War Tax Resistance Speakers’ Bureau

Is your group curious about war tax resistance, brainstorming about antiwar actions, or looking for an inspiring speaker on nonviolent resistance to war?

Is your class studying nonviolent action, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, war resistance, Thoreau?

Consider a speaker from our list below!

You will find people who are deeply involved in peace and justice issues and organizing and have taken action that challenges listeners to consider how they might end their complicity with war and killing.

We have speakers in many regions of the country. If travel, meals, or over night stays are involved, the host group should cover those expenses and offer housing. If an honorarium is provided, it would be helpful if a portion is contributed to NWTRCC. However, this is up to each speaker. There are a number of resources available to reduce costs of events with speakers. Both Food Not Bombs and couchsurfing.org have been helpful in the past with food and lodging.

Please contact the speakers directly about arrangements for an engagement. Please let them know you are contacting them as part of the War Tax Resistance Speakers Bureau.

: Kathy Kelly (Chicago, Ill.) helped initiate the Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the UN/US sanctions against Iraq. For bringing “medicine and toys” to Iraq in open violation of the UN/US sanctions, she and other campaign members were notified of a proposed $163,000 penalty for the organization, threatened with 12 years in prison, and eventually fined $20,000, a sum which they’ve refused to pay. Read more
: Randy Kehler (Colrain, Mass.) has been actively engaged for the past 40 years in research, writing, organizing, and advocacy regarding a range of public policy issues including energy and land reform, electoral democracy, and nuclear disarmament. Read more
: Juanita Nelson (Deerfield, Mass.) became a dedicated war tax refuser in 1948, and 11 years later was arrested for refusing to give information to the IRS. Read more
: David Waters (Birmingham, Ala.) was born in Alabama in 1946; grew up in six deep south states; was in the Army Special Forces during the Vietnam War. He became a war tax resister after the invasion of Iraq. Read more
: Daniel Woodham (Greensboro, N.C.) started resisting in 1991 during the outbreak of the first Gulf War when he heard a WTR person speaking of their resistance on community radio in Portland, Oregon. Read more
: Ruth Benn (Brooklyn, N.Y.) is the Coordinator of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, and is a co-editor of War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military. She has been a war tax resister since the early 1980s. Read more
: Karl Meyer (Nashville, Tenn.) is one of our country’s most knowledgeable counselors and practitioners of strategies and methods for maximizing war tax refusal, while minimizing negative consequences, such as job loss, seizure of assets, or criminal prosecution. Read more
: Bill Ramsey (St. Louis, Mo.), a human rights activist and long-time war tax refuser, which he began during the Vietnam War. After an arrest for leafleting at the IRS in 1992, he was given an unusual probation requirement… Read more
: Clare Hanrahan (Asheville, N.C.), a conscientious objector to paying for war, has been speaking out for decades for peace, human rights and global & environmental justice. Read more
: Pat & John Schwiebert (Portland, Ore.) have been refusing to pay some or all of their Federal Tax in protest against military violence for more than 30 years. Read more
: Geov Parrish (Seattle, Wash.) has been a conscientious objector to military taxation for over 30 years, and spent over a decade as the Director of the Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia. Read more
: Mike Butler (Albuquerque, N.M.) first became aware of war tax resistance right after 9/11 when he realized that taxes were not going towards helping people but rather towards funding illegal war. Read more
: Lincoln Rice (Milwaukee, Wis.), a member of the Catholic Worker, has been a war tax resister since 1998 and participated in a number of actions at the Milwaukee IRS office on tax day that have resulted in his arrest. Read more
: Larry Rosenwald (Wellesley, Mass.) is a member of New England War Tax Resistance. He teaches at Wellesley College, and his courses include one on Thoreau. Read more
: Ed Hedemann (Brooklyn, N.Y.), a war tax resister since 1970, is the author of War Tax Resistance: A Guide to Withholding Your Support from the Military and, in 1982, was a founder of NWTRCC. Read more
: Robert Randall (Brunswick, Ga.) became a Christian pacifist in the late 1960s while still in high school. “In those days,” he says, “a young person approaching the age of 18 simply had to think about whether or not to kill.” Read more