Tax Resister

Tax Day Protests Highlight Refusal To Pay For War

April 12, 2017 NWTRCC, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Tax Resister, Taxes, Wars and Militarism

By National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. From now through the last day to file federal income taxes on Tuesday, April 18, hundreds of people across the United States are taking public action to call for a change in federal budget priorities away from military spending and toward human and environmental needs. Individually and in groups, many of these concerned activists will divest from war by refusing to pay some or all of their federal income taxes. “Survival demands better ideas, not better weapons,” say members of the Raytheon Peacemakers, who will hold an urgent peace vigil on Tax Day, April 18, at the gates of Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Arizona. Raytheon stock prices climbed after their missiles struck targets in Syria on April 6. Jack Cohen-Joppa of the Peacemakers says, “Our federal and local taxes have supported the expansion of this plant to produce weapons that are Tucson’s largest export. Tucson needs good paying jobs, but we should not 'develop’ our own community by destroying others around the world.”

Tax Protest: Refusing To Pay Income Taxes In The Trump Era

February 2, 2017 Staff, www.nwtrcc.org Resist! Tax Resistance, Tax Resister, Taxes

By Staff for the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, Tax refusal has a long history in the U.S., from the Boston Tea Party, to Thoreau’s refusal of the poll tax collected for the Mexican-American War, to widely practiced tax resistance during the Vietnam War. Refusal to pay taxes for war has been continually practiced since World War II, at times by only small groups of pacifists; at other times, such as before and since the invasion of Iraq, by thousands opposed to war. Today the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) calls on U.S. taxpayers to reinvigorate this form of resistance in order to challenge federal policies, spending priorities, and actions. We oppose Trump administration plans to boost the Pentagon budget and cut social spending. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security (border and immigration control, and the 1033 program that sends military weapons to local police forces) and the Energy Department (nuclear weapons), among other agencies, are major parts of the military budget.

The Activist As A Young Girl

July 10, 2016 David Swanson, www.davidswanson.org Educate! Activism, Book Review, Peace, Tax Resister

By David Swanson for Let's Try Democracy. Clare Hanrahan's memoir The Half Life of a Free Radical: Growing Up Irish Catholic in Jim Crow Memphis is a remarkable feat: part Jack Kerouac, part Dorothy Day, part Howard Zinn, and a bit of Forest Gump. First and foremost this is an entertaining and irreverent tale of childhood and adolescence told with great humor, honesty, and empathy. But it's also told by someone who became a peace and justice and environmentalist activist in later life, someone able to look back on the poverty, racism, consumerism, militarism, sexism, and Catholicism of her youth with passion and perspective -- even appreciation for all the good that was mixed in with the bad. Hanrahan writes what in outline form would read like an endless tale of misfortune, and yet leaves you with the thought of how much riotous fun she and her eight siblings and other acquaintances had.

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