This letter comes from the edition of In These Times, twenty-five years ago today:
Exemplary Poverty
Marcia Yudkin’s “Pocketbook Pacifists” (ITT, ) is a good article showing the diversity of the war tax resistance movement. However, I don’t agree with Alan Eccleston who was quoted as being wary of us resisters who live on a non-taxable income. Many of us choose to live in “voluntary poverty” effectively to show our opposition to the spending of our tax dollars for the military. We do this because we know that not one cent of our money goes toward the race toward human extinction; unlike Eccleston, from which the military eventually gets its money and then goes forward to produce killing machines. Military tax resistance, whatever its form, is just a means. The end result is to gain support for spending for human needs (peace) and to end the threat of self-annihilation.
Brad Ott
New Orleans
