Boycotts have often changed the world.
The American Revolution began with the Boston Tea Party.
The non-violent movement that brought down the British Empire included Gandhi’s boycott against British textiles.
The Montgomery bus boycott launched the civil rights movement.
The United Farm Workers in the U.S., led by Cesar Chavez, were unionized through laborious national boycotts of lettuce and grapes.
And of course, the international boycott of South Africa played a vital role in bringing down the system of apartheid.
But strangely, Mr. Rockwell restricts himself to talking about boycotts of U.S.-based companies, particularly those with government contracts in Iraq.
Boycotting the U.S. itself, through tax resistance by its subjects, seems to be off the peace movement’s radar.
This surprises me.
Why is the war tax resistance movement so sluggish and invisible?
One war tax resister writes: “A few weeks ago I stumbled on a poster for this year’s war tax conference and was shocked to find out it was nearby, in suburban Philadelphia.
I asked other war tax resisters I knew and none of them had heard of it.
Granted we’ve all drifted away from the network (primarily out of frustration) but I probably would have gone if I hadn’t already made plans for the weekend.
“Just a few hours of googling and phone calls could have reached out to the disillusioned supporters.
And there’s a dozen people who could have made the calls… Weird.
This is a large part of the reason I drifted away from the organized war tax movement — I just don’t think it’s serious about wanting to succeed.”
The “latest news” on the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee web site is four months old.
That organization’s semiannual conference was , and if any decisions were made or campaigns launched I haven’t heard about it (and I’ve got my ears up for tax resistance news more than your average Joe).
I don’t get it.
I’m fairly new at this game.
Maybe when I’ve been doing tax resistance and tax resistance advocacy for a decade and still haven’t made much headway, I’ll become resigned to my irrelevance and learn to be satisfied with noble failure.
Until that psychological shift takes hold, though, I’m just baffled, frustrated, a little angry, and eager to try some new and more vigorous approaches.
Is it just me or are the newspaper articles about war tax resistance coming earlier and more often ?
We’re a long way from , which is our traditional fifteen minutes of fame, and yet we’re getting a lot of ink lately.
Alas, the article hits my pet peeve which is to overstate the difficulty of living under the tax line: “Others dodge the Internal Revenue Service entirely or reconfigure their lives to live below the taxable level — $7,950 in income for a single person under 65, according to the IRS.”
Caleb Mozzocco contributes to the annual early-April flurry of War Tax Resistance press with an article for Columbus Alive.
It more-or-less follows the standard template for such articles, but sadly does a nose dive right into my pet peeve — exaggerating the difficulty of staying below the tax line:
Perhaps the most hardcore way to avoid funding the war machine is to try to live below the taxable income level, which means earning less than about $10,000 a year.
If you’re that poor, Uncle Sam lets you keep it all.
If you’re used to making more than 10K, however, it’s a pretty radical adjustment just to have a clean conscience.
On the plus side, it’s perfectly legal.
[I]n my unsystematic, affectionate observation of our community, our movement, our campaign, whatever the right word is for it, I don’t see much that suggests we’re being successful in our outreach, or that suggests we’re growing and flourishing as a movement.
This isn’t to put down anyone’s commitment, my own included, or the solid moral reasoning it’s based on, but I’m guessing that what I wonder is, what would it be like to sit down at a gathering and raise a couple of new questions, which at least have the benefit of being new, however crackpottish they may seem?
Here are the ones on my list: 1) Why are we so disproportionately white (at least, at all the meetings I’ve ever attended)? 2) Why have we failed to become a larger and more powerful movement? and 3) in response to a visionary comment made at one gathering by Bob Bady (and this one I heard myself!), namely, “if we built a better movement, people would come to it,” what would we need to do to build a seriously better movement than the one we have now?
Rosenwald was responding to the preliminary minutes from the NWTRCC meeting in Nashville and reacting to a comment he heard from a participant at a regional gathering: “we always talk about two things: outreach to non-WTRs and sustaining ourselves as a movement.
When are we going to start talking about something new?”
I think Rosenwald is on to something.
The war tax resistance movement seems to be spinning its wheels and it’s time to reexamine what we’re doing.
To his first question, I have an observation or two.
I don’t know much about the demographics of the war tax resistance movement, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it is “disproportionally white” as he says.
I think this is probably because today’s war tax resistance movement in the U.S. descends from mostly-white religious movements like the Quakers and Catholic Workers with a more-recent infusion from the mostly-white anti-Vietnam-war movement.
Over time, certain aspects of white American (counter-)culture have permeated the movement — not because the people in the movement were deliberately trying to make it a white one, but because with few exceptions, they felt that such things were comfortable and unexceptional.
, when I went to the national NWTRCC meeting in Santa Rosa, I noted:
Because these sorts of things are par-for-the-course in the “white granola left,” it is easy for people who are part of that subculture not to realize that they may be somewhat off-putting to people who are not.
The war tax resistance movement often behaves as though we were trying to broadcast that we are very welcoming to white, mild-mannered, organic vegetarian, Dalai Lama supporting, folk-music-loving, gun-control advocates who voted for Kucinich.
That message comes through loud and clear.
Not that we should be broadcasting that mild-mannered et ceteras aren’t welcome, but if that welcome message is the loudest message we’re putting out, that’s the subculture we’ll be drawing our members from.
As for how to make this movement larger, more powerful, better, and more effective… I’ve got an even crazier idea.
People in the war tax resistance movement have two modes of trying to make change and influence people:
On the one hand, we try to influence the government not to be such a pack of scoundrels.
On the other hand, we try to convince people who also dislike the government’s scoundrelism to adopt tax resistance as a way of protesting it or of ending complicity with it.
When trying to convince the government, we use the whole assortment of sit-ins, letter-writing campaigns, protest marches, blockades, angry denunciations of all varieties, lawsuits, petitions and the like.
When trying to convince the taxpayers, though, suddenly we get very timid.
To the IRS, the tax resister will say “I cannot pay, and I won’t pay, because if I did, I would be complicit in the murder and thievery that this government engages in.”
But to the taxpayer who is complicit in the murder and thievery, the tax resister will say, “y’know, if you’re interested, you can make a powerful statement by redirecting the thirty-four cents in phone tax you pay every month, but if it’s too much bother, I understand.”
It is a shame that we divide our energy in this way.
The government will ignore us no matter how obnoxious we are (because we’re a fairly small, powerless movement and because they don’t care what we think), and we pretty much invite everybody else to ignore us by the timidity of our message.
My suggestion is to turn this around.
Let’s take ourselves seriously and act as though we believe what I think we believe: that the government is only the monster that we allow it to be by feeding it, that there’s no anti-war bumper sticker clever enough to make you actually anti-war if you’re still supporting the war with your money, that paying taxes to the U.S. government is not a neutral act but a pro-war, pro-militarism, pro-government act.
Let’s turn around and protest the taxpaying peace movement with the same energy we have been using to protest the government in vain.
I’d like to see us picket the taxpayers Michael Moore and Ward Churchill.
I’d like us to remind the folks applauding Iraq war refuseniks that conscientious objection is for everyone, not just for those in uniform.
I’d like to see us start a letter-writing campaign to MoveOn or a sit-in at the next United For Peace and Justice meeting, asking them to join the opposition.
I want to see us blockading the next protest march, holding a banner reading “When you’re serious, get back to us!”
Let’s make it crystal clear to the people who just might care that the best way to start opposing the war is to cut off your support for it.
I’m being a little provocative here for effect.
Some of the ideas I mention might be counter-productive and following their example might turn us into the annoying nags of the peace movement rather than expanding our influence.
There’s a good way and a bad way to go about this.
But I think that our current strategy of not standing up and challenging the paper-thin opposition of the taxpaying peace movement is no strategy at all.
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:
Tax resister “insurance”
For instance, the Breton Association in
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
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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).
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.
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-gatherersand 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.
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.
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.
Maintain solidarity in the face of divide-and-conquer tactics
In
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.
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.
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 , 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.
Protests, rallies, pickets, and the like have been a part of many
large-scale tax resistance campaigns.
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.”
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.
Form groups for mutual support & coordinated decision-making
Here there are too many examples to list.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
Although WTR
was never really really strong in other countries, I did sense at this
meeting that there were fewer resisters from countries other than the
U.S. and Britain
than my first meeting way back 20 years ago, which most attendees attributed
to the quickness to collect/seize in many countries. (Or are people being
drawn into peace tax fund efforts as a safer alternative?) However, although
the German groups seem to be all about peace tax fund efforts, they also told
about holding a vigil for a resister who was taken to court recently. And I
didn’t write about War Resisters’ International in Britain, which is a case
of an organization choosing to refuse to send on withheld taxes voluntarily
because that is the only way the staff can resist. Their board had to make
that decision. They await Inland Revenue’s showing up to sticker their
equipment for seizure now, but they are also trying to figure out how to make
their resistance more public and convince other orgs that they can do this
(even though Inland Revenue usually collects, it is at a point of forced
payment).
Still, while I can see these good examples, I do find it discouraging that in
the times we are in there are not masses turning to this form of resistance
(or even to the peace movement in general for heaven’s sake!) in the
U.S., if not
elsewhere.…
War tax resisters and peace tax fund advocates have some similarities in the
sort of goals they’re aiming for: they think that their governments overspend
on the military and they’d like their own money spent in better ways. But
tactically, they’re miles apart: peace tax funds are about the polar opposite
of conscientious tax resistance, and in fact are most likely to be enacted as
a weapon in the government arsenal to fight against war tax
resistance should it ever become sufficiently popular to be troublesome.
A lot of peace tax fund promoters don’t see it this way. They think of peace
tax fund schemes as being a natural extension of the same impulses that cause
people adopt war tax resistance, and they support the former for the same
reasons that other people support the latter. So, to that extent there’s some
harmony between the groups: peace tax fund promoters typically have their
hearts in the right place and just need to appropriately reposition their
heads to match.
But, since peace tax fund schemes are really inimical to conscientious war tax
resistance, there is necessarily some tension here.
I think it might be useful to rethink the “big tent” that brings war tax
resisters and peace tax fund advocates together in conferences like this one.
Not that I think there should be a formal divorce, but maybe instead we should
consider making the tent even bigger, to include tax resisters who resist from
different motives than antimilitarism. The invitation of George Rishmawi was a
good example of this (he was one of the organizers of tax resistance during
the intifada in Palestine) — too bad he couldn’t make it.
Here’s another example: what appears to have been a sophisticated campaign of
tax resistance from Mexico, where the motives of the resisters were to protest
that the government simply wasn’t providing the minimum of service in return
for the taxes. (From the Saltillo Palabra
a couple of years ago; the translation is mine, which is why it’s clunky):
TIJUANA — The executive council of the
National Chamber of Commerce [Canaco] in Tijuana decided to hold back
taxes from the three levels of Government since they do not provide security
to the city, said César Cázares, president of the organization.
“There is a group of tax lawyers who are advising us. We are going to stop
paying taxes. Already we have had agreements, meetings, plans. It’s a
method of civil disobedience," he said.
So far this month, 24 people have been assassinated in Tijuana, among these
was the assistant chief of security who was ambushed Thursday.
Cázares asserted that tax resistance is being tried because the retailers of
Tijuana are very worried about the constant crime wave, and they do not see a
response from the authorities.
He explained that since Thursday Canaco
is consulting with the College of Accountants of Tijuana to find a way to
redirect the taxes to some government entity and for the retailers not to be
sanctioned as tax delinquents.
“The possibility exists that the taxes will be redirected to an account in
the Federal Court for them to hold in escrow so long as the government fails
to return security to us,” he emphasized in the press conference.
About 35 presidents of skilled groups from Canaco
entreated Cázares to ask the state authorities for the intervention of the
Army.
In addition, they will initiate a campaign to urge the rest of the population
to stop paying taxes: property, vehicle, and others.
Cázares indicated that there are commercial sales losses of 30–50% due to the
insecurity that Tijuana suffers.
Canaco Tijuana
includes 2,300 companies in packaging, pharmacy, hardware, used car sales,
junkyards, and repair shops, among others.
War tax resisters in many ways have a lot more in common with tax resisters
like these shopkeepers in Tijuana — for instance how we organize, what legal
complications we have to deal with, what sort of mutual support we provide,
and so forth — than we have with peace tax fund promoters. I think we’d
probably have a lot more to talk about, too.
There are some interesting threads ongoing on the wtr-s mailing list about whether or not there is a war tax resistance “movement” in the United States, and if so, who qualifies for membership.
I don’t know about y’all, but where I’m at things have gotten mighty chilly lately.
One way to beat the chill and make a statement — and a timely one, too — would be to get yourself one of NWTRCC’s new fleece scarves.
Each one is embroidered with the message “Foreclose on War; Invest in People,” and you can order them for $15 each (plus $1.60 for shipping) or less in bulk direct from NWTRCC.
The war tax resistance movement is a little self-conscious about being a bit long in the tooth.
How to encourage more young people to become war tax resisters and to participate in the war tax resistance movement is a regular topic of discussion at NWTRCC meetings, for instance.
It isn’t as though there weren’t any young war tax resisters, or that the ones that exist aren’t active — indeed there are two young activists on NWTRCC’s Administrative Committee.
But there’s no denying that grey hair is overrepresented.
Part of this may come from the fact that a lot of young people don’t have much experience with paying federal taxes, and so the gravity of the situation hasn’t hit them yet.
And part of this may be that for a young person applying for student loans and trying to break into the job market, tax resistance seems to interfere with other important goals.
Part of it also may be that the war tax resistance movement has developed a culture that carries along with it traditions and cultural assumptions that are more comfortable to an older generation of activists (for instance, the folk songs we sing).
A few years back, Dan Berger and Andy Cornell, two young activists, toured the eastern United States to promote their books and to put their fingers on the pulse of radical activism in the country.
Along the way, they stayed the night at the home of a war tax resister.
Here was their impression:
Intergenerational movements are not simply about people of various ages being in the same room.
Instead, it is about building respectful relationships of mutual learning and teaching based on a long-haul approach to movement building.
In raising this issue, we saw three typical responses that are generally unhelpful to building intergenerational groups and movements:
The Nike Approach (Just Do It!)
the older activists who tell young people to just go out there and change the world already and to stop looking for validation from older people.
But young folks aren’t looking for a go-ahead; we are out there, doing our best.
Validation and encouragement from people we respect can bolster our resolve, but what we’re really looking for is mentorship, multigenerational commitment, and solidarity.
We’re willing to put ourselves out there, even to make mistakes.
But it would be helpful if we didn’t have to make the same mistakes older people have already made.
And young folks need to see that older activists maintain their political commitments in both word and deed.
The Retired Approach (We Had Our Turn, Now You Try)
several older activists echoed the sentiment that they did their best and now it was up to us.
Some with this position argue that they and their generation need to get entirely out of the way of the young folks, which functionally removes older people from the equation.
This abandonment masquerading as support is equally unhelpful in actually learning from the past and moving forward together because it serves to enforce a generational separation.
The Obstructionist Approach (Only If You Accept My Politics and Unquestioned Leadership)
people with this position demand adherence to the politics and vision of the older generation as the prerequisite for any working relationship.
They make The Retired Approach more appealing and are a reminder that, frankly, some people do need to get out of the way.
This is where older allies committed to collaboration could be potentially helpful, proving that political divides are not inherently generational gaps.
A lack of intergenerational relationships and groups is apparent nationally and locally.
In one town we visited, for instance, the “peace community” seemed to lack any relationship to anyone under 50 or to impoverished communities of color that are most directly affected by the war machine.
Another town saw a largely generational split over confrontational anti-war activism, where older people generally refused to support any confrontational tactics and anyone using them.
Yet when the younger folks went out by themselves to picket the recruiting station, they were able to successfully shut it down on two separate occasions.
Intergenerational movement building could be useful not only in expanding the base of people willing to engage in such confrontational tactics (and thereby hopefully contributing to hastening the war’s end) but also in trying to push other older people to work with and support youth leadership.
Young people, for our part, make it difficult for movement veterans to find us and assess our work when we organize only as temporary affinity groups that usually lack office space and sometimes even contact information.
Expressing interest in building such ties is also important.
When one of us off-handedly commented to an SDS veteran and radical historian that many younger activists would appreciate being asked by organizers of his generation to have coffee or lunch and talk shop, he seemed genuinely surprised.
“Really?
You think folks would want to get together with people like me?”
We assured him that we at least appreciated it — especially when the older folks picked up the tab.
What young people don’t want to deal with is patronization or abandonment, people who focus on their glory days or on lecturing “the youngens.”
What young folks do want are older activists who remain steadfast in their resolve and organizing, who seek to draw out the lessons from their years in the struggle (and are clear about where they differ with others of their age cohort without being sectarian), who look to younger activists for inspiration and guidance while providing the same, and who are focused on movement building.
Building on the more multigenerational roots of Southern organizing, two older organizers in Greensboro beautifully summed this up at an event in saying, “We aren’t done, we’re not leaving, and we’re in this together.”
If, as we argued throughout the tour, militancy is not to be conflated with violence or property destruction, but is instead understood as a stance of political integrity and commitment in spite of serious consequences, activists young and old might also more seriously consider the challenge directed at the two of us by a long-time radical pacifist anarchist who housed us for a night: the challenge of becoming “war tax” resistors.
While the unpublicized, moralistic actions of scattered, aging individuals that seem to have characterized the war tax resistance movement for many decades haven’t proven particularly appealing to many younger radicals, it seems that a coordinated, media-savvy campaign of joint declarations of tax resistance by a significant group of the younger-generation activists, expressing an explicit anti-imperialist politics, has enough potential to ignite debate as to at least be given a thoughtful appraisal.
“After all,” expressed our new friend, “the only thing the government wants is your money.
They sure don’t care if you vote, or if you approve of what they’re doing.”
An update on the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign.
This is an alternative fund to which war tax resisters can redirect their taxes.
It has a national focus and so is an alternative to the various regional alternative funds.
S. Brian Willson was interviewed on KQED’s radio show “Forum with Michael Krasny” .
Among the things he discussed were varieties of protest tactics, symbolic tactics versus practical direct action, the need for deep and radical change as opposed to superficial changes that keep dysfunctional structures intact, and his encounters with Juanita & Wally Nelson.
Here’s some of what he had to say about tax resistance:
Willson: I think it would be good if people
simplified their lives and lived below the taxable level. Or even if they
didn’t do that, to become tax refusers and to begin getting rid of their
property — which I did, myself, with the
IRS
over the years…
Krasny: Have you refused to pay taxes?
W: I refused…
K: But you didn’t get prosecuted.
W: No. And I thought I would be
prosecuted.
K: ’cause there are so many in jail who have said…
W: Sixteen years… but I had to get rid of my
property, my bank accounts, and pay all my bills with postal money orders.
But I had to resolve going to jail. I mean I had to resolve that that was a
likely consequence. But I felt free when I made that… It took me three years
to get clarity on that, back in the early eighties. But when I got clear
about it… I’ve had twelve meetings with the
IRS
over the years and I was always very clear with them that their option was to
take me to prison. Because they didn’t have anything to seize, but they
could seize me. And I thought — my lawyer said — pretty sure they’re gonna do
that. But they didn’t.
Later they took a call from “Greg:”
Greg: I would think that if people were to become
tax refuseniks at a larger scale, we’d cut off the supply — the blood supply — to people who are making some of these really poor decisions. My question
is: how would that be coordinated? how would that get started? how would that
become a much larger movement so it wasn’t just maybe a few people who were
left hanging out there with their pants down, so to speak — how to go and
make something that’s a coordinated effort that was much larger in scale and
difficult to stop, and really make a big statement?
W: Well that’s a good question…
K: We’re getting this from a lot of emailers:
‘How do we organize?’ or ‘How do we get more momentum?’
W: There are about 10,000 tax refusers in the
United States, I think, now. There is a national group called the National
War Tax Resistance Coordinating Council [sic] which is
trying to do just exactly what you as the caller have suggested. It’s just
very tough: it’s another leap that people make. I made the leap, myself, and
it took me three years to process the thought of being a tax
refuser, which I felt was the correct position for me personally, and I met
other people who were tax refusers…
Ed Agro started things off by bemoaning the current lack of “political salience” of war tax resistance, and wondering “what it might take to turn (or re-turn?) wtr into something resembling a social movement… What do we mean by a ‘movement’ and how does it differ from the wtr community that now exists?”
Larry Rosenwald suggests that in order to become a real movement, we need to reach agreement on a set of principles and guidelines, to resolve “the relation between wtr as civil disobedience, committed publicly, and wtr as a mode of life in which one simply doesn’t owe the government any money,” to “seek to exert influence, even power… to win, that is,” and to give a collective answer to the question: “What changes in governmental behavior would it take [for] us to stop doing war tax resistance?”
Dana Visalli is skeptical of the value of “movements,” saying that “we are confronting an issue of consciousness… it seems to me to be an issue of waking up, and only individuals can do that.”
I suggest a couple of possible paths to movementhood: 1) a “revival” of enthusiasm in the anti-war movement like the “come-outer” abolitionist movement in American protestantism, 2) a populist tax resistance campaign from outside the anti-war movement that leads to a sympathetic reaction by anti-war activists. I suggest we more aggressively confront “complacency and feel-goodism in the peace movement.” I also am skeptical of Larry’s call for us to come to agreement on the details of our methods and goals: “I doubt we could come up with a fixed answer… even in the small circle of a NWTRCC gathering that would satisfy everyone, and an attempt to do so might divide us rather than strengthen us.”
Larry responds, seconding my call for confronting a complacent peace movement, suggesting that the emergence of a populist, TEA-party-like tax-resistance movement is unlikely, and addressing my skepticism about his call for tighter definition of the tactics and goals of war tax resistance. He identifies three tendencies among resisters: 1) people who have embraced radical simplicity to avoid paying taxes but without engaging in confrontational civil disobedience (“it’s not, in Thoreau’s sense of the word, ‘friction’”), 2) people who refuse to pay taxes due and then do whatever they can to prevent the government from seizing the money (“For them, holding on [to] the money is a victory, being found and levied is a defeat”), and 3) people who refuse to pay taxes due and who see being found and levied as “like being arrested for civil disobedience” and a vital part of the action (“when the penalty is exacted, we can throw a party, tell our friends, write our bank administrators or our employers or colleagues, make it even more public than it was before”). He also says that having explicit goals or demands is perhaps crucial for war tax resistance to become a movement: “When the Montgomery bus boycott began, among the first thing the organizers did was to stipulate what changes would cause them to stop boycotting.”
Ed Agro writes about doing outreach to encourage war tax resistance from a non-pacifist perspective — “an audience for WTR that’s been given short shrift, perhaps unconsciously, by activists moved by personal conviction so strong that it leads to a too-quick devaluing of other, different convictions” — and says that the experience of his local WTR group shows the strength of ideological diversity.
Larry Rosenwald then asks: “if one isn’t what Ed calls ‘a radical pacifist’ (I myself am), what justifies doing war tax resistance? And if one is of two minds, supports some military actions, opposes others, what results does that have in how one practices wtr?”
I try to answer Larry’s question: “[I believe] that whether or not a person should use violence in some situation is something that that person needs to carefully decide on a case-by-case basis and not by applying a pre-made doctrine. Paying taxes, though, means that you’re not making considered decisions about your participation in war and peace, violence and nonviolence, and so forth — instead, you’re leaving those decisions up to politicians. These politicians are, almost by definition, morally repulsive creatures. They cannot be trusted with such decisions, and to allow them to make these decisions for you is morally reckless.” Then I add this challenge: “I’d turn the question around and ask the ‘radical pacifists’ how they can justify taxation of any sort (many do, to my surprise). If you wouldn’t support violence even to stop a Hitler, how can you justify using violence to collect money for any of the far less crucial things government does?”
I pointed out some discussion that was taking place on the wtr-s email discussion group about the possibility of turning the loose affiliation of American war tax resisters into something more like a war tax resistance movement.
To summarize: Larry is trying to describe a war tax resistance movement that would be able to exert political power and act as a “counter-friction” (in Thoreau’s sense of the word) against the war machine.
He thinks in order to do this, resisters need to narrow down the large variety of techniques they use to a subset that has the following characteristics:
It is illegal (that is, actual civil disobedience)
It is public (not just trying to avoid taxes and stay under the radar)
It is accompanied by a common set of clear and specific demands for change on the part of government
He is critical of the sort of war tax resistance that is primarily conscientious objection rather than protest.
If a resister is satisfied merely to wash his or her hands of militarism by personally not paying for it, without making his or her resistance confrontational, Larry thinks, the resister is missing an opportunity to make the resistance make a difference and to make a noble individual stand stronger by making it part of an effective collective movement.
That at least is my understanding of what he means.
I have some doubt about whether such a movement would be practical to organize or would be politically effective at this stage of the game.
I also think that the variety of methods of war tax resistance is one of the strengths of the movement, such as it is, today — it gives people more options and is respectful of people with a variety of lifestyles, risk tolerances, and goals.
I worry that trying to narrow down these options to a subset of “real” war tax resistance varieties might weaken the movement rather than strengthen it, by making it seem less possible or attractive to some potential resisters.
(For some other perspectives on the proposal, see the responses by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, Karl Meyer, and Bill Glassmire in the latest issue of More Than a Paycheck.)
For us, tax resistance is, among other things, a struggle.
And as we struggle against militarism, this struggle must be nonviolent.
It contains within itself a model of the society that we are aiming for.
Here we express some of the characteristics of our struggle:
Collective
Because we want to transcend the very noble and respectable personal and
individual choices in order to constitute a group of disobedient activists.
Public
Because in the face of institutions we must make very clear our
intentions for what we are putting into practice.
And in the face of public opinion we must act in the streets, write in the press, demonstrate, bicycle from Vitori to Nanclares, etc.…
Active
In this way, through tax resistance, we also reclaim the right of all
people to participate in democratic life in a profound and responsible way, without losing track of the serious problems that affect humanity, in the neighborhood around us [“el barrio de al lado,” probably an idiom I’m unfamiliar with —♇], in social services.
Because in tax resistance we are required to go beyond opinion, that we stop to take a stand against military spending, the manufacture and trade in armaments, against the military.
A topic so grave cannot be left in the hands of the professional chatterboxes that join the legislature.
And by means of tax resistance, together we contribute to the citizenry a small seed for growing a deep democracy, one that is participatory and as direct as it is possible for us to imagine.
Non-violent
We struggle against an unjust order of militarist violence, but always
we do so without using violence, preferring the strength of our reason.
We strike out against the state of affairs, while valuing people.
Constructive
Our objective is to transform state policy, the use made of public
funds, in order to employ them effectively in the regulation of social conflicts.
If we do not advance toward this goal, we do not find our work useful.
We intend to convert the military power into the popular power of civil society.
Illegal
Tax resistance is a form of struggle that consists of disobedience to an
unjust law that promotes violence as a way of resolving conflicts.
There are many historical examples of disobedience to unjust laws.
Must we ask for a law that would legalize the right to conscientious tax resistance?
Here there are not many who ask for this.
If such a law were made, military spending would not go away, but would be further legalized.
The total revenue from the state would not diminish military spending.
They will not make the law that we want.
So meanwhile we will publicize the justification for disobeying unjust laws.
Educational
The tax resistance campaign will be more effective if the relationship
between the ends and the means used are consistent; if we perform all actions such that we clearly demonstrate what we hope will follow and explain our reasoning; if we will open real and possible paths to social transformation even for people who are less committed.
We will continually reflect on what we do and on alternatives we propose.
http://www.unz.org/ has some scans of old magazines of interest.
Naturally, I went hunting for tax-resistance related bits and pieces.
Today, a hodge-podge of ads that gives a sort of impressionistic picture of the state of the American war tax resistance movement during .
The first one comes from the DC Gazette from :
The next comes from the back cover of New Politics, also from :
The next comes from the DC Gazette from :
The next comes from the DC Gazette:
A similar effort is underway today, with the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee collecting names of signers to its War Tax Boycott in the hopes of assembling an impressive public list of resisters.
The last ad in today’s flashback comes from the DC Gazette:
It is all well and good to consider the impressive variety of tactics that historical tax resistance movements have used to supplement their campaigns, but how do you go about choosing the right set of tactics that will do the most good for your campaign in the here-and-now?
This has lately been a frequent topic of discussion in American war tax resistance circles.
Some American war tax resisters have been pushing to convert us from being a coalition of people with a common interest in war tax resistance into an actual movement that has precise goals, particular tactics designed to meet the goals, metrics to measure success, and so forth.
(If you’d like to review some of the back-and-forth on this topic, take a look for example at The Picket Line entries for , , and , Larry Rosenwald’s War Tax Resistance Manifesto, and some of the wtr-s email list threads starting in .)
So far, these efforts have floundered in their attempts to move from this sensible-sounding idea towards an implementation that actually defines which goals and which tactics and which criteria we’re all supposed to unite behind.
Why might this be so?
Why has it proven difficult for a group of people with such a specific and unusual preoccupation as war tax resistance to make headway towards agreeing on something seemingly so basic as which goals they are pursuing?
There are several varieties of war tax resister
It turns out that there are distinct varieties of war tax resisters, and that while unsurprisingly they have a shared interest in the nitty-gritty of tax resistance and a shared dislike for militarism, when it comes to motives, goals, and tactics these varieties are in important ways very different.
There are four varieties of tax resister:
conscientious objection
A tax resister who is motivated by conscientious objection wants his or
her conscience to be free of the stain of complicity with what the government does with the tax money.
Such a resister doesn’t necessarily care if the government knows about his or her resistance, and doesn’t necessarily feel like he or she needs to be part of a movement — resisting taxes is the right thing to do, resisters like this feel, and they’d do it even if they were alone.
civil disobedience
A tax resister who is using tax resistance as a form of civil-disobedient
protest is trying to amplify the effect of his or her protest by breaking the law, publicly, and inviting the legal consequences.
It is a way of communicating the strength of the resister’s objections, and his or her willingness to sacrifice for these beliefs.
If the government responds by seizing the tax money, that doesn’t necessarily represent a defeat, since the tax resistance is more about taking a principled oppositional stand than about the actual money involved.
nonviolent conflict
A resister who hopes to use tax resistance to reduce the resources
available to the government and thereby force it to change its behavior (or perhaps even to replace it or force it to relinquish control), is using tax resistance as a form of nonviolent conflict.
Such a resister needs lots of comrades to join in the struggle, and prefers tactics that cost the government the most.
legal test-case
Some tax resisters resist because they conclude that the tax they are
resisting was enacted illegally, or is imposed by an institution without the proper authority to do so, or that it is being illegally applied to them.
They resist in anticipation of such a legal theory being found to be correct, and for the tax to be legally abolished.
In the war tax resistance movement you find this in resisters who argue that the Nuremberg Principles say taxpayers are legally obligated to avoid paying for aggressive war and war crimes, or that the option of conscientious objection to military taxation is a human right.
Many other tax resistance movements do not have the same variety
These varieties are not unique to war tax resistance.
They are found in all of the tax resistance campaigns I have studied.
But most of those campaigns have been dominated by a single variety, and so it has been much easier — almost second-nature — for them to decide on their goals.
For example, Quaker war tax resisters in the early years of the United States were almost exclusively motivated by conscientious objection.
Their goal was to have a conscience clean of involvement in shedding the blood of others, and they developed techniques that satisfied this goal.
Tax resisters in the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain wanted to demonstrate the self-serving hypocrisy of a male-exclusive government that treated women as people when it came time to tax them, but as non-people when it came time to ask for the consent of the governed.
These resisters courted arrest and property seizure and used such events as opportunities for protest.
They are classic civil-disobedient protesters, and their tactics reflect this.
Tax resisters in the movement pressing for the Reform Act of wanted to “stop the supplies” — that is, withhold enough money from the government that it would be crippled and would be forced to grant the movement’s demands.
This is why they augmented their tax strike with a run on the Bank of England.
They were using tax resistance as part of a campaign of nonviolent conflict meant to force political change.
Property tax resisters in Depression-era Chicago refused to pay while they pursued a legal challenge to property assessments that had left many wealthy and well-connected property owners exempt.
(They won their case, which found the assessments — and therefore the taxes based on them — to be invalid.)
The challenge for American war tax resisters is that their “movement” is not any one of these things, but is an unstable amalgam of elements of all four.
Some resisters are conscientious objectors, some are civil disobedients, some are nonviolent resistants, some hope to legalize war tax refusal, and some straddle two or more of these varieties.
Because of this, there is little agreement to be had once you get past the tactic of tax resistance itself.
This could change.
If the number of war tax resisters were to grow much larger for some reason — for instance because of an unpopular war, a religious revival that emphasizes pacifism, or a revolt against government spending that highlights Pentagon profligacy — perhaps the swelling of the movement would make one variety or another overwhelmingly predominate, and such a movement could more easily unite behind particular goals and tactics.
Another possibility is that a subset of current American war tax resisters who are united by all being of one variety decides to unite on their own behind a particular campaign with goals and tactics that are appropriate to them.
If they have success with their approach, they may find that some of the resisters who currently find homes in the other varieties will come to find that approach more to their liking, or will find ways to make it compatible with their own.
These varieties are not entirely distinct
You may notice that the varieties I listed are not entirely distinct.
For example, some of the women in the Women’s Tax Resistance League pursued legal challenges that made them seem very much like people in the legal test-case category.
Some of the property tax resisters in Chicago were also motivated by a civil-disobedient protest against corrupt and big-spending government.
It is possible for a war tax resister to belong to two, three, maybe even all four categories simultaneously.
And many of us in the war tax resistance movement are motivated by more than one of these categories of resistance, or may find ourselves migrating from variety to variety over time as our motivations change.
But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this.
You cannot just haphazardly mix-and-match motives, goals, and tactics and expect to come up with something that makes sense (unfortunately, I sometimes see war tax resisters try).
Consider these examples:
“I resist taxes because I’m unwilling to be complicit in the belligerence of the government. I hope to convince many people to take this stand, and so I am very public about it. I am willing to risk government retribution by doing things that make my resistance more disruptive to the state. I hope that if enough people join me, we will rise up to reorganize society in a less violent way.”
“My conscience will not allow me to contribute to killing in any way, so I withhold €84 from my income tax bill and give it instead directly to the Ministry of Education. If enough of us do this, maybe one day the schools will have all the money they need, and the army will have to hold a bake sale if it wants to buy another tank.”
In the first example, the resister talks about his or her motives (“I’m unwilling to be complicit in the belligerence of the government”) sounding like someone motivated by conscientious objection, but chooses tactics (“I am very public… I am willing to risk government retribution by [being] more disruptive to the state”) that sound like they spring from civil disobedience as protest, and has a goal (“we will rise up to reorganize society”) that involves ambitions of using tax resistance as nonviolent force to cause governmental change.
And that’s fine. None of this is contradictory or incompatible.
You can be motivated by conscientious objection and decide to use tactics of civil disobedience to pursue a campaign of nonviolent resistance.
But the second example is more problematic.
The resister again sounds like he or she is motivated by conscientious objection (“My conscience will not allow me to contribute to killing in any way”) but the tactic chosen, to withhold and redirect a symbolic portion from the tax bill, is incompatible with the motive.
Someone whose conscience will not allow them to contribute to killing in any way, if that person considers their taxes such a contribution, will be just as unwilling to pay the second €84 as the first €84, and of course each € after that.
Furthermore, this resister’s goal — to make the military have to hold a bake sale if it wants to buy a tank — is also not compatible with that symbolic tactic.
So a resister like this is incoherent and confused, and is therefore less effective and less persuasive.
Different varieties of resister evaluate tactics differently
Evan Reeves with his 5,574 checks
Remember Evan Reeves?
He’s an American war tax resister who decided to protest the connection between taxes and war by paying his taxes, but in a unique way: he wrote 5,574 checks, each one for ⅟5,574th of his tax bill (about 96¢), and each one bearing the name of a different war victim in the “memo” field.
This was an innovative, creative, interesting tactic — but if you try to imagine how it appears from the vantage point of war tax resisters in each of the varieties I described, you’ll get some idea of how difficult it can be to pick a tactic that pleases everybody.
Here is one way I have imagined four resisters evaluating Reeves’s tactic:
“That wouldn’t work for me. If I pay my taxes, in any form, I help to pay for war. If I did this, at the same time I was expressing sympathy for 5,574 war victims, I’d be paying for their victimization.”
“That’s a great way of making the connection between taxes and the victims of war, and it’s very media-savvy as well. Not only that, but you may get some people at the tax office to scratch their heads and put two and two together. The only thing that would be better is if it were illegal, so that it put you in clear opposition to the government.”
“How much does it cost the government to process a check? If it’s more than 96¢ you may have struck upon a way for people to withhold resources from the government without risking legal sanction. It’s worth investigating further.”
“I don’t get it. How does this get us any closer to legalizing conscientious objection to military taxation? The whole point is that you shouldn’t have to pay those taxes in the first place.”
There’s also a fundamental ideological divide at work
Another thing that can make it difficult for American war tax resisters to agree on tactics and goals is that there is a fundamental disagreement among these resisters about whether the U.S. government is salvageable.
Many American war tax resisters believe that their government is, by and large, a force for good that ought to be preserved and strengthened, and that its militarism is a flaw that for the time being and in some contexts necessarily puts conscientious people in opposition to it.
Our goal, such resisters believe, is to reform the government by removing this flaw so that it can do the good work it ought to be doing without tangling us in its bloody errors.
Many other American war tax resisters believe that their government is, by and large, a force for evil — an irredeemable tool of militarism whose primary function is violence.
They believe that conscientious people like themselves ought to be wholly in opposition to it, should withdraw allegiance from it, and hope to replace it with something else entirely.
I see this divide come into play frequently among American war tax resisters.
It makes a big difference when evaluating tactics because resisters in one camp will ask “but how does this weaken the government?” while resisters in the other camp will ask “but how can we do this without weakening the government (or seeming to ally ourselves with enemies of the government)?” and immediately they’re at loggerheads.
There are war tax resisters who can say, almost in the same breath, that people ought to refuse to pay their taxes because so much of the federal budget is for war, and that corporations ought to pay more taxes because they have a responsibility to help pay for government programs. At first this didn’t make any sense to me at all, but then I came to realize that if you believe that government is essentially good, though terribly flawed, and if you are a tax resister as a mode of civil-disobedient protest, it’s not contradictory to want to resist taxes yourself (to amplify your protest) while hoping that corporations pay more taxes (so the on-the-whole benevolent government can accomplish more) — misguided, perhaps, but not contradictory.
In conclusion…
Anyway, I bring all this up in part because I think it helps to explain why some of the arguments that occupy the modern American war tax resistance movement never seem to go anywhere, but also in part because I want to prepare people who read about my catalog of tax resistance tactics.
It is very unlikely that all of the tactics on the list will appeal to you.
Some of the tactics will seem to you to be bizarre, counterproductive, or irrelevant to the sort of campaign you are hoping for.
This is because tax resistance is a tactic that belongs to movements of many sorts, with many motivations, and many goals.
Which tactics will best harmonize with tax resistance will depend on the variety of tax resistance campaign they are part of.
To find tactics that the American war tax resistance movement could unite around, we can start by using a process of elimination.
First, let’s eliminate the ones that require violence against people, since many war tax resisters are pacifists, and many of the ones who aren’t are still opposed to the use of violent tactics or are skeptical of their efficacy.
That crosses the following tactics off the list:
There are also examples of violence directed at property.
These pass muster with some pacifists but not with others, so we’ll drop those from the list too:
Some other tactics on the list may or may not include violence.
Rather than screen them out entirely, for the purpose of this exercise we’ll just stipulate that in our case violent methods of implementing the remaining tactics will be excluded from consideration.
Next, let’s try to find tactics that will be attractive both to those war tax resisters who support the existing government (by and large) and see its militarism as a flaw that they hope to correct, and also to those resisters who oppose the existing government and see its militarism as an essential component that can only be combated by weakening the government as a whole.
First, let’s eliminate those tactics that assume the goal of weakening or eliminating the government as a whole (or of wholly withdrawing allegiance from it):
(There are a few other tactics that arguably belong on this forbidden list, but that I think could be finessed in such a way as to appeal even to the most dyed-in-the-wool anarchist.)
There’s also one that could be finessed in such a way as to appeal either to government-supporters or government-opposers, but I can’t imagine how it could appeal to both simultaneously:
We can also eliminate a few tactics that, while they were useful to some tax resistance campaigns in some times and places, have no real use for the modern American war tax resistance movement:
There are also some tactics that, while not being theoretically useless to the modern American war tax resistance movement, are not currently practical given the movement’s size and capabilities:
Okay… now, of the remainder, are there any methods that would be deal-breakers for any of the four varieties of resister I identified as being components of the modern American war tax resistance movement coalition?
the conscientious objector to government spending
the civil-disobedient protester
the practitioner of “people power” conflict
the person asserting a legal right to refuse
A conscientious objector is likely to object to any methods that involve giving the government resources or making yourself more vulnerable to taxes and property seizures (at least so long as the government is engaged in its objectionable policies).
So that eliminates these:
A civil disobedient protester will not be satisfied with tax resistance techniques that remain under-the-radar without being in open confrontation with the government.
For this reason, tactics like the following are unlikely to be appealing to them:
Someone whose aim is to succeed in changing government policy via a campaign of nonviolent resistance that includes withholding funds from the government is not going to be satisfied with tactics that are merely symbolic or communicative (except possibly in the course of recruiting new resisters or weakening the resolve of government agents), but will have no reason to oppose such tactics so long as they are secondary and in service to the more practical main thrust of the campaign.
The only remaining tactic that I can’t see as having much of any appeal to a resister from this camp would be:
Finally we have the case of war tax resisters who are motivated by a belief that conscientious objection to military taxation either is legal (via the Nuremberg Principles, other international legal agreements, or an enlightened interpretation of the U.S. Constitution), or ought to be legal.
The purpose of their resistance is largely to help convince the government to enforce this legal interpretation.
Folks in this camp have a goal in which people who for reasons of conscience cannot financially support war have a legal option that respects this.
They see tax resistance as a stop-gap measure that conscientious people must resort to because the government does not offer such a legal option at present.
They will only be interested in tactics that are plausibly in the service of the goal of changing the law in this way, although, as with the nonviolent resisters, they may also be comfortable with other tactics so long as they are secondary and in service to this main goal, or they help resisters during this stop-gap period.
Their approach rules out one tactic in particular, since the approach presupposes splitting the tax resistance movement into those who would stop resisting once given a legal option and those who would not:
Now, not all of these may be good ideas, or ones the movement would really be capable of carrying off in its current state, but these at least are ones that remain worth considering.
Many of them are already being put into practice in some form (but perhaps not the most effective form).
Those and the ones that remain unimplemented ought to make for good food for thought for people trying to make the modern American war tax resistance movement more effective.
Remember that some of these tactics would have to be conducted in a certain way or in conjunction with other tactics in order to appeal to tax resisters with particular goals in mind (like civil disobedients who need to be in open confrontation with the government, nonviolent resistants who need to make practical dents in the government’s resources and capabilities, and legality advocates who want to make strides towards legalization).
I tried to get a little buzz going in American war tax resistance circles by highlighting my articles on
Larry Rosenwald wondered whether it was worthwhile to try to pick tactics that appeal to all factions of the modern American war tax resistance movement.
Might it not be better, he suggests, to select the most powerful tactics, even if they’re ones that not all resisters will be interested in signing on to?
He may be right about that, but the example he chose to illustrate it — “the peace tax legislation activism that’s the heart of many European war tax resistance initiatives, and the American campaign for a peace tax fund” — strikes me as the least powerful and among the most divisive of the possible tactics we could be considering.
This just goes to show how difficult it may be to get the movement, such as it is, to rally around a particular set of effective tactics.
While I’ve been delving through the archives of Gospel Herald, links have been backing up in my bookmarks.
Here are some that concern war tax resistance in the here-and-now:
The Trump administration has decided it enjoys provoking trade wars, which perhaps have the blessing of distracting them from getting their jollies by provoking real wars.
But the prime mechanism — tariffs — is also a revenue source for the government.
Which leads war tax resisters like Lincoln Rice to ask, are these tariffs for war? and if so, what can war tax resisters do about it?
Thirty-Eight Years of Refusal — Erica Leigh, Georgia Pearson, Larry Bassett, and Bill Ramsey review the history of the recently-closed Conscience and Military Campaign Escrow Account, which was responsible for coordinating tens of thousands of dollars in war tax redirection.
Counseling Notes — News about government policies towards war tax resisters, including the use of private debt collectors, IRS summonses, passport revocations, and a sharp decline in levies.
Colrain After 25 Years — A 25th Anniversary celebration of the actions surrounding the Corner/Kehler house seizure, coinciding with the New England Regional Gathering of War Tax Resisters.
War Tax Resistance Ideas and Actions — Including the Maine War Tax Resistance Gathering, and obituary notices for war tax resisters Ray Gingerich and Naomi Paz Greenberg.
NWTRCC News — Including an announcement of the NWTRCC national gathering in Cleveland.
Adrienne Maree Brown writes about her war tax resistance in the wake of a wage levy, and reflects on the disadvantages of going it alone as opposed to resisting as part of a supportive group. Excerpt:
i still deeply agree with the politics that led to this action, but i know now that i didn’t do it the right way.
i acted as an individual, as if my singular act of rage should be respected, as if it could have meaningful impact on the systems of oppression that lead to the military spending i want to divest from.
it helped me sleep well at night, but it wasn’t tied into a collective strategy, a system of accountability around whether it was effective.
someday i hope to be part of larger direct action efforts around debt and taxes, but from this struggle i have learned in a most personal way the importance of the collective.
Is there a war tax resistance movement?
According to a pseudonymous author in a back issue of Conscience (the newsletter of the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign), “War tax resistance is real, but the war tax resistance movement is fiction.”
War tax resistance is a tactic, says the author, whereas movements coalesce around goals, so there will never be a war tax resistance movement, though there may be movements that incorporate war tax resistance.
Erica Leigh looks back at the Beit Sahour tax strike as it was covered at the time, in a two-part series of excerpts from Conscience (part 1 and part 2).
Leigh writes: “The tax resistance in Beit Sahour was due to a high level of community cohesion, organization, education, and solidarity, something that’s missing from our scattered war tax resistance organizing around the United States.
Most of our finest moments in US war tax resistance arose from such concentrated and dedicated efforts in a small geographic region, even when the total number of resisters was small.
Food for thought!”
“I resist taxes because I’m unwilling to be complicit in the belligerence of the government. I hope to convince many people to take this stand, and so I am very public about it. I am willing to risk government retribution by doing things that make my resistance more disruptive to the state. I hope that if enough people join me, we will rise up to reorganize society in a less violent way.”
“My conscience will not allow me to contribute to killing in any way, so I withhold €84 from my income tax bill and give it instead directly to the Ministry of Education. If enough of us do this, maybe one day the schools will have all the money they need, and the army will have to hold a bake sale if it wants to buy another tank.”
