Environment

Tax Day 2019 Report Back

Like many, I awoke Monday morning with anticipation for Tax Day. My excitement was related to thinking of the many throughout the US who would be resisting giving money to pay for war and raising the issue of bloated military spending to the general public through leafleting, holding vigils and marches.  NWTRCC had been busy in the lead up to April 15, sending out copies of the War Resisters League’s annual Pie Chart and information about how to resist paying taxes for war with packets to communities gathering on this day. Additional posts were made on social media, especially with tweets of the many ways people were refusing to pay taxes for war.  Lists of communities taking action were compiled […]

The Continual Crossroads of Nuclear Weapons

People of Bikini Atoll carry their possessions to ships as part of forced relocation

History of the Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands After World War II the United States seized the Marshall Islands, a 1,800 mile chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Prior to that the Japanese had occupied the territory as an outpost for their military interventions. One Sunday in February 1946, the island’s US military governor asked the locals if they would be willing to temporarily relocate for “the good of mankind and to end all world wars.”  Operation Crossroads began on July 1, 1946 to determine how nuclear detonations would impact warships. The operation was terminated after many ships were destroyed and a 94 foot tsunami coated everything with radioactive water.  Many of the veterans who were ordered into […]

Gambling with our Future

Image of nuclear weapons explosion on horizon with orange glow

A recent headline, Cost to taxpayers to clean up nuke waste jumps $100 billion in a year brought home the tragedy of the nuclear weapons legacy. NBC reported that 80% of the increase was related to the Hanford site in Washington state where the plutonium was processed for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. David Trimble, director of the Government Accountability Office’s Natural Resources and Environmental team stated “We believe the number is growing and is understated.”  The projected timeline for clean up at this site is at least 50 years. Hanford is one of 75 sites in 35 states contaminated with nuclear weapons waste throughout the country. It was just a few days before that the Bulletin of Atomic […]

Niger Needs Food, Not Drones

Ed and I had an amazing trip twelve years ago to the Sahara Desert in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world. For those of you who know us, the reason we’ve traveled to some more unusual places is the chance to see a total eclipse of the sun — and it’s true, one is not enough! The August 2017 eclipse created new “eclipse chasers” since it crossed the U.S. and was visible to millions of people with tons of media coverage before, during, and after. So, you may wonder what this has to do with war tax resistance… The UN consistently ranks Niger near or at the bottom of human development based on life expectancy, education, and […]

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 […]

Trump’s wall plans are built on existing border militarization

an image of the rusty brown border fence at Nogales, Sonora/Arizona, seen from the Mexican side

October 2016: I’m crossing the border to Nogales, Arizona, US by foot, returning from a brief visit to Nogales in Sonora, Mexico, following the SOAW Border Convergence. A tall rusty steel border fence, maybe 20-25 feet tall, lines the border in both directions as far as I can see, dotted occasionally by even taller surveillance towers. While my entry to Mexico was a matter of walking in, I stand in a line for 45 minutes to re-enter the US. We’re waiting to present our passports, which are scanned and examined closely, get questioned by Border Patrol agents, and perhaps be sniffed by large Border Patrol dogs. I’m white and a US citizen, so I pass through easily, but I wonder […]

Musings on Obstructing a Public Way, War Tax Resistance, and More

Why Don’t We Do It In the Road? Musings on Obstructing a Public Way, War Tax Resistance, War Profiteering, Divestment, Livelihood, and Destroying Hundreds of Targets at a Rate of Up to Ten Per Minute by Jason Rawn I was involved in an organized civil resistance action last June 18 at shipbuilders Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. The 12 of us, now called the “Zumwalt 12,” sat in the road blocking traffic just outside BIW for ten minutes at the “christening” of the second of 3 super-high-tech Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers. The original intention was to build 32 of these unproven warships “capable of destroying hundreds of targets at the rate of up to ten per minute[!],” but due to […]

Thanksgiving, Standing Rock, and war tax resistance

A group of about 15 people standing with a paper banner reading "War Tax Resisters: We Stand with Standing Rock #NoDAPL #waterislife"

Given what’s going on at Standing Rock, last year’s blog post on resisting militarism and colonialism at Thanksgiving seems as timely as ever. I know gratitude is a feeling that keeps our movements going, as we are grateful for each other. Yet the “story of Thanksgiving” helps cover up the lack of gratitude – really, the violence – that followed. Here’s last year’s reflections on Thanksgiving, with a few updates. Post by Erica *** Thanksgiving has got me thinking about how the militarization of the U.S. extends all the way back to the pre-colonial days of Pilgrims and other white settlers arriving on the shores of this continent. In addition to the land they claimed, they decided they had a […]

The military is at Standing Rock again

A man, "Happi" American Horse, is shown standing atop the shovel of an excavator in a field. People and cars in the background.

Many of our readers have been following the water protectors’ struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL, or “the Black Snake”), which is being built on Standing Rock Sioux treaty lands. Thousands of people are on the ground in several resistance camps. The local Morton County police department has brought in reinforcements from other police departments as far away as Minneapolis. The combined police forces are cracking down on water protectors through surveillance (including drones), roadblocks, violent confrontations, dismantling campsites, and hundreds of arrests. They have employed heavy weaponry and armor, including LRADs (sound cannons), MRAPs (tank-like armored vehicles), riot gear, and sniper rifles. The police get this equipment from the 1033 program, which we have written about elsewhere on […]

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 deported more undocumented immigrants than any other administration, even as many of those immigrants are fleeing unsafe situations caused by US interventionism. As a result, School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) has moved its annual convergence against the Fort Benning, Georgia-based military training facility to the border, centering on Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico. A smaller convergence will still take place in Georgia in November. […]

End War, End Poverty, Save the Earth

Reverend Billy has a new book out called The Earth Wants You, published by City Lights Books (San Francisco). It’s a quick read, but all about breaking out of our busy-ness, and listening to Earth as a call to get involved in some new kinds of activism — and fast. At a recent book talk, Billy said he ran across this information by accident one day: At one point recently more than half of the counties in the country were in federally certified states of emergency, and yet the American media machine was so silent on the matter that you had to ask yourself, “Who’s the censor?” If the Earth is indeed speaking to us, we’ve chosen to demote that […]

How can I divest from the Pentagon?

Divest from the Pentagon, Invest in People - Redirect your taxes from war to peace! National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee - nwtrcc.org - (800) 269-7464

NWTRCC chose the theme “Divest from the Pentagon, Invest in People” for our 2016 Days of War Tax Action. Divestment (also called disinvestment) has been used to galvanize big changes, like abolishing apartheid in South Africa. Today, it’s used in the movements against fossil fuels and Israeli occupation of Palestine, where supporters pressure institutions and corporations to stop investing in certain governments, industries, or businesses. Divestment campaigns don’t always encourage individuals to see their own complicity in the target industry or behavior. While I don’t think we should only focus on changing ourselves, or trying to make ourselves “perfectly” ethical, we should understand if we are upholding the systems we oppose. And when we invest our taxes in war, that’s […]