News

Why Bother?

Getting out of bed on a chilly and windy Sunday, about the last thing I wanted to do was go out to a rally and march that afternoon. I had to give myself an extra kick. After all, it was April 15 and a perfect day to do outreach about war tax resistance. On the one hand, I can’t say it was the best event I’d ever been to. I tire of endless speakers speaking mostly to the converted — a full two hours of that before the march to Trump Tower, so the crowd of some hundreds steadily dwindled before the march began. On the subway on the way home I was thinking of other things I could have […]

Spread the Word This Tax Day!

Hi everyone, Tax Day is coming up fast. NWTRCC’s team of consultants is working to spread the word about war tax resistance as much as possible, and you can help! Attend a local tax day event! Share our press release with your local media or favorite website. Got pictures/reportbacks from a tax season event, or want promotional coverage of your upcoming event? Send pictures, text, or other info to nwtrcc@nwtrcc.org, socialmedia@nwtrcc.org, and wartaxresister@nwtrcc.org, and we’ll make sure it gets into our listings, gets posted on social media, and/or is included in our newsletter coverage of tax season 2018, as appropriate! Make your own social media posts with links to NWTRCC and/or sharing your own perspective on WTR. Use hashtags like […]

Taxes, Teens, and the Costs of War

I hate doing my taxes. For each of the last few weekends, “do your taxes” has been on the top of my to-do list. If I were to prioritize a list of things I procrastinate about, doing taxes might be on top. I’ve always done them myself since my situation is not particularly complicated, but I am usually rushing at the last minute to get it in the mail before or after our tax day demonstration. Probably the one thing that motivates me to finally get it done is so I can enclose the letter telling the government why I’m not paying (here’s one from 2003). If I wasn’t a war tax resister would I continue to file? My style […]

News from the 2018 Tax Season

thumbnail image of 2019 pie chart - click to go to WRL website and download complete file

It’s been a bit of a quiet tax season this year. Send us any news coverage you see, so we can add it to our website! Here’s what’s crossed my computer in the last few weeks – both some clear calls to refuse to pay war taxes, and some calls for reducing the military budget and redirecting these funds elsewhere. War Resisters League released the fiscal year 2019 pie chart, and things are looking worse this year for war spending than last. Although the percentage of your income tax dollar that goes to military spending has gone down from 48% to 47%, the total amount went up, from $1.45 to $1.5 trillion. Every pie chart includes information about NWTRCC. It’s […]

The Path to War Tax Resistance

tax day war tax resistance leafleting

People who join NWTRCC’s e-list (subscribe here) receive a welcome email that asks how they found NWTRCC. Here are some responses stored up over the past year or so, which point out the importance of the internet — but don’t discount leafleting and talking to friends either! New people often say they have known about war tax resistance, or tax resistance, for a while but deciding to actually do it takes longer, or takes some confluence of factors. It is a reminder that much of what we do as organizers is plant seeds; there may not be instant gratification, but maybe readers who are organizers can take heart from some of these comments. I’ll post these without names, but thank […]

“Trespassing” Against War at Bath Iron Works

photo of nine people in winter clothes standing in a row indoors facing the camera, with the words "The Aegis 9" at the bottom of the photo

by Jason Rawn (In Part 1 of this story, Jason was among nine people [the Aegis 9] arrested for alleged “criminal trespass” at the Bath Iron Works warship facility on April 1, 2017. Jason also testified at a Maine legislature Taxation Committee hearing about a bill that would give $60 million in tax breaks to General Dynamics.) There’s a long history of opposition to building weapons at the Bath Iron Works facility. One of my codefendants in this trial entered the shipyard as a teen in the 90s and dumped blood on a warship. Previously, Daniel Berrigan, Vermont WTR Daniel Sicken, and others successfully performed two Plowshares actions at the yard. There have been vigils organized by Smilin’ Trees Disarmament […]

End “Taxpayer Generosity” for General Dynamics

by Jason Rawn On April 1, 2017, 9 of us were arrested at a “christening” of the latest nuclear-capable guided missile destroyer manufactured by WMD corporation General Dynamics at their Bath Iron Works facility in Maine. It was snowing that day, and I got there late. I had to walk 10 minutes through it from where I parked, and I got pretty wet as the snow turned to sleet. When I got to the protest, my clothes were too wet for tape to stick, so I was unable to attach all the great NASCAR-style corporate logos provided to me as “$en. An-gas King” by fellow protester and WTR Lisa “Power$uit” Savage, who attended the rally as Maine’s senior senator, Susan […]

Creating An Affinity Group for Resistance and Support

Tax season is here! Calls and emails come to the NWTRCC office from people who don’t want their taxes going to war, border walls and deportations, a white supremacist system, tax laws made for the rich, a government set on speeding up climate change, etc. etc. etc. Despite the desire to resist, many of these people express a fear of doing it alone. Lots of people like the idea of a pledge: “I’ll resist when 10,000 others sign on to a tax resistance campaign over a particular issue.” There’s one about stopping war with North Korea now. On the one hand, most of us longtime resisters want to say yes, let’s go for it. On the other hand, there have […]

Tax Overhaul – First Look for WTRs

How will the new tax bill affect war tax resisters (WTRs)? This is something we will all be learning by experience in the next couple years. One thing that is clear: the IRS is pretty overwhelmed by all the new work and continued budget cuts. That makes it harder for them to enforce collection (although personally, since I resist as a protest, I’d just as soon not be totally ignored). So, for a first look, here are a few things that come to mind: If you don’t file, you probably get to ignore the whole thing, at least as far as tax details and forms go, unless you’re a wage employee (see below). You might not ignore the fact that […]

Natural Disasters and the Disaster of Militarism

Given all the crises we are seeing (or living) today, the crime of sustaining a massive military and endless wars is obvious. Emergency relief has a tiny budget compared to the Pentagon, and recently some members of Congress began to demand that new money for crises must be offset by spending cuts. You can bet they are not looking at the Pentagon for those cuts. As I’ve watched the news about devastating hurricanes and fires in recent months, I was thinking that sending the military to help with relief is a far better use of the troops than sending them to war. It would, of course, be better if they were actually trained in relief rather than killing, something that a […]

Gatherings of Resistance

I’ve been at three different activist events recently – or at least parts of all of them. For various reasons I didn’t stay for the full programs, but each provided some food for thought. WTF Do We Do Now? This was a day-long forum in Brooklyn sponsored by Pioneer Works, Creative Time, and the Yes Men and defined as a time to “reflect on a year of incredibly bad politics, and to gather energy, develop clarity, and make plans for the long fight ahead.” It was all day on a Sunday, which is really my time to gather energy catching up at home, so I got through about half the program. Still, it was a young crowd, mostly artists and […]

The latest travel ban expands US wars

on left: "Wars create refugees. Our taxes fund the wars. National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee - www.nwtrcc.org" on right: photo of truck driving toward refugee camp with many white tents.

The Trump administration released a new travel ban on Sunday, September 24, 2017. This new travel ban includes majority-Muslim countries covered under previous travel bans (Somalia, Iran, Syria, and Yemen), but also includes provisions preventing certain kinds of travel to the US from Libya, Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela. People are worried that this expansion of the travel ban may be harder to challenge in court, as it no longer targets majority-Muslim countries exclusively. Nevertheless, as I mentioned in a February blog post on border militarization, these travel bans increase the punishment of civilians in countries already targeted by the US.  Yemenis are suffering a cholera epidemic and catastrophic war waged by a US-supported Saudi-led coalition. The US has provided […]