Spirit in Action
Supporting War Tax Resisters: Sharing the Brunt
The War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund (WTRPF.org) is a way to help manage the risks of conscientious objectors to paying for war, something to think seriously about as April 15th approaches.
- Duration:
- 55m
- Broadcast on:
- 05 Apr 2015
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world alone ♪ For some, April is a time when a young man's mind and a young woman's mind turns to thoughts of the birds and the bees and flowering trees. But it's also the time when people look at the looming April 15th tax filing deadline. For some of us, and I definitely count myself among this group, it is a time to look hard and seriously at what those checks that get sent off to the IRS pay for. For decades now, roughly 50% of every income tax dollar sent to the IRS pays for war and the preparation for war. So for some of us who can't simply ignore the facts and distract ourselves with other things, this has posed an immense dilemma. How can we be good civil participants and still not pay for killing, which is abhorrent to our deepest moral beliefs? For many, the answer is war tax resistance. This is different things to different people, but for a certain number of war tax resistors, this means that the federal government will impose penalties and interest in an attempt to coerce payments and to stomp out resistance. The answer from those opposing paying for war has been to band together to support those bearing the brunt of the government's tactics. And one such tool is the war tax resistance penalty fund. I'm a supporter of the fund, and I recently got to know a member of the steering committee for the fund, Peter Smith. And when I learned of the wide range of his peace and justice activities with the war tax resistance penalty fund, and with the olive tree Nicaragua medical delegation, and with the Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition and with the St. Augustine soup kitchen, I figured Peter would be pretty much the perfect guest to speak to in the lead up to tax day. Peter Smith joins us today by phone from Northern Indiana. Peter, thank you so much for joining me today for spirit in action. Well, you're welcome. Glad to be here. I'm in touch with you because we had several exchanges correspondence. I've been a war tax resistors since 1982. You've stepped forward with a group of people to provide a service. Could you describe for folks the war tax resistance penalty fund? Okay. The fund is essentially set up so that people can volunteer to be supporters, and they also can appeal for funds when the IRS collects money from their salaries or bank accounts or whatever. And also in the process of that, they also seize penalties and interest. Many folks find that the penalties and interest sometimes accumulate almost as much as the original principal that the IRS said they owed. So we try to take the amount that the people have had in penalties and interest, split it up into small amounts so that all of the supporters can chip in maybe $30 two or three times a year. And eventually we get enough to reimburse the folks for their penalties and interest and help them continue their war tax resistance. Is there a lot of demand? Are there a lot of people coming? Can you supply all of the demand? I mean, all the people being penalized by the government for their war tax resistance? Well, there isn't a lot of demand at this point. We're not quite sure. We sent out a survey to see if we could find out whether people know folks that are being garnished by the IRS and whether they know about us or I don't know exactly why more people don't apply for it. But as of now, we've been able to pretty much reimburse everybody for what they have asked for. Is it okay for you to talk about the most recent people who submitted for support? Can you talk about the people? I don't know if it's appropriate to use their names or talk about their situations because I think it would be really helpful for listeners to know that there are people making the valiant effort and that there's a community of support for them. Bob, maybe use their first name in that way. You'll be able to tell who's who, but not necessarily that full name. The most recent person we've helped is Robert and he is a longtime war tax resistor. For the whole last year, he's had a good part of his paycheck seized by the IRS. It was somewhere around 5,500 in penalties and interest is involved with that. Over the course of two appeal letters, we have been able to reimburse him totally for that and he was really grateful. He sent us a quite a long letter saying how much he appreciated it. He also gets to most of the National War Tax Resistance penalty fund, I mean, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee meetings, and so he's a good advocate for the cause. The other two people we've been able to reimburse totally when he's named John and he had, it was long ago. In fact, these three people that we're working with, they had applied for reimbursement back in 2008 or 2009, but somehow they got lost with the old steering committee for War Tax Resistance penalty fund. So we took over about a year ago, so we're trying to get through the backlog. He's an active person and he had about, I think it was close to $5,000 also in penalty and interest. And we had another person who had just a really small amount, it was like $250, but he'd been waiting a long time. And we were able to take care of him very quickly because what we do, what our policy is, is if the person has asked for less than $1,000, well, reimburse them as soon as we get the money that we need in order to reimburse them for it, the people who ask for more than $1,000, most of the time we have to ask for only part of what they owe or what they request in one appeal, and then in the next appeal we ask for more of it and so on. The last person that we, it's also named John that we're working with, he had something like $14,000 in penalties and interest from way back in 2007 or 8. We're still working with him. He's out in San Francisco and he's involved with the Northern California People's Life Fund, and so he's quite active in the work. So we're hoping in the August appeal to be able to finally get enough to reimburse him totally for his work. So the War Test Resistance Penalty Fund is your target to do maybe two appeals per year, how does that work? Three a year, yeah. We tried to do it in April, August and December. This is kind of a newly rejuvenated, it used to be somewhat intermittent, and that was my experience of it. I might even go a year or two and I didn't hear anything and then there'd come a fund appeal and I understand that all of us are doing this as volunteers, including the people who are making the donations to help support the witness of these war tax resistors. How many people are involved with this? How many supporters out there? My sense is it's actually decreased over the years. Yes, so when we got the mailing list from the other committee, there were close to 500 people on it. We wrote to every one of them and also we wrote to the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, let us use their mailing list for a one-time mailing just to see if we could get people that weren't with the old fund but would be interested in picking it up. We had a very poor response. Maybe we got a lot of letters back. They had people that moved or died or whatever and from the old penalty fund. But we didn't get too many responses back from that. Right now we have about 220 people who've said they will support the war tax resistors. You don't have to be a war tax resistor to support people. Anybody who wants to can sign up to help. It's easy to do. Our website is WTRPF.org. There's a forum there that you can fill out to become a supporter. We'll send you a letter or email it preferably three times a year and we never ask for more than $30 so it's not going to break the bank kind of an appeal. And again the website WTRPF War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund.org WTRPF.org. So you Peter Smith have been involved with this for a really, really long time. When did you first get involved with War Tax Resistance? I was back in the Vietnam War days in 1969. Right after I got out of my graduate studies I got a job in New Orleans at the Xavier University down in New Orleans. It's a Black Catholic college and I started resisting the military portion of my income tax and I can continue to do it pretty regularly. There was one time after the war ended I said well maybe the United States is going to... We can trust them now. Yeah but it soon became evident that the military budget was not decreasing even though we were finished with that particular war so I started right back up again with only you. I stopped maybe for a year or two but that was a but if so that since 1969 that you've been on this path I started in 1982. I think there's a light that goes on for each of us and we get to the point where we say wait a minute. This war is going on and the only reason they're able to wage this war is because they grab our bodies to draft which they're not doing now. Now they don't have to draft. All they have to do is draft our dollars. Every bomb that goes down is one that we've paid for so all the killing is personal to some of us. Is it your sense that there are fewer active war task resistance practitioners now than there used to be back in... Well certainly 69 when you got involved more in during Vietnam War. It's hard to say. I don't quite understand how someone who is really anti-war demonstrates and so on doesn't become a war tax-resistant. This seems so obvious. I mean Higgs's statement whether he said it about let them march all they want as long as they pay their taxes. That's pretty much the obvious thing to me is that if you against war you shouldn't pay for it. But the IRS is kind of scary institution and I guess people just feel like they don't want to mess with it. I don't know that there's fewer now. There are many people now in the underground economy who don't pay taxes. They don't interact at all with the IRS. Many of them could well be war tax resistors in the sense that that's one of the reasons they don't make more money or make money in the regular economy is because they really can't. In conscience pay taxes for war but those people we don't know about a lot of times and so it's really hard to know how many there are. I know the new trick always tries to figure it out because that's the question they get every tax day and I don't know what the answer is going to give this time but the bottom line is we just don't know how many people are out there doing it. Is it your sense and again having been involved since the late sixties up to present is it your sense that the proportion of the federal income tax dollar that goes for military uses has that grown or decreased. Can you discern that in the course of history? Yeah, it's decreased from Vietnam. I mean it was up to 65 or so to 70% almost during the Vietnam War course the budget was a lot smaller than but the military portion was bigger. It's come down this year according to the War Resistors League it's 45% of the tax goes to the military. Last year it was close to 50 so I don't know whether this is just a blip coming down now because it is gone. It's covered around 50%. It's either a little bit above or a little bit below for as long as I can remember except during the Vietnam War where it was much higher. Now you're involved with multiple organizations. You're on the steering committee for the War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund. You're also active with NWTRCC which is the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee on the website NWTRCC.org. And folks remember you can always find these things just by coming to NortonSpiritRadio.org. I have links for all of this. So how has the work of that organization changed over the years? Are there any new efforts coming out of that group to educate and support people who are trying to make this witness who don't want to be paying for war? Yes. When I first joined which was in 1999 I think the organization saw started in '82 I think just about the same time you started War Tax Resistance but I joined I became a member of the Administrative Committee there in 1999. And there was almost no web presence. The newsletter, almost everyone got the newsletter by mail, regular mail. And over the years it's become more and more online. And this last couple of years we've had a really push to expand our image on social media. We now have a social media consultant who works 10 hours a week. Our coordinator works I think 20 hours a week. And this is Erica Weiland out in Seattle and she's done a lot of work getting us on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and all those other social media things which I'm afraid. I'm an old dog and I haven't gotten involved with any of that stuff. But I think that some of the young people I think are getting reached through the social media. When I first got involved I was very helped by a couple different publications that came out. One was by Bill Derland. Bill and Jeannie Derland published a really great resource for me. What kind of resources are available to people now who are considering or practicing War Tax Resistance? Well, all the resources are available on this nwtrcc.org. So many of them can be downloaded free. Others will send it for them and they'll have to pay for them. So the main what we call the Bible is War Tax Resistance, a guide to withholding your support from the military. And it's on the 5th edition right now. That gives you pretty much everything you need to know. There's a little history of War Tax Resistance. It describes the thinking or the kind of thought process that you want to go through in deciding to do War Tax Resistance. It talks about the consequences that are likely and maybe some of them probably unlikely that will occur if you participate in War Tax Resistance. And it gives them a bunch of stories of people all the way from Daniel McCracken way back in the 60s or 50s even. That kind of bothers of the movement in some ways and all the way through to some of the more recent folks that have done War Tax Resistance and what they say about it. So it's pretty inspiring. So that's something I think anybody who's interested ought to try to get is ten dollars. It costs ten dollars from nitric and it's well worth it. And then there are a whole bunch of what we call practicals. We have seven of them. One of them, they are controlling federal tax withholding with the W-4. Whether or not to file, how to resist collection, self-employment, simple living or low income way of doing it. Organizational, War Tax Resistance for employers or contractors, healthcare, social security, those kinds of issues. And then we're just developing one on relationships. And so the ones I just mentioned are all going to be downloaded. They're only maybe ten pages or so each. I think it bears some looking at this thing about relationships because one person in a relationship might be gung-ho very clear. I cannot voluntarily hand over this money for the government to kill people in my name. One person can be very clear, but then there can be people around them, maybe a spouse, parents, children who are not clear on the same issue. So, what particular are you putting together in this practical and more tax-resistant relationships? We've collected a bunch of stories, many of them about what you just described. We have stories from, like my wife and I who are both War Tax resistors. We have stories like Robert who we helped in his wife who he's a War Tax Resistance. She's not, but she's supportive, but she doesn't want to participate. We have people who broken up because their significant other just couldn't take the pressure of wondering whether the IRS was going to come and get their stuff or their money many more. But the War Tax Resistor just couldn't give up the War Tax Resistance. We've had people who the War Tax Resistor has decided to stop in order to preserve the relationship. We've had people whose in-laws have given him a lot of grief, even though he and his spouse are okay with it. Sometimes children are pressure like my children, for example, couldn't understand why they couldn't have everything that all their friends had because we had to live quite simply in order to not owe so much in the line of taxes. So it's kind of a combination of all those. And what we're trying to do with the practical is kind of talk a little bit about the issue and then embed some of these stories in the section. That's a little tricky because the stories of course come from all kinds of people and sometimes hard to funnel them into the right section of the practical, but working on it. We're talking today about War Tax Resistance. The initial gate into my discussion with Peter Smith is the fact that I'm one of the supporters of the War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund. Find them on the web at WTR, War Tax Resistance, WTR, PF, penaltyfund.org. That's actually a sub page that you will get directed to of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee webpage. Pronounce New Trick, n-w-t-r-c-c.org. Easiest way though is everybody knows how to spell NorthernSpiritRadio.org and they can come to my site and the links will be there. This is Spirit in Action, which is Northern Spirit Radio Production. On the web, NorthernSpiritRadio.org, where we have almost 10 years of our programs for free listening and download. We have links to our guests so you can get to the War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund and other good folks. There's also a place to post comments and we love it when you post comments when you visit. Please do help us out that way. Keep this communication two way. There's also a place to donate, click on support and you can help us make sure that this kind of information gets out there because too often in this country, our news media are not providing the information and analysis which allows us to make this world a better place. Which is of course the objective of Spirit in Action. So first thing you want to do, before you support NorthernSpiritRadio, please support your local community radio station. They provide you a slice of information and news that you get nowhere else on the American airwaves. Start by that because of free media and this information makes such a difference to people opening their eyes and making a change in the world. Again, Peter Smith is with us. He's part of the steering committee for the War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund which helps support people who've chosen this witness against the portion of our tax dollar that goes to support of military. I've got him on the phone. I'm finding a lot more about him because I didn't know him before I picked up the phone. Peter, you got involved with War Tax Resistance in 1969. Can you say why you did? What led you to that? Because I know some things about your history that did not make it obvious that you were in opposition to war. Yes, in fact I was in the Navy, when I was in college because I had to join the Navy for four years after I got out of college and I served on a destroyer in the West Pacific. But after I got out of the Navy I went to graduate school, University of Wisconsin in '64 to '68 and that of course was during the time of the Vietnam War. And also was a big important era in the civil rights in this country. The incident that really turned me around was the march from Selma to Montgomery, Dr. King. I did not get there for the actual beginning of the march, but Dr. King invited people to come for the last day of the march where we marched from the outskirts of Montgomery into the center. And just sitting there, marching first, I had never marched before. And it was quite an experience as far ahead as you could see there were people and if I have a hind as you could see there were people. And then just sitting there and listening to the speakers, watching the Confederate flag fly over the Alabama Capitol, it was quite a moving experience, a really life-changer for me. And it just made me very concerned that I do everything I can to prevent violence both against people in this country and also the people who were trying to fight in Vietnam. And so I was a draft counselor. Actually I did tell out my draft card at a demonstration at Notre Dame even though I couldn't be drafted again, but I still had the card. And I went on strike as a teacher during the Vietnam War. And then after the war, or right towards the end of the war, I decided that I needed to become a war-text-resistor because the money that I was paying, the government was buying, the weapons and paying the soldiers who were doing all the killing and so on. So that was pretty much my conversion experience. Would you describe yourself as having been, I don't know, supportive of war, supportive of Vietnam War, supportive war in general, when you got involved in reserve officer training, Roxy as his own, and end up going in military? Were you pro-military at that point? I don't know. I was a runner. I ran track in college. And so I couldn't participate in any of the drills that Roxy went through. I was kind of happy that I didn't have to do that. I was not going the whole military person at any time, but I also was not opposed. I grew up Catholic. I was involved with the Knights of Columbus who were really supportive of the Vietnam War. I didn't get anything in my background that would indicate to me that there was anything wrong with war. And I never thought particularly about the death and destruction that it caused, it just kind of passed me by when I was a young man. You said you grew up Catholic, and I think you still are Catholic. And my sense is that in spite of Pope Francis, who I think maybe is leading a lot of people to think more deeply about their Catholicism, there wasn't a clear voice coming out of the wide range of Catholics at that time. Eventually we had the Baragons who I think helped open up a lot of eyes and so on. Did you find that peace supportive strain within Catholicism anywhere on the near end of your witness? Yes, when I was at Wisconsin, we were in the local peace group, young Christian students, I think we called ourselves. Those people were very much against the war and very, very radical. That's where I kind of helped. That was the community that supported me when I began to change from becoming a supporter of John Birch when I was out in California to completely anti-war and draft counselor and so on person that I ended up when I left Wisconsin. So, that was a big help to me, that community. And does that kind of connection and support for your strong peace witness, including your war tax resistance, does that continue in the Catholic Church to this day? Yes, it did not. When I first got to South Bend, I had a very difficult time finding a church where I felt supported in my stands, but we have an African American church here that it was actually started because the black people in South Bend weren't able to actually, they had to sit in the back row of the other churches and they really weren't accepted very well. So, they built their own church. Long before I got there, they had done that, but that church is very open and very welcoming to people of all different ways of thinking and I felt very supported. In fact, I worked in the soup kitchen there, I'm the director of the soup kitchen, so that way I got to have close contact with a whole bunch of folks from different walks of life and that's really helpful in my keeping solid and well-based. Even though I was a professor, I don't think I was ever every tower kind of thing. I worked in the soup kitchen all the time. I was teaching as well, so I felt a little bit more in touch with the community. And is that Catholic community supportive of your war tax resistance now? Very, you know, in some sense, they certainly welcome me and they support me. They haven't said anything particular about the war tax resistance that I've done, but when I talk about it with them, they just ask questions about how it works and so on. There's no negative kind of, I don't experience any negativity from the folks at the church, so I don't think any of them are our war tax resistors that I know of anyway, but they are supportive. Do you have any sense of the reasons that prevent people from practicing war tax resistance? I know a lot of very peace-oriented people who are really a bit of aghast at the idea that they pay so much for the military. Some people say it's my duty as a citizen. I don't get to veto specific line items of the budget, so some people take that kind of approach. What do you have a sense actually impedes the growth of people actually paying for peace instead of paying for war? Well, that particular attitude that you just mentioned is, I think, probably significant. The IRS has kind of made itself a pretty scary institution. Most people don't want any kind of contact other than sending their forms in each year, so it takes a pretty strong commitment to go against that social training that people have of paying their taxes and so on. The argument that you can't decide what taxes you pay is similar to the one that if people didn't pay taxes, then we wouldn't be able to support Social Security and all those good programs. I tend to agree that those programs that help people should be supported, so that's one reason I only refuse to pay the portion of my income tax that goes to the military, but I do contribute everything out. The whole amount of the taxes, plus more, two causes that I know are going to directly help people. Giving you money to the government is not a very cost-effective way of really helping people because a lot of waste and so on. So I think that if maybe if people saw that they can give the money that they refuse to pay in taxes directly to agencies that they know are going to be using it well for the benefit of society, maybe that would make a difference. I don't know exactly why many people don't do it. They don't ever give a good reason when I ask, or at least, well I think it's a good reason. They just say they do other things and that's pretty much the answer that I get. They feel they do their piece work in other ways and they don't feel they're called to be war tax resistors. You've mentioned something about spending money alternatively, putting it in an alternative direction. Do you happen to know of alternative life funds? I was certainly acquainted with them along the way and that is you withhold your money that you don't want to go to war and you deposit it in a joint fund, often called an alternative life fund, not under your name. So the money is sitting there in this fund and if the feds come and take money out of your paycheck or your personal accounts, you can replace the funds with your deposits from the alternative life fund. Do you know of how many alternative life funds are out there or is there one there in Indiana where you happen to be, Peter? No, there's not. As far as I know, there's none here, but I know the Northern California Life Fund is active. The Conscious and Military Tax Campaign escrow account is kind of an alternative fund. That's actually the physical sponsors for the war tax resistors penalty fund. If you donate to the war tax resistors penalty fund, you actually send your money and make up a check to the Conscious and Military Tax Campaign and they are very active. And I know the New York City Life Fund I think is still active when in Kansas, but any one of those will take anybody's money. They aren't regional necessarily, but what they do in addition to keeping your money and letting you have it back if you need it, is that they invest the money and they give all the interest and sometimes when people no longer have need of the money, they often will let the fund use it for grants to various organizations that have applied for money that do good work. And so your money actually does help people in addition to yourself. One other thread that I wanted to follow, clearly this is a concern about killing people. I've been exposed to what's called the consistent peace movement. People who are strongly concerned about, for instance, paying for war or participation in war. People who are opposed to capital punishment, another way in which our government kills people. And then there's some concerns about abortion as killing. I know people, of course, who are vegetarians as well. So sensitivity to life concerns over a wide range, concerns about violence and killing over a wide range of ways that can happen. Are you familiar with the consistent life movement and particularly since you're Catholic, I was wondering if there's some strain of that that you've had any connection with? I've not had too much connection. I don't know that particular movement, but I know in general the whole life ethic, the seamless garment type of stuff, the fact that violence occurs on many levels and one needs to kind of work against it in different levels. So I've mostly been involved with war tax resistance and opposition to war in my active life. I've done some death penalty protests and so on, but mostly with the war kind of things. You say that. You've been mainly interested in the war tax resistance and active with that. But I know your resume includes a lot larger share of activities you've been involved in. You mentioned already the soup kitchen that you work with. Let's talk a little bit about that and then let's talk about Nicaragua and let's talk about Missiana, Peace and Justice Coalition. You're doing things all over the place, man. Yeah, right. So can we start with the soup kitchen? What's that like and what do you do in there and why? Can't you just let the government take care of it? Well, no. I mean, the government doesn't take care of people. That's the real problem. And of course, we know what's happening in the Congress that nothing can really get passed that's really helping people. But that's politics. So what we try to do is we serve soup and bread and some doughnuts and stuff that we get donated from bakeries and fruit. And over the noon hour on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, I'm the director of the soup kitchen. So I kind of make sure that everybody we have enough volunteers to make and serve the soup. In fact, I pretty much make the soup myself on Mondays and then make sure that we have enough people in the other teams and the other two days. I got involved with that just to be close to people. It's easy to be kind of a war tax resistor without ever seeing the results of violence. You can read about it and see it on television and everything, but you don't actually talk to the people or be with the people that are really suffering. And so that's one of the reasons I got involved with the soup kitchen. So I have firsthand contact with folks, particularly in the minority community that most of the people we serve are African American or Hispanic. So that's the soup kitchen pretty much. And how is this supported? By donations. We usually send an appeal letter once a year and we have a few people that donate regularly. And every now and then we get something from an organization that's heard about us and sends money out of the blue. So last year we thought we were going to go under, but we got rescued. So I guess God will provide if you do your work. And so we have been lucky to be supported. You know, we do get some donations from Bakeries. And we use the local food bank for money that the food you get from there. You just have to pay so much a pound for it. Now we have other wholesale outlets in the area that we can get food from. So that's one area. And how long have you been working as the director for the St. Augustine soup kitchen? Let's see. I think it's about 2000. I think I started as director. I started volunteering there in the 1980s, the mid-80s, when I was still teaching. I organized my teaching schedule so that I would have like a morning free so that I could go in and get the soup ready and serve it. So I came up to the ranks. The directors before me worked, we actually tried to pay some people to be directors. But that didn't work out at all because they were not familiar enough with the operation. And they didn't have the same commitment that a volunteer has to make it go. And we ran out of money. So it didn't work. So then I became director at that time. I know about a few other things that you've been involved with. And again, folks were speaking with Peter Smith. I got to hold him originally because of his connection with the war tax resistance penalty fund. He's on the steering committee for that organization, which helps support people who are opposing money their taxes going for war. He is also connected with, has been in the organization, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, their website, nwtrcc.org. New trick is how that gets pronounced.org. And find the links on Nordenspiritradio.org. And another thing that you've done, Peter, is you've been connected with peace and justice work connected with Nicaragua. Do you want to sketch out how you got involved in that and what you've done with respect to Nicaragua? Yes. My wife is a family practice physician. And she gave up her practice in 2001, but she still works for the hospital as a midpoint, which is a kind of a urgent care center every now and then. But what we did in the early 2000s was heard about a group at Manchester College who took students down to Nicaragua for a month and worked as medical teams. And they would go to a small village and all the people would come and the doctors would see the people and other folks would do the intake work where they give blood pressures and all that kind of stuff. And other people would give up medicines, and so we would try to help the villages who hadn't had much medical care, at least get a little bit for a little while. Manchester College had enough doctors after a while, but some of the people who went there didn't want to give up the experience. And so we founded the group in Maryland, and then my wife and I here in South Bend. We founded a group called Olive Tree Nicaragua. The website for that is Olive Tree, Olive Tree Nica. So it's all run together, olivetreenica.org. So every year in February or March, usually spanning the two months, we go down to Nicaragua. We bring some medicine with us, but we buy most of it down there. There's a Christian foundation that is able to get medicine fairly reasonably, and we buy most of our medicine from them. And they use medicine which is available in Nicaragua. So once we leave, if the people need refills or whatever, if they can afford it, they can actually find the medicine that we give them. Like this past year, we just got back a couple of weeks ago, we worked for nine different clinics. We saw over 800 people while we were there. Most of them had just the normal kind of aches and pains and flu symptoms. But some of them had more serious kinds of things, diabetes and heart problems and hypertensive medicines and that type of thing. So what we did, we'd see them and we tried to give them 30 days worth of medicine. And then anybody who had dental or eye problems, we try to follow up with them throughout the year. We have a coordinator in Nicaragua and she tries to contact people who have serious eye and dental problems and get them to a dentist or eye doctor. And then we pay for the classes and the dental care and whatnot. So that's pretty much what we do. It's nice to go in the February and March because it's cold up here and it's nice and warm down there. A vacation but doing service while you're doing it. Right, yeah. So why Nicaragua? I mean, I mean, it could be Haiti, which is in worse condition than that. Why Nicaragua? Well, Nicaragua is the second poorest country. You mentioned Haiti, that's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and Nicaragua's the second poorest. We got involved mainly because that's where Manchester College went. They already had a program that they went there. Unfortunately, Manchester College always seemed to find places that were at least 12 hours away from the capital city by a bus with terrible roads. And so the other coordinator from Maryland said, "Can't we find some poor people closer to Nicaragua?" So we know that we're only about an hour and a half away from our base is only about an hour and a half away from the city. But we have no trouble finding poor people that we can help there. So we mainly just started there and that's where we continued to go. The other coordinator has bought a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean and she converted it so she can house about 50 people or so there. And so we have housing for our delegation. So you've got olive tree working with Nicaragua and again website olivetreatnica.org. And you're also connected with something called the Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition. What the heck is that? And what's Michiana? Okay, I live in Northern Indiana right by the Michigan border. So the area that I live in is called Michiana. Mich from Michigan and Indiana for Indiana. So that's the name of the community that we live in. And the Peace and Justice Coalition, it turned out to be a long, somewhere in mid-80s or so, there were a lot of organizations that were doing similar work. And we weren't connected terribly well with them and we'd find some conflicts. People would schedule things at the same time and there are only a finite number of us and so we weren't helping each other very well. So the coalition originally started to kind of pull these groups together. We'd have representatives from each group that would meet and try to coordinate efforts or at least find out what the other groups were doing. Most of the groups that started the coalition have faded. We have Women's Internationally for Peace and Freedom. We had the National Organization for Women. We had not the fellowship right in the situation, but the witness for peace. Anyway, all those organizations have now disbanded in the area. So we're not really a coalition anymore, but we do keep doing things like it. Mind with the king day, we have a table. We have a flyer that calls Cost of War that we keep updated every year that talks about the cost, both in money and also in lives and things that are not done because the money is spent on war. We have a vigil every Monday, an anti-war vigil down by the federal building and rain or snow or sleet or ale or whatever we're up there for that. So those are some of the kinds of things. We meet every month just to kind of keep track of everything. Then we have the website, which is michianapeacejustice.net. And that's one of several websites that I think you maintain. I think you maintain it for new trek for the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee for Olive Tree. I kind of wondered when I see all of the things that you're involved in, I wonder if you're busier now that you've retired? Well, I'm certainly busy. I don't have so much work at night. When I was teaching, I was up pretty late every night preparing classes, grading papers and so on and on the weekends. Now, once I eat dinner, I kind of sit back with a book and relax a little bit. So I get most of the stuff that I need during the day. I also like to get exercise, so I run three times a week and try to keep active in that way. And I like to try my hand at carpentry, not fancy stuff, but just kind of build things around the house. And we have a house on Martha's Vineyard that I kind of work on in the spring, usually. So those are the things I kind of do to keep relaxed a little bit. I had one last area question. This is so important in this kind of program. Spirit in action, it really is about trying to find out what we do to support and motivate people to make a positive difference in the world. You'd certainly do that on a lot of different levels with a lot of different organizations and a lot of different ways. So my question is, and we've certainly had hints of parts of this, but maybe you'll have some further insights. What role does religion or spirituality play in your activism? Is it the horse or the cart? I mean, is it the motivator? Is it the result of having been religious? Does it support you, motivate you? Did you get involved with the Peace and Justice in this gave you a spiritual center? I just interesting how that works out in your life, Peter. Well, as I mentioned back in Wisconsin, in the University of Wisconsin group that I was in, was definitely spiritual oriented. That was kind of the, that what my activism grew out of that spirituality. And I've used the religion that I, I mean, my practice of religion has always supported me in that way. But, you know, the other way is that the activism has really supported, you know, my spirituality in a sense. It's given me the commitment that I might not have had if I hadn't been active. It's, you know, it makes a lot of what I do in both ways. So there's a trade-off back and forth between the activism and the spirituality. They really support each other. It is such a long list of things that you have been and still are active in. Again, we've been speaking with Peter Smith. Starting from the point of contact for me was the War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund. A steering committee which makes sure to help people who are refusing to pay their taxes because they don't want to contribute to war. And the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee that Peter's also connected with. There's the work with Olive Tree and with St. Augustine Soup Kitchen. And there's the Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition and the websites that he maintains for a number of different organizations. Peter, you do such really bright inspirational work for the world. Thank you so much for doing that work and for joining me today for Spirit in Action. Thank you for inviting me. I hope that it helps people. I'm sure it does help people, Peter. And I want to recognize and thank the other members of the War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund Steering Committee as well. Besides Peter, there's Bill in North Carolina, Barbara in Vermont, Shirley in Colorado, and until recently I think there was Jerry in Wisconsin. I want to send you off today with a song about not paying these war and injustice taxes. One of the reasons I thought this song would be quite appropriate is that the lead singer has one of those also common American names, rather like today's guest, Peter Smith. This song is by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. And it asks the question, what if we all stop paying taxes? It's a very good question. Think about that as we listen to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings and we'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. What if we all stop paying taxes? I was talking to a friend of mine, said it only no wars, no wars, no wars. They're billing bombs while our schools are falling. Tell me what the hell we're paying taxes for. Well, what do we all stop paying taxes? Now what do we all stop paying taxes? Now what do we all stop paying taxes? Now tell me who's gonna buy their bombs, their takes, their plays and all their guns. Well tell me who's gonna pay for their wars if we all get together and cut their funds. Listen people, listen to what I've got to say. Now what do we all stop paying taxes? I said now what do we all stop paying taxes? Well what do we all stop paying taxes? I said now what do we all stop paying taxes? Well what do we all stop paying taxes? Well what do we all stop paying taxes? 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The War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund (WTRPF.org) is a way to help manage the risks of conscientious objectors to paying for war, something to think seriously about as April 15th approaches.