Recently, former NWTRCC coordinator Ruth Benn, as part of her ongoing effort to finally clear the NWTRCC archives out of her house, sent me a stack of old issues of Conscience. This was the newsletter of the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign (CMTC), which promoted what was then called the World Peace Tax Fund and ran… Continue reading
History
Resisting Nukes: Then, Now and How Much Longer?
![](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/wont-pay-for-nukes.jpg)
I am among the many war tax resisters who got into this form of resistance after becoming aware of the horror of nuclear weapons, the damage done by every step of the process to build them, and the incredible waste of trillions of dollars over seven decades. Surely the world would look very different if… Continue reading
Taxing Wars and BDS against the US
![](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/NYC-piechart-and-divest.jpg)
A new book by professor and former Air Force officer Sarah E. Kreps, Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance and the Decline of Democracy, argues that the decline of the war tax has a lot to do with why the U.S. modern wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are seemingly neverending. What do you… Continue reading
Let’s Honor Peacemakers on This Memorial Day
![rows and rows of crosses and the Santa Monica beach in the distance - the Arlington West memorial to veteran and civilian deaths in war. Photo by Ruth Benn, May 6, 2018.](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/peter-heads-to-exhibitLA2018.jpg)
by Susan Miller When we’ve inquired about remodeling our apartment in Manhattan, contractors ask, “Is it pre-war?” That’s hard to answer. Pre- which war? For the past century, the U.S. has been complicitly or directly at war with countries around the world, with perhaps only a few years during President Jimmy Carter’s administration in which… Continue reading
Migration and Militarism
![](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/us-mexico-border-2-small.jpg)
I’ve been tangentially following the Pueblo Sin Fronteras caravan of Central American migrants, and have been reading more closely about their experiences since they arrived at the San Ysidro port of entry on April 29, 2018. Migrants and supporters also gathered at the beach in Tijuana and San Diego that day. Although, several days later,… Continue reading
Doing the Right Thing is Never Futile
![](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/randy-kehler-local-bias-tv-2017.png)
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… Continue reading
Lifting Up Dellinger and Antiwar Activists
![](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Dellinger-speaking-to-crowd.jpg)
Are you watching the big Ken Burns/Lynn Novick series The Vietnam War on PBS? My friends are talking about it, some are watching it, others, like me, not. I still find the horror of that war too painful to see the footage again. The waste on all levels remains painful and has carried through my… Continue reading
Resisting Nukes – Then and Now
![](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/no-taxes-for-nukes.jpg)
August 6 and 9, 2017, mark the 72nd anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. War tax resistance spans the nuclear age, and many war tax resisters have been motivated by the horror of those bombings, by the frightening possibility that nuclear weapons will be used again, and by the human and financial… Continue reading
Celebrating “Civil Disobedience”
![sepia-toned picture of the backs of early 20th-century soldiers with text superimposed: "I have heard some of my townsmen say, “I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico, — see if I would go;” and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. Henry David Thoreau, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849), nwtrcc.org/Thoreau200years](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/sending-substitutes-to-war.png)
Henry David Thoreau was born 200 years ago on July 12, 1817. His essay, “Civil Disobedience” (1849), has influenced thousands of protesters, war tax resisters, and direct action practitioners over the years. Part of the essay recounts his night in jail as a war tax resister, while other sections call on people to act in their… Continue reading
After Tax Day, the discussion continues
![yard sign with Put People First printed on it; a hen in the grass behind the sign](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/sign-hen.jpg)
This hasn’t been a typical year for war tax resistance by any stretch of the imagination, and that includes the atmosphere after Tax Day! Even after Tax Day this year, people are fired up about resistance, funding work for justice and peace, and building a better world. For example, Michael McCarthy wrote this week about… Continue reading
Thoreau’s work is still relevant
![Thoreau](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/thoreau-button.jpg)
By David Gross I am a war tax resister because Henry David Thoreau convinced me to be one. I was looking for medicine: something to help me ease my troubled conscience and to help me sleep better at night. I turned to Thoreau and instead of medicine, he gave me marching orders. This turned out… Continue reading
Ammon Hennacy’s “One-Man Revolution”
![Ammon Hennacy: The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist](https://nwtrcc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/cover.jpg)
A man asked me: “Why does a fellow like you—with an education, and who has been all over the country—end up in this out-of-the-way place, working for very little on a farm?” I explained that people who had good jobs in factories had a withholding tax for war taken from their pay, and that people who… Continue reading