It has been heartwarming to read the comments left by some of those who have signed the pledge so far:
After my son’s second deployment when he related to me the horrors of the
occupation in Iraq, I vowed I would do whatever it took to end it.
As we urge our lawmakers to stop funding the war, we have to be willing to do the same.
It is time we stop funding with our tax dollars.
Tina Richards, founder, Grassroots America
The world and history will judge us by how vigorously we resist the
illegal and immoral war tactics of the Bush Administration.
My husband, friends and I have decided we can’t pay for war anymore.
Jodie Evans, Cofounder, Code Pink
I won’t pay my taxes if you won’t pay yours.
Nina Rothschild Utne,
Utne Reader
We should stop the war, whatever it takes.
If withholding our income taxes
is a way to do it, I am all for that.
Lee Newman, Retired Captain.
U.S. Air Corp, World War Ⅱ
We must stop supporting policies that use our tax dollars to bring
violence around the world.
Not one cent more.
Maricela Guzman, Iraq War Veteran U.S. Navy,
I am one of the majority of Americans who want the war to end and
will be happy to pay my taxes when democracy and the rule of law and the Constitution is restored to our once great nation.
Steve Savitch, Tuscon, Arizona
I increased my deductions to 10 .
I
am so glad for this movement to show me what to do next and for the safety in numbers.
I will no longer help kill people.
andee Scott, Pacific Grove, California
We must renew the American Revolutionary Spirit.
We must have a Velvet
Revolution to save America.
Theadora de Soyza, New Rochelle, New York
If our leaders won’t stop this travesty, then We, the People
must
anonymous, Oregon, Wisconsin
Stop feeding the bush war machine… if he thinks the war is so damn
important why aren’t his daughters on the front lines?
Gina Arcuri, Barneveld, New York
Time to act for justice and do the right thing.
I refuse to pay a war
tax!
Herb Gonzales, Jr., San Antonio, Texas
We must have the courage to take a stand.
If enough of us will take this
stand, I believe this government will listen.
Leo Anderson, Austin, Texas
I will not pay my taxes to support the war in Iraq.
Renata Ahmed,
Brooklyn, New York
As a matter of conscience I will not voluntarily pay my hard earned money
to a government whose daily order of business is waging war.
Michael Zargarov, Houston, Texas
When government is out-of-control, citizens must exert
control.
Den Mark Wichar, Vancouver, Washington
I refused to pay for an illegal war.
It is unconscionable and disgusting
that U.S. Congress continues to fund President Bush’s war-crimes.
anonymous, Ewa Beach, Hawaii
I am so impressed and proud of your actions.
Blessed be.
Vicki
Noble, Freedom, California
I may not have much to withhold, but it’s all worth it!
It’s time to stop
this crap…
Daniel Bryan, Granc Blanc, Michigan
Hell nay, I won’t pay!
Avi Peterson, San Francisco, California
United we stand; divided we fall.
Kristine Abney, Salt Spring
Island, British Columbia
Taxation without representation.
Let’s fight this together and start
restoring democracy.
Shawn DeFrance, Dallas, Texas
Throw the tea into the harbor.
70% of the American people oppose this war.
That constitutes taxation without representation.
It is time to throw the tea into the harbor.
Coincidentally, that is exactly what I have been saying.
Let’s have a tea party.
Bobi Meola, Berkeley, California
We are retired and don’t pay any tax.
I fully support your courageous
efforts to end this bloody occupation.
Chris Caldwell, Anaheim, California
Yes and though dangerous, I pledge to join in not paying the 7%
taxes!
Nat Vance, Muskogee, Oklahoma
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Iraq.
I will not pay my taxes if we
bomb Afghanistan.
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Nicaragua.
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Vietnam.
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Laos.
I will not pay my taxes if we bomb Cambodia.
Therefore, I don’t pay my taxes.
Dani Visalli, Winthrop, Washington
Spend my tax dollars on the good of the nation, not
war.
Jennifer Chacon, Portland, Oregon
Together we can bleed the war machine dry by using this non-violent civil
disobedience.
anonymous, Modesto, California
Already had planned to put all of my taxes for
in escrow.
Refusing to pay 7% is a good start, but is it really impacting enough?
As Michael Venturi suggests, they will only borrow from the resources for our poor to kill their poor.
The war will continue, and the 7% will be stolen from the ‘lock-box.’
Alan Scouten, Charlottesville, Virginia
Thank you for organizing this.… It is time to act.
CodePink consistently
does excellent work.
anonymous, Olympia, Washington
‘A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.’
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Thomas Fatone, Brooklyn, New York
Bravo.
I have been advocating for just this to happen for several
years.
Duncan Dow, South San Francisco, California
Cherish the people, defund the military machine.
Doug Mackenzie,
Los Gatos, California
This is a great idea.
Next a national strike!
Claire Chang, Gill,
Massachusetts
I already signed onto NWTRCC’s War Tax Boycott, refused to file for and have quit my full-time job to live below the taxable
threshold.
If Congress won’t defund the war, the last bulwark of democracy, The People, must.
NTodd Pritsky, Cambridge, Vermont
This is a bandwagon that most Republicans should hop onto since they abhor
paying taxes.
Alert everyone you know about this cause there is larger safety in larger numbers.
Laura Martin, Clarkson, Georgia
Let’s protest with our dollars this time.
Maria Kanaan, Chicago,
Illinois
Thank you all!
If Congress wimps out by giving Bush more $$, than we must
not provide it.
Enough!
I refuse to pay for murder.
Friend Burton, St.
Louis, Missouri
Time to defund the war.
Larry Harper, Sebastopol, California
I consider myself in good company — like all the ‘traitors’ who fought off
British control and taxation without representation, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Friend Johnson, Cedar Falls, Iowa
Let’s put our money where our mouths are — since Congress doesn’t have the
courage to stop funding war — the people will.
Susan Eleuterio, Highland, Indiana
Things have to change with this disastrous war and administration, and
women will be the ones to do it.
Joni Goodale, Orlando, Florida
In a governmental system based on money and corporate profits, the most
effective form of protest comes from withholding payment of taxes.
Daniel Woodham, Greensboro, North Carolina
Thank You!
It is about time… I am so ready to join those who are ready to
live their convictions.
Tighe Barry, Santa Monica, California
With 50% of the federal budget being used for military purposes, I cannot
in good conscience pay for war while praying for peace.
Lincoln Rice, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
I will refuse to pay taxes for war even if fewer than 100,000 people
pledge because I cannot in conscience pay for these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Peter Smith, South Bend, Indiana
It’s about time citizens used their green to bring peace.
Heli
Taylor, Los Angeles, California
Not one more dollar!
Deidra Lynch, Orlando, Florida
And this is just from those who have signed up by the beginning of !
The conference, a regularly-scheduled business & strategy meeting of NWTRCC, brought together about 20 dedicated members from across the country — some of whom have decades of experience with tax resistance — and also drew some curious locals who are just getting their feet wet.
Our hosts did an incredible job of organizing beds, meals, and transportation, and making us feel comfortable and at home, so that we could keep our minds on a challenging agenda throughout .
, at the national gathering in Santa Rosa, I was the curious local getting my feet wet.
, I was appointed to a term as an alternate on the national administrative committee.
I’d been reluctant to consider taking on a responsibility like this in the past, for one reason because we already had an AdCom member from Northern California, and for another because I thought I might not be sufficiently on-the-same-page with the group as a whole (for instance, not being much of a “progressive” and thinking the “Peace Tax Fund Act” is worse than worthless).
But then the AdCom member from our area resigned, and the more I thought about NWTRCC the more I realized that we’re a wildly diverse lot ideologically and we manage to comfortably fit on the “same page” anyway.
For the most part, we’re pretty good at concentrating on the stuff we agree on and treating the diversity of perspectives on other issues as a strength rather than a nuisance.
During the conference, we heard reports of Tax Day actions and general status reports from local groups around the country.
These varied a lot in tone, with some groups reporting a surge of interest and enthusiasm, while others were discouraged at diminishing membership and activity.
We spent a lot of time reviewing the War Tax Boycott — what worked, what didn’t work, and whether we should continue it in some form or change tactics.
I have mixed feelings about the Boycott.
On the plus side, I think that it provided a good project for us to focus our energies on, and it was a good wedge for publicity and outreach.
I think that it’s very likely that our project inspired, perhaps subliminally, the parallel war tax resistance projects that sprung up last year — Code Pink’s “Don’t Buy Bush’s War” campaign and Christian Peace Witness for Iraq’s “Pledge for Peace.”
Bill Ramsey at the War Tax Boycott press conference
However, these are largely side-effects.
In terms of the goals we explicitly set for the Boycott — which seemed to me to involve creating and maintaining a large-scale mass resistance and redirection campaign — I think the Boycott was mostly a flop.
It was unable to even reach a large percentage of current NWTRCC members to convince them to sign on.
My feeling is that we could use our resources, time, and energy more productively in the future by pursuing more realistic goals or by partnering with other organizations that have the resources to lead the sort of campaign we have in mind.
However, mine was very much a minority position.
And I heard enough about how useful the Boycott campaign had been to people in their local outreach that I became convinced that the campaign should continue in some form.
At the meeting, we agreed to spend some time reassessing and restructuring it, but to commit to continue it for at least.
On , Bill Ramsey, who has been the main organizer behind the Boycott effort, organized a press conference to announce that $325,000 had been redirected by boycotters from the Pentagon to humanitarian projects.
Antor Odu Ndep, executive director of Common Ground Health Clinic, accepts redirected taxes
Antor Odu Ndep, executive director of the Common Ground Health Clinic in New Orleans, was on-hand to accept a check representing donations from tax boycotters and to talk about what the clinic has done and is doing to help people in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Najlaa al-Nashi of Direct Aid Iraq joined the press conference by an audio/video link to talk about how that organization will use the redirected funds to help provide medical care for refugees from the Iraq War.
Tax resister Joffre Stewart speaks with representatives of the Direct Aid Initiative on a videoconference from Jordan
The Birmingham News also had a reporter on site, who fired off a quick note afternoon, and then filed a more complete story for the edition, featuring local resister David Waters:
David Waters’ protest started .
The Vietnam veteran couldn’t support the United States’ first Gulf War, what he calls a “slaughter in the desert.”
So he stopped paying his federal taxes.
“It just went against my conscience,” said Waters, a 61-year-old carpenter who lives in the Avondale community of Birmingham.
Today, he is one of more than 520 U.S. citizens from 44 states who refused to pay some or all of their federal taxes and pledged to redirect the money — more than $325,000 — to humanitarian causes.
On , a New Orleans health care clinic and an Iraqi refugee aid group accepted about $95,000 in gifts and pledges through the anti-war tax boycott.
The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, the organization that led the boycott, met in Birmingham to award some of the monetary gifts.
The Common Ground Health Clinic, a free clinic in New Orleans, received more than $50,000 in pledges.
The Direct Aid Initiative, or Direct Aid Iraq, got more than $44,400 of the would-be taxes.
Other “tax resisters” gave to local projects or humanitarian causes of their choosing, member Bill Ramsey said.
Najlaa al-Nashi, with the Iraqi refugee organization, said over teleconference afternoon from Jordan that her organization was grateful for the money.
Daniel Woodham put $300 on the table after al-Nashi spoke.
“I thank you so much for putting it to much better use than my government ever would,” said Woodham of Greensboro, N.C.
Woodham said he hasn’t paid his taxes , which he estimates amounts to about $15,000 before penalties.
The 43-year-old farmer and English language teacher files every year with a letter explaining where he is redirecting his money.
Woodham said he questions why his federal taxes should go “to kill people.”
“I don’t think it increases our safety.
I don’t think it increase our integrity around the world,” he said.
“I’m a conscientious objector.”
After the press conference, we returned to the Quaker Meeting house and I facilitated a workshop on how to talk to people about war tax resistance.
Mostly I was concerned with how we should respond when we’re promoting the tactic to activists who aren’t currently tax resisters, and then they throw up one of the dozen or so objections we’ve all heard before.
This was largely an extension of what I discussed here , with a focus on one-on-one communication as opposed to talking to and through the press.
After going on at some length about these theories of mine that I’m so proud of, I opened it up to the group by play-acting a potential resister who is raising excuses (in each of the needs / fears / values categories) as to why they don’t think tax resistance is right for them, and asking how the resisters present would answer the objections.
I thought it went well, provided a lot of food for thought, and could help to make us more persuasive as we go back home, away from the true believers, and have to respond to the old familiar objections again.
That evening we heard David Waters tell the gripping and fascinating story of the path he has taken in his life, from being an Army Special Forces volunteer in the Vietnam War, to being a “revenuer” for a liquor-law enforcement agency, to being a war tax resister.
I’ve left out a lot of nitty-gritty that occupied a lot of our time, but probably doesn’t have a whole lot of interest to those not already elbow-deep in the springs & gears of the organization.
I brought down six copies of We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader, figuring that if this wasn’t a good opportunity to find its audience nothing was.
Of the six, I gave away one to our hosts and sold seven (that is to say, I had to place quick orders for two more to keep up with demand).
I can’t convey, but should certainly mention, one of the most important parts of the meeting, which is just to be able to meet face-to-face and share stories and outlooks and be together in a group where tax resistance isn’t a frightening fringe idea but is the center of discussion.
I’m back from the NWTRCC National Gathering in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
I’ll share some of my impressions and go into more detail in the coming days.
I flew into Charlottesville and was picked up by one of our hosts — who’d be shuttling incoming conferencers all weekend and who did a fantastic job of making sure we all got collected, assembled, fed, and then given a comfortable place to lay our heads at the end of the day.
We passed the new America tombstone on the way back to Harrisonburg where we were holding the sessions of our meeting at the Community Mennonite Church.
After the administrative committee met on morning and afternoon to grease the wheels for the larger coordinating committee meetings, night was devoted to introductions, a viewing of a video on corrupt and insufficiently-monitored government spending on the Afghanistan War, and reports from local groups about how their Tax Day actions went and what they’ve been up to.
Clare Hanrahan shared some stories from the tour she and Coleman Smith have been conducting through Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina to meet with peace & justice activists in that area, forge alliances between them, and learn about the state of the regional movement.
They’ve been blogging their adventures on the War Resisters League Asheville site.
Lots of people reported that their tax day protests had been upstaged by the Tea Party demonstrations this year, though a few groups took the “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach and partied along with the rest of them.
One person noted that with more people e-filing their tax returns, the phenomenon of the last-minute post office rush has diminished, and there’s less media attention and less of an audience for leafletting and such.
Ruth Benn reported on how in New York they held a viewing of tax resistance related excerpts from Boston Legal and Stranger Than Fiction as a discussion-prompter.
Robert Randall reported that an attempt to focus messaging around the single issue of opposition to the Iraq War had seemed promising at first, as the war became more unpopular even in his red state of Georgia, but that it hadn’t seemed to lead to any noticeable uptick in interest in war tax resistance or in new resisters.
Many people noted the increasing challenge of developing interest in our message in a time when the anti-war movement is suffering from a post-election tranquilization.
Ray Gingerich reflected on the difficulty he is having in trying to reinvigorate the war tax resistance tradition in the Mennonite church.
On tax day, he sends his letter of protest to his church.
He also recalled for us that their local war tax resistance group used to be much more active and at one time they had a mutual aid fund that they used to defray the costs of penalties, interest, and frivolous filing fines incurred by individual members.
morning
After breakfast morning, we discussed what we thought of a rough cut of an upcoming war tax resistance film project, and talked about what we thought would be the best use of the available footage.
Then Bill Ramsey gave us an update on the War Tax Boycott project, and we discussed options for modifying the campaign going forward.
Here are some of the comments from my notes (these are all paraphrased and on-the-fly, so may not represent what these folks actually said or meant to say):
David Waters
I love the palm cards.
Pam Allee
It would be good to keep the campaign going on a low simmer during the sleepy times so that we would be ready to jump in with a flashier campaign when the moment is right.
Bill Ramsey
I recommend a scaled-down campaign in which we keep the website updated but reduce the budget.
Robert Randall
How can we hold on to the new resisters whom we learn about for the first time when they sign up for the boycott?
Ray Gingerich
I’m confused as to whether the boycott is meant only for first-timers or if it’s for everyone; to me it seemed gimmicky and not particularly appealing.
Susan Balzer
Some people might not want to sign on to the boycott because they don’t want to be “on a list” and they might be more comfortable if there’s a way to remain anonymous.
Jim Stockwell
I think maybe “boycott” is a threatening or discouraging word to some people.
Clare Hanrahan
The hard copy boycott sign-on sheets weren’t at all popular when we were tabling.
Daniel Woodham
We should make the palm cards less likely to go stale by removing the year and references to specific wars/issues.
Geov Parrish
The value of the campaign is mainly as a vehicle for publicizing war tax resistance as an option, not so much in getting people to sign on.
Erica Weiland
I wonder if by framing the campaign as a one-year thing we prompt people to make their resistance temporary.
Clare Hanrahan
I do low-income resistance and I redirect unwaged labor, not money.
I think the war tax resistance movement should honor that and recognize that option for boycott participants (not assume everyone has a dollar amount to redirect).
Tim Godshall (and others)
We need to have better follow-up with the people who sign on — by phone is better than by email.
Robert Randall
Maybe we could parcel out some of the following-up to people in our network list.
Next came a discussion of our finances and a report from the fundraising committee, and then we broke for lunch.
afternoon
First thing on afternoon we had a panel presentation and group discussion about the Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Act and about NWTRCC’s relationship with the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund.
This was the most contentious item on the agenda, and I’m going to leave you all in suspense about it by writing it up in a future blog post all its own rather than putting it here.
After this, we broke up into smaller group sessions.
In mine, a group of maybe twenty resisters just shared some of their recent experiences with resistance and with the IRS.
Sharing our war stories like this is one of the best parts of these meetings, and is also a great way of keeping our fingers on the pulse of how IRS enforcement trends are changing.
I didn’t take notes during that session since it seemed to be a more-intimate sharing of personal information than the general meeting.
I did write down one quote though that was too good to miss, from Clare Hanrahan:
“I used to say that they could boil me in oil before I’d pay any war taxes, but now that I know that they could actually do that…”
One idea I came away with was that it would be nice to have some tips from war tax resistance veterans about how to deal with “mixed marriages” in which one partner is a resister and the other one is not.
There are some tricky questions, especially when finances get tangled up together.
I’m hoping, next time I have some free time, to put some time into collecting some of these stories and tips.
The next full-group session was about “organizing strategies and outreach ideas in the Obama era.”
I didn’t take notes here either as I was facilitating and had to devote all of my attention to that.
What I mostly recall from the discussion is that people were less interested in talking about strategies, techniques, and outreach ideas and more interested in talking about what sort of messaging we should and shouldn’t use.
Before dinner was another set of small-group breakout sessions.
I joined the web team, discussing the nitty-gritty of web site maintenance and design, none of which is really worth relating here.
was our business meeting, in which decisions that require consensus approval of the coordinating committee are made, folks are rotated onto and off of the administrative committee (Erica Weiland is joining us this time), we review the budget and priorities and how the coordinator is doing, check in on the progress of ongoing projects, and plan for the next gathering.
The first half of the meeting was largely taken up by Peace Tax Fund-related discussion, which I’m holding off reporting on until a future post.
For the second half, I was the facilitator and so took no notes.
So you’ll just have to wait until Ruth Benn posts her meeting minutes for a full picture of what took place.
This issue had come up at our last meeting in Eugene because the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund had asked us to formally endorse this legislation.
We were unable to reach consensus on the endorsement at that meeting and didn’t allot enough time to really discuss the matter in detail, so we planned to readdress the issue and devote more time to discussion this time around.
One of the arguments in favor of us endorsing the bill was that in the NWTRCC “Statement of Purpose” is a section that many people interpreted as a built-in endorsement of the bill.
That section reads:
NWTRCC’s goal is to maintain and build a national movement of conscientious objectors to military taxes by supporting, coordinating and publicizing the WTR actions of groups and individuals.
These actions include: war tax resistance, protest, and refusal; the redirection of military taxes to meet human needs; support of the US Peace Tax Fund Bill; and adjustment of lifestyle to avoid tax liability.
I’ve heard many perspectives about whether this section endorses the bill or merely indicates that support for it is one of many war tax resistance related activities that our affiliate groups engage in.
But in any case, the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill” doesn’t exist as an active piece of legislation anymore.
The currently-proposed legislation is substantially different in content and has a new name.
So this time around, in addition to debating the endorsement question, we were also trying to come up with a satisfactory way to remove or replace the anachronistic language from our statement of purpose.
On , we had a panel presentation on the bill followed by an open discussion.
Bethany Criss, the executive director of the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, presented the case for why we should endorse.
Ray Gingerich and I each gave statements opposing the endorsement.
Ruth Benn shared some of her insights from being exposed to the variety of international peace tax fund campaigns (some of which are promoting legislation that differs in important ways from the U.S. bill) and also recounted some of the history of the close working relationship of NWTRCC and NCPTF.
After these brief remarks from the panel, other attendees addressed the issue.
The following summary is based on notes I was taking at the time, so is only as good as my attention and note-taking were — caveat emptor:
Bethany Criss started out by noting the similarity between legalized conscientious objection to military service and conscientious objection to military taxation.
She also tried to assuage concerns that the “Religious Freedom” part of the bill’s title meant that the provisions of the bill would not be available to non-religious objectors.
She said that she felt confident that Congress would not raid the peace tax fund to pay for military expenses because the RFPTFA would represent a contract between us and Congress and that we could hold them accountable if they were to violate it.
She acknowledged that the bill was imperfect and would not accomplish as much as many people would like, but hoped that we would see it as an initial step in an incremental process.
I went next.
Here’s more-or-less the argument I gave against endorsement:
War Tax Resisters and Peace Tax Fund advocates agree that the belligerent militarism of the United States is a grave problem, that individuals must act to oppose it, and that our tax dollars are an important way in which we can move from complicity to opposition.
Because of this, we’re natural allies and have much in common.
The RFPTFA currently being pushed by the NCPTF has some significant problems. So much so that although our groups have much in common in our outlook and our interests, I think it would be a mistake for NWTRCC to endorse the RFPTFA.
Indeed, the problems with the bill are so significant that if the bill ever looked as though it might pass, we would be wiser to actively oppose the bill than to endorse it.
The main problems with the bill are two: 1) it’s no good, and 2) it’s bad.
That is, not only would it not deliver any meaningful benefits, but it would have harmful effects that would be damaging to the war tax resistance movement and dangerous to individual war tax resisters.
The reason why I say the bill is no good is this.
If the bill passes, it would give Congress more taxpayer money to spend and would allow Congress to spend as much money as it likes on war and armaments.
Every dollar paid into the “Peace Tax Fund” would increase taxpayer spending on the military.
This sounds like exactly the opposite of what the NCPTF intends, which may be true.
But sometimes good intentions lead to counterproductive laws and policies.
If you read the NCPTF literature, you’ll see that they admit that the bill would increase government revenue without decreasing how much Congress could spend on war:
So Congress would have more taxpayer money than before and could spend as much as it wants on war.
Why on earth would we want this?
Well, we’re supposed to want this because at least our money wouldn’t be spent on war.
But this is just an illusion.
The basic problem has to do with displacement.
If you pay into the Peace Tax Fund and Congress can only spend “your” money on something nice like the National Park Service, Congress can just take some other money that it had been planning to spend on the Park Service and divert it to the Pentagon.
So Congress spends just like it always has, with a little more taxpayer money than it would have had otherwise, but the people who pay into the Peace Tax Fund falsely believe that they aren’t responsible for the results of that increased spending.
It would be as though I were to pour a cup of sand into a mug full of hot coffee and then claim that I wasn’t responsible for the spillover since my sand sank to the bottom of the mug and it was only someone else’s coffee that spilled over the top.
So that’s why the RFPTFA isn’t any good.
Now here’s why it’s bad.
First: it constructs an illusion through which people can be induced to pay for war and militarism while believing that they are not.
The war tax resistance movement should be working hard to tear down illusions like this, not build up new ones.
Second: it would divide the war tax resistance movement between those people who maintain their testimony against paying for war and those who take advantage of the false moral cover of the RFPTFA.
This would also give the IRS fewer targets to pursue, and make the remaining war tax resisters more likely to be targeted by enforcement actions.
If the war tax resistance movement ever does become a powerful force for social change, you can bet that the government will consider passing such a bill — not as a concession to our movement but as a divide-and-conquer technique against it.
Third: it would give a persuasive rhetorical tool to people who oppose war tax resisters.
They would say that war tax resisters should just pay into the Peace Tax Fund like good, law-abiding, conscientious people.
Imagine what the IRS would say to resisters: “We gave you the ‘Peace Tax Fund’ you wanted — now you’ve got no more excuses not to pay up.”
Those three things are harmful effects the bill would have if it ever became law.
I don’t think this is likely, but there’s a fourth reason not to endorse the bill that doesn’t depend on whether or not it is successful in becoming law: advocacy of such a bill sends the message that the war tax resistance movement is naïve and that our conscientious scruples are superficial.
It tells people that war tax resisters:
are not particularly conscientious at all, but can be easily bought-off by symbolic concessions and simple sleight-of-hand
are conscientious enough to check a box on a form, but not conscientious enough to follow through on the ramifications of our actions
are willing enough to fund war if you can give us a way to deny that we’re doing it
would rather have a certificate from the government recognizing our officially certified conscientiousness than to actually be conscientious
These flaws have been pointed out before, and frequently PTF promoters have responded with an argument along these lines: Sure the RFPTFA won’t reduce military spending and it has at best an ambiguous effect on taxpayer complicity, but it has strong symbolic power: it’s a way to get conscientious objection to military taxation officially recognized, to get a foot in the door, to be able to take a census of conscientious objectors every April 15th, to propagandize for peace with every 1040 booklet, and so forth.
These benefits are not very convincing to me, for a number of reasons, but even if you were to acknowledge them — are they sufficient to justify putting any more energy into a 38-year-old campaign that has gone nowhere at all, currently in support of a piece of legislation that, even as watered down as it is, hasn’t had as much as a committee hearing in over a decade?
I feel strongly about this, and I have not pulled my punches.
Some of you may think I’m being uncharitable and unfair.
I’ll end on this note: I think the advocates of the RFPTFA have their hearts in the right place.
They are temperamentally our allies and I hope they continue to think of themselves that way.
I think that to the extent that we agree, we should continue to work closely and warmly together, and to the extent that we disagree we can agree to disagree.
After me, Ray Gingerich spoke, giving what I interpreted as a Thoreauvian argument against the peace tax fund idea: we shouldn’t wait to act conscientiously until the government gives us its permission to do so.
In addition, he feels from his work in trying to reintroduce war tax resistance into the Mennonite churches that the peace tax fund is an obstacle to this — it creates an excuse that people use: they say they’ll resist taxes but only when there’s a peace tax fund that allows them to do it legally.
After these prepared remarks from the panel, and Ruth’s discussion which I mentioned above, we heard from the other attendees.
Before Eugene, I thought of myself as a real outlier in my skepticism about the peace tax fund bill.
Most of what I heard about the bill in war tax resistance circles was positive, and the way people spoke about it made it seem like NWTRCC enthusiasm for the peace tax fund was a foregone conclusion if not a tautological one.
In Eugene I was pleasantly surprised to see that a few other people shared my misgivings about the bill, though I still felt like we were the minority.
In Harrisonburg last Saturday, though, it was clear that the tide had shifted dramatically.
Even with the executive director of the NCPTF there to pitch the bill, most people had little praise for it, and even the ones who were peace tax fund supporters in the abstract expressed that we probably shouldn’t endorse this version.
Gary Erb noted that most of those present probably wouldn’t qualify as conscientious objectors under the bill’s restrictive language, and so wouldn’t be able to legally avail themselves of the RFPTFA even if they cared to.
He also felt the bill would have a divide-and-conquer effect against the WTR movement, and recommended against endorsement.
Geov Parrish felt that the RFPTFA hadn’t a chance of becoming law, so it should be best seen as an educational vehicle.
That being the case, it was a poor idea to have watered it down so much in an attempt to make it palatable enough to pass through Congress.
Also, he noted that he feels excluded from the RFPTFA and its promotional materials because he is not a Christian.
Joffre Stewart said that as an anarchist resister, begging the state for exemptions and favors isn’t his style.
He thinks that conscientious objection to military service was mostly enacted for the state’s benefit, not for the benefit of the COs, and he thinks the same would be true of legalized conscientious objection to military taxation.
From this, he draws the conclusion that the reason we don’t have legal conscientious objection to military taxation is that war tax resisters have not yet become sufficiently inconvenient to the government.
Daniel Woodham thought that though the RFPTFA wasn’t perfect, it might make for a good first step, and once it was enacted we could work to amend it or correct its faults over time.
Bethany Criss said that in her view the “laundry list” of items in the section (§3b) of the bill that defines spending that falls under the “military purpose” category shouldn’t be seen as excluding other spending from that category, but only as examples of spending that fall under that category.
In her view, once the bill passes, a next step will be to ensure that the “military purpose” definition is interpreted inclusively so that it covers all the stuff we’re worried about.
Greg Reagle gave us some perspective on the reasoning behind watering down the bill to permit Congress to spend the money in the RFPTF on anything in the budget other than things in the military purpose category (previous incarnations of the bill had specified more precisely where that money would go).
He said that potential supporters in Congress had balked at having their spending decisions micromanaged by legislation, and so the changes had been made to mollify them.
Erica Weiland wanted to emphasize the positive working relationship between NWTRCC and NCPTF, though she too was opposed to endorsing the bill.
As an anarchist she doesn’t much favor trying to solve problems via legislation, but as an activist she tries to inspire well-intentioned people to be more active in ways that seem most appropriate to them, so she wants to encourage PTF promoters to keep doing their thing.
Robert Randall said he was impressed at the high plane on which the discussion was taking place.
He thought that the results of passing the RFPTFA might not be all that important, but that there might be some benefits to be had from the campaign to pass the bill anyway.
Pam Allee felt that the bill would help to emphasize that “we are the government” and so we can take control of the budget and change spending priorities so as to emphasize things like education, seat belt law enforcement, and other liberal priorities.
She was concerned that the RFPTFA seemed to lack grassroots support.
Larry Bassett paused to wonder whether it was really appropriate to the mission of a group like NWTRCC to be endorsing legislation or the individual projects of the affiliate groups.
Jim Stockwell felt that there might be a contradiction in that for many WTRs, the fact that tax resistance is illegal civil disobedience is an essential part of their WTR, and so legal conscientious objection would not be helpful to them.
He hoped our two groups would continue to work together.
Hiro (whose last name I didn’t catch, and whose first name I may be misspelling) encouraged us to patiently work at incremental approaches and not reject RFPTFA just because it wasn’t everything we wanted.
That said, she also worried that the government would spend the “peace” tax fund on things based on its warped definition of peacemaking work.
She envisioned Blackwater contractors doing their institution-building mopping-up exercises in Iraq (where she is from) and calling it “peacemaking” activities deserving of RFPTFA funding.
Tim Godshall tried to give us some perspective, noting that WTRs are one of the best arguments for the PTF (that is, the existence of WTRs demonstrates that many citizens have a strong conscientious objection that their government needs to accommodate), and also that although the RFPTFA might not have any effect on the military budget, the same could be said of WTRs. He believes that the RFPTFA is one part of a larger campaign to pressure the government to change its spending priorities.
Peter Smith disagreed with the suggestion that if the RFPTFA were to pass it would divide the WTR movement.
He agreed that we should not endorse the legislation, but hoped we would continue to support the PTF campaigners.
Ray Gingerich responded to a comment from Joffre Stewart by insisting that he was not an anarchist and indeed believed that a strong, active government (for example, one capable of implementing single-payer universal health care) was not incompatible with pacifism.
He plugged nonviolent conflict resolution strategies of the The Unconquerable World / A Force More Powerful school.
He also suggested that Marian Franz (the long-time National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund executive director) had been used by people and institutions who wanted to delay their confrontation with taxpayer complicity by putting it off until some distant future in which conscientious objection to military taxation was a legalized option.
Joffre Stewart noted that the U.S. government had no qualms about raiding the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for its military spending, and that it had stacked its “U.S. Institute of Peace” with CIA folk committed to the government’s violent foreign policy.
He therefore sees no reason to trust the government to administer a “peace tax fund.”
Bethany Criss told us that not only is she committed to seeing the RFPTFA enacted into law, but that she is also a war tax resister and has been since .
She said that although there is an associated “Peace Tax Foundation” with an educational mission, there should be no doubt that the Campaign’s goal is to get the legislation passed into law.
She thinks that the bill will be beneficial to war tax resisters and the war tax resistance movement by making WTR more visible.
She says that if the bill were enacted, it would not take away the opportunity to resist or say no; that resisters could continue to resist as before if they wished.
The goal is to bring more people in to a war tax resistance mindset.
She notes that part of the reason the bill was watered down is that their campaign doesn’t yet have enough supporters to bring enough pressure to bear on the legislators; this is another reason why she’d like our support.
Finally, Bill Ramsey felt that we might be better off not concentrating on the (unlikely) endorsement and instead trying to work on ways the two groups can work better together.
was an open-ended discussion without any decisions to be made on either the endorsement or the statement of purpose wording; on , our “business meeting,” we addressed those decisions.
A number of people who could not come to the meeting sent along their opinions about the RFPTFA, and printouts of these were made available to attendees of the business meeting before we took up the issue.
These were on the whole much more positive about the Act and more in favor of endorsement than the attendees had been, with one person recommending endorsement, another recommending “NWTRCC continuing its endorsement” of the bill (though we had a hard time determining which if any version of the bill our group had originally endorsed), and another conveying the results of a discussion about the issue held by Sonoma County Taxes for Peace which led to that group deciding to strongly support NWTRCC endorsing the bill.
Predictably, we did not reach consensus at the business meeting on to endorse the RFPTFA.
I counted about a half-dozen people in favor of endorsement, maybe half again as many against it.
Unfortunately, although a non-endorsement was pretty clearly the inevitable conclusion, it took a while to get there, and we weren’t able to devote as much time as we needed to the stickier question of the Statement of Purpose and its anachronistic reference to the “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
The upshot of that discussion was that there were two replacement phrases with a large amount of support:
“…support of peace tax fund legislation…”
“…support of legislation that would legalize conscientious objection to military taxation…”
While there was broad support for both, neither was able to rally a consensus around it.
My proposal to simply scrap the old anachronistic wording for now and perhaps come up with a replacement at a later date also failed to attract consensus support — with many people feeling that by rejecting the endorsement and also eliminating mention of the PTF from our Statement of Purpose it would look too much like we’d conducted a wholesale purge of PTF sympathy from the group.
So when it came down to it, the Statement of Purpose ended up the same way it began in this area: it continues to pledge our support for supporters of the long-gone “US Peace Tax Fund Bill.”
This is a little ridiculous, but seems mostly harmless.
was .
I got here early to do some preliminary work as part of NWTRCC’s Administrative Committee.
While the last meeting was contentious, with the controversial issue of a possible Peace Tax Fund endorsement on the agenda, this meeting looks to be comparatively placid.
The article has some accuracy howlers in it, but certainly fits under the any publicity is good publicity umbrella.
I especially liked this detail:
“My great-great-grandfather was drafted for the Confederate Army,” said Frank Massey…
“In those days you could pay $300 to hire someone else to fight for you.
But he thought that if he opposed fighting, it would be just as bad to hire someone else to fight in his place.
So he resisted.”
That mentality is what caused Massey to begin resisting the war tax in .
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 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
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
. 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 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 , 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 .
When the authorities tried to impose a tax on dogs in Breslau, Germany,
in 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.
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 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.
Tax Day has come and gone… twice! — since the
IRS had
to extend it by a day at the last minute when their on-line payment system
went down.
War tax resisters around the country
dusted off their penny poll
jars and protest signs and did what they could to remind people of the
cruelty and destruction that results from their tax compliance.
Author Alice Walker (The Color Purple) wrote a poem for an anti-war march in Oakland, California, which reads in part:
How do grownups
Truly say No
To War?
By not paying for it.
Some so-called grownups will harass you when
You attempt to do this: Not Pay For War. But do not be discouraged.
As your elder, it is my job to help you think
Your way around this obstacle of taxes
That have the blood of the children
Of the world on them.
The poem goes on to encourage an “I Don’t Need It” movement in which concerned people withdraw from the consumer economy.
“We can stop war by not shopping our way through the bad news of it; as it creeps ever closer to our door.
We can stop war by not funding it.”
The Freedom Highway show on Radio Kingston interviewed Gabe Roth from Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings about the song he wrote for the group:
“What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?” and also interviewed war tax resister Daniel Woodham.
Reason’s Brian Doherty gives a rundown of some of the more pettily infuriating uses of our taxes, and experiments with describing them in terms of how many American taxpayers had to pay taxes all year so that, for example, EPA head Scott Pruitt could install a soundproof booth in his office to take his phone calls in, or so that the New England Foundation for the Arts could put on a version of Hamlet performed by dogs.
Sarah Vowell managed to put a meandering and mostly-pointless op-ed in the New York Times encouraging people to read their Thoreau on tax day, or something.
In other news…
The Italian group Addiopizzo organizes and promotes businesses that refuse to pay the pizzo protection money to the mafia.
They’ve now extended this from brick-and-mortar businesses and recently announced an on-line Addiopizzo store.
(Alas, when I tried to use it they didn’t have shipping options to the United States, but you might be luckier if you live somewhere in the European Union.)
They encourage people to buy from non-mafia-tainted businesses as an action they call consumo critico (critical consumption) in order to make sure the profits from resistance exceed the risks.
Spanish war tax resisters created a video to showcase the little school (esquelita) they funded with redirected taxes.
The school helps children in a neglected school district, has a food pantry, and also offers Spanish language instruction for immigrants.
