In my 8 years with the war tax resistance community, I’ve heard a lot about the value of using our real names and sharing our stories in public. Lately, as I’ve pondered the barriers to resistance, I’ve concluded that the ideal of going public needs re-examination. (Please note: I originally drafted this essay prior to… Continue reading
Last week, I was explaining war tax resistance to someone new. They asked how I got started. I talked about attending the November 2008 NWTRCC conference in Eugene. Meeting the knowledgeable and caring NWTRCC community, and having inquisitive and inspiring conversations with a variety of people, was my tipping point to start resistance. Likewise, this… Continue reading
For better or worse, I start my day off listening to the NPR news and then listening/watching Democracy Now! Today’s big story was about the release of two pages of Trump’s taxes from 2005 — more all-Trump-all-the-time. Even his 12-year-old taxes get big notice. However, the reporter who received the leaked forms, David Cay Johnston,… Continue reading
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… Continue reading
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
The New England WTR Gathering, October 14-16 The Gathering was powerful. I drove there and back with Ruth Benn, the NWTRCC Coordinator, and we had a great conversation about the history of war tax resistance in the car ride. The Agape Community in Ware, Massachusetts, generously opened their space for us all to meet, including… Continue reading
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
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
“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
I have a pile of clippings from newspapers and magazines intended for notes in the NWTRCC newsletter. They go back a few years because the newsletter pages seem to fill up before I get around to the clippings, and the pile keeps growing. I was pulling out some of the articles that have to do… Continue reading
In Campaign Nonviolence’s recent conference call, Metta Center for Nonviolence staffers Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook talked about Gandhi’s concept of a constructive program. War tax resisters have a history of giving away their resisted taxes to worthy causes, and we have sometimes called this a “constructive program” in the model of Gandhi. For… Continue reading
Book review: Dietrich, Jeff. 2011. Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles’ Skid Row. Marymount Institute Press / Tsehai Publishers. In 1970, Jeff Dietrich was a young draft resister who had just returned to the United States from traveling in Europe. He heard about the Catholic Worker movement at a Peacemakers… Continue reading
