It seems that the US government has passed the buck in its most basic responsibility to protect its citizens.  The federal government missed the opportunity to prepare for and purchase equipment at the beginning of the pandemic.  By trying to save money and downplay the severity of the crisis, they missed a crucial opportunity.  Later they stated that it was the states’ responsibility to purchase the items. Finally, they resorted to their tried and true catch all phrase used to justify not providing the most basic of human needs- that we just don’t have the resources. 

The same weapons platforms that have bombed civilians across the world were sent to fly over hospitals in the US that cannot even provide health care workers with masks that should cost $1.27.  The most expensive bomber was the nuclear weapons capable B2 Stealth Bomber flying out of Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri at $122,311.00 per hour (in 2017 estimates.)  It seems that no area of the US has been spared these displays of affection with many of the targeted cities roped together just as would be the case with a nuclear bomb or a flying mission to destroy multiple targets.  A senior US military official speaking on the condition of anonymity told the Washington Post “This is just a sincere thank-you. It’s one way to acknowledge those pitching in.”

While the military had stated in their press release that they wanted “to thank first responders,essential personnel, and military service members as we collectively battle the spread of COVID-19” it seems rather insincere to thank themselves; more as a way of justifying that almost half of US taxpayer monies go to warfare. The US military didn’t seem to get the memo or want to acknowledge that UN Ceasefire Defines War As a Non-Essential Activity  In March, UN Secretary General Antonio called for a world wide end of armed conflict during the Covid- 19 pandemic as well as an end to economic warfare. More than 70 nations signed onto the statement.  The United States blocked the vote before the UN. 

Meanwhile the New York Times recently had a piece on homelessness, America’s Cities Could House Everyone If They Chose To. Towards the end it concluded “the nation’s homeless population could be housed for less than the price of one aircraft carrier.” That seems to bear repeating- that for LESS than one military expenditure all of the people living on the streets of the cities that the bomber jets are flying over could have homes. Imagine those 13 billion dollars used to meet basic human needs.

There has been a proposal to replicate the ‘Salute to America’ military parade on July 4th 2020 despite concerns over corona virus. This year that would be before Tax Day. Increasingly, people are becoming more aware of the catastrophic funding priorities in the US and the deadly consequences. 

image from wikimedia

PS It doesn’t seem that this is the first time this tactic has been used.-It was also used during WWI and the pandemic of 1918.

Post by Chrissy Kirchhoefer

The post Grounded…or flying by the seat of our pants? first appeared on National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

The post Grounded…or flying by the seat of our pants? appeared first on National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

Larry Gara at a WRL event, May 1984. Photo by David McReynolds.

As many readers know, we date the “modern war tax resistance movement” to World War II, when hundreds of amazing people refused to participate with their bodies and/or their taxes. These resisters tended to be committed pacifists, many of them already involved with War Resisters League or the Fellowship of Reconciliation or members of peace churches, such as the Society of Friends.

Larry Gara was one of them. I knew and worked with him during my time on staff at the War Resisters League and was sad to learn of his death at age 97 on November 23. After the war years he became a history professor and retired in 2002 from 40 years of teaching at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio. You can read his resistance and prison story in a lovely book, A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of World War II Tell Their Stories, which Larry co-edited with his wife Lenna Mae Gara, who survives him.

Graphic by Peg Averill, The Nonviolent Activist, Oct/Nov 1991

Thinking about all the ways that Larry contributed to war resistance and to War Resisters League, reminded me of the Radical History Quiz he used to write for WRL’s Magazine, The Nonviolent Activist. So, for today’s post I decided to pull out questions from some of his quizzes that appeared in the magazine between 1989 and 2002.

Most of these questions or answers relate to WTR somehow. If the answer is a person, it is usually someone who was a war tax resister, and you can find references to them on NWTRCC’s history pages or on this “Pioneers of the Modern American War Tax Resistance Movement” page collected by David Gross.  A few are just good war resistance stories.

Answers are at the bottom of the page.

1. Who was the Quaker pacifist tortured for his refusal to obey orders during the Civil War, and whose wartime diary became a peace classic?

1. Cyrus Pringle
2. Alfred Love
3. William Lloyd Garrison
4. Thomas Garrett

2. In 1940, eight theological students refused to register for the first U.S. peacetime draft. Their action was organized by:

1. Igal Roodenko
2. Devere Allan
3. David Dellinger
4. Tracy Mygatt

3. An international pacifist community founded in 1940 near Cleveland was called:

1. The Bruderhof
2. Ahimsa Farm
3. The Newark Ashram
4. Koinonia

4. Radical pacifist movement, favoring non-registration and war tax resistance was founded in 1947:

1. Fellowship of Reconciliation
2. Women Strike for Peace
3. American Friends Service Committee
4. Peacemakers

5. Christian anarchist and self-styled “one man revolution” who picketed the IRS offices each Tax Day and fasted a day for each year that had passed after the bombing of Hiroshima:

1. Harold Gray
2. Ammon Hennacy
3. Scott Nearing
4. Ernest Bromley

6. Missionary who was ousted form British-controlled India for supporting the Gandhian independence movement, he also wrote Democracy and Nonviolence:

1. Ralph Templin
2. Allan Knight Chalmers
3. Holmes Smith
4. Harry Emerson Fosdick

7. Labelled by Time Magazine as America’s best known pacifist, he had briefly belonged to the Trotskyist Workers Party:

1. Norman Thomas
2. A.J. Muste
3. J. Holmes Smith
4. John Nevin Sayre

8. A theater group founded by Julian Beck and Judith Malina and involved with the nonviolent movement was called:

1. Bread and Puppet Theater
2. New York Mime Theatre
3. Greenwich Village Players
4. The Living Theater

9. A poet who served time in jail rather than pay a fine for an act of civil disobedience in the Redress demonstration against the Vietnam War was

1. Anais Nin
2. Sylvia Plath
3. Muriel Rukeyser
4. Denise Levertov

10. In what song did the Hello People tell of going to prison for war resistance?

1. “How does it feel to be free?”
2. “This land is your land”
3. “Anthem”
4. “White Winged Doves”

11. A founder of Peacemakers whose war tax resistance led to the threatened seizure of her land trust home in Cincinnati:

1. Marion Bromley
2. Barbara Deming
3. Marjorie Swann
4. Dorothy Day

12. Folksinger/founder of the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence:

1. Bernice Reagon
2. Judy Collins
3. Holly Near
4. Joan Baez

13. For which war tax resister(s) did dozens of supporters create a kind of war tax resistance camp in Colrain, Massachusetts, to block IRS efforts to seize a home?

1. Wally and Juanita Nelson
2. Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner
3. Maurice McCracken
4. Ernest and Marion Bromley

14. Which celebrated U.S. writer and activist started both careers in Washington Square Park?

1. Tillie Olson
2. Amiri Baraka
3. Grace Paley
4. Meridel LeSeuer

15. How much money was redirected in the year 2000 from the Pentagon to progressive causes by “peace tax” funds and individual war tax resisters (according to NWTRCC)?

1. $10,000
2. $50,000
3. $100,000
4. $250,000

Bonus Question!

A Prothonotary Warbler plays an important part in the case of:

1. Alger Hiss
2. the Rosenbergs
3. Arthur Miller
4. Frederick Remington

(Ok, the bonus question has nothing to do with WTR, but Larry was an avid birdwatcher so I had to throw that in.  More on that case…)

— Post by Ruth Benn

Answers: 1 – A; 2 – C; 3 – B; 4 – D; 5 – B; 6 – A; 7 – B; 8 – D; 9 – C; 10 – C; 11 – A; 12 – D; 13 – B; 14 – C; 15 – C; Bonus – A

The post Radical History Quiz first appeared on National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

The post Radical History Quiz appeared first on National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

— Ruth Benn, NWTRCC Coordinator

Outreach at the Petaluma Progressive Festival in California.

“I finally am becoming a war tax resister this year, so I found your website and have very much appreciated the materials you give to support this important action. With gratitude and best wishes.”

“I found your organization by doing a google search regarding withholding taxes for moral reasons. The thing that spurred me to search (there are so many things these days) is the apparent go-ahead on the military parade that’s being planned for November. I am happy to have found you and will look forward to the emails and other information.”

“As April 15 approaches, I found myself wondering yesterday if there was a way I could opt out of supporting this administration’s policies other than reposting my disdain to like-minded friends on a FaceBook page. And I decided, in my kitchen with peanut butter and spoon in hand, that I would not pay my federal taxes.
I then hoped there was a place in New York City where like minded individuals advocated, educated and got educated, met, discussed, planned, acted – a tax resister’s salon, if you will – and I found an article from February of last year in The Guardian about what appears to be a scattered movement to resist this administration’s policies by withholding their federal tax dollars. And there you were.
In short, I am blindly in. I am also looking for guidance and wanting to be a part of a concerted effort so that my voice is not lost. I am not sure if you are in the market to educate those of us who, aside from being opposed to funding military wars, are also opposed to funding policy wars waged against our people, our country, our environment, our world. I need to take action that is personal and emotionally satisfying. And so I turn to you.”

“I am in Canada and have placed the military part of my taxes in the Peace Tax Fund of Conscience Canada in years past.

“As the military budget increases yearly I think it is time that the citizens of both countries realize that paying for illegal wars is surely illegal: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/what-happens-when-war-is-outlawed.”

“I found you by googling ‘tax resistance’”

“I found one of your brochures at a church in Berkeley, CA.”

“many thanks for your email. I learned about you and the concept of tax resistance through this article: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/40248-where-your-dollars-are-going-why-some-anti-war-activists-are-withholding-taxes.”

“I was fascinated by the idea of refusing to pay for war by withholding taxes and since have done a little research: as I live in Germany, I tried to find out how many percent of our taxes go to military spending. It’s tricky because officially Germany does not spend a lot on “defense” but of course some of the biggest weapon producers are German and weapon exports are “important” to the German economy and I daren’t think how many Euros are being spent unofficially on facilitating this kind of business. As all of this is morally highly questionable, they tend not to advertise it too much and so people don’t think about it.
Anyway, that’s why I signed up to stay informed what you do in America and to learn from it. I am engaged in peace and nonviolence activism here in Germany and if you have any international cooperation with other tax resistance movements I would be interested to know and spread also among the German peace movement.
I hope that all peace-loving people in the world can unite one day and sweep away this system of violence!”

“internet research and Quaker Readings”

“Thanks so much for the information. I look forward to learning more about your activities. I found the link to your list in the Guardian article that ran yesterday on people who are or want to be tax resisters to the Trump administration.”

“I found your group when doing research into how I could legally hold my taxes in escrow until tRump releases his.  I expect that could be for the next four years, during which I do not want to support the unraveling of American democracy, which I see getting worse by the day. Listening to Bannon, Flynn, and Sessions, makes it strikingly clear to me that we will soon be engaging in an all-out holy war against Islam, most likely launched on false pretenses – perhaps as a result of the US government engineering a terror attack on US soil.  I am sad to say that I have lost all faith in our leaders and have no doubts that the current administration is evil enough to slaughter American citizens as a way to justify an attack on Iran in alignment with Russia – against its foremost oil competitor in the region.  I would be horrified to contribute even a penny of my money to such an immoral war and want to be ready for that tax protest.
I am hoping to learn how to legally withhold my taxes as a means to do just that.  Any information you can suggest or supply would be of great interest to me.”

“Searched the web for “tax resistance,” came upon the Wikipedia article on tax resistance, clicked through some links I don’t recall and landed at your site!”

Outreach to skeptical passers-by. Photo by Ed Hedemann.

“I found out about you through a friend who is a tax resistor and who told me that this is a viable response especially with the current political climate”

“A friend of mine shared a link on facebook in an argument about taxes.”

“Hi! I found the list when listening to a permaculture podcast featuring Ethan Hughes (here: http://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/2015/episode-1523-ethan-hughes/), and he mentioned being a war tax resister. Cheers!”

“I was referred by a member.   I’m happy to be here.”

“I have known about war tax resistance for some time but decided I needed to know more. I googled the subject and up came your website.”

The post The Path to War Tax Resistance first appeared on National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.

The post The Path to War Tax Resistance appeared first on National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.