Blog

Reasons to Celebrate

Somehow the IRS is attuned to vacations and holidays. They like to surprise you with their letters, bills and perhaps stronger demands just when you’re in a good mood or feeling relaxed. Like last week: I came back from vacation to a pile of 10 “Amount Due” letters from the IRS (not sure what our… Continue reading

Join NWTRCC at the SOAW border convergence!

Text: "Mass Mobilization at the U.S./Mexico Border - Resist Militarization - Support Refugees - End Migrant Incarceration - October 7-10, 2016"

War tax resisters will be at the Border Convergence with leaflets, literature table, and a workshop. Please help us cover the costs for travel and fees. Donations of any size are much appreciated! Over the past few years, organizing around the legal status and rights of undocumented immigrants has grown significantly. The Obama administration has… Continue reading

Unpleasant truths about preemptive strikes: War Is a Lie

After putting the book down for a few months, I recently picked back up my reading of David Swanson’s War Is a Lie, which I got from the author himself at his April 16 appearance in Portland, Oregon. Over this weekend, I think I started to understand why I had put the book down. Just… Continue reading

Opposing nuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore Lab

by Cathy Deppe Last August was the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan.  As members of the international peace group Global Network,  Alex and I were fortunate to participate in commemoration services in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  A year later we traveled a shorter distance to California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to… Continue reading

Understanding common IRS collection letters

image of IRS letter with heading "You have unpaid taxes for 2015 - Amount due: $1,922.39"

Most war tax resisters who refuse federal income taxes will eventually (or quickly) get a letter from the IRS. Here I describe some of the most common letters one tax-return-filing resister has gotten over the past few years. Resisters who do not file tax returns may get letters more slowly or not at all, until… Continue reading

Fits and Starts with WTR Organizing

Here in New York City there are a lot of war tax resisters and people who support war tax resistance. It should be a big, active community, but over the years and from experience, we’ve found it exceedingly hard to get people together. There are about 125 people on the email list for NYC resisters…. Continue reading

Expanding war and nuclear programs

Foreign Policy just released another episode of its Editor’s Roundtable podcast, called “What does the expanding definition of war mean for the US military?” The panelists discuss Rosa Brooks’ new book, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, as well as the general idea of the expansion of war into economic intervention and… Continue reading

Mutual aid and war tax resistance

War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund brochure cover with a row of rifles turning into flowers, and the first paragraph: ""The fund provides a process of mutual support through which war tax resisters and their supporters can distribute financial assistance to war tax resisters whose taxes are collected and for whom the collection of penalties and interest is a burden..."

One of the ways war tax resisters support each other is through the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund (WTRPF). This fund was founded in 1982 by the North Manchester, Indiana chapter of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and later became a separate organization. Its purpose is to provide mutual aid for war tax resisters who have… Continue reading

Resisting in Dreamland

Home ownership might seem like a mundane topic while confronted with the latest news headlines, but most of us in war tax resistance see life choices as inextricably linked to global issues, so let’s see where this goes. I saw the movie The Big Short a while ago. I totally don’t understand what those guys… Continue reading

Job opening at NWTRCC; new books by war tax resisters

activists holding a black umbrella with a peace sign on it, a blue sign with red letters saying "Honk for peace," and a banner reading "Don't like war? Then don't pay for it! Your taxes arm the world"

First and foremost, we have just listed our new Field Organizer/Outreach Consultant position on Idealist, New York Craigslist, and our website! We’re looking to build more power among our network affiliates and individual WTRs around the country. This is a temporary position with flexible hours. See the listings for details and application procedures. War tax… Continue reading

Presidential candidates against war taxes?

image of a skeleton on a park bench with words "waiting for an anti-war candidate"

Note that this blog post, like all of our blog posts, are the opinion of the author and don’t represent any official NWTRCC position. Short answer: There aren’t any presidential candidates against war taxes. As we all know, success in national major-party politics requires a commitment to a certain kind of discourse about war: the… Continue reading

Maladjusted to a War Culture

“The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Western Michigan University, 1963 “Creative maladjustment” emerged as a take-home theme (at least for me) from the day I spent at the… Continue reading