News

Doing the Right Thing is Never Futile

Last month, war tax resister Randy Kehler was interviewed on Local Bias, a public access TV show in Massachusetts, by guest host Marian Kelner.  Some highlights: “In 1969, I was giving a talk at an international conference of war resisters from around the world. And I had turned in my draft card, I had refused to cooperate with the Vietnam draft, and I knew I’d be heading to prison soon, and I said that in the talk. And unbeknownst to me, this guy named Daniel Ellsberg [was there], who was a combat marine officer who’d been in Vietnam, and he’d been fighting in the trenches in Vietnam and worked for the Pentagon and the Rand Corporation and high up […]

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 […]

War tax resistance and…

Although I’ve been connected to NWTRCC since 2008, the group has been around since 1982. So I often am curious about what things used to be like. Yesterday, I started poking around the Wayback Machine’s saved versions of the NWTRCC website, which go back to August 2000. (The site was around for years before that.) I was immediately drawn to the Issues page – it’s something we don’t have on our current site. The page summarized some arguments for war tax resistance based on other issues people are concerned about, with subjects ranging from the Contract with America (a 1994 initiative of House Republicans to reduce government spending, cut taxes, enact term limits, build prisons, and slash welfare, among other […]

Happy New Year! Want to Be a War Tax Resister?

In 2017, many people discussed and organized around tax resistance to the Trump administration or to its policies (such as nuclear antagonism, the recent tax bill, and attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act). War tax resisters were the subject of a lot of media attention too! However, we didn’t get a lot of visible growth in the number of resisters. But it takes time for folks to become comfortable with the idea. 2018 is a new year! One of the biggest reasons to be a tax resister is the reason the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee has been around since 1982. Namely, the toxic militarism that persists no matter who is president. The waste of lives, dollars, and […]

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 […]

No tax dollars for the war in Yemen

Throughout this year and last, the war in Yemen has been on my mind. The desperate ongoing humanitarian crisis, the devastation of war, and the United States government’s complicity all weigh heavily on me. Some, mostly Democrats, in Congress are coming around to criticizing this war, and even criticizing Saudi Arabia. If only they’d spoken up when Obama authorized billions in arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Or said something when he authorized US refueling of Saudi planes and other support for war in Yemen. Maybe we’d be getting somewhere by now? On November 13, 2017, the House passed a resolution noting that the US assistance to the Saudi war in Yemen was not authorized by Congress. But the resolution did […]

Keep resistance alive in 2018

"I know first hand how hard NWTRCC's coordinators work to spread the word about war tax resistance and to create and provide resources. All this work requires money to continue." - Peter Smith and Ellyn Stecker

Just a brief post this week! Please support the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee with a generous donation by December 31! We want to keep going strong in 2018, able to address new events and concerns in the struggle against war – but also keep up our solid work in providing community and support for resisters! Your donation will help a lot. The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund announced that they received no requests for assistance in 2016. I would call this shocking, but it seems like resisters just aren’t being collected on lately. Success! But if people need this fund and aren’t using it, that’s no success. To support resisters in the future by contributing to reimburse them for […]

Looking for more coins to feed the machine

still from video of "Mother of All Bombs" being dropped on Afghanistan, April 13, 2017

We’re shifting gears a bit today to share a poem about war and tax resistance! Let’s stop feeding the machine. -Erica Purgatory by Jayson I had a dream last night and in the dream, I woke up and I didn’t know where I was. There was nothing leading up to it, I just woke up in a strange place. Before too long, based on what was happening I figured that I was in hell, or someplace like it. I must have died, somehow, and now I was in hell. It was absolutely awful. There were people dying all around me from famine and disease. Bombs were dropping on them and they were too weak to run.   Then, all of […]

A NEW HOPE (Sam’s October College Tour)

Disclaimer: This blog post about Sam’s college tour is best to be watched, not read. Watch it in its true format here! A long time ago (not so long actually, it was only in October of this year) in a galaxy far, far away (called “The Northeast”), it is a period of civil war. A lone rebel spaceship, striking from a hidden base (Philadelphia), won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet (the Military Industrial Complex, funded by hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars). Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents (cops be […]

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 […]

“Fighting Nazis should be fun” and other lessons

Last weekend’s Voices of Resistance conference, a joint effort of the joint New England Gathering of War Tax Resisters and the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (oh, jeez, that’s a mouthful) was some deep food for thought. I want to start by thanking the organizing team and all of the guests who joined us for the panel and workshops. It was great to see several UMass students in attendance too. Every part of this weekend was a different challenge for me! Friday was a lot of meetings and logistics, with Ad Comm meeting and then prepping for the Fulfilling Lives While Fighting for Our Lives panel. During the panel, Camila, Nathalie, and Rojas were dropping a lot of heavy […]

Podcast #7: New War Tax Resisters

Listen now: Podcast #7: Why and How I Became a War Tax Resister We’re happy to present today a series of interviews with brand new war tax resisters. These folks started their war tax resistance in the past year, spurred on by varying political circumstances and the need to take some sort of concrete action to stand against the war machine in its varying manifestations. First, we speak with Caitlin, a Seattle-area war tax resister for whom Trump’s border wall plan was the final straw. Next, we talk to Sarah Mueller about her recent decision to start resisting war taxes and her conviction to redirect them toward community organizing led by people of color. Finally, we hear from Lauren von […]