go to war but he did not feel that it was his job to propagandize about it.

Other friends I met told me of a man in Phoenix whom I knew who had been given up by the doctors because of tuberculosis of the kidneys. He had read in some book that in ancient Egypt those with such trouble had laid in the hot sands. Egypt was too far away so he came to Arizona and for 6 months literally lived in the sand. He was entirely cured. He is a strict vegetarian these past 20 years and in good health.

The Mormon wife of a friend of mine told me of her grandfather who in the old days had several wives. At the age of 86 he discovered that he had diabetes. He fasted 68 days at home and cured himself and lived 9 more years in good health. But Mormons are used to disciplining themselves so his fast was not as difficult for him as it would be for the regular flabby American.

My other sign read: “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” HIROSHIMA WAS A-BOMBED AUGUST 6. 1945, JUST 8 YEARS AGO TODAY. As penance I am Fasting these 8 days IN MEMORIAM.

This was enclosed with a black border. The six story Veteran’s Bureau was across the street and many men in uniform went by. One soldier asked me what kind of lies I was peddling. I told him I was peddling no lies, but the right side of a very important question; that he had better read it and see what it was all about. He read it as he walked along. Another soldier did the same. Generally soldiers refuse to take the leaflet or tear it up.

Near quitting time on the next to last day a young fellow whose appearance marked him as of the nervous intellectual type, and not a rowdy, stopped and asked me if this was my sign that I was carrying. I told him that it was. He said that I had better call the police for he was going to take the sign and tear it up and dance on it for no Communist could carry such a sign in his town. I told him that I was not a Communist; that I was a Catholic and an anarchist. He replied that he was a Catholic. I asked him what parish he belonged to and it was mine also. I inquired if he had been at mass the last Sunday and if he noticed me selling CW’s in front of the church. He had been to last mass and had not noticed me. I told him that if he had looked closer he would have noticed a candle burning before the Blessed Mother for the success of my intention in this picketing and fasting. He didn’t believe it. I asked his name and he told me but would not give me his address. I said I did not believe in the police and if he got any pleasure out of tearing signs he could do so. He took them and tore them off the standard and danced on them there on the sidewalk. He refused to take a copy of my leaflet or of the CW, muttering “Communist, Communist.” I advised him to see our parish priest and get straight on the matter of the CW. He promised to do so. I then called the priest and told him of what had just happened. He did not remember the name of my patriotic friend.

I wanted to see the AP man on another matter so went to the newspaper office. Here I saw my friend with my signs telling a reporter about the Communist he had found. I recognized the reporter from pictures I had seen of him but I had never met him. The reporter said that I was not a Communist for they all knew of my picketing activities for years. The patriotic Catholic said he was a veteran from Korea and repeated that no one could carry such signs in his town. The reporter said he was a veteran of two wars and he had fought for just such things as the freedom of Hennacy to carry his signs and picket; that if the young man did not like my signs he could do as the pickets in front of the White House in the Rosenberg case did: get other signs and picket the pickets. The reporter also said that I was standing up for the freedom which was true Americanism, and although he disagreed with my ideas, that the patriotic young man was acting like a Communist or a Fascist in denying me freedom. He picked up the signs saying, “Here Hennacy take your signs; they are yours, not his.” The young man said he would take them away from me. I replied that I was too tired carrying them anyway and would simply give out my leaflets the next day as Rik was away and I had no cardboard to make new signs. The young man said he would come down next day and tear up any signs that I had. The reporter told him that he was breaking the law and he was lucky he opposed such a person as Hennacy who would not take him to court. I left him still arguing with the reporter. The AP carried this story and it was reported over the radio. Some of the newspaper men wanted me to prefer charges against my assailant to make a more exciting story. I refused to do so, explaining my Gandhian principle of non-violent resistance to evil and that as an anarchist I could take no recourse to law under any circumstances. The next day the young man did not show up. I phoned my priest and he had not come around to ask about the CW.

To Maryfarm

All during my picketing the employees of the tax office, including the three Catholic tax men whose job it had been to get my tax money, were cordial. There was not a mean look from anyone in that office. This was the first time this had happened. Several friends came and walked around the line with me. Only about a dozen people tore up my leaflet. Many stopped and cordially approved of my picketing. About half a dozen grunted disapproval. There was not as much traffic as there had been other years at the postoffice. I had not met the new head of the tax office so as I finished my fast I introduced myself to Col. Wood and expressed my appreciation of the cordial attitude of his coworkers toward my picketing. He asked me the difference between a Communist and an Anarchist and seemed to understand my explanation.

Ginny and her boys came up and broke the fast with me around 3:30 on the last day as we all drank juices at the juice bar. I left for New York on the 4 p.m. bus. I had bought more fruit than I could eat but I nibbled at it on the way. In Prescott, I phoned the former head of the tax bureau in Phoenix and talked to his wife, Mrs. Stuart, Democratic National Committeewoman. They own the Prescott “Courier.” She was pleasant as usual and told me that they had a story on my fast that day. Soon I was with Platt and Barbara Cline in Flagstaff and now I could eat mashed potatoes and other soft food. Platt made a recording of my experiences. He had a fine Third Mesa basket which I took to New York for Dorothy. The next evening I spent with Hopi friends in Winslow and by Saturday I was visiting with Msgr. Garcia in Albuquerque and my good friend Rev. Soker of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church there. Reagans had moved to Arkansas and the letter I had sent to Al and Catherine Reser must have gone astray or they had moved, for I couldn’t find them. By Sunday morning I was in Sante Fe welcomed by Peter and Florence van Dresser. They had a meeting for me that afternoon. I did not have time to go to El Rito to see their Organic House heated by solar heat and with windmill for power. I will stop there on my way back when I visit my daughter Carmen. Carmen is with her sister Sharon for a retreat at Mt. Shasta. I visited the nearby Trappist monastery and spoke to two monks who are CW fans and had lunch with the nursing sisters where I had spoken last year.

As I left Tuesday evening I was pleased to see a good factual writeup on the front page of the daily New Mexican. This paper goes to nearby Los Alamos, so perhaps for the first time those who make the bomb could learn of opposition to it. A social worker told me that there were more maladjusted children from the homes of Los Alamos workers than from any other strata of people from the state. The gloom of this blood money thus defiles the next generation. A few days with my family in Cleveland and I arrived at Maryfarm, with Father Casey. I understood more this year than last and read some Catholic literature that I should have read long ago. It is too soon to evaluate the effect of this spiritual retreat upon me. Just now I am at Dave Dellinger’s at Glen Gardner, N.J., proof-reading my autobiography.

Some excerpts from an Ammon Hennacy article in the April 1954 edition:

…Wally Nelson came to take me to Sharonville to spend the night with tax-refusers Ernest and Marion Bromley. We disagree on my frankness to the authorities but we have the same aim.

The afternoon and night was most pleasant as I became acquainted with Fred Schulder, age 79, who had written in the anarchist paper Liberty in the 1880’s before I was born. He is not religious in the accepted sense, but takes the CW. His son Horace Champney took me to Brookville to an area meeting of Peacemakers where Ralph Templin, Clay Marks, and others whom I knew held forth in a discussion about tax refusal and the picketing which they would do in Cincinnati this March.

Some excerpts from an Ammon Hennacy article in the May 1954 edition:

Max Sandin, old time tax refuser, and one of we seven veterans of jails in World War Ⅰ who also refused to register in World War Ⅱ renewed old time memories with me.

Jim Ward had asked me in Chicago what live meant to me now that I was a Catholic and I had listed the seven things which seemed to me now in 1954 the most important, and I talked this over with Father Casey. Here they are: (1) Voluntary poverty. (2) The Sermon on the Mount. (3) Pacifism, with its absolutist meaning as evidenced in tax refusal. (4) The Mass. (5) To Work and not be a parasite. (6) Anarchism. (7) Vegetarianism, which includes no tobacco, alcohol or medicine. This is for myself and not meant for others. Each has to go at his own speed and in his own way.

We drove to Grasston to see old man Paul Marquardt and found him reading his Bible. He told us of the time when his children had been sent home from school with a card telling the family to save fat for the war. Marquardt immediately withdrew the children from the school saying that each morning he prayed “give us this day our daily bread,” and he was not going to save bread or fat or anything for a war. He told also of the priest in nearby Pine City, who, in instructing his confirmation class said, “Have faith like the Marquardts.” To have this honor in your home town is indeed an honor.

From the March 1956 edition:

Individual Income Tax: War’s Chief Supporter.

Of the income of the Federal Government 48% comes from individual income taxes which we pay; 30% comes from corporation taxes; 15% comes from excise taxes; and 7% other sources

By Ernest Bromley

The Administration’s proposed budget, recently announced, asks for a billion dollar increase for “new weapons of unprecedented strategic and tactical importance” in order to give this nation “the greatest military power in its peacetime history.” Diagrams of the proposed income and expenditures emphasize two things: (1) The chief source of federal revenue is the individual income tax, (2) The chief national expenditure is military (including bomb stockpiling and new terror weapons). Both things have been true for these eighteen years, but one is always struck anew with each announcement of them.

So minute a portion of the tax money is being spent for any socially acceptable activity that it seems to be only an illusion to consider that one’s Federal taxes go to anything constructive. (Actually, the only way one can support the better enterprises is to bypass the Internal Revenue Bureau completely and find ways to contribute to these causes directly.)

The war build-up touches the individual much more directly and intimately at the income tax point than it does anywhere else. Almost two-thirds of every tax dollar goes to build H-Bombs, Guided Missiles, Germ Warfare, Conscript Armies, etc.—thirty-five times as much as for schools, roads, and health combined. (Can there be any doubt about what the Federal government’s major activity has come to be?) It is almost unthinkable that more people (especially more pacifists) have not declined to bolster this monstrous drive to destruction; that they have not at this major point stopped the flow of their funds through the book-keeping which takes most of what they pay and channels it into what they abhor; that they have not by-passed the present tax set-up and given their valuable, held-back funds to something worthy of support. Will we wake up too late?

The first, and major, encumbrance to keeping one’s tax money and using it for something decent is the withholding set-up. Trying to be a tax refuser in a withholding job is a good deal like being a pacifist in the army. In each case you have already placed yourself well within the system; and in each case the very first step is to take yourself out of the system. The real, creative possibilities on these fronts begin to open up only after this step of separation has been taken. The fact that such separations are difficult to carry out makes them no less imperative. Because the withholding situation presents problems, is there no advice that can be given to the average working person about the business of non-cooperating with income tax payments? I would advise: Stop paying income taxes (whether you file a form to this effect or not).

For some people this will, of course, mean that they will have to leave their present jobs and take employment that is not affected by withholding. Here we sometimes tend to lose sight of the fact that there is probably no type of socially useful work (individual or organizational) being done under the withholding tax set-up which cannot also be done outside it. And, too, this raises the important question of what social usefulness really is. Can “socially useful” firms or organizations remain socially useful to any real degree when their one rigid requirement is that the first portion of a worker’s earnings be set aside for war? Can a “socially useful” person remain socially useful in his job to any real degree when, in order to do with one hand the work of building a better society, he has first to do with the other hand the work of destroying it (like a church constructing a brothel)? Conscientious workers in such employment may reason after a while, as some have, that the effect of this operation is that they are working in a munitions factory part of the time.

Men go to prison rather than join the armed forces and support conscription. Should not the people with these principles (especially the people not subject to any draft) face the imperative of sacrificing a little economic security (or convenience), especially when not facing it means continuing to pay substantial sums of money for terrifying weapons and conscript armies?

---

Ernest Bromley lives in Sharonville, Ohio, with his wife, Marian and family. He keeps his earnings below the amount where any tax has to be paid. Around 1942 he refused, when a Methodist minister in North Carolina, to purchase an automobile tag (not a license), for his car and did three months in jail. His wife worked for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the leading pacifist group in this country, and quit her job rather than pay the withholding tax for war which this and all other peace organizations take from their employees. He has been head of the tax refusal committee of Peacemakers. He supplements his income by an apiary in his garden. I have visited there several times and respect the effort which he and his wife are making to live up to their ideals. They live a few miles from the Grail farm at Loveland, Ohio. The Jehovah Witnesses and the Catholic Worker are two groups where all work for their keep and no salaries—and no taxes—are paid. This basis of voluntary poverty could be approximated by others if they wished to make the necessary adjustment between faith and works and try to live in community.—A.H.

Excerpts from an article by Ammon Hennacy in the March 1956 issue:

For the first time since 1943 when the withholding tax began I have not earned enough money to owe the tax man anything. I only made $310 lecturing and as my Autobiography is not copyrighted and I want no royalties from it, the sales go to pay for the printing and whatever is left over will go to the CW. There is no status [sic] of limitations on income taxes so I owe for 12 years. I told the tax man that I would not be foolish enough to tell him where I was going to lecture so he could be there and get the money. There is practically nothing that I have to buy as all of us here at the CW work for our keep. However, if I was to purchase anything in a store and give the cashier a $5 bill for a dollar purchase the tax man, if he were present, could garnishee the change from the cashier right then without any legal proceeding.

In this idea of tax refusal there are ways by which pacifists have to act according to their web of circumstances. Some, like Ernest Bromley, limit their earnings to the amount they are allowed because of dependents and have no tax to pay. Others like Rev. George Hauser, because of being ordained in the clergy, do not have a withholding tax taken from their pay, but at the end of the year make a statement of their earnings. Then the amount of tax is taken by garnishee from the pay with added penalties. There are others who have an income from securities and do not work for wages and who keep their money in a bank where the tax man comes and gets it.

There are millions of people who dislike paying taxes and who may write a letter to the government about it, but they pay. There are others like Governor Lee of Utah who put a certain amount of the tax due which comes from income other than wages in a bank and dare the tax man to sue to get it. But the government always will evade a moral issue, so it is likely that the Governor’s money will be taken the same as others who keep money in banks.

I plan to picket the tax man here in New York City for one day, Friday, April 13^th, and then fast and picket the 11 days from Aug. 6^th through the 16^th in penance for the bomb we dropped at Hiroshima 11 years ago. The T men have interrogated me and what they want to do about my tax arrears is up to them. With more H bomb tests scheduled for the spring by politicians and militarists it is increasingly the responsibility of the individual pacifist to think and to act about being a part of this terrible destruction planned by those who will soon be asking for votes because they have “kept us out of war.”

An excerpt from an Ammon Hennacy article in the May 1956 issue:

The coming atomic tests now scheduled for May 8 and the air raid drill for July 20 are a challenge to all Christians. We intend to demonstrate against this “pinch of incense on the altar to Caesar.” This with our non payment of income taxes for war and a refusal to be a part of the war system is positive evidence that we are trying to understand and practice the Sermon on the Mount.

The argument that the idealist hears from the opportunist is that we are not practical. I submit that our program of the one-man-revolution is the most practical of all. Others who believe in bullets and ballots must gain a majority before they can begin to practice their beliefs and thus postpone indefinitely anything but conversation about their views. We do not need to wait upon others for we have seceded about 90% from this exploitative system and are already practicing our ideals.

An editorial from Dorothy Day the following month reflected on the hydrogen bomb test among other things, and included this note:

Those who can take such stringent courses as tax refusal can give their services rather than be put on payrolls and beg their way to supply their daily needs if they can find agencies willing to work with them on these terms. Or they can embrace voluntary poverty and manual labor as a life of penance and mortification.

The harvest is great and the laborers are few. No fear of unemployment in this field.

An unsigned book review in the April 1957 issue included this:

These publications [Thomas Merton’s The Silent Life and Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality] will be of special interest to novices in the religious life or those contemplating such a move but laymen who read them should keep in mind that while there is much contained in them from which any Christian can benefit still the “techniques” of attaining union with God proper to the monk are not always the same for those “in the world.” Anyone who has lived under the Benedictine rule, and all the monastic orders of the Western world have felt the impact of Benedict’s spirit and legislation, knows the position of the concept of obedience in his thought. It is just about the most important single element and no one can be a good monk unless he is willing to give up his own will and like Jesus become “obedient unto death,” and the whole monastic observance is organized to serve this end. But the layman, living as he does most often in a society where “the prince of this world” and his spirit prevail, has the duty to cultivate, rather, the virtue of rebellion in order to be obedient to God. It is in rebellion too that we can imitate St. Benedict who fled the corrupt Roman society of his day, whose only concern was “to please God alone.” The monastic life is a judgement on the life of the “world” and in its light the “world” stands condemned. In this way the monk practices the virtue of rebellion. For those in the “world” there must be rebellion also if they are not to be counted “of it.” They must rebel against materialism by embracing voluntary poverty and giving all they possess over and above the absolute necessities to those who have not the necessities, they must rebel against war and its causes by conscientious objection and tax refusal, they must combat that selfish middle class individualism and fear of giving of self by embracing community in one form or another. Rebellion is the first step in any attempt at conforming to Christ; it begins at baptism when the neophyte formally renounces Satan—et omnibus operibus ejus.

More from Ammon Hennacy, in the December 1957 issue:

Richard Fichter, whose article appears in this issue, had been dismissed from the Methodist ministry in Pennsylvania because of his energetic anti-war and tax refusal stand. I had never met him but he had bought several of my books and distributed the CW and had attended various picketing demonstrations. He and his wife have three small children and live on a farm with twenty cows to attend to. All radicals have to make the decision when to follow Caesar and when to follow Christ. 75,000 followers of Gandhi went to prison and someone besides the British government took care of their families. Many bourgeois minded pacifists thought it was wrong for a CO to go to CPS camp or prison and leave a family behind. Richard wrote to many papers about the evils of atomic war and little attention was paid to his views. So one Sunday he came to New York City and in the midst of a nation wide broadcast on television he jumped to the stage and shouted his message. He thought that this would gain attention and the papers would print his views in full. Instead he was locked up in Bellevue for mental observation. I visited him there and met his wife and brother and two Methodist ministers who were his friends. Later his brother and Parents came to visit us at the CW from their home in Ohio. When the government comes to a pacifist and says you must register for the draft, pay taxes for war, sign a loyalty oath, or when a Congressional Committee wants you to tell on others, then if you do not follow the best you know and refuse absolutely, you are following less than you know and will live to regret your timidity. But to leave farm and family to try to tell your message to those who do not want to hear it is not wise and does not make a witness with the dignity which no doubt inspired Richard in the lives of Thoreau and Gandhi. A radical who has faith knows like Thoreau that “one on the side of God is a majority.” And when his neighbors think he is queer and out of step he can reply like Thoreau that he “is listening to a different drummer.” He is not frustrated if all are against him. He does not need the applause of the multitude for he will be content when “two or three are gathered together.”

Ammon Hennacy, in the March 1958 issue:

Tax Refusal

Leland Olds of Yellow Springs, Ohio has refused to pay income taxes and as a result his house worth $9,000 has been sold by the government for the less than $200 taxes due. He can regain the property within a year by paying the tax with interest. This action, together with the sale of a car belonging to Walter Gormly and of Arthur Emery of Iowa, are the only cases I know of where the government has taken property of tax refusers. At times they have garnisheed wages and taken money from bank accounts. They got $5 from a farmer I was working for in Arizona who paid it out of his own pocket rather than take it from my wage, and the tax man also took my picketing sign saying he would sell it to the highest bidder. I never heard of anyone buying it. I still owe taxes for 12 years and will picket the tax office here on Aug. 6 for 13 days unless I am in jail on the air raid drill. Then I would fast in jail.

Karl Meyer, in the April 1960 issue:

Stepping Up the Agitation

Dear Bob or Dorothy or whoever is holding things down there while we are all out making angry and urgent faces at the giants of the impersonalist order.

I was very encouraged to receive the March issue and to read your letter to the California legislature, even as I was preparing to step up the agitation in support [of] Rose Robinson and tax refusal.

On March 10 I began to hand out a new leaflet outside the Federal Building which has been the focus of our protest. After outlining developments in the case. I wrote, “There are some of us who believe, as she does, that it is wrong to pay taxes for war. We have refused as she refused, to cooperate with the Internal Revenue Service in the collection of taxes. And, beyond this, we encourage everyone to do the same. If she deserves to be in prison we deserve to be there too. Therefore I ask from the judge, the United States Attorney’s office, the Internal Revenue Service and all taxpayers and supporters of military preparations, a share in the judgment against her. We have said very simply that your preparations for nuclear war, and therefore your war taxation, are criminal beyond any measure of crime that man has known before. And you have said that our dissent from the idea and action of military preparedness is criminal. The question of which is right is urgent for the future of all men. We have shown a readiness to ratify the truth of our conviction at the risk of imprisonment and hardship. The integrity of justice asks either that Rose Robinson be released, or that all who share her stand be imprisoned with her. That is why I ask the officials and the people for a decision in my case consistent with their decision in hers. How can one person be imprisoned for taking a stand, while others who take the same stand and, what is more, advocate and promote it in the marketplace are left free? I ask the officials and the people involved to release Rose Robinson, but if they will not do that, I ask them to prosecute me for refusing to cooperate with Internal Revenue Service and for advocating that all people do the same.”

The third person who came out and took this leaflet was Judge Robson. I had already mailed him a copy with a covering letter in which I said, “…By presenting this nuclear issue as an issue of imprisonment and freedom, we approach by an analogy the core of what it really is: that is, an issue of life and death for all of us… I hope therefore that you will not regard this leaflet distribution and this request for a share in the judgment against Rose Robinson as something impertinent, but as an attempt to enunciate forcefully the terms of a public discussion of a crucial issue, as well as to bear witness to a very strong conviction that it is wrong to participate in modern war in any way.”

We encouraged Rose by our vigil, visits and letters. In court she thanked us for that. I feel responsible to every one man insurrection to make it a two-man insurrection, so that it may become a three-man insurrection and finally a revolution of enough men.

It is at the critical moment when we recognize our responsibility to one another that we realize our responsibility to mankind and to God. That is what Jesus told us. We see war coming on, bearing down on us, a visible monument to an immensity of sin. Our voices have not reflected the horror we have seen. Our voices have not challenged the supremacy of crime in the actions of men. We were glad enough if a government preparing for World War Ⅲ, was yet benevolent in this decade until war comes, glad enough if our protest could be free from suffering. We are still accomplices because we have whispered at the moment when we should have shouted. We ought to throw up the challenge of Tolstoi and Thoreau, to keep all just men in jail or give up war and slavery.

Here we are making faces at the giants of the impersonalist order, but what we do not forget is that a face turned in urgent desperation to them is a face turned in hope to God. Our work is primarily a prayer.

Early last week two men were standing on the step of the Federal Building watching me as I passed my leaflets and commenting to each other. I recognized one of them. It was deputy U.S. Marshal Wheeler, the man who put the chains on me last summer at Mead, Nebraska. I stepped up to him and said, “Hello. Mr. Wheeler. Will you take a leaflet?” “Yes, Karl,” he said, “I’ll take that. I see that you are still here passing them out.” And so I was, and I realized that the children of this world are too wise to be consistent. Last summer he put me in chains for standing on a grass covered knoll near a missile base. Last month they gave Rose Robinson twelve long months and a long day. Who can say what they will do tomorrow when I walk up the steps and into the building and have a try at handing the leaflet to taxpayers lined up outside the Federal Internal Revenue office.

In Christ,
Karl Meyer
Chicago Catholic Worker

An announcement in the July 1960 issue:

Prayer, Fasting, and Tax Refusal

Ammon Hennacy will picket the office of Internal Revenue at Varick and West Houston Streets in New York City from August 6^th through the 20^th and will fast at this time as a penance for our dropping the bomb at Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, and for our continued atomic activities. He has openly refused to pay income taxes during 12 years while working in the fields in the Southwest, or while lecturing, as 83% of the income tax goes for war. He will picket from 9 to 5 on weekdays. Readers in New York are invited to keep him company, and anyone sympathetic can help by praying and fasting according to his capacity.

The same issue also included an article from Eroseanna Robinson, borrowed from The Peacemaker:

Rose Robinson Tells of Her Arrest and Prison Experiences

It was January 26^th, a cold grey Tuesday, and I got off the city bus in a hurry because I was late for work. My arms were straining with the packages I’d bought downtown. They were things for the Play Club mostly, and food. I hadn’t had any lunch, except a couple of cashews and some fudge nibbled at on the bus. I was quick-stepping toward Bethlehem Community Center compelled by two nagging realizations. I was late and I was hungry. I had a conference with my supervisor set for two o’clock. It was already ten after. Well, I’d just have to talk and eat at the same time. I stopped, late as I was, at the corner store and bought some buttermilk. Actually, I already had an abundance of food — vegetable soup, swiss cheese sandwich and what not. But for a change, I had a little extra money and for the rest of that year, certainly, I was going to be earning a little more than usual. For the first time in my seven years of tax refusal, I wouldn’t have to budget so closely. Eating was as good a way as any to celebrate. I was vexed with myself to be so busy. First the conference. Then group preparation. Then the Play Club children’s time. I’d have to do a lot of phoning after that for the parents meeting that night. I took the hall steps quickly when I got inside the building and rushed into the front office, I said “Hi” to the secretary. She had a peculiar look on her face. My supervisor and the girl workers were also in the office. I spoke to them but everybody kept looking at me strangely and nobody said anything. “What’s wrong with all of you?” I asked. “I’m not that late. It’s only 2:15.” Then the secretary said, “Rose, there’s somebody to see you.” She was nodding across the hall toward the library. Somebody to see me. I didn’t want to see anybody with all I had to do. I wanted to put down my arm-racking bundles and have my conference and eat. The fact is that I never had that conference and I didn’t eat for 115 days because a short, stocky, authoritative man in a grey uniform came toward me out of the library. Behind him was a man I knew. He’d come to my home several times and to Bethlehem Center only a week before. He was Mr. D.L. Turner, deputy collector for the Internal Revenue Service. The first man said, “Erozee-yanna Robinson?” and I said correctly “Eroseanna,” and he snapped his right hand open sidewise showing his badge. “I have a warrant for your arrest," he said. “Come with me.” For eight months the government, through its agents, had hammered link upon link several visits by the deputy collector, registered letters, a subpoena, a certified court order, telephone calls, throughout, to my home and work, a call to my sister, Adrienne, at her work, a visit to my job — until at last, they had reached the handcuff-end of the chain, putting my wrists into them so tightly that they cut, and lugging my body, in deliberately ungainly fashion, away to jail.

My body was lugged and dragged around many times after that because I refused to walk to jail or trial or any place authorized by the courts. And throughout the whole of my incarceration, the practices upon which government power pivots came into sharp focus. One is the coercion of the individual to unquestioningly submit to authority imposed by the government, the other is the deliberate misrepresentation of any individual who might take exception to such authority. This whole pattern is disguised as the democratic process’ and, in recent years, has frequently been labeled ‘freedom’ and ‘truth’. Actually, respect for the right of the individual to examine policies of government — which certainly affect us all — is a myth. And taking exception to policy, as in my own case — even though that exception be a denouncement of violence, waste, psychological intimidation, misrepresentation of truth, and preparation for wholesale destruction — can constitute a felony.

When the individual is willing to be fodder for such an organ, it is partly out of desire for reward but largely to escape punishment. And submission to such authority is no guarantee of either. So, when the deputy marshal told me he was there to arrest me, I told him that was his affair and was of no concern to me, and started up the 2^nd floor stairs to my office.

I recognized that I was going to be forcibly involved and I was alert to a point of high tension. But still, I knew I was faced with a choice of being arrested or of arresting myself. I knew then that my arrest was to be his affair, since he had not the conscience to do otherwise, and later, that or the ten or so others who answered his telephone call for help when I refused to go with him voluntarily. I wasn’t going to contribute my body for incarceration anymore than I would contribute federal income taxes for militarization. This would be giving sanction to the government’s inflicting punishment upon the individual. But just as militarization is evil, so too is the punitive institution.

The government has prepared a glossy brochure about Women’s Federal Prison at Alderson, West Virginia. They call their penal process ‘rehabilitation’! This is a calculated misuse of the term. They proceed due south of rehabilitation. Such downgrading of human beings — infantile treatment of the women, the frequent apathy toward the physical ailments of inmates, the absurd restrictions — is anything but preparation for constructive living. This was equally true of the Cook County Jail.

This maltreatment of prisoners would be bad enough if done out of ignorance. But attempts at concealment of the facts by all levels of government personnel, with restraint of information and with lies, reveals the hypocritical state of such authority.

I’ve learned, since my release from Alderson, that a number of lies in regard to me and treatment of me were given to the Press by the wardens of both the County Jail and the prison and by the U.S. marshal. I will recount some in a later issue, but let me state a few of these now and set the facts in order:

Rose was arrested and taken to the Clerk’s office of the county jail.

I wasn’t taken to any office, but was carried upstairs and dumped on a bed in the incorrigible cell of the “Hole.” The Hole is usually reserved for narcotics addicts who are breaking the habit. It was overheated because addicts in that condition are always cold. They vomited all day and all night and in between they talked in the lewdest profanity. The Hole is a four part unit — 1 larger room about 9′×12′ and 3 tiny cells, removed from the outer door, about 4′×8′. The grey speckled floors were stone, the clay colored walls, iron. The larger section had four iron beds with mattresses and bedding. A bed in each of the little cells took up half the width. There’s a seatless toilet in each. The two outer ones had windows that opened (but that were kept closed because the addicts complained of being cold). Only one of these boasted a sink. Two cell doors remained open usually, while the one in which I was put was locked. In that cell, the window was nearly opaque with dirt and with heavy screening, and iron bars were on the outside. It could not be opened. Under it, going full blast always, was a radiator. The only way I could get relief from the heat, and a breath of cool air, was by lying flat on the floor on my stomach and inhaling of the stream that flowed under the hall door from several feet away. The iron bed had a wafer-thin mattress on it and was so short that my head and feet stuck out simultaneously beyond its borders. I was given a clean sheet and a blanket. To get some sleep at night, I tilted the bed up on one end out of the way and put the mattress on the floor. I slept fitfully with my head resting on stone, under the toilet. Whenever a toilet in an adjacent cell was flushed, the substance would back up into the others. This kept me jumping up throughout the night, reflushing the one over my head. The radiator boiled away, where my feet were, all night long. I didn’t wash for 3½ days because I was told I couldn’t use the facilities without begging. Frequently the matron put food for me on the floor.

Rose proceeded to take off her clothes and to remain thus in the cell.

I was forcibly undressed by two matrons after refusing to give up my own clothes. Then I was manually searched all over and forced into a striped cotton dress that was ripped in two places. All my clothes — even shoes — were taken from me. The next morning I was told repeatedly that I would be left in jail to rot unless I got dressed and walked out to go to court. I refused. About an hour later, without explanation, my clothes were given back to me. Another hour passed, and when I refused to walk out, I was dragged from the cell, up the steps, into a wheelchair and hauled off to court. When I returned, the nurse had trouble removing my clothes by herself, so she didn’t bother to take any more than my skirt. I fashioned another by doubling a sheet and wrapping it around my middle. I refused to put on the striped dress she’d provided. On the fifth day, after I’d been dragged from my prayers and put in isolation cell of the so-called hospital (a dingy white-painted dormitory), the nurse, who proved to be sympathetic and courteous, offered me a nightgown which I accepted. I wore this to bed and whenever I washed my own clothes.

Rose took exercises unclad.

Silly. I always wore the above-mentioned.

Rose, therefore, had to jump into bed when the warden and a reporter from the Daily News came to interview her. She told her story, said the reporter, who “quoted” her in the News.

How reluctant I’ll be to believe anything printed in the daily papers from now on. No reporter was ever admitted to quarters where I was confined. And such quotes are out-and-out lies. Moreover, I neither saw nor talked to the warden until the last day when, under his supervision, I was dragged from the cell and carted to the U.S. hospital.

Rose left the cell to go downstairs and see a boyfriend, but she wouldn’t go to see her parents.

During my incarceration I walked out of the immediate confines 3 times — once at Alderson when I helped carry a sick inmate to the hospital car, once to my release and one other time, at the Cook County Jail. And I went to talk to Rev. Ernest Bromley, editor of The Peacemaker. At first I hesitated. And then I decided that too few people knew my views on tax refusal and the like, so this was to me a fine chance to express these views through the newspaper. I then resumed my plan to see no one unless they were admitted to the area where I was confined. My mother was admitted and I welcomed her.

The other inmates were sneaking Rose candy bars during her fast. The warden, head matron, priest and others had proof.

This’s the first time in my experience that fantasy has become proof. I ate nothing throughout my whole time in jail and nobody crammed anything down my throat. After my removal to the U.S. hospital I ate nothing. I drank no water the first 3½ days of jail, very little — spasmodically — in-between, and none the last 9 days before force-feeding. I did not wish to crave things that could be withheld from me, because emotional control meant freedom.

Rose enjoyed being fed through a tube in her nose. She didn’t struggle.

At Alderson, I didn’t struggle. I gave voice protest and continued whatever I was doing. In the beginning at the U.S. hospital in Chicago, I had struggled, nonviolently against four men and two women. It took them 20 minutes to turn me over and stretch me out and another 20 minutes to get me tied, hand and foot to the bed, in a straitjacket. I couldn’t do much moving in that state, but they further secured me with a restraining blanket made of bulky canvas. Then they tightened a rope across my chest. It was in the mid-eighties in that room and no air was stirring. I had trouble breathing. I was miserable. But they had an easy time force-feeding me. By the next morning I was aching all over. One of the doctors came in and asked me how I felt. I felt terrible, I said. Would I struggle if he let me out? I’d thought about that overnight. How easy it was for them to force food into me—how uncomfortable it was for me. Besides this, I was 37 lbs. below normal weight and very weak. If I could keep them from having power over me, struggle I would. But I knew I couldn’t keep up even the kind of effort I’d made the night before, and neither did I have the control yet to remain lying in one position for a long period of time. So, I told the doctor, no. Did I want to be untied? Yes. So, he walked away and left me like that for several hours more. I stayed, thus restricted, for nearly 24 hours. The night before, when they inserted the tube, the other doctor had jammed it into my nose, letting it stop at my throat. I tried desperately to get my breath but I kept choking. I could see the doctor’s face, looking like a great wax mask—with expensive eyes—magnified enormously. He watched me as though I were a specimen under glass. I gagged three times and he watched me. “Alright now, breathe,” he said this steadily, “through your mouth”. Of course I did, and, in one movement, he jammed the tube down to my stomach. Blood bubbled from my nose and mouth. It continued for hours, after that. My nose and throat were inflamed and sore for 4 days. My nose remained sore and ran constantly, and I sneezed again and again throughout 12 days of force-feeding. The doctor at Anderson was considerate and gentle in this. He used a smaller tube and put it down by degrees. There was very little irritation. My nose did run for weeks though, and always when I talked. I sneezed, because the tube was left there all the time. I plugged up the nostril with cotton to keep the thing from wriggling. I slept with it and otherwise lived with it for 76 days and nights. That made a total of 88 days of force-feeding.

Rose was being well-fed, gaining much weight, and was getting 3000 calories per day.

For nine days at Alderson, I was force-fed 2 pints of water with 5% sugar and 2 pints of a mixture of egg, molasses, sugar, salt, water, evaporated milk and orange juice. After that the mixture was doubled and the sugar-water eliminated. When I was removed to solitary confinement, the mixture was cut 25%. Then it was cut a second time. I was carried to solitary 25 lbs. underweight. Taking measurement of myself revealed I hadn’t gained a pound. Limited exercise wore me out. To keep from losing, frequently I’d spend long hours in bed. Hospital aides (inmates) told me the mixture contained very little protein and an abnormally high amount of molasses, salt and orange juice. Long before they told me this I’d started drinking lots of water because I was feeling irritation from the acidity. I was drinking as much as 15 glasses of water each day. Sometimes I felt a little feverish and my face would swell. That was when the prison staff would compliment me on how nice and fat I was getting. Only when friends came to the prison, asking after my welfare, did the aides tell me the protein had been increased noticeably but that the molasses and salt and orange juice remained high. Again, before they told me this, I’d already noticed my measurements were increasing normally. When I was released, I was 10 lbs. underweight.

Rose liked the feeding.

I was forced-fed in a ragged pattern. The aides and nurses came any time between sun-up and 9:30 at night. I overcame feelings of weakness usually through prayer, and sometimes, as I said before, by just climbing into bed. Food was left as an enticement throughout most of my confinement. An aide who felt sorry for me told the head nurse I wasn’t getting enough nourishment. “That’s impossible.” said the nurse. After that they left a glassful of the stuff on the dresser. Often I was spattered with the stuff, whenever the tube came off the syringe. So, too, were walls, ceiling, floor, draperies bed, bedding — everything in the cell. And usually it was left where it landed. I made a practice of going on with whatever I was doing. At first, the nurses carried or sat me into position for force-feeding. Sometimes the aides would lurk, pitcher and syringe in hand, waiting for me to halt so that they could pour the stuff down easily. After I was moved to solitary, the aides were ultimately told to walk away if I didn’t sit down right away, so sometimes my stomach was left empty. One day I accidentally got a hole in the tube. The doctor refused to let the aides cut it, and he decided that neither did he have the time to leave the hospital to change it. I wasn’t fed for 25 hours.

Rose was given considerable freedom of movement.

When this was said, I was in solitary confinement in the maximum security cottage, one of only two with bars on the windows and with locked outer doors. I remained there for 27 straight days in full confinement. The last 31 days, the cell door was opened from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.

And so the lies went and there are more — most skillful — all paid for with federal income tax. Lies. The Official order of the prison day, and at Alderson, the green grass grew all around. For the grounds were lovely to look at — lovely its trees, its broad lawns and gay spring flowers, lovely the birds singing outside the cottages where wires crawled through the walls like snakes, so that every word that every inmate spoke day or night was listened to and taken down on a tape recorder. There weren’t any secrets. Next time, I’ll tell about the alleged psychiatric and medical examinations at Alderson and about the marshal’s predictions about what the inmates would do to me when they found out I wouldn’t work. Also, I’ll tell about a time of weakness. One morning, for a moment, I was in a turmoil. Daily discipline, including prayer exercises, helped me to regain strength.

More from Karl Meyer, in the November 1960 issue (excerpts):

Since September 1958 I have had a small house of hospitality, five rooms where I have lived with nine or ten people who were sick, poor, orphans, old, travelers or needy of other kinds.

Since December 1958 I have sought some way to work for the support of my responsibilities to this house and not pay federal income taxes for the support of militarism.

In March 1960 I quit my job where taxes were withheld and resolved not to pay withholding tax anymore and went to jail for 54 days in solidarity with tax refuser Eroseanna Robinson, who had just been imprisoned here in Chicago.

After my release I began a search for work without taxes. I experimented with self-employment in odd jobs and in tutoring. I tried to persuade employers to pay for my work in the form of a direct donation to St. Stephens House, without withholding tax. I received an opinion from a lawyer that Internal Revenue Service had ruled that this type of arrangement with a charitable organization was legal for hospitals, so I applied at a number of hospitals, but was turned down. I looked for part time work paid for in cash. Nothing worked, particularly me.

Being under the firm impression that only one’s relatives could be claimed as dependents for the purpose of withholding exemptions, I complained bitterly to my pacifist brethren that, in fact, I had nine dependents but was unable to claim them for non-tax purposes. Not one of these experts on tax resistance set me straight.

On October 25, after five months of frustration, I checked on the Internal Revenue Service definition of dependents. This is how it reads: “To qualify as your dependent… a person (a) must receive more than one-half of his support from you for the year, and (b) must-have less than $600 gross income during the year… and (c) must not be claimed as an exemption by such person[’]s husband or wife, and (and) must be a citizen or resident of the United States… and (e) must (1) have your home as his principal residence and be a member of your household for the entire year, or (2) be related to you…”

I counted four people in my household, in addition to myself, whom I could claim for dependency exemptions. I discovered that all along I might have been earning $3000 per year without a cent of withholding tax. I could have kicked myself all the way down Clark St.

We need more small houses of hospitality “to shelter the homeless at a personal sacrifice” instead of delivering them to the City and the State to be supported by taxes, on the street or in the jails. We believe that housing the unemployed, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, caring for the sick and the aged and, last of all, visiting the prisoners are parts of a total Gospel of Peace. If we do these things, we can also starve the tax collector, by feeding the poor. We can build “a new society in the shell of the old,” a City of God, and swing wide its gates to let the King, and his ambassadors, enter in triumph.

Not all of the poor who come to our door come in the embassy of God. Several nights ago one of the men came with two drop-cloths and a gallon of turpentine “from the job” and asked permission to leave them here and stay the night himself, and I, in all innocence, agreed to this. The next morning, two painters arrived, with a policeman, demanding the drop-cloths, which had been stolen from them and traced to our house. I turned over the drop-cloths, but the policeman also demanded that I turn over the thief. When I declined to do this, he said that he would take me to the station and book me for possession of stolen property. The painters agreed to sign a complaint against me, because, they said, not only had the cloths been stolen, but also, some paint had been spilt and now they would have to pay for it out of their own pockets. However, perhaps if I would reimburse them for the spilt paint, they would find it in their hearts to forget about the complaint. How much paint was lost, asked the policeman? Ten dollars worth. Now, half a gallon of paint may have been spilt, but how could anyone have spilt ten dollars worth? Still I had to take their word for it or they would surely have taken me to the station and signed the complaint, so in the end I paid and they went away satisfied with their take, all of which goes to prove the old moral: one good theft deserves another, or no use taking a fall over spilt paint. After the danger had passed, I found the thief under a bed in the farthest corner of the back room. He said he was sorry. And I said he sure as hell should be. And after a little of that he left.

I did reap an unexpected reward for my ordeal however, for that morning the most shiftless character in the house, out of an excess of sympathy and generosity, offered to press my trousers for me.

I might also say that some of the “rich” even come to our door as ambassadors of God. There is one man who comes from time to time and leaves things that we need (clothing, furnishings or household items) inside the door. He just opens the door, puts them inside and goes away. For almost two years he has been doing this. He used to come perhaps once a month, but recently he has taken to coming much more frequently. For a long time we knew nothing about him because we never saw him come, but several times recently, when the door was locked, he knocked and handed in his gifts when the door was opened and then left very quickly. I have always respected his anonymity, because I remember from my childhood the story of the shoemaker and the elves: the elves used to come at night and make shoes for the shoemaker, but one night he tried to catch them at their work and they disappeared and never returned again. (After the story I told above, let me hasten to say that there is always a ticket with the things that this man brings so that I know they are not stolen.)

During the voter registration period, one man from the neighborhood came in and asked, “Is this a registration office?” And I looked at the crucifix on the wall and the picture of Ammon Hennacy and said, “No, it isn’t.” The Democratic precinct worker for our building came in to see if we were registered, and she told me that I am going to vote under the name of Geoffrey Thornton, because he is registered but she can’t find him anywhere in the building. She needs votes but this is one she won’t get. Three young Catholic workers have said they may join me in the work here soon. If they do, we will be well staffed to carry out the Green Revolution program I outlined in my last letter.

The next article concerns Laurence Hislam, a war tax resister who is new to me. It comes from the March 1962 issue:

Catholic Pacifist Jailed in England Father of Five Refuses Civil Defense Tax

By Robert Steed

My friend Laurie Hislam, who resembles Ammon Hennacy in many ways, was recently sentenced to a term in jail far refusing to pay his Civil Defense rates. He served two months last year for taking part in the civil disobedience campaigns of the Committee of 100 which protested the British involvement in the nuclear arms race.

I was in court with Laurie in Octeber of 1960 when he first appeared on this charge. When he put on bis best suit, cranked up his car (a huge, old London taxi), which finally had to be pushed down a hill to get it started, and drove to town where other friends were waiting in court I was expecting fireworks but the magistrate put a damper on the proceedings and said he would allow no speechmaking. He said a note would be made of the tax refusal, and went on to the next hearing. Laurie said the court would probably send someone around to the house and want to take away a table or a few chairs and auction them off for the amount owed (the former owner having the privilege of bidding for them too) and debated whether any kind of resistance should be offered and if so what kind. When I left a few days later nothing had happened and a month after that when we met at the Spode House PAX Conference it was still the same. And now more than a year later I have heard in a letter from Laurie’s wife, Winifred, that he is serving time for the offense.

Lest I give the impression that Laurie became a radical in middle-age I should also say that he declined to serve in World War Ⅱ and instead of showing up for his physical went off on a tour of England and Scotland selling anarchist literature for Freedom Press. When he got back to London after a year on the road the police picked him up but the army doctors found something wrong with one of his feet and rejected him.

In the intervening years he has become a Catholic, gotten married and moved to the Cottswolds in the west of England near Gloucester where he and his wife built their house with their own hands and are raising five beautiful daughters. The whole family is vegetarian. Here is the text of Laurie’s leaflet explaining his position which was distributed in the Stroud area:

Why I Am In Jail

I have just commenced serving a term of imprisonment imposed by the Stroud (Glos.) Magistrates, and I believe it is important that it should be clearly understood by the members of the community on whose behalf the Magistrates have officially acted, why this has happened.

For the past two years I have refused to pay the portion of the Local Rate (roughly 1 penny in the pound) allocated to “Civil Defense.” My reasons are as follows:

1. There is not even any pretense of preparation to protect the people of Stroud in the event of war.
2. According to Government spokesmen, there is no known means of protecting the population against nuclear attack.
3. Even if “Civil Defense” could be effective (which I do not believe possible) I would still feel bound to refuse to pay for it, since “Civil Defense” is an essential part of the preparation for a war in which millions of innocent people would be brutally killed or maimed.
4. I believe that those who support “Civil Defense” have been deceived by the Government into believing that they are helping to save life and assist the injured, whereas in fact by their acceptance of the need for “Civil Defense,” they have given their tacit agreement (in certain circumstances) to the waging of nuclear war and its unimaginably terrible suffering.
5. Worst of all is the hypocrisy attached to “Western” propaganda, which says, in effect, the Russians are the atheistic barbarians and we are good people trying to protect Christianity and democracy, whereas, in fact we and the U.S.A. are prepared to collaborate with the Russians in the ultimate blasphemy of destroying the whole of creation.

A so-called policy of which this is the logical result can never be justified, and I appeal to everyone who reads this statement to seriously consider his or her position. Examine your conscience and ask yourself the question: Am I willing to lend my support, either actively or (as the majority, unfortunately do) by my silence, to the preparation for nuclear war? (Remembering that “Civil Defense" is part of the insidious mental conditioning for war-acceptance.)

If we give our silent agreement to Lord Home’s recent boast of our ability to annihilate all Russia’s cities (even in revenge) we have committed murder in our hearts. You can no longer remain silent and still hope to retain your integrity. I may be forcibly silenced for a time, but I ask you to speak out fearlessly against the crime which is being prepared by the world’s leaders. Above all—speak out for the children and babies of the world who rely upon you for protection. You cannot give protection by preparing for war — a war in which there can be no defense — only revengeful slaughter on both sides.

Laurence Hislam,
Brownshill,
Stroud, Glos.

This next comes from the September 1963 issue:

Tax Refusal

Handbook on Nonpayment of War Taxes; published by the Peacemakers’ Movement; 35 cents; 52 pages; available from the Peacemakers (1208 Sylvan Ave., Cincinnati 41, Ohio)

Reviewed by James Forest.

For all those who have ever felt a deeply responsive chord struck upon reading or re-reading the story of 10 just men saving the city, this book on conscientious tax-refusal should be meaningful.

The book is divided into a number of sections: there is a good collection of fairly brief quotations by a wide range of tax-refusers, a chapter on the philosophy and history of this particular form of conscientious objection, considerable material concerning the inherent legalities/illegalities, descriptions of the basic forms of refusal (surprising variety) and, most important, a substantial collection of “personal experience” sketches. The reader might find it useful to see a tightened version of the major contents:

Philosophy

Nonviolence begins with personal disarmament: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hate, let me sow love.” It is not a partial disarmament. At least that isn’t the goal. It is a serious and concerted effort to shred the rhinoceros hide which makes us either witting or unwitting enemies to other men. (I recently had the opportunity to hear a young woman describe the effect her first long term contact and participation in a nonviolent project — in this case the Walk to Cuba — had on her. She spoke of the sensation of peeling off layer upon layer of dead skin, of feeling the wind for the first time.) What is it the pacifist says? I refuse to be your enemy. I refuse to be your enemy so much that I will fight for you, fight with you, fight with love to see justice done — even at personal risk. The Great Commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you.” I cannot be free until you are free. I cannot be comfortable or safe or satisfied until these things are common property.

It is not necessary to quote here statistics offered in the book on where taxes go. We all know. A good deal of it goes to the arms race in all its continuing facets. I don’t think it would make much difference if it were only a little. There is nothing more moral in contributing a nickel to a child’s death than in giving a dollar for the cause. But the plain fact is that more than half that money goes for that purpose, and we do give it.

Said one woman, Miriam Nicholas, deciding this was one contribution she would be unable to make, “…the government expects me to help pay for weapons that could destroy all life on this earth.” “This I must not give,” said Wendal Bull, finishing a similar statement. “You may be imprisoned, but that is sometimes more honorable,” Ross Anderson stated. “If I can’t stop other people’s killing.” Milton Mayer decided, “I must stop my own.”

What Is the Law?

The legal aspects of tax refusal are complicated and inevitably vary from case to case. It is, of course, a punishable offense to refuse all or part of one’s taxes. It is also an offense not to submit the required documentation. Any noncooperation with the Internal Revenue Service is illegal. The penalty can be as high as a $10,000 and a year in jail plus the cost of prosecution.

In practice, for reasons which one can easily understand, no such sentence is ever meted out. In fact few tax-refusers ever find themselves in front of a judge at all. It is interesting to draw some quick statistics from the 41 cases detailed in the handbook (there is some slight overlapping): Four lost their jobs (two were Protestant ministers). Six were jailed, average sentence served being about three months. (Those jailed, it should be noted, refused any alternatives: put no money in the bank so that it couldn’t be seized, held no volatile property in their own names, etc.) Nine had property or funds seized. (The government, when it desires to seize anything, prefers funds; attempts to garnish salaries or draw from cheeking and savings accounts are most common. As a last resort it may seize property for public auction, such as a house.) 29 received no punishment and had no property or funds seized. That is not to say there was no intimidation, that the going was easy. It wasn’t. But the simple truth is, or at least has been, that there are still relatively few tax collectors, district attorneys or judges who wish to play a modern version of Pilate’s role. We can be glad there remain many (perhaps even a growing number) who do not feel justice is served by stale coercion of conscience.

Forms of Refusal

There are, and this I didn’t realize, several distinct forms of tax-refusal, each with its own sub-variations. The first and probably most well known is absolute nonpayment.

Absolute Refusal

To practice absolute nonpayment it is necessary either to earn an income too low to be taxable (Citizens and residents, under 65, can figure as nontaxable any income which is below the number of members in the family times $600. Thus a family of three would be tax exempt if it made less than $1,800 in the course of a year), or, if is is impossible or philosophically repugnant, to earn a taxable income where one is not subjected to withholding tax, such as by having one’s own business or forming one with others of similar concern. Ammon Hennacy, though he owes $1,300 in back taxes, is for the present in the first group, earning less than a taxable income. Karl Meyer was in the latter group until he discovered he could count all the members of St. Stephen’s house of hospitality as dependents (as long as they had lived in the hospice from the beginning of the year and received half or more of their subsistence from him). Persons interested in both tax refusal and running a small house of hospitality might find this an ideal solution.

Partial Refusal

For persons who are having taxes withheld from their incomes there is the opportunity of refusing to pay the balance due, or part of it.

Others, whether they have taxes withheld from their earnings or not, sometimes choose to pay only the percentage which they feel is used for peaceful purposes — 30% to 40%. UNESCO seems to be one of the frequent recipients of the balance.

A third form of partial refusal includes persons such as Franklin Zahn, who annually withholds a “token ten dollars.” These believe that the minimum one can do is to refuse a symbolic sum. “Ten dollars is large enough to be noticed,” Zahn says, “but small enough to avoid excessive penalty.” The “token ten,” he suggests, could be given to some constructive project and the IRS so notified.

(The book also relates Zahn’s refusal, beginning in 1951, to pay that portion of his telephone bill which was a federal tax, at the time 49¢ monthly. He explained this action to the telephone company, saying “My refusal to pay this tax is part of a larger rejection of all participation in defense activities.” Before long his telephone was removed. His resultant letter of explanation to friends, an apology, is a document worth reading: “Three times I have refused the monthly telephone war tax of 49¢ (15%) and now [garbled text omitted ―♇] is no more, as of November 14, 1951. I regret much of the inconvenience of this fails on you, and offer my apologies to you and others who thus suffer from my act of conscience. When irked, please consider: 1. Somewhere in the world there may be one less bullet killing a human being. 2. The $3.74 saved monthly will be used for CARE parcels. 3. If it actually is the narrow choice I feel it to be, you would prefer me to be connected with my highest conscience than with a mere gadget.”)

Conclusion

Finishing the handbook, I am reminded of a brief epigram of James Baldwin contained in The Fire Next Time. “To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.” How we admire action and commitment! St. Francis strikes off to the Holy Land with his nonviolent “Army of Love,” an army, as Clement of Alexandria would call it, “which sheds no blood.” And we applaud this, one of the few moments of sanctity which occurred during all the Crusades, one of the few a Christian can recall with pride. St. Maximillian refuses to serve in the military and shortly dies under the executioner’s axe. The Cure d’Area, as a young man, changes his name and flees to the mountains rather than be conscripted. Before death he recalls this, saying be never felt his conscience burdened by it. And on and on. Thank God the list is endless. No editorializing is needed on lives like these. Somehow they change the question. It is no longer Should I be a tax-refuser? It becomes How can I be anything else?

It is fitting to end this discussion with a quotation the book provides from Milton Mayer:

“The power to stop war is not in my hands, and never will be. The only power that is in my hands is to stop killing my fellowmen. A thousand, or two thousand, or fifty thousand people refusing to go on killing via the tax method may save the old way of life; fewer than that were required to save Sodom. But if a new way of life is the condition of the revolution to which we are called, then we must find it in our hearts, and when we do that we will stop killing our fellowmen and, best of all, stop justifying our doing it. If I can’t stop other people’s killing, I must still stop my own.”

Another book review from the November 1963 issue:

The Cold War and the Income Tax

The Cold War and the Income Tax, by Edmond Wilson; Farrar, Straus and Company; 1968; 118 pp.; $2.95.

Reviewed by James Forest.

Edmund Wilson’s most recent book is a small volume which carries the subtitle “A Protest.” Indeed it is that: a forceful, plain-spoken broadside at the cold war and the related income tax, and though it is not without blemish, it ought to provide at least an awakening for a great many.

What Mr. Wilson has done is to tell a simple, and at times homely, tale that began with carelessness (or more likely unadmitted and ingrained Yankee independence) and concluded with a monumental decision, at least for our timid age: a modified refusal to pay income taxes.

Much of the book is devoted to a detailed account of the original carelessness, fascinating in the sense that a common experience of almost everyone is seen in the sharp relief of Mr. Wilson’s prose — the utterly frustrating encounters with the rule-book bureaucrats, who seem always the same whether it is a hospital clinic or the army or a tax office that houses their working hours, or no matter what their ideology may be.

In Mr. Wilson’s case, his long encounter was precipitated by almost, dedicated indifference to taxes.

Until 1946 taxes were no problem to him, as they were automatically withheld by his various employers. But after that year he began to devote himself to fulltime independent writing, and of course there was no withholding. Six years went by, no taxes were paid, no returns filed, and though he tells us he occasionally thought about the eventual necessity of paying up, he was unaware of the astounding severity the law applies for even minor neglect. When at last he spoke to a lawyer friend, saying he might need some assistance in preparing his returns, the lawyer was flabbergasted and immediately urged Mr. Wilson to establish citizenship outside the United States before it was too late. But even the author of To the Finland Station can be naive, and he couldn’t believe it would be more convenient to change countries than negotiate a debt. He insisted on settlement, gave the lawyer a check and told him to begin his work. “You’re a brave man,” his lawyer told him.

The Years That Followed

It would be of little value to outline the years that followed 1955, when the arduous work began. He must often have wished he had followed his friend’s advice and tucked himself away in a friendlier economy, where if he were paying taxes, at least it wouldn’t be for war. It took Mr. Wilson five years and two lawyers to settle the case.

At some unspecified point, Mr. Wilson’s instinctual annoyance emerged into a time of probing the meaning of his experience, the inadequacies of the collection system and, most important, the uses the money was being put to. His discoveries are carefully outlined—translating the noble sounding verbiage of the Administration’s Budget in Brief (which says in part, “The Federal Government’s final responsibility is to help safeguard the peace and security of the free world. This is our largest category of expenditures… Expenditures devoted to national security… space programs… and the continuing cost of past wars amount to 79% of the administrative budget…”), translating this into the facts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of napalm and phosphorus bombs, of disease, warfare. The latter two are of particular interest, because, (despite protest demonstrations at Ft. Detrick, Md., the U.S. research-development center for chemical and biological weapons) there is little popularisation of these methods of warfare, though it is admitted that napalm bombs are being used in Vietnam — as they have been widely used elsewhere — and there is evidence that disease weapons are also being employed. For instance, water supplies in South Vietnam have been poisoned in areas where both civilians and Vietcong rebels use the same well, killing some Vletcong, but also many non-combatants who were merely thirsty.

About napalm: It is, Mr. Wilson writes, “a kind of jelly saturated with gasoline, which is ignited by the bursting of the bomb. Its great advantage is that it sticks to whatever it touches… Its effect on human beings has been described by a BBC correspondent in Korea: ‘In front of us a curious figure was standing a little crouched, legs straddled, arms held out from his sides. He had no eyes, and the whole of his body, nearly all of which was visible through tatters of burned rags, was covered with a hard black crust speckled with yellow pus. A Korean woman by his side began to speak, and the interpreter said: “He has to stand, sir, cannot sit or lie.” He had to stand because he was no longer covered with skin…’ ” The BBC correspondent goes on to explain, however, that he would rather be killed by napalm than phosphorus or flame throwers.

Toward Inspired Derangement

The material on disease warfare (often termed bacteriological, biological or chemical) is on much the same level, though not so grossly horrifying, as we do not see it translated into eye witness accounts. Involved is the same degradation of any value system. For as one military man, Admiral Mahan, puts it, every advance in the use of lethal weapons, beginning with firearms, has been denounced as cruel. He goes on to point out that shells with asphyxiating gases could produce “decisive results.” Says Philip Noel-Baker, in his book The Arms Race, “All the leading governments have them now.” And in 1955 the Chief Chemical Officer of the United States Army announced that even “mental derangement might be deliberately inspired” by this form of weaponry.

As Mr. Wilson observes, “Human life since Stalin and the Nazis has been something that few people in the East or West any longer care much about.” Or as Robert Pickus, Turn Toward Peace executive, observed: “We support policies that would make Genghis Kahn vomit, and yet we turn out for Church every Sunday.”

Of course the question is, what can we do about all this? To Catholic Worker readers this is no new question, as we have been fighting this a long time.

Mr. Wilson outlines the general steps of tax refusal (see detailed article on this subject in the September 1963 Catholic Worker [Forest’s review, see above]) and describes the course of two more well known refusers, Dr. A.J. Muste of the Committee for Nonviolent Action and Liberation magazine, and the Rev. Maurice McCrackin, active in the civil rights effort and the Peacemaker movement.

He goes on to describe his personal response, which is to keep his income below taxable levels. (It is a fact, though it is not mentioned in this work, that Mr. Wilson has assigned all royalties of this book to use in the peace movement.) He has decided not to go to jail, however, and will move to another country before allowing this to occur. But he is determined to withdraw his support:

“When the stakes in games become so serious — when everybody’s life is at stake — they ought not to be played at all, and the taxpayers should not support them.”

The following article, from the April 1964 issue, announces the formation of the “War Tax Protest Committee,” a group I hadn’t heard of before. I’m guessing it was an early, regional form of the group “National War Tax Resistance,” which came together in 1969.

Tax Refusal

The War Tax Protest Committee was formed February 18 to bring together West Coast conscientious objectors to income taxes for war and war preparations. The aim of the committee is to heighten public awareness of uses to which tax monies are put and to suggest alternatives to the submissive payment of such taxes. A range of activities around the April 15 tax deadline is being planned, including an all-day picket of IRS regional headquarters in San Francisco, a press conference, and a public meeting.

Founders of the War Tax Protest Committee include Ammon Hennacy, Roy Kepler, Mark Morris, Britt Peter, Ira Sandperl, Barton Stone, Sam Tyson, and Ida and Denny Wilcher.

The War Tax Protest Committee welcomes all persons involved in war tax protest — from total refusers to those who include a letter of protest with their return.

Creation of this new committee took place at the Committee for Nonviolent Action-West weekend seminar on Conscientious Objection to Income Taxes for War Preparations at Forest Farm in Marin County, February 14 to 16. The new committee, however, will have no organisational tie with CNVA-West, which is furnishing it with office space.

c/o CNVA-West P.O. Box 5983, San Francisco 1, Calif.

The May 1964 issue reprinted a letter from Joan Baez announcing her income tax resistance:

Tax Protest

Joan Baez, American folksinger, has refused to pay that 60% of her 1963 income tax which goes for military expenditures. She sent the following letter to the Internal Revenue Service explaining her action:

Dear Friends:

What I have to say is this:

I do not believe in the weapons of war.

Weapons and Wars have murdered, burned, distorted, crippled, and caused endless varieties of pain to men, women, and children for too long.

Our modern weapons can reduce a man to a piece of dust in a split second, can make a woman’s hair fall out or cause her baby to be born a monster. They can kill the part of a turtle’s brain that tells him where he is going, so instead of trudging to the ocean he trudges confusedly towards the desert, slowly, blinking his poor eyes, until he finally scorches to death and turns into a shell and some bones.

I am not going to volunteer the 60% of my year’s income tax that goes to armaments. There are two reasons for my action.

One is enough. It is enough to say that no man has the right to take another man’s life. Now we plan and build weapons that can take thousands of lives in one second, millions of lives in a day, billions in a week.

No one has a right to do that.

It is madness.

It is wrong.

My other reason is that modern war is impractical and stupid. We spend billions of dollars a year on weapons which scientists, politicians, military men, and even the President all agree must never be used. That is impractical. The expression “National Security” has no meaning. It refers to our Defense System, which I call our Offense System, and which is a farce. It continues expanding and heaping up, one horrible kill machine upon another, until for some reason or another a button will be pushed and our world, or a good portion of it, will be blown to pieces. That is not security. That is stupidity.

People are starving to death in some places of the world. They look to this country with all its wealth and all its power. They look at our National budget. They are supposed to respect us. They do not respect us. They despise us. That is impractical and stupid.

Maybe the line should have been drawn when the bow and arrow were invented, maybe at the gun, the cannon, maybe. Because now it is all wrong, all impractical, and all stupid. So all I can do is draw my own line now. I am no longer supporting my portion of the arms race.

Sincerely Yours,
Joan C. Baez

Karl Meyer was back for the January 1967 edition:

War Escalates, Tax Refusal Called For

“The future will be different, if we make the present different.” ―Peter Maurin

By Karl Meyer

I have been refusing to pay Federal income tax, or to file tax returns, since 1960. Finally, on December 13^th, after several visits, an Internal Revenue Service agent sent me returns for the years 1962, 1963 and 1965, which he had prepared and filed without my cooperation or consent, claiming a total of $1,099.12 in back taxes and penalties for those years. Since 1958 we have shared the greater part of our personal income with people who have no income, through the house of hospitality, and since 1960 I have claimed an appropriate number of exemptions on the withholding tax slips which one must file with one’s employers in order to hold a job, but I.R.S. did not recognize these exemptions, because I refused to file a return or to substantiate a claim to such exemptions in their conversations with me.

My resistance to Federal taxes is not based on legalities, but on moral opposition to militarism, and I will maintain it in spite of legalities and without taking refuge in them. I will never pay the tax that is claimed, even if I must become a pilgrim from job to job in order to avoid the attachment of my wages. (A national list of income-tax refusers is being collected for April 15 publication, by the No Tax for War Committee, c/o Rev. Maurice McCrackin. 932 Dayton St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45214. Last year’s list included the names of Dorothy Day, Martin Corbin and Ammon Hennacy among a list of two hundred.)

But I am not writing about this because I expect a mass addition of Catholic Worker readers to the list of income-tax refusers (it is not that easy to resist so thoroughly the demand of the state). I mention it as background to a more modest effort that we have also been promoting. Since September we have been advocating a first step toward denying to the government funds to carry on the war against the Vietnamese people, refusal to pay the 10% excise tax on telephone service. This tax had been reduced to 3% as of January 1, 1966 and was scheduled to expire altogether, but it was restored in March 1966. The rationale for our campaign to refuse the tax is based on the words of Congressman Wilbur Mills, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and administration floor leader for the legislation which restored the tax, who stated directly at the outset of debate on the measure, “The bill, H.R. 12752, is intended first and foremost to provide additional revenues to help finance the expenditures required to sustain our operation in Vietnam!” (Congressional Record, Feb. 23, 1966.) Further along he declared, “I believe it is clear that it is the Vietnam, and only the Vietnam, operation, which makes this bill necessary,” and a third time, “I have stated, and I state it again, that it is the extraordinary expenses attributable to our operation in Vietnam that are responsible for the Ways and Means Committee reporting this bill.”

The Chicago Workshop in Nonviolence, Peacemakers, the Committee for Nonviolent Action, The War Resisters League, and other groups supporting the campaign have already collected several hundred names of people who are refusing the tax, but not yet in the numbers for which I had hoped. It is not that any danger is involved in the act. In no case has telephone service been terminated, because, under the regulations, the ultimate responsibility for collecting the tax lies with the I.R.S., not with the telephone companies, which are only required to bill for it. And the I.R.S. so far has done practically nothing to collect from any of the phone-tax refusers. This is understandable when you realize that the amounts of money are so very small, that it took I.R.S. six years to get around to trying to collect over a thousand dollars from a publicly acknowledged income-tax refuser like myself, and that they have never succeeded in collecting from Ammon Hennacy or numerous other tax refusers.

For the individual, the telephone tax by itself seems an insignificant amount of money, though the Johnson administration is counting on it, together with a 1% automobile excise tax increase, to raise $1.2 billion in fiscal 1967, which would pay for about twenty days of killing in Vietnam at current rates of spending. For the individual, telephone-tax refusal is a small step, but for many it is a significant step, because for the first time they are acknowledging in action that if they had the free choice they would refuse to contribute to the activities of the federal Government, because its military activities outweigh its positive tax-supported programs. And if they admit that they are involuntary participants in such a great evil, they must face the issue of struggling in the society for the freedom to do what they believe is right, even by going outside of the law. But in going outside of the law they are taking back for themselves a basic responsibility for the order of society, which they had hitherto reposed in the state and the law. They are facing the issue of ultimate personal responsibility for society and the needs of others as we have faced it in the houses of hospitality and the Catholic Worker movement.

These are some of the implications of civil disobedience; of recognizing that the majority of citizens organized in the state, have failed man so badly, that we must struggle to build a whole new way of life that will be able to be human. I remember how often Ammon Hennacy has spoken of the people who were “pacifists between wars,” which he says is like being “vegetarians between meals,” and now it is possible to speak of those who oppose the war but pay their phone tax at “pacifists between telephone calls,” because with each ten-cent telephone call another penny joins the stream of Federal revenue that flows inexorably to Vietnam. It is true, friends, that with a first small step like phone-tax refusal, we are trying to coax people down the primrose path to the one-man revolution. The future will be different only if we change our lives. The act is small, but the meaning is large: this war is not our war, and we are willing to struggle to be on the side of life.

In the October 1969 edition, Karl Meyer explained in-depth how to stop income tax withholding by claiming excessive dependents and how tax redirection could be used to nourish alternative institutions. (This would not be good advice to follow today, as the IRS has new punitive tools at its disposal.)

Through Effective Tax Resistance:

A Fund for Mankind

By Karl Meyer

Let us speak of a clearcut solution to two prevailing ethical concerns which are shared by many stable, wage-earning citizens who are in the peace movement today. On the one hand, we see a perverse system of national priorities which devotes most of our federal tax contributions to militaristic purposes which we abhor. We want our money to be used positively to fulfill social needs. On the other hand, we see young men of draft age resisting war and conscription concretely by refusing to participate, and suffering the consequences: imprisonment or exile. We wish to support them and to align ourselves with them in a real way.

Let me affirm that it would be very practicable for us to get together in our own resistance movement to prevent the conscription of our money by the military and to create a Fund for Mankind to support the things we believe in and provide mutual aid in the difficulties that might come as a consequence of our resistance.

The Vietnam War may draw towards a conclusion in the months to come, yet we have already been warned by spokesmen of the government, if not by the history of the last twenty-five years, not to expect huge amounts of money to be freed for the solution of domestic problems. There are plenty of military boondoggles waiting in the wings, promising that military expenditures will command the stage for many years to come. We should either seize our destiny in our own hands or stop crying about our involuntary complicity in the militarization of society.

I promise to show how we can stop paying for militarism and instead pay into an alternative fund and use it according to our own moral and political judgments.

At the outset, we must directly contradict the widespread notion that refusal to pay federal income tax is merely a form of personal witness and a purification of conscience, which because of inherent obstacles cannot emerge as a general action of resistance to the Vietnam War, militarism, and imperialism. Instead, let us affirm that tax resistance can be the most promising basis for a movement of constructive social action, as well as resistance to the evils of war and the wastefulness of the arms race.

Right away we come to the heart of the issue, because people say, “Our taxes are withheld at the source and paid by our employers without our consent.” This is the fallacy which must be resolutely laid to rest. Your consent is given whenever you fill out and sign a new W-4 Employees Withholding Exemption Certificate. The proper use of this form and of the early income-tax return are the keys to effective tactics of widespread tax resistance.

Let me therefore outline these tactics for Everyman in nine easy steps:

1. Obtain a new W-4 form from your employer. On lines 4 and 5 claim as many extra dependents as is necessary to prevent the withholding of any tax (ten or twenty or five hundred thousand or thirty-five million if you wish). Sign the statement, “I certify that the number of withholding exemptions claimed on this certificate does not exceed the number to which I am entitled.” (Entitled by whom? We cannot have a moral revolution as long as we supinely acknowledge that we are entitled to do only what can be drained by the Internal Revenue Code and Regulations. We must explicitly reject the standards and definitions specified by a blind bureaucracy and instead affirm definitions that spring from our own consciousness of human solidarity. We must affirm that our obligation to the victims of United States militarism entitles us to claim as many exemptions as may be necessary to prevent the payment of taxes in our name.) Submit the new form to your employer. He is not responsible under law for the legality or accuracy of our claim, nor is he authorized to alter your claim. He is advised, but not required by law, to report to the Internal Revenue Service if he believes that your claim exceeds the number of dependents to which you are entitled.¹ It is only if you fill out no W-4 form that he may withhold the taxes without your consent.²

2. Write a letter to the I.R.S. stating that five hundred thousand American soldiers are depending on you to bring them home, or that thirty-five million Vietnamese are depending on you to stop supporting the war, that consequently you cannot accept the narrow definitions of human interdependence specified by I.R.S. regulations, that you therefore affirm your right to claim enough exemptions to forestall the collection of war taxes, and you have recently filed a new W-4 form with your employer in accord with this affirmation. This will put you on record as an open and principled tax resister, and may provide you with some defense in case of prosecution for making a fraudulent claim, since fraud implies an element of concealment, deception, and bad faith.³ But in writing to them, I would advise you not to name your employer, since this would only facilitate possible attempts by the I.R.S. to harass or intimidate you or your employer.

   Taking these first two steps should forestall the withholding of any tax from your wages.

3. On April 15^th (fifteen and a half months after the beginning of your no-tax year) you are required by law to file an income-tax return. File and complete an honest return, but don’t do it the way they want it. On line 3B of form 1040 U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, enter the same number of dependents previously claimed on your W-4 form (if thirty-five million, enter that number on line 3B). Attach a schedule stating the moral grounds of your claim: the universal interdependency of man. For line 11C, multiply the total number of exemptions claimed by six hundred dollars. Fill out the rest of the form, showing no tax owed, and send it in.

4. Wait a few more taxless months while the I.R.S. gets around to figuring out your form, disallowing your numerous exemptions, and sending you a “proposed adjustment” of your income tax liability. You have another taxless month to request a District Conference to discuss the “proposed adjustment.”⁴

5. If agreement is not reached at the District Conference, you may appeal to the Appellate Division of the Regional Commissioner’s Office.⁴

   All steps up to this point can be easily taken without the aid of an attorney and without much cost or inconvenience to yourself.

6. If agreement cannot be reached with the Appellate Division, a statutory notice of deficiency will be sent to you; you will then have ninety days to appeal to the Tax Court of the United States, but if the I.R.S. believes that assessment and collection of the tax deficiency will be jeopardized by delay, it may proceed to assess and collect the tax in the meantime, pending your appeal to the Tax Court and decision by it, and any further appeals to the United States Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, if you choose to pursue such appeals. So a number of time-consuming bureaucratic steps must be gone through before the I.R.S. can make its final assessment of the tax due and begin the process of attempting to collect. The whole process must be repeated for each taxable year. I do not see how the I.R.S. can reach the collection stage in less than two years from the date when you first began to frustrate the withholding of taxes.

   Even if you chicken out and pay up at that point, you will have cost them more than it was worth and made them wait at least two years to get their money. But above all, you will have expressed concrete convictions clearly and registered effective short-term resistance against any particular war or Defense Department program that happens to be the primary current target of the resistance movement. If you want to go beyond this and keep struggling, as I have done, there are further effective steps to prevent the collection of the assessments by wage attachment or seizure of assets:

7. Take your cash out of banks you have used in the past. If you have so much money that you have to be afraid of keeping it in the mattress, you should probably start thinking of what that money says about your aspirations towards human brotherhood. In the meantime, you could distribute it into several banks you have not used before and be careful not to write checks in payment of bills whose payment could easily be traced by the I.R.S. (such as telephone and utility bills). I have used an account in this way for several years, but I could do without it easily enough.

8. If you are not strongly tied to your current place of employment, you can switch jobs as soon as the I.R.S. arrives to collect from your wages by levy and take a few simple precautions to make it a little difficult for the I.R.S. to discover your new place of employment. They are so bogged down and incompetent that it doesn’t take much to throw them off the trail for several years. I changed jobs in September 1967, and they haven’t found out my new job yet, though they have tried through numerous visits, phone calls, notes left under the door, and other perfunctory attempts.

9. In preparation for the eventual confrontation, you can begin early to have real property which you use, such as houses and automobiles, owned and registered in the names of persons who will not be liable for payment of income taxes.

These and similar steps have worked for me and for a number of other individuals around the country for many, many years. I have used this method of tax resistance, or variations, of it, for the last ten years. In that time, I have paid no federal income tax of any significance. I have devoted the greater part of my total income to sharing with other people through Catholic Worker Houses of Hospitality. The I.R.S. is many years and hundreds of dollars behind in its attempts to collect from me, and has indeed collected nothing from me so far, though it has prepared returns for the years 1962, 1963, and 1965, and is trying to collect over eleven hundred dollars from me.

Here is the strength of tax resistance. If you don’t play by their rules, the cost of collecting will in many cases exceed the successful collections. The process of assessing and collecting taxes in the face of intelligent resistance is an immensely complicated bureaucratic operation, which frequently gets bogged down for incredible periods of time. The due process of law involved in the arrest and conviction of an induction refuser under Selective Service law is child’s play when compared to the due process involved in the collection of taxes from the intelligent tax refuser. So we have an effective tool at hand for resisting the demands of war and the arms race, if we will only seize the courage to act.

Positive Side

Now we turn to the constructive side of this action. If we pool all of the tax money that we did not pay in locally administered funds, we can create a model for a future in which men can regain direct control of their common institutions and effectively deny their consent to governmental programs they believe to be evil.

In each community or region we can set up a common fund. Each contributor will have one vote, as in a cooperative. The members will meet from time to time to set priorities and guidelines for administering the fund and to elect a committee to administer it according to their guidelines.

Part of the fund can be held as a reserve, which can be invested in low-interest loans to socially useful projects. In case of needs these loans can be liquidated in order to compensate members of the fund, up to the amount of their contribution, for personal losses and needs resulting from successful tax collections by the I.R.S. The reserve funds can also be used to provide legal defense for members who might be prosecuted under the tax laws, and to provide aid for the families of those who might be convicted and imprisoned or suffer other needs as a result of conscientious tax refusal. Thus through mutual aid the members of the fund will be protected from personal hardships arising from their stand, and together they can develop a most valuable sense of community and solidarity, that could immeasurably strengthen the whole peace movement.

Assuming that successful collections by the I.R.S. would always lag far behind the ongoing contributions to the fund, the greater part of receipts could be disbursed in the form of direct grants for ail kinds of socially useful organizations and projects. Assuming that the federal-income-tax contributions of most people in the movement probably far exceed their voluntary political, organizational, and charitable contributions, we could expect that the tax alternative funds could become one of the most substantial sources of money for the projects and purposes in which we most strongly believe. But beyond that we could hope that our experience in mutual aid through these cooperative funds would bear fruit in the development of ashrams and communities for closer economic and social cooperation; for it is when our constructive action and our resistance to evil become for real that we will see the need and value of mutual aid and begin to create cooperative alternatives within the competitive society in which we live.

If we ignore or neglect the great potential of tax resistance joined to constructive action, we must be deaf to history and blind to experience.

Deaf to history. Do we not know that tax resistance has been one of the greatest sources and strategies of revolutionary movements throughout history? Has not history shown that taxation is a process requiring the general consent and cooperation of the populace? Has it not been shown that when numbers of people reject a government by withdrawing their consent from the elaborate bureaucratic process of taxation, that government is in deep trouble? Did not the French Revolution begin with tax resistance? Was not the Estates General called into session by the King because he found it impossible to raise sufficient revenue for the operation of his government? Was not tax resistance the slogan and rallying cry of the American Revolution: “Taxation without representation is tyranny!”? Does not the Boston Tea Party, an act of resistance to taxation, stand in our historical tradition as a model for the actions of the Baltimore Four, the Catonsville Nine, the Boston Two, the Milwaukee Fourteen, the D.C. Nine, and the Chicago Fifteen? Did not Thoreau fashion the cornerstone of American resistance theory out of his own experience as a tax resister? Was not Gandhi’s largest and most significant campaign of civil disobedience, the Salt March, based on the strategy of tax resistance?

Blind to experience. Can we not see what the I.R.S. knows full well: that even where the public gives general consent to the process of taxation it is always and everywhere a grudging and tentative consent, a resentful and querulous consent, a fragile consent that must always be nursed and safeguarded by positive public relations? Why has the I.R.S. trodden so lightly in prosecuting principled tax refusers, usually concentrating instead on ineffectual attempts at collection? Is it not because there exists among the public at large a greater reservoir of grievance, a potential of sympathy for tax resisters, and, what is more, a vast subliminal potential for tax resistance and evasion, that only needs to be aroused by news of widespread tax resistance?

Let us learn from the experience of the draft-resistance movement and the telephone-tax-refusal campaign, a few years ago, many people regarded draft refusal as a personal witness of the solitary conscience. Today it has taken on the dimensions of a social movement. It is, however, restricted by the narrow age and sex range of those who are subject to conscription, and even more restricted by the narrowness of the draft as a single focus of action.

In the telephone-tax-refusal campaign we measured the potential dimensions of a tax-resistance movement. In the summer of 1966, we started the campaign for nonpayment of the ten-per-cent federal telephone excise tax, which had just been restored by Congress explicitly to help in meeting the rising costs of the Vietnam War. The July 1969 issue of WIN magazine quotes from a Wall Street Journal story reporting that eighteen thousand people refused to pay their telephone tax last year. This resistance tactic caught on quickly and spread rapidly with little organizational effort, because it was a direct and simple action which any telephone subscriber could easily carry out. But after flaring up briefly, interest in this tactic gradually subsided, though thousands no doubt continue to refuse to pay the tax. Enthusiasm for the action could not be maintained, because it was not resistance for real. It was, rather, the first token of a spirit of resistance, which at the time could find no practical channel for deeper development.

When we can combine real war tax resistance with the tremendous constructive potential of a Fund for Humanity, we will have raised a banner to which all honest and courageous men of conscience can repair.

---

Note: I want to acknowledge the contributions of Brad Lyttle, Sidney Lens, and several young members of the draft-resistance movement whose names are unknown to me. Recent discussions with them helped greatly in stimulating and formulating the ideas for the article, which has also been distributed in mimeographed form by the founders of the Chicago Area Alternative Fund (C.A.A.F), 1209 West Farwell, Chicago, Illinois 60626. (Tel: 764-3620). We have begun. Join us!

Notes and References

1. Internal Revenue Regulations, Paragraph 31.3401 (e)-1 (b) — “The employer is not required to ascertain whether or not the number of withholding exemptions claimed is greater than the number of withholding exemptions to which the employee is entitled. If, however, the employer has reason to believe that the number of withholding exemptions claimed by the employee is greater than the number to which such employee is entitled, the district director should be so advised.”

2. Internal Revenue Regulations, Paragraph 31.3401 (e)-1 (a) — “…If no such certificate is in effect, the number of withholding exemptions claimed shall be considered to be zero…”

3. Internal Revenue Code, Section 7201. ATTEMPT TO EVADE OR DEFEAT TAX. “Any person who willfully attempts to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.”

   Internal Revenue Code, Section 7205. FRAUDULENT WITHHOLDING EXEMPTION CERTIFICATE OR FAILURE TO SUPPLY INFORMATION: “Any individual required to supply information to his employer under section 3402 who willfully supplies false or fraudulent information, or who willfully falls to supply information thereunder which would require an increase in the tax to be withheld under section 3402, shall, in lieu of any other penalty provided by law (except the penalty provided by section 6682), upon conviction thereof, be fined not more than $500, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” (Section 3402 is the section which provides for withholding of income taxes.)

4. INSTRUCTIONS — Unagreed Income, Estate, or Gift Tax Cases — U.S. Treasury Department — Internal Revenue Service — Publication No. 5 (Rev. 8-64)

5. Internal Revenue Code, Section 6861. Jeopardy Assessments of Income, Estate, and Gift Taxes.

Meyer had a followup in the January 1970 issue:

Clarification On Tax Withholding

By Karl Meyer
December 12, 1969

Dear Mike and Allen:

I was pleased to receive your inquiry about our “Fund for Mankind, Through Effective Tax Resistance” (Catholic Worker, Oct.–Nov. 1969). Yours is one of dozens of serious inquiries from all over the country, and the fourth so far from the Minneapolis area alone. Jim Dunn (19 Sidney Place S.E., Minneapolis, Minnesota) has already started an alternative fund and has reprinted my article as a leaflet. Dennis Richter (Hope House, 2603 14th Ave. South) has begun by claiming forty million exemptions on his W-4 Withholding Exemption Certificate. This has tremendous educational value, but we don’t know yet the effective results of this experiment. One person in Chicago tried this mass approach and it did not work. He claimed three and a half billion dependents, the entire population of Spaceship Earth. His employers, on the advice of their tax attorneys, rejected his W-4 form, on the grounds that it was not correctly filled out because it would be impossible under the rules to have that number of legally qualified exemptions — a trenchant argument we must confess. They also pointed out that their payroll computer program could not handle that number of exemptions. Two digits, or a maximum of 99, would be all the computer could handle. This leaves him nowhere, since his only recourse would be to appeal to the Internal Revenue Service or the courts for support of his right to claim three and a half billion, and it is obvious enough that he would get no support from that quarter.

Does my article give the impression that I advocate claiming such great numbers of exemptions as a practical step, or that I myself have used this approach and succeeded? If it does, that impression should be corrected before it leads us down the blind alley of ineffectual protest. I myself have always claimed the minimum number of exemptions necessary to prevent the withholding of tax (between six and twelve in my case) and the same modest approach is used by all those I know of who are successfully using the exemption method of tax resistance at present. The idea of claiming hundreds of thousands, millions or billions of dependents makes for a beautiful protest and a glorious expression of fraternal solidarity. I introduced this idea in my article, and I certainly hope that a certain number of bold souls like Dennis will experiment with it; but I proposed it with tongue in cheek, and I would be the first to predict that it will not work in very many cases. Most employers, on their own initiative or on the advice of I.R.S., will probably reject such a W-4, and those that don’t may fire you. It would be a fine educational protest, but if the idea is protest, that could also be expressed by picketing the personnel office during your lunch hour to ask them to stop withholding taxes.

If the purpose is actually to prevent the withholding of tax, the most practical way to proceed is to claim the minimum number of exemptions necessary to achieve that objective! This number can be found by dividing your weekly salary by $13.50, or dividing your projected annual salary by $700, or by consulting the tables and rules in Circular E, Employers Tax Guide, available to the public at your local office of I.R.S.

The minimum number of exemptions necessary for most people will be between six and twenty. If your employer should question the number you claim, you may wish to save him the embarrassment of being implicated in your action by simply stating, “This is the number of exemptions to which I believe I am entitled.” Since you are the person responsible for the number which you claim, it is not necessarily incumbent on you to offer your employer a more elaborate explanation. In our group, some people have explained to their employers the entire basis of their claim; others have filed the new W-4 with their employer without further explanation; some have written to I.R.S., or other officials of government, stating the entire basis of their claim; others have taken the action without informing the state directly. These choices must be made on the basis of personal inclinations and circumstances of employment.

You ask about the chances of prosecution for tax evasion or fraud. No principled tax refuser has been indicted or prosecuted for violation of tax laws within my memory or knowledge. A few have been imprisoned briefly for contempt of court for refusing to reveal information about their income and assets. The I.R.S. has concentrated exclusively on attempts at assessment and collection, rather than prosecution. With the rapid development of this campaign, I predict that this policy will be changed. If pressed to do so, I could name a man whom I believe to be a prime candidate for aggressive prosecution. But it would be impossible for me to predict what pattern of criminal prosecution may emerge as this campaign grows and develops. I do predict that many people in this movement will eventually be subjects of intensive efforts by I.R.S. to assess and collect income taxes that they have not paid. Ten years ago I popularized the aphorism: “If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime,” which was taught me by Marshal Raab as he drove me to the penitentiary. Today I am in a position to coin a new variation of this maxim for our time: “If you can’t stand heat, don’t put your hand in the fire.”

If people want to start out easy and test the temperature before they go all the way they might begin by not paying the ten-percent federal excise tax on telephone service or they might try claiming just one extra withholding tax exemption. Most important of course is to band together in small local alternative-fund groups for mutual aid and the sharing of experiences.

Over the years I have developed quite a tolerance for heat of all kinds so I was not dismayed on Halloween when Agent Roy Suzuki of the I.R.S. telephoned at my place of employment, which he had at long last discovered, and very graciously demanded payment of $46.60 in taxes, penalties, and interest for the year 1965, a small part of a bill for more than a thousand dollars, going back to 1962 that I.R.S. has been unsuccessfully trying to collect for a long time. After I stated that I would not pay he came over immediately and served my employers with a levy against my wages which they reluctantly honored by deducting $48.60 from wages due to me. These events inspired the composition of the following ballad, which is currently leading the hit parade of the tax-resistance movement:

Some Enchanted Taxmen

Some enchanted evening
You may meet a stranger,
You may see him come to you
Across the crowded room,
Then pull put his badge
And ask for your wage;
If you don’t go along,
He will not argue long.
He will be a taxman,
He will be insistent,
He will bring a levy
To place against your wage,
And when he is done
He’ll go back to his boss,
And give a report like this:

Suzuki:— Who would believe it,
Who would say it’s so?
I found him at Follett’s,
I collected dough.

His boss:— Oh, Suzuki,
How did you know? Now that you’ve found him,
Never let him go!

Suzuki:— Forty-six dollars,
All for the war,
I’ll go back again soon,
I will grab some more.

His boss:— Oh, Suzuki,
Try going slow,
Don’t scare him off too fast,
Don’t let him go.

Suzuki:— l have worked so patiently,
I have tried so long,
My, but that man’s
Conscience is strong.

Boss:— Don’t get sentimental,
Remember he’s your foe,
Now that you’ve found him,
Never let him go.

Suzuki:— I’ll go back tomorrow,
Shortly after dawn,
I’ll levy on his wage again;
But he will be gone.

Boss:— Buck up, Suzuki,
Don’t let it get you down,
We have lots of agents,
Snooping round the town.

Suzuki:— They will never nail him,
They’ll never collect,
Why should we waste our time,
Breaking our necks?

Boss:— The war must go on you know
And we must be paid,
The arms race must be financed
And profits be made.

Suzuki:— We will never make it
With guys like that Meyer;
Why not quit and go to work;
Our proceeds would be higher.

Boss:— Roy, that’s not the spirit
Of I.R.S., you know;
Once you have found one.
Never let him go!

A few days later I quit my job, and since then I have been earning part of our livelihood by part-time and irregular labor, while spending most of my time on the important work of developing the tax-resistance campaign. I have to thank Roy Suzuki for having given me the incentive and the opportunity to do this. To coordinate a countrywide campaign for tax resistance and to provide literature and counseling we have established a center called War Tax Resistance/Midwest (1339 North Mohawk St., Chicago, Illinois 60610) which is sponsored by the Nonviolent Training and Action Center, the Chicago Area Draft Registers and the Chicago Catholic Worker. We will have a basic leaflet based on my article in the Oct.–Nov. 1969 CW, as well as reprints of the article itself. For a single copy of each, send us a stamped, self-addressed envelope. For quantities the price will be a dollar for fifty, or two dollars for a hundred, plus a dollar for each additional hundred in one shipment. We hope that people will send a few extra dollars to help with the organizing costs and that new tax resisters and alternative funds will earmark a small percentage of their tax savings to contribute to the organizing work.

The February 1970 issue reported on the death of Ammon Hennacy on January 14. Ernest Bromley added a tribute, which included this summary of his tax resistance activity:

I, like so many others, knew Ammon by reputation long before I met him in person. He was one of the pacifist tax refusers during World War Two, at a time when I could count them on the fingers of one hand. He was in Arizona during those years, working as a day laborer in the fields. To the few of us who made up the Tax Refusal Committee of Peacemakers, which began in the spring of 1948, he is memorable, not only because the number was still very small but mainly because he was simple, direct and dramatic. He saw that the government got none of his tax at the source (through withholding), he refused the total amount of income tax, he took steps so that the tax man could not garnishee money from his employer, and he went straight to the tax man and to the people with the message that he would not pay for the weapons or the soldiers. He was basic, cryptic, humorous. When the tax collector asked him if he thought he could change the world to his point of view, he answered, “Of course not. but I’m damn sure it won’t change me.” Then, referring to his contest with the government, he said, “Every day I win and every day the government loses.”

He once told a tax man, “Peter could return to his nets, but Matthew could not return to his tax collecting.” It was in World War One, while doing time in Atlanta Penitentiary for opposing the war, that he read the Bible and became a Christian. He was also turning from socialism to anarchism. It was not however, until the early 1950’s that he joined a church. Soon he wrote his first book. The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist. Later he revised this book, calling it in the new form The Book of Ammon. While in Arizona he wrote a column in the Catholic Worker, entitled “Life at Hard Labor.” He managed by doing day labor in the fields and irrigation ditches, to contribute financially to the education of his two daughters by his first marriage.

After moving to New York in the early 50’s he became one of the associate editors of the Catholic Worker with Dorothy Day. In 1961 he moved to Salt Lake City and began a "House of Hospitality.” Borrowing the language of Robert Frost in one of his poems “Build Soil — A Political Pastoral,” Ammon spoke early and often of the “one-man revolution — the only revolution that is coming.” He felt that the only way to change society is for each to become a radical and responsible person. He detested dependence on government, state, institutions. He wished to live as the early Christians did. He did not join organizations or participate much in conferences or committees. Most of the actions he took were solitary ones.

After leaving Arizona he travelled several weeks of each year, going to homes of friends. Innumerable opportunities opened up to him to talk to small groups of people. Many young idealists got their inspiration from a first contact with Ammon Hennacy. He was always quick in tongue and caustic in comment. He could state his views briefly. Once when asked why he refused to pay Federal taxes, he said “Jesus wouldn’t make atom bombs. Why should I pay for them?”

And Karl Meyer wrote, in part:

[I]n thirteen years, I spent only a few hours in his company; so I know nothing of him that is not amply recorded in the Book of Ammon and his columns. The only original thing that I can tell is what he has written in my spirit.

In closing I want to remind you that Ammon wouldn’t pay taxes that go for war. In his last letter to me (November 17, 1969) he wrote, “I think your idea of claiming a million dependents is o.k. for a joke between you and the tax man, but to consider it for a group of people is not being a bit realistic. Hardly half a dozen in this country would have nerve enough to do it for fear of losing their jobs.”

That was the main fault Ammon had: he never had faith that other people would be radicals, would change their lives and live the revolution. But I remember a pipsqueak boy of twenty once, who didn’t want to lose his job, who wanted to take bail and get a lawyer and a long continuance. And one summer day that boy went down to Chrystie Street, and that was the day that he met Hennacy.

That’s why I have faith that a lot of people are not going to go on paying taxes for another five years of national murder; and anyone who really wants to stop can send me a couple of stamps for our leaflet entitled “Common Sense for Every Concerned Taxpayer — You Can Stop Paying War Taxes Now,” or send a dollar for fifty copies.

After the death of Ammon Hennacy in 1970, Karl Meyer took up the torch of promoting war tax resistance in the Catholic Worker. Meyer’s approach was less exhortational and more practical: he pioneered the method of inflating deductions to prevent income tax withholding and wrote an influential early how-to guide on that method. (An embryonic version of what is now NWTRCC’s Practical War Tax Resistance pamphlet #1: “Controlling Federal Income Tax Withholding”.)

Below are some excerpts from the Catholic Worker from the 1970–71 period, starting with an essay by Karl Meyer from the January 1971 edition:

New Resistance to War Taxes

By Karl Meyer

“Under penalties of perjury, I certify that I incurred no liability for Federal income tax for 1970 and that I anticipate that I will incur no liability for Federal income tax for 1971.”

If you can sign that statement, you can stop the withholding of war taxes from your wages.

The statement is the Employee Certification for Form W-4E Withholding Exemption Certificate, which was first published in 1970 by the Internal Revenue Service as an alternative to the standard W-4 form. If your employer doesn’t have it on hand, get it from the local IRS office. Signing this statement alone provides complete exemption from prior withholding of Federal Income tax, without enumerating dependents or any other specific basis for the exemption.

Who is eligible to claim this exemption? I say, “everybody.” It is morally impossible to incur a liability to support evil purposes and actions. Since at least 70% of Federal taxes is spent for military or war-related purposes, and much of the balance for useless or harmful purposes, it is impossible to incur a liability to pay Federal income tax.

Who is eligible to claim exemption according to IRS? On the back of the W-4E it says, “You may be entitled to claim exemption from withholding of Federal income tax if you incurred no liability for income tax for 1970 and you anticipate that you will incur no liability for income tax for 1971. For this purpose, you incur tax liability if your joint or separate return shows tax before allowance of any credit for income tax withheld. If you claim this exemption, your employer will not withhold Federal Income tax for your wages.”

According to this definition, you would technically satisfy the requirements for exemption if you file a return for 1970 showing no tax due because of the immorality and illegality of U.S. military expenditures, even if IRS subsequently rejects your reasoning and assesses tax against you. Likewise, if you file no return at all, your non-existent return can not show any tax due.

Now, it has always been a puzzle to me how a person who believes in conscience that taxes should not be paid could file a return showing taxes as a “balance due.” That is self-contradictory. If the tax is acknowledged to be due, it ought to be paid. If it ought not to be paid, it shouldn’t be shown as “due.”

The IRS calls the income tax a “self-assessed tax.” When you file showing tax due, they are empowered to accept your assessment and proceed to collect immediately. If you show no tax due, even if they disagree with you, they must first reassess the tax themselves and give you extensive opportunities for legal appeals, before they may proceed to collect on their claim. Therefore, it is foolish and self-defeating to show tax as due, if you sincerely believe that it ought not to be paid.

There are several ways to assert your claim that no tax is due:

1. you may claim extra exemptions on line 11, on the ground of obligations to all mankind as brothers and members of one family;
2. you may claim an adjustment of your income on line 17, based on your principled opposition to militarism;
3. you may itemize a deduction on line 16 of Schedule A, claiming deduction of your whole taxable income on similar grounds.

Perhaps the soundest approach is to file no return at all. (The main disadvantage of this, besides its being illegal, is that IRS agents sometimes file distorted returns in your name, claiming excessive amounts of tax.) I didn’t file for ten years, but IRS agents have filed seven returns in my name showing more than $2000 in tax and penalties due.

On April 8, 1970, I filed a return for 1969 in a personal interview with E.P. Trainor, the District Director at the Chicago office of IRS. On the 1040 Form I filled in my name and address. Under SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, I wrote “Peace;” under OCCUPATION, I wrote “Love;” across the face of the return I wrote in bold letters, “WE WONT PAY—STOP THE WAR—STOP THE DRAFT—STOP MILITARISM,” for FIRST NAMES OF DEPENDENT CHILDREN, I wrote “All Men Are Brothers;” under OTHER DEPENDENTS, I claimed “A Vietnamese child killed at Song My, an American soldier killed In Vietnam;” and I filled in a total of three and a half billion exemptions for the whole population of Earth; under BALANCE DUE, PAY IN FULL WITH RETURN, I put “$0.00;” then I signed with my name and the date.

Mr. Trainor and his henchmen haven’t figured that year out yet, but they can’t say I didn’t file.

Before you follow my advice and my example, I wish to speak a word of caution: Everything here is my interpretation. Don’t expect the IRS, U.S. Attorneys, Federal Juries, or Courts of Appeal to buy a word of it. In the November 1969 and January 1970 issues of the Catholic Worker, I published landmark articles on how to claim sufficient exemptions on the W-4 Form to prevent the withholding of war taxes. Many people all over the country tried out these ideas effectively, but several last their jobs for persisting, and three were tried and convicted in Federal courts for claiming illegal exemptions. If you can’t stand heat, stay out of the kitchen. If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime.

If you have a concern of conscience about paying war taxes, but feel unready to face the possible consequences of the methods of resistance outlined above, the present tax rate provisions give ample opportunity to stop paying war taxes, without violating any provisions of the tax laws, if you are willing to live in reasonable simplicity and voluntary poverty in the spirit of the Catholic Worker movement.

Under the present law an individual may earn up to $1700 a year without any obligation to file a return or pay Federal income tax. A married person with three dependent children could earn up to $4300 a year without having any tax withheld or due. Form W-4E was actually introduced by IRS so that such persons, earning less than the minimum yearly taxable incomes by working for only a few months out of the year, would not have taxes withheld and would not have to apply for refunds months after they earned the money. You can find the complete tables of tax withholding rates and other information in Circular E, Employer’s Tax Guide, available for the asking at your local IRS office.

I do believe that we should all strive to live in a simpler way. If we work part time for wages and live on less than taxable incomes, we will have extra time to grow, create and do more things for ourselves, or to offer our work as a gift to people in need of it. Even if we work full time for taxable wages, but successfully resist collection of the taxes, we should still live simply in order to share our surplus money with others who are in need. I have done this all my adult life and intend to go on with it.

One hundred and eighty years ago, our brother rebel Tom Paine wrote:

…were an estimation to be made of the charges of Aristocracy to a Nation, it will be found nearly equal to that of supporting the poor. The Duke of Richmond alone (and there are cases similar to his) takes away as much for himself as would maintain two thousand poor and aged persons. Is it then any wonder that under such a system of Government, taxes and rates have multiplied to their present extent? In stating these matters, I speak an open and disengaged language dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me who have not only refused offers because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

(The Rights of Man, Modern Library edition, page 241)

If we do not live by these principles, how are we different from the warfare state we condemn?

The budget and accounting methods of the Federal administration are confusing. They have recently been modified to deliberately de-emphasize the role of military expenditures as a proportion of the Federal budget, enabling Nixon to claim that they count for less than 50%. This has been done by counting all separately raised and earmarked revenues, such as Social Security revenues and payments, as part of one budgetary total. Then the large Social Security payments can be thrown in the pot and counted at part of domestic expenditures for health and welfare.

Rejecting this ruse, it is possible without detailed analysis to estimate that between 70% and 80% of all Federal income and excise tax revenues is spent for military programs and purposes that are intimately related to the cost of past and present military activities. Acceding to individual judgment this estimate might include veterans benefits, space research and technology, various “international affairs” programs, certain “Justice Department” activities, a percentage of the general administrative expenditures, and the interest and principal payments on the national debt, incurred primarily as a cost of World War Ⅱ and the Cold War.

Awareness of these facts, plus the explanation of new methods of resistance, contributed to a tremendous growth in the movement of war tax resistance in 1970. In late 1969 a national coordinating center called War Tax Resistance was established in New York. Its periodical bulletin, Tax Talk, lists 181 local centers of contact people all over the country.

Simple nonpayment of the federal excise tax itemised on telephone bills is the easiest and most common form of principled tax resistance. War Tax Resistance estimates that more than 100,000 people are now participating in this action. IRS agents expend great effort in collecting very small amounts of this tax, and they are hopelessly behind in their efforts to collect. I have paid no excise tax on telephone service since 1966 and IRS has succeeded in collecting only $8.00 so far. War Tax Resistance has a basic leaflet on phone tax resistance.

War Tax Resistance estimates that 15,000 people participate in some form of income tax nonpayment, as a principled protest against militarism. We speak of those who consciously and explicitly relate to the war tax resistance movement, because we know that millions of our countrymen, from the highest to the lowliest, participate in tax resistance or evasion, largely because of unarticulated opposition to the basic policies of government. They will be our allies if their protest can become articulate and organized.

The most promising development in 1970 was the significant number of people who began to successfully resist payment of all or most of the income tax amounts that would be claimed under Federal law and regulations. Until 1970 the number of such total tax resisters was small and almost exclusively limited to self-employed persons or others who derived most of their income from sources not subject to withholding tax.

In articles for the Catholic Worker (November 1969 and January 1970) I explained how to beat the withholding tax by claiming enough exemptions on the W-4 Form that no tax could be withheld from one’s wages. Widely reprinted and circulated in leaflet form, these articles offered an effective tax resistance method to almost any wage earner who had the courage to try it and risk the possibility of prosecution or harassment sometime in the future.

In his last letter to me before his death, Ammon Hennacy, a pioneer influence in our war tax resistance movement, glumly predicted that from fear of going to jail, there wouldn’t be more than a handful in the country that would take up my idea. But Ammon was wrong in this case. I know that many have taken it up, and they are growing in numbers, because I keep hearing from them, particularly those in the Chicago area. Thousands of dollars have been held back from the military machine and donated to alternative uses that meet the real needs of people.

This movement will continue to grow from roots that are deep in the American tradition. The ideas of Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience, fruit of his brief imprisonment for war tax resistance, are well-known today. But a century before Thoreau our forefathers made their stand for independence in resistance to unjust taxes. Both the American Revolution and the French Revolution were organized around the issue of resistance to taxation. Tom Paine understood this well because he was active in both.

In 1791 he published in England a powerful polemical tract on The Rights of Man to stir the people of England to a similar revolt. His most persistent theme of grievance is the criminal burden of war taxes imposed on the people by power hungry men in government. He vividly describes the genesis of the French Revolution, including the refusal of the Parliament of Paris, in 1788, to register the edicts of the King and Government seeking to enforce new taxes:

While the Parliament were sitting in debate on this subject, the Ministry ordered a regiment of soldiers to surround the House and form a blockade. The members sent out for beds and provisions, and lived as in a besieged citadel; and as this had no effect, the commanding officer was ordered to enter the Parliament House and seize them, which he did, and some of the principal members were shut up in different prisons… But the spirit of the Nation was not to be overcome, and it was so sensible of the strong ground it had taken, that of withholding taxes, that it contented itself with keeping up a sort of quiet resistance, which effectively overthrew all the plans at that time formed against it.

(Rights of Man, Modern Library edition, page 149)

On this strong ground let us also take our stand for a quiet battle, more effective against wrong, more productive for good purposes than any other I can think of.

Yours for a gentle revolution

January 1, 1971
Karl Meyer

Permission is granted to anyone interested to reproduce this article in whole or in part. If it is reproduced in part, please indicate editing and deletions.

List of sources for information and communication:

War Tax Resistance
839 Lafayette Street
New York. N.Y. 10012
Phone (212) 477‒2970
Send $1 and ask for

1. WTR Handbook
2. Hang Up On War telephone tax refusal leaflet.
3. reprint of Karl Meyer’s Fund For Mankind article from Nov. 1969 CW

or send more to help with their crucial work of coordinating the communication and work of the movement.

The Peacemaker
10208 Sylvan Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio 45241

A valuable periodical for all who are interested in draft resistance, tax resistance, and radical life styles. Send $4 for a subscription, plus their Handbook on Nonpayment Of War Taxes, which includes many informative case histories. I further recommend that all tax resisters contribute a substantial percentage of the money not paid to the Peacemakers Sharing Fund at the same address. The Fund is a valuable channel of mutual aid for war resisters and their families, when they suffer from imprisonment or financial hardship as a result of their stand.

Karl Meyer
1209 West Farwell Street
Chicago, Illinois 60628
Phone (312) 764‒3620
Call me or write to me for personal counseling and encouragement. If you write, send two six cent stamps for my reply and any leaflets I may send you.

Dorothy Day visited war tax resister Art Harvey and brought back this story (May 1971 issue):

I visited Art Harvey of South Ackworth, New Hampshire who has a mall order book shop handling a great number of books by and about Gandhi. Art and Ammon Hennacy served six-month-terms in Sandstone Prison in Minnesota for trespassing on a missile base some years ago. He carries on a practical application of Karl Meyer’s tax refusal (see article in this issue) by having teams of workers in orchards where they prune trees, harvest apples and later blueberries and work seven months of the work and live in a style which frees them from the payment of taxes for war. Perhaps about a hundred are engaged in this way of life, which results usually in some settling in communities of the moshavim variety, each having some small acreage and a house built by themselves Considering the New England climate, no small achievement! It certainly means an emphasis on the ascetic, on sacrifice.

The Karl Meyer article she mentioned follows:

War Tax Resistance

by Karl Meyer

On April 5, 1971, charges were filed in federal district court in Chicago against Bill Himmelbauer, Mike Fowler and myself. In separate cases, we are accused of falsely claiming exemptions from federal tax, to which we were not legally entitled. Mike Fowler, a student at the University of Chicago, is charged on two counts of filing false W-4 forms with his employer. The maximum penalty for each count is one year in jail. Bill Himmelbauer is charged on one count. He and Sue Himmelbauer joined with us in late 1969 in starting the Chicago Area Alternative Fund for tax resistance money, and then moved to Pittsburgh where they became ringleaders in War Tax Resistance activities. I am charged on five counts for W-4s executed in 1968, 69 and 70.

Through eleven years of “one man revolution” I had successfully resisted payment of almost all federal income taxes claimed from me, mainly by claiming enough exemptions on W-4 Withholding Exemption Certificates that no tax was withheld from my wages. The tax man did nothing beyond ineffectual attempts to collect.

Then suddenly in 1970 the one man revolution exploded into a growing movement of effective war tax resistance by the withholding exemption method. Suddenly the tax man got worried. Suddenly he started prosecuting withholding tax resisters around the country: September 1970, Jim Shea, Alexandria. Virginia; November 1970, Sally Buckley and Dennis Richter, Minneapolis, Minnesota; December 1970, Paul Malinowski, and Donald Callahan, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; February 1971, James Smith, Springfield, Missouri; and now, three more in Chicago.

On February 19, 1971, IRS Intelligence Agents Sam Miele and Alan Leksander visited me at home. They confronted me with copies of five W-4 forms for 1968, 69 and 70, and two articles from the Catholic Worker for November 1969 and January 1970, “A Fund For Mankind Through Effective Tax Resistance” and “Clarification On Tax Withholding.” These are the articles which launched the wave of withholding tax resistance action in 1970. I acknowledged authorship of the five W-4s and the two CW articles.

On March 1, I received a letter from the Chief of the Intelligence Division of IRS: “The current investigation by the Intelligence Division is nearing completion… consideration is being given to recommending that criminal proceedings be instituted against you…” I was invited to a hearing March 8 with Group Supervisor Ralph A. Weber.

At the hearing I presented a statement of my position and various other relevant literature and documents to Internal Revenue Service.

Statement to Internal Revenue Service, Intelligence Division Hearing:

My name is Karl Meyer. My immediate family includes my wife Jean and three children, William, 7 years old, Kristin, 3 years old, and Eric, 2 months old.

In South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos there are many families like ours. I gladly accept a responsibility toward them, like that which I bear toward my own children. These other families, these other children are the ones who were machine-gunned in a trench at My Lai, and are being killed in many other ways every day that the war continues In Indo-China.

There are also the soldiers of both sides, Americans and Aslans, who are also the victims of the war, who are dying by the thousands as it continues.

Upwards of 80% of all federal income tax revenues are devoted to purposes intimately related to American wars and military activities, past and present.

In the name of my family, of the families of Indo-China, of the soldiers of both sides and all other victims of International militarism, I claim a complete exemption from all federal taxes that finance military activities.

Yes, I have claimed ten or more exemptions on several W-4 exemption certificates. I have claimed exemption from tax for myself and my family, for several others who have lived in our household and received their primary financial support from me, and for these others, the families of Indo-China, and all the victims of war.

In a peaceful and nonviolent society the job of collecting assessments for social purposes might be a useful occupation. But the man who collects taxes for the United States government today makes himself a direct accomplice in some of the most horrible crimes of our age.

You have already told me that you are considering compounding these crimes by beginning a criminal prosecution against me.

I and my family have already made some sacrifices in the struggle against war, but they have been as nothing compared to the suffering of our brothers and sisters who are in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

We ask you today to recognize just one basic human right, our right not to participate in acts of war against them. Even if you refuse to recognize that right, we will still refuse to pay federal taxes that continue the war in Indo-China and the militarization of our society.

This is all that I have to say.

Karl Meyer

After I received the letter from IRS, I went in to talk with my supervisor in the huge hospital bureaucracy in which I was employed. I expected her to be unsympathetic, and even hostile to me as a source of trouble for her. After thirty years of working her way toward the top of the bureaucracy, it had seemed to me she lived and breathed the system and its rules, though I respected her even so for the great strength of her character.

But now when I told her directly of my long struggle against the war and of the imminent threat of criminal prosecution, she smiled at me from deep within, and expressed her own strong opposition to the war and her respect and support for me. “Mr. Meyer” she said, taut with emotion, “I am black. From all of my experience I know that when you fight the system in this ‘democratic’ country they are going to make you pay for it.” Then she told me something of her own struggle. After a long talk she asked me, "Wasn’t there a girl here in Chicago who took that same stand (war tax resistance) several years ago?”

Yes, there certainly was. Eleven years later, another black woman in Chicago still remembered the courageous witness of Eroseanna Robinson, the very person whose example set my feet on the path of determined tax resistance, back in 1960 — Eroseanna Robinson who refused to pay taxes, who defied the order of Judge Robson to give information about her income in spite of a one year sentence for criminal contempt, who fasted one hundred and eight days and won her own release from federal prison by the strength of her resistance.

Now, on April 15, 1971, the charges against Fowler, Himmelbauer and Meyer were announced. That night we picketed and leafleted from 10:00 p.m. ’til midnight at the Main Post Office where special postmen were on duty to receive last minute returns from thousands of more tractable Chicagoans.

We haven’t yet received official notice or summons, but from the records filed in court David Finke has found that the three cases are assigned to three separate Judges for trial. I am to be summoned for an initial hearing May 7 in the court of Judge Joseph Sam Perry.

I plan a simple and direct defense. I plan to represent myself without an attorney. I will ask for a jury trial at the earliest possible date. I will not base my defense on legalities. I will simply seek to convince the jury, judge, prosecutor and everyone else that I have done what is right and in accord with inalienable rights of personal judgment, and that I should not be declared guilty or penalized for my actions.

If I am convicted and sentenced to prison, we have been thinking that Jean will apply for public aid for the financial support of our family. We feel that if the State insists on tearing from the family its source of support, the State should bear the cost of providing other means. We prefer to see the resources of the movement devoted to the needs of poor people in this country and abroad who have no other recourse. This is just one of the reasons why I do not desire a costly legal defense or primary financial support from the movement, though we welcome the personal support of our friends.

The form of encouragement and support that we will value most highly will be if our friends in the movement take our troubles and our resolve as an example, to stop paying war taxes and to devote the greatest possible part of their income to sharing with the victims of international war and of the war of rich against poor. This is why we of the Chicago Area Alternative Fund have saved nothing for our own protection, but have already given away all of our war tax resistance money to meet the immediate needs of others.

If you want to read the articles that launched the present movement of withholding tax resistance by explaining the method, and incidentally brought upon us our small tribulations, you may send two eight cent stamps to:

War Tax Resistance
339 Lafayette Street
New York, New York 10012

and ask for their reprint, “A Fund For Mankind Through Effective War Tax Resistance.” To get in touch with us about the trial, write to:

Karl Meyer
1209 West Farwell
Chicago, Illinois 60626
Phone 764‒3620

The June 1971 issue reported on how the court ruled in Karl Meyer’s case:

Karl Meyer Sentenced to Two Years, $1,000

By David Finke

On May 7 in the court of federal district Judge Joseph Sam Perry, Karl Meyer appeared in his own behalf to answer a 5-count “criminal information” charging that he falsely and fraudulently filed W-4 income tax withholding exemption certificates. Having successfully negotiated with the U.S. Attorney, Karl got the government to drop three of the five counts (which he had said he could prove the accuracy of). He then entered a plea of “nolo contendere,” which the judge accepted as a finding of “guilty,” on the other two counts. A two-week presentence investigation was then ordered. while Karl remained free without bond.

Friday, May 21, Karl returned to court with about 25 friends, supporters, and fellow tax resisters, and personally accompanied by his 7-year-old son William. Before imposing sentence, Judge Perry with great decorum and civility said he would hear from both the government and the defendant, whose absolute right to represent himself without attorney would be respected.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kocoras then launched into a most amazing and accurate summary of Karl’s career of leadership in the movement of War Tax Resistance: Not only has Karl not filed a tax return since 1962, he has encouraged others to join with him in resisting federal taxes! And he has explained publicly exactly what he is doing and how other people can do the same. Kocoras read extensively from articles that Karl had written for Catholic Worker, including those memorable (but to Kocoras damning) phrases, “If you can’t do time, don’t commit crime,” and “If you can’t stand the heat, don’t put your hand in the fire.” The prosecutor hit the issue squarely on the head, then, when he said: “What is at stake here is the integrity of the income tax law.” The government is obviously worried about the possibility of widespread, undetected, mass-based tax resistance if Karl’s ideas should catch on and not be deterred. The prosecutor closed his remarks by observing that federal taxes support all programs of government including the operation of Judge Perry’s court.

Karl was then asked to present his statement to the court, the Judge being very cordial again. With brevity and simplicity, Karl pointed out that federal taxes (unlike the city and state taxes which he pays) are “overwhelmingly devoted to warfare,” and that during the course of his life between sixty and seventy per cent have gone to pay for military ventures. In conscience, Karl said, he cannot and must not cooperate with the financing of killing. As he began to explain how his resistance had always been done openly and publicly, the Judge dramatically changed his tone and manner. In rapid sequence he interrupted Karl to say that being open is no excuse — “You can openly and publicly rob a bank!” — “this defendant is showing no penitence, this is obviously not a case for probation, and there is no point in wasting anymore time.”

Karl was immediately sentenced to the maximum penalty on both counts (one year, $500), with the sentences to run consecutively, although he might consider making the sentences concurrent if Karl showed a “change of heart.”

The Judge was about to call the next case when an older man, Solomon Goldman, appeared at Karl’s side from the audience, shook his hand, and loudly declared, “Karl Meyer, my grandchildren will thank you. You are a man of peace.” Judge Perry was astounded; exclaimed to Mr. Goldman “You’re not an attorney!” and ordered him removed from the building. Then a bit of confusion set in. The Judge was ordering the marshal also to remove Karl, but the marshal was still involved with Mr. Goldman. Karl was asking if he could give his briefcase to his friends, was told it could be gotten from the lockup. Bill Himmelbauer (another convicted W-4 tax resister) was by this time at Karl’s side getting the briefcase, various people were waving two-fingered peace signs to Karl and saying “Goodbye!” as he walked out, and the Judge (whose courtroom was still understaffed) was on his feet shouting “No demonstrations! There will be no demonstrations in here! I’ll have you all in jail for contempt. Clear the courtroom!” as we slowly filed out.

I’ve been informed that Karl will be sent to Sandstone, Minnesota, federal prison, after about two weeks in Cook County Jail in Chicago. Several friends have seen him already, and report that he’s the same old Karl: He has put his hand in the fire, and he can stand the heat as well as anyone.

(See Letter Column for Karl’s letter. The story of his action bears repeating. ―Editor’s comment.)

Karl Meyer’s letter follows:

From Prison

Sunday, May 30, 1971
Cook County Jail
Chicago, Illinois

Dear Dorothy and C.W. family,

I received a letter from Kathy Bredine telling me of your call, and I was very pleased to receive your message. Here I am permitted to write and receive mall from anyone, but I will probably be here only a few more days, before “shipment” to a federal “Facility.” There I will have a restricted mailing list; how many names I will not know until I get there; but I have been planning to put you on the list, near the top. The letters will be for all of you, from A Prisoner. I hope that you will not be cut from the list for being a single woman and not a relative, even though more than twice my age. Rules are rules (though I am not sure that that is one of them), and the crime of which I stand convicted is that I claimed a familiar relationship of brotherly responsibility for the very lives of a people not in my own line of genetic descent, at least for several generations, and not even born on the same continent between the St. Lawrence River and the Rio Grande.

I was a little stunned to receive the maximum penalty for that crime, one year on each of two counts, to be served consecutively, plus $1000 in fines, though it is my prudential practice to go into court prepared and expecting to get the maximum. Nevertheless, I keep forgetting that when these judges see a sheet of convictions as long as mine (however humane the motivations that lie behind it) going back for fourteen years, they can’t seem to see beyond that sheet, and they have a reflexive reaction to go for the maximum. Of course it is appropriate that I should be the first person to start serving time for claiming exemptions from war taxes on the W-4 Form, since, being a child of Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy, it is not my way to conduct guided tours to the jailhouse door and not go in myself. A number of statements were torn from the context of my writings by the U.S. Attorney to be quoted against me, and he particularly dwelt on that prison aphorism. “If you can’t do the time, don’t commit the crime,” which I have often repeated.

In the light of that reality, I might have done differently myself if I had known the severity of the penalty that would come down on me. For a person without a family of small children, two years is nothing to speak of; but for people having the care of small children such as my own, William—aged 7, Kristin—aged 4, and Eric—aged 5 months, it is a serious thing for them to be fatherless for such periods of time, I think; that is why we must emphasize that there are practical ways, fully within the range of any ordinary working person, to withdraw financial support from the murder of Vietnamese families without going outside U.S. law and without taking the risks of imprisonment that I hare unfortunately taken.

Now, after a year and a half of widespread experience, we can gauge the response of the federal government to the withholding exemption method of war tax resistance. Nine people have been prosecuted to date, and a sentencing pattern of one year on each count seems to be emerging. The withholding exemption method of war tax resistance remains very important and useful for persons who measure the personal risk and decide that it is proper for them to take it.

But, particularly for those of us with families, it will be useful to develop ideas on how we can be true to our deepest convictions about our responsibilities to mankind, without coming into such open confrontation with the laws of the U.S. Many people have talked with me about working toward conscientious objector provisions under the federal tax laws that would allow war objectors to earmark their social tax assessments for exclusively peaceful purposes. As to practical effect, such provisions already exist under the tax laws of the U.S. We need only the generosity and honesty in our ideas to take advantage of them. For instance, under the present tax laws, a family of five could retain income of $4350 for personal use without having to pay any income tax. In addition they would be entitled to an itemised deduction from taxable income for up to 50% of their gross income if donated to broad categories of recognized charitable and socially positive purposes. Thus a family of five could easily have an income of at least $8700, give half of it for peaceful purposes, and legally owe no federal tax on the balance. This is a general figure that does not take account of many deductions and exemptions that might increase that figure. Many people feel that it is not possible for a family of five to live decently on $4350 a year in the United States. Our own family experience, in urban Chicago, one of the higher priced areas of the country, indicates that it is quite reasonable and possible to set a family budget at that level. The factor which has required us to use a higher income has been our contributions to the support of several other people outside our immediate family, at St. Stephen’s House of Hospitality, whom we could not legally claim as dependents for exemption from taxation.

Over the past three years our personal household has lived on a budget averaging about as follows: rent, including heat—$135 a month; food, clothing and household items—$135; hospitalization insurance—$16; Social Security deductions—$30; public transportation—$23; gas—$3; electricity—$8; phone—$8. That totals $385 a month, very close to the minimum we are talking about; but we are far from having explored all potentials for less expensive living; our rent is higher than necessary because we live in a desirable location in northern Chicago, one block from the lakefront, and our food budget could be cut somewhat by different and more careful buying methods that we have not taken the time to explore; we could cut our electric bill in half and do without a phone, if necessary. Yet, I can not describe our life as one of sacrifice or hardship. Thus I believe that if we are honest about our commitment to a peaceful coexistence with other people and other societies, we must and can learn to live in a way of voluntary simplicity that is compatible with equality among people. And it isn’t even illegal.

Yours, with a large part of my love.
Karl Meyer — a Prisoner for Peace

P.S. The Bldg. Dept has been after us about the house on Mohawk St., which now stands alone amid vacant lots on all sides where other houses were torn down. I have found places for two of the three men who remained of our household there; Lemont had to go back to the TB Sanitarium; Roy, who was with us since 1960, I have gotten on public aid and found him a decent place in a residential hotel; Richard has been with us since 1960 but he is able to look after himself. The building will soon be condemned and torn down. Frank Marfla, of our Alternative Fund group, will visit the men and look after them while I am in jail.