Spirit in Action
Praying for Peace, Paying for Peace, Part One - A Visit with Robin Hood and Maid Marian
I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from this struggle and weak from growing old. I have no voice but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am out and out is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give and to give the ragged and the morn. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue, through you and will be done. The enders have I none to help I'm done. The tangled knocks and twisted chains the strangle fearful minds. Welcome to Spirit in Action, my name is Mark Helps me. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive effort. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. Today I'm going to share with you the first in a series of interviews with people scattered across the USA who practice war tax resistance. The practice of refusing to voluntarily give government money that it will put to use in organized violence and the threat of violence. This takes on particular importance, each spring, as Americans scramble to get their tax forms in by April 15th. As this is done, many taxpayers are looking at the taxes that they're asked to pay and feel some inner turmoil, knowing that between 40 and 50 percent of each income tax dollar goes to the military or military related purposes. Literally thousands of dollars for war for each man, woman and child in every US household. Some people made the decision they simply cannot conscientiously pay for war and have chosen to divert their income away from the military, channeling their funds to life-affirming works. My guest today hail from different parts of the country, Daniel lives in North Carolina while Heather is over in Colorado. Heather has about 30 years of war tax resistance behind a wild Daniel, newer to the planet, has more than 15 years of experience. The first visit with Daniel, who is a member of the administrative committee of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. Daniel, welcome to spirit in action. Thank you. I should be here. No Daniel, you're in North Carolina, but I think your accent tells me that you're not originally from North Carolina, are you? No, I'm from upstate New York, mid-Hudson River Valley, rolling hills of apple country. Can you film me in a little bit on your background, you know, where you grew up, how you grew up, where you went to from there, how you got to where you are today? Yeah, I was born, raised, pretty much lived the whole time in New York state when I went away to college for some Pennsylvanes and in Vermont, I graduated in international studies and moved to Oregon for the better part of 15 years. Then with my partner, Kimberly, we moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, going on almost three years ago. I went to college thinking I was going to be a chemical engineer, quickly changed to sociology majors, switched schools and graduated with international studies with a focus on rural development. I thought that I was going to be going into the field of project management in the third world. You know, you have your background in Peace Corps. I didn't think about Peace Corps for myself, though I was doing an internship in college with care over in Bangladesh and with a small rural development organization in Western India. But, congratulations, realize that the majority of the problems in the third world were generated from my country or industrial countries in the first world, and so decided I wanted to work in development and with poor people in my own country and try to combat the problems that have been created from economic colonialism of taking resources out of the third world and making people rich in the first world. So I guess I have an egalitarian nature just thinking that, you know, fair should be fair and this is a little bit what got me into war tax resistance also. Was this concern about paying for killing that most people call war tax resistance? Was this something that you grew up with, got out of your home, the family you grew up in, or was it something that came to you over the years since then? There isn't a clear delineation of where it all came from. I grew up in a family that attended church regularly and I was brought up in Christian tradition and one of the tenets that I learned from Sunday school was that I shall not kill. So I always kind of held that in my own consciousness and started becoming a little bit political, I guess you could say, in the middle of high school. I remember sitting in a chemistry class during the days of the Cold War thinking, you know, what the heck am I doing in school? This world could be bombed any second by the two major superpowers and this is crazy. And I went to my first anti-nuke rally with the big one in New York City in 1982 and was really moved by that experience and started getting involved a little bit in Central America issues at that time and the freeze and that sort of thing going into college and it wasn't until eight years later in the early 1990s that I became a war tax resistor though. I guess you could just say that being brought up in a sort of moralistic background though not over the top and not a conservative bent that you might find with some southern churches, I definitely had the open-minded family. My dad was a social worker, my mom was a homemaker and volunteer in various places and I feel like I had a pretty good upbringing and got exposed to a number of different things in my little colloquial talent upstate New York and at age seven my best friend was from France and I had a pen pal in Liberia and collected stamps and you know just started thinking more about the world from that standpoint I guess. I'd like to understand Daniel a little bit how you changed over the years and how maybe your moral outlook changed. For instance I'm not sure you're a pacifist but I think you probably lean in that direction because you're a war tax resistor but most people do grow up thinking that shall not kill that that's a bad thing except most people add a caveat or two to it like they say you can kill only if you're doing in self-defense or if you can kill only if you think it's going to save more lives like if you kill one person then you can maybe save lives with ten people and maybe it's okay. So I'd just like to understand what you grew up with and what you think now about those kinds of issues about killing and what's okay and what's not okay. You know when I was growing up I didn't know anything about the issue of abortion. I did know about the Vietnam War kind of vaguely ended when I was starting to understand what that means. I sort of remember Watergate I vaguely remember the landing on the moon but my upbringing was really you know about being helpful to others. My dad is still to this day the guy that all the neighbors know because he's always helping them out to do something. I had that as a model and somebody keeping a clean house as another model and grandfather that was an Episcopalian minister and these kinds of things. My own exploration kind of branched out from the Christian tradition, moralistic upbringing in my family in that sense in college when I started studying about nonviolence and read about Gandhi my second year in college I went to India for a semester was part of a study group in nonviolence to ask the question well if you're faced with somebody who's being violent to a loved one or a threatening to kill them what would you do you know would you kill them and bringing up these kinds of questions and was part of some nonviolence trainings in the community for people that were thinking about doing civil disobedience and I hesitate to classify myself or classify other people because it sort of boxes us in and I would rather encourage people to have open minds about possibilities. I would consider myself a pacifist in some senses but you know I've also taken some martial arts to be able to defend myself if I ever had to which I haven't I kind of pride myself I've never gotten into a fist fight with any kid ever but that being said what would I do in those kinds of circumstances well it depends on the circumstance and I'm not going to say that I wouldn't kill I surely killed a lot of insects when I was growing up and you know in terms of my own species I don't believe that there is ever a correct time to kill somebody in general you know especially from the government standpoint I don't agree with the death penalty I don't agree with war making in my mind war making has always been the power elite that don't send their own sons and daughters to war and instead dupes the masses into signing up because it's the brave thing to do I'm kind of thinking and writing right now about the idea of greed being an illness and that it should be diagnosed as such in the psychiatric field just like an addiction that somebody would have a drug or alcohol. How did all of this lead you into war tax resistance well that's a good story I was living in Portland Oregon at the time that the first Gulf War started had never heard of war tax resistance and I don't know if you remember that time people that didn't watch TV and I was in Portland Oregon a lot of people don't have TVs in my peer group so we get our news either newspaper that was kind of before internet news days and so they listen to the radio and NPR was one of the stations that people listened a lot to and we were dismayed because of how much of the normal corporate media line they were espousing at that point in time and I think they learned a lesson there and maybe have gotten a little bit more balanced in the reporting sense so I had turned to a community radio station KBOO of Portland is a great radio station so people can stream to that on the internet they have a daily morning and evening rush hour news program and on one of the talk shows somebody was being interviewed about war tax resistance vis-a-vis the Iraq war the first Gulf War as soon as I heard it you know sitting alone in my apartment and I thought oh my god I've got to do that I don't know what that means I'm kind of scared maybe I'm going to go to jail but I have to do it it's just a notion of it you know that our dollars no matter how much we're supporting peace and marching for peace and handing out flyers for peace and attending lectures on peace writing congressmen about peace if we're funding it then we're not really doing much so what did you start doing right after I heard about it they were also advertising a workshop that was happening at the university a couple days later and so I went to that workshop and there were some people mostly over 60 that were presenting the workshop there was a group and still exist called the Peace House 18th Avenue Peace House and you know pretty much a Christian event of pacifists that have Sunday services and a lot of good kinds of programs that are being espoused through that organization and so they were holding the slideshow and talk that broke up into small groups all about war tax resistance and I was just like wow fantastic you know and I joined the small group of people that were thinking about going hall hog either you know half or more of their federal income tax not paying that to the feds but instead redirecting it to peace and justice groups that I want to emphasize because a lot of people think that war tax resistance is about not paying taxes still friends and even family members today will say well so you're still not paying your taxes and I say no I pay my taxes I just don't pay them for war so at that point that year I was kind of forget and scared about what might happen so I resisted half of what I owed the federal government and I redirected that to a couple of local group groups and I think that year we support a soup kitchen a homeless shelter free clinic in downtown and that's what our dollars went to after that year I still was you know thinking gosh you know half of my tax dollars I'm still paying and half of that goes for what I don't want to go for so that year I started resisting all of my federal taxes that's the way I've continued ever since a lot of people figure that if you don't pay your taxes if you withhold your war taxes like you do that right away they'll come and grab you and throw you in jail what actually have you done what have spent the consequences have there been particular tribulations have you had to suffer because of this what's what's happened to you because of what you've done I love that response from people I say well you know we've got this button early war tax resistors Henry David Thoreau and he did go to jail for that but you know what they don't do that anymore because people can't pay their taxes in jail they're not working so the IRS would sooner see people continue to work and figure out a plan with them to get the money that being said there's all kinds of different ways that war tax resistors resist I always tell people you have never met such a group of people that are individuals in any kind of venue any kind of format the people that are part of war tax resistance march to the beat of their own drum they got into it for their own reason and they do it the way they feel and maybe it's based on some other people and maybe it's just from what they hear from within their what their conscience is telling them and so I have taken the approach of filing so that I'm legal except that I'm not including payment when I do that the federal government has a ten year statute of limitations for collections and my point of view in doing resistance is to remain as uncollectible as possible now there are some people that will not mine if the IRS comes and gets their money on an annual or you know every two or three year basis you know or assess penalties and interest and and then pay for it my point of view is I don't want him to get a darn dime you know if I can help it so as soon as I start resisting I closed my bank account because I found out that that was the easiest way for them to get money the next easiest way was then and still is garnishing wages you know they follow your social security number so anything you know mutual funds wages assets houses cars anything that has your social security number on it is what they look for over the years I have kind of refined the way that I resist so that I hopefully give them nothing now that being said they have tried to garnish my wages twice now one was in 2002 and one was two weeks ago and both of those occasions I was fortunate enough not to have had a check garnished and had some time to quit in 2002 they actually did get I think around three hundred dollars that I owed or they say that I really didn't think that I owed it and two weeks ago they actually got nothing because I was able to quit before they were able to get anything that being said I I controlled it through the easiest way to be a war tax resistor is to have your own business and therefore control the amount of declared income and even easier than that is below the taxable income level which isn't that easy in this country those some people attempt to do it and some people do I at this moment and making a living by piecing together employment again after taking a couple weeks break I'm going to be making some of the money through growing and selling vegetables at the local farmers market I'm going to hopefully I'm going to hear back teaching English half time with the refugees from called the Monceon Yard tribal populations from the hills of Vietnam and looking at the possibility of starting my own business for writing so what I figured out finally in the long haul to it setting up my own business is that kind of divesting myself from one job one income where you know I'm working forty to sixty hours a week and you know having the benefits that come with that instead figuring out my benefits in other ways and diversifying so that I am not making above taxable income in any one job you mentioned Daniel that you have a partner significant other I'm supposing and I wonder how your war tax resistance has worked out with respect to her I mean I know it could be that this is something that you do together or maybe it's something that she supports you at or that maybe you each just do your own thing and I ask about this because I'm aware of the different ways that this has worked out in my own marriage and I'm curious how it works for you and her yeah that that's in the war tax resistance realm that's what we called mixed marriages or mixed partnerships I'm not legally married I'm with my partner five and a half years and one of the reasons that we haven't gotten married I mean there's various reasons but is the war tax resistance that I do now she supports me but has her own business and acupuncture and naturopathy and you know it's fearful for that business so doesn't do it herself and that causes issues and at the same time you know it will always depend on the relationship about how much that is going to be a benefit for the relationship or not in this particular case for me I've got a very supportive partner who likes that I do that she calls me a modern-day Robin Hood I'm not sure about that but you know whatever the downside of it is that gosh you know sometimes I think well I mean it would be nice if both of us were resisting and and yet you know there's a house that she owns that I live in and I pay her rent this doesn't you know affect my war tax resistance and it enables me to be a resistor a little bit because you know I'm living in a nice house with somebody who's a professional and supports me I wouldn't say financially so much but I guess you better probably ways that that is that being said you know she's from California which is a common property state and is an issue for if we were married to move back there even not married there are states that are common law marriage where if you live together for a certain amount of time well then you're legally married and in those common law or common property states not common law but common property then her possessions could be taken you know in trying to find the monies that I owe to the IRS I guess you're implying Daniel that North Carolina where you live is not one of those states that is common property marital property I think it's called elsewhere it's not one of the states where that is the law it's not a common property state what we say is common property most of those states are in the west coast and it's one of the pieces of information that's on the national war tax resistance coordinating committee website NWTRCC the national war tax resistance coordinating committee they NWTRCC is that an organization that you're part of yes matter of fact I'm on the administrative committee that helps the new trick coordinator to get projects done make decisions it's it's been a great experience for me I just we have meetings twice a year and they happen in various locales of the country and we get to meet with and do some sort of program or activity or actions usually all of the above with the local group the war tax resistors that is kind of hosting us so I've had a just absolutely splendid time because the people that I meet I would say in my book are modern day heroes especially those that are well I was going to say especially those that are elders you know 60 or over but then there's the the young people that are inspiring to that just such inspiring stories about what people have done how they do war tax resistance other things that they do because you know I don't know any war tax resistors that only do war tax resistance they're all involved with other kinds of oh progressive cause is looking for peace and justice and change you know for the common good and that kind of thing so so what you're saying is that war tax resistance is really a kind of a feature maybe one of the important threads of many threads that make the cloth of some people's lifestyle yeah I mean of I would say a couple of things that I could point out to listeners as far as resources one is a film called act of conscience from I think 19 I want to say 1993 narrated by Martin Sheen is the story of this couple in western Massachusetts that they're had their houses by the IRS I went to the action when people were doing civil disobedience on the property while the IRS were trying to sell the house it's all kind of covered in the movie but I met these people there's an elderly black couple and now he's deceased but she's in her 80s her name is Juanita Nelson who lives in Massachusetts and she is an organic farmer living below the taxable income level for the last 50 years at least I can't remember exactly and hasn't paid money for war since the 40s you know when you think about that and you meet people that like that and people that met you know and learned and got inspired themselves from people like Dorothy Day from Ammon, Hennessy from people in the Catholic worker movement or the international workers the wobbly movement even people that have met Mother and Jones for goodness sake you know the people that are running these circles are each one you know an inspiration and hanging around them you know for me just encourages me gets rid of that black cloud that the Bush administration has put over my head because of listening to the news too much you know fires me to positive change and to continue working it doesn't sound like you have much fear and trembling in your practice of war tax resistance and yet you know I think that kind of fear is really the major impediment that keeps a lot of people from putting into practice something that they really feel deeply in their hearts and their souls doesn't that kind of fear ever grip you as you face the government as you face the IRS as you practice your war tax resistance that's why I tell people you know when we do tabling well it's been more than 15 years and I'm still I'm still waiting for him to come and get me in fact I'm feeling a little bit I was up until a couple weeks ago feeling a little bit neglected because hadn't heard anything for a while we turn the situation on its head because instead of having fear people that do hear from the IRS make public demonstrations public actions with these kinds of events you know I have seen people that do because you know of having no some people have kids and I don't change and that's something that I might change my resistance for if I did some people will go ahead and pay and for example there's a couple in Portland Oregon that you know they were going to seize their house unless they paid up and so they decided to pay up and they did it in five dollar increments to pay off I want to say about a seven or eight thousand dollar debt to the IRS and they had various people I think twenty twenty five different people come and help them the day that they decide to do this and each one took five dollars and went into the IRS office and said I'm paying this in the name of this person and I am making myself known to be a person that's against paying for war and thereby jammed the IRS office for the entire day and got the point across and had the press there and had it televised on the local news and got the whole idea out about the idea that some people that are against paying for war were then being pushed by the IRS to to make these payments and what does that look like on a level of one's conscience I've also met people that are working in the UN both in the New York and the European office for having conscientious objection either to participating in war or paying for war recognized as a human right now how much have you seen that in the news so from whence does our fear and loathing come from it's very much portrayed by the popular media the corporate media because you know as as we know through the years and Hitler's Germany and everything if you keep the populace in fear then they will do what you want them to do and you'll be able to tax them and pay for war and do things that will make you a colonial neo colonial economic power or economic colonialism if you want to call it that so the people that have come across in these circles you know gosh I know I'm not at all fearful hey I just changed my life once again and finally got out of social services because I've been beating two for years now and really and loving the idea of especially diversifying and growing organic food and maybe eventually even being a writer and being able to sell that product from my experiences it sounds like for you this is really positive transition and it's really nice that the government was there to help you get off your butt exactly the way to look at it exactly Daniel from your personal point of view what is the purpose of war tax resistance I mean both for yourself and also from the point of view of the people you're helping to examine their consciousness is it only that they're not paying for war or are there bigger or additional reasons that you think war tax resistance is important well there's a few answers to that one is legislative people should know about the national campaign for a peace tax fund now this is a bill that's been introduced into congress since 1972 which would make it possible for people that are not okay to pay for war to have them pay taxes to another another kind of department with the IRS and so that their taxes would supposedly not be used for for making war now there are people that have qualms with this because how are we going to verify that blah blah blah I think it's a good first step so one end would be to actually recognize conscientious objection to paying for war recognize on a national level here and even an international level in the UN and thereby move this world toward recognizing conscientious objection as a human right as basic as freedom of speech freedom of religion freedom of expression you know all of these kinds of human rights another you know when you talk about the end point for war tax resistance for me this will never be a mass movement is my feeling and that's after you know a couple of decades in the well almost a couple decades in the movement and lots and lots of teaching of workshops and tableings because most people's mind can't go there it's a complex matter to think about there's math involved but mostly it's a moral question that people have fear about and most people are willing to take that extra step now I'm going to encourage people to do it if they want to but my end point is just for me really I can't force anybody else to be a war tax resistor but I know that I can't live with paying for war myself now other people might be able to do that and even think about it and not being denial about it and say that it's okay and that's that's good and I hope those people are not anti war then you know there is a really important question of consistency of integrity that I at least believe it is really important to face particularly for those of us who have found clearness in our opposition to war I've seen it express several different ways on posters perhaps those of the national war tax resistance coordinating committee and other related groups and that is the question if you work for peace or if you pray for peace do you pay for war and I wish for everyone a life of integrity of wholeness and that seems to me a very important question to face for people who are seeking lives of wholeness and of integrity well and of course consistency would be great if you've ever seen the film herald and mod mod says you know consistency is not a human trait and Gandhi himself said you know don't take what I said 10 years ago take what I'm saying now is what I believe and I think we evolve we evolve as people over time and change our beliefs and change our ways of doing things and ideally we're more consistent however it's not my job to stand and point fingers at people and say you're not being consistent mostly I just want to let them know that this is a possibility that war tax resistance exists because most people have never even heard of it well and you had a very freeing and kind of a conversion experience just by hearing that it existed yeah yeah and you know I I go down now because I'm on the east coast now annually to the school of the Americas protest at Fort Benning, Georgia where we're trying to close what's called the school of the assassins you know for propagating torture throughout Latin America in general and generally people there have not heard about it now we've been down there a number of years so more and more people are hearing about but a lot of the people that are coming there are high school or college students and a lot of them have not heard about it and I feel that just planting the seed of knowing that it exists is a huge thing so we pass out a lot of literature down there and are currently involved in a national survey to find out why people don't do it when or how and what conditions they would and if they once did but don't know what you know what would make them start again and the end point of this whole survey would be to launch a one-year national mass war tax resistance movement where people are resisting at least part of their federal income tax money so Daniel is there a question or are there some questions that you could offer to our listeners questions that they could sit with and this is something like the process that we Quakers call queries that they could sit with to kind of find their way into the future to sort out what direction they might take at a deep level that they might be called to go in in connection with this question of war tax resistance sure that's a good question question of questions I guess one question would be am I comfortable working for peace but paying for war that's kind of fundamental if I'm not comfortable with that what can I find out about war tax resistance what are the different ways to do it what are the risks involved another question would be where can I find resources about this and hopefully you're going to let your listeners know about the new tricks website no time like the present that's National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee NWTRCC.org that's the new tricks website as you refer to it that's correct also looking at the national campaign for a peace tax fund for the legislative option for conscientious objection and trying to get our elected representatives to back some bill that would be able to allow us to consciously object to paying for war maybe one last question would be when when me the listener is a grandparent and my grand kids ask me what were you doing to oppose war that I have a good answer for them and then I feel comfortable in myself about what I'm going to be able to answer them that's really a hearty question question that goes straight to the heart it makes me feel like crying just thinking about what we do or what we don't do and what we won't have to say to our grandchildren not only as regards things like war tax resistance but many other things like care for the planet and other places where we're falling so far short of being responsible to future generations that's really an important query to sit with well I sure sure appreciate you doing these interviews and spreading the word mark and thank you Daniel for your work with the national war tax resistance coordinating committee and also for your personal witness you know it's inspiring to see someone who travels the world sees it as it is then brings the witness back home resolved to improve what we right here in the USA can do to take responsibility for our part of the mess thank you for doing that well thank you Mark I appreciate [MUSIC] There are building bombs while our schools are falling. Tell me what in the hell we're paying taxes for. Well, what do we all stop paying taxes? Now what do we all stop paying taxes? Stop paying taxes, yo. Now tell me who's gonna buy their bombs, their tanks, 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, yeah. Listen, people, listen to what I've got to say, yeah. Now what do we all stop paying taxes? I said, now what do we all stop paying taxes? Who's gonna pay taxes, yo. Well, what do we all stop paying taxes? I said, now what do we all stop paying taxes? I think you may have got the idea of that song. The song was called "What If We All Stop Paying Taxes?" The song was by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and that's the subject today. What if we all stop paying taxes? In particular, what if we stopped contributing money for war? Our first interview was with Daniel Woodham. He's a war tax resister over in North Carolina. And now we go across the country to Colorado. We're going to be visiting with Heather Snow, who's been a war tax resister now for close on to 30 years. This is part one of a spirit and action series called "Praying for Peace and Paying for Peace." Heather, welcome to Spirit in Action. Hi, Mark. You're joining me from Durango, Colorado. Are you a long time, Colorado? Long time, about 18 years. If you wouldn't mind, Heather, give me a little background on your life, you know, where you grew up, what your family was like, that kind of thing. Because I'm trying to get a feel for what prepares people, what leads people into this practice that is known as war tax resistance. My parents were upper class Protestants, and they, for some reason, put me in a Quaker Elementary School. Before that, I actually had gone to a boarding school in northern Connecticut, a very small boarding school. So, I got introduced to the Quakers in, like, around ninth grade, and then there happened to be a Quaker College in Long Island called "Friends World College." And I went there for a year, and I learned all about the Quaker activism. It was really exciting, and I just began to identify with them. Also, I had just complete to stand for my family. I was severely abused, and I felt like if that's what happens when you're wealthy, then I was going to turn my back on them. And I never believed in war, and I never believed in our government. So, somewhere along the line when I was about 17, I decided I was never going to support the government, and the best way I could do that was not pay my taxes. And so, you didn't pay war taxes, but you also didn't pay any other taxes, so it was the whole shebang for you? It was the whole shebang for me. Maybe your parents put you in that Quaker school because they figured they weren't giving you what you needed, and they thought that maybe you'd get it at the Quaker school. Maybe so. Actually, I think it was probably a better school in the area, but they were beautiful people, and I really identified with their values, and they made much more sense to me than my crazy family. And then, as I watched over the years, the corruption in our government, I just made me so angry. I felt ripped off and betrayed by the very thing that's supposed to be taking care of us. I mean, I suppose if everybody didn't pay any taxes, then our government would have to figure out some other way to get money. I know that there exist a number of people who simply refuse to pay taxes at all, maybe from self-interest, maybe just because they don't believe in government. Most war tax resistors, I think, of starting from this principle, they don't want to support war, they don't want to support the unhealthy things that our government does. Where do your values come in? Do you start from the war tax resistance principle, or do you just kind of generally don't think you want to give your money away to the government? Oh, no, it was always, it was that I didn't believe in the corruption, and I was always against war. And it was only, oh, maybe in the last ten years that I even heard of other war tax resistors. I didn't even know the movement existed. Is that because you haven't kept up your connections with Quakers? Because certainly, in Quaker circles, sooner or later, the question's going to come up and the concern about paying war taxes. Well, people, yeah, it was talked about in the circles, but no, I didn't keep up with the Quakerism over time. I moved away from that. I moved into a lot of Eastern thought, Buddhism, and didn't do a lot of interacting with the Quakers. I still haven't. It doesn't mean that I don't enjoy them. I guess I just haven't been into that much of anything organized on a spiritual level. Can you say something more, Heather, about the religious, spiritual, the beliefs or values that have led you into practicing war tax resistance? Because I think that most people would say that they don't believe in killing, except in extenuating circumstances, self-defense, for example, or to protect their country, etc. So, most people probably would say that they dislike war, but they just consider it a necessary evil, even as they glorify it. So, I'm wondering if you can explain some of what separates your beliefs about war from the more mainstream beliefs of war being bad, but... Well, I think the whole theme around democracy, that we live in a democracy and then our country goes around to other countries and pushes this whole idealism on them. And I also believe that we've lived in an illusion about freedom, that we've never really been free. We still live and die basically like slaves, in my mind. We have a slave society and we feed the corporate world. Nothing in our society is based on anything real, like money isn't real, what's real is nature and trees. Money is some constructs made up by man, and it doesn't add to our freedom, it takes away from our freedom. What are some of your higher values, Heather? I mean, the kinds of positive things, as opposed to not believing in war, what are the positive things, the values that help determine how you live your life? I've always believed in a humanistic society, where we take care of each other. Everybody gets taken care of, everybody has a house, medical care, food. That's my highest ideal for humanity, to see a world, live like that in a world that lives in conjunction with nature instead of against nature. I sometimes think it's confusing to use that label humanist, because a lot of times the people who self-described as humanists have a great concern for other species beyond the human species. That is to say, it doesn't seem like their beliefs or their values are just human-centered, they're centered on something larger. So how does that work for you in terms of the balance of your beliefs about what happens for people or what happens for animals? Is it important, what happens to people and not important, what happens to animals, is killing an animal equivalent to killing a person or not? Is what's really important? How things affect people, as opposed to the ecological damage that we inflict on the world? How does that balance work for you? Well, absolutely. I mean, ecological, we destroy our mother, we destroy the very thing that feeds us, that's pretty insane. I believe that we, you know, you could live on animals, that is just such another can of worms. Is it morally right to kill animals and eat them? I mean, if you're a humanist and you don't believe in killing, then why would you kill animals and why would you kill vegetables? And that whole discussion is really gnarly. I just think that, first of all, the way we raise animals to kill them is pretty disgusting and it's not sustainable. So I think we could go about that in a better way. There's a whole lot of things we could do in society that would be a lot more sustainable than what we're doing right now. We're just on Destruction Road right now. How did you get into war tax resistance and just, how do you practice it? And, you know, I don't want you to say anything here that's going to get you in trouble with the government. But a lot of people imagine that it's hard to do war tax resistance. So, how have you been able to do it and how do you do it? Well, I've been very blessed that for a while there I was just completely incognito. Nobody really knew about me. I just never filed a tax return. I decided I was just going to ignore the system. So, how do I get away with it is that I've always been self-employed and I always live below the poverty line pretty much. Now, I can't say always because I have had a few jobs where I actually made some money. And I had an inheritance and I actually have a house. So, in a lot of ways, I feel like I live on an edge and there's always, you know, the possibility of getting caught, quote unquote. And how did I just decide that I was just going to do this? It was just made sense. What I do is we don't have a peace fund, so I donate a lot of money, what money I have, to organizations that I believe in that help other people. So, instead of putting your funds, you're withheld taxes in one of the escrow accounts, like many war tax resistance groups have, to cover you in the future in case the government comes against you to collect that money, you redirect those withheld taxes to something healthier than what the government would be spending them on. Yes. Well, what kind of things do you help out with? Oh, like free speech radio, Planned Parenthood, local radio stations, food kitchen. Well, that's enough. That'll keep you pretty busy just covering those ones. And it's not a lot, you know, I don't have a lot to give, but I feel like it's what I can give. Has there been anyone who's been particularly supportive or helpful or encouraging to you as you've done your war tax resistance? You know, it doesn't sound like the government has been particularly on your case. Well, actually, I did have a run-in about three years ago. I worked for some people and I made some money, and the IRS sent me a letter wondering where I was for only that year. So, I decided I'd gone so many years without ever paying, I would pay up that year and maybe they would dry up and go away. So, I only owed them about $100, and then I owed Social Security $3,000, which put me in the hole. And so, what I did is I did file that year, and so far, I haven't heard from them again. It sounds like they were satisfied with the fact that you existed one year, and since then you cease to exist again. He could go figure! I don't know, and I'm not going to try to figure that out. Now, I have had some talks with some very interesting people. I called a lawyer once. He was in Virginia, and I don't have his name here. He worked with war tax resistors, and the last time I talked to him, he told me he was getting out of the field because basically, the law is on their side, and you're never going to convince them otherwise. So, he told me that I should lay low if he would tell me things that would happen, and I could get a series of letters. This and that could happen, so he kind of laid it out for me what could be out there. And then, you know, I got some support from the WTR, the Quaker Division. I talked to a couple of guys who help people like me, and so I have only really had support. I'd say since I really discovered the WTR's website. By that, Heather, I assume you mean either the war resistors.org, or the site for the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, and WTRCC, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee.org. Either one of those will connect you up with a lot of war tax resistors, folks, and people who can provide information and help. So, I assume those are the groups that you were talking about that you got in touch with. Oh, okay. I've been talking to Ruth a lot. To who? This lady named Ruth who is sort of like, I guess, one of the main people. And, yeah, a lot of those people live with getting constant letters and harassment. Do you have some people right there in Durango with you who give you support, or is it all pretty much by phone? Or do you actually get face-to-face support? No. I'm pretty much, I feel, on Ireland. I mean, I tell a few people, a few people know my story in town, and they all think I'm crazy. They would never dare try such a thing. People are always actually quite amazed that so many of their tax dollars get funded to war. If you could deliver a message, Heather, to our political leaders, what would you want to tell them? I like that question. Well, they're not going to listen to me. What I want to tell them is that it's time to wake up and take care of your people and stop destroying the earth that you live on. It's just really basic. They've heard it since the beginning of time. Stop corporations, put people first, and create a peace fund where if they have to have taxes, then we can send our money to the peace fund. That seems to be a pretty straightforward concept idea, and you'd think that it would get through pretty easily. But, you know, you take a simple idea and you deliver to them, and right away people start making complicated conditions, and thoughts, and points of view on the subject, and pretty soon they get stuck, and they don't feel like they can move forward. But it's not complicated when you look at the bigger picture and begin to ask, "What is real?" And what are we doing here as a species? I mean, we're just going to kill ourselves into oblivion at this point, which very little time left for us to really turn things around if anything is going to get turned around at this point. And anyway, the WTRs, we need something like 2% for it even to make a dent in their budget. So that's sort of a bummer. Right, if 2% of the population were war tax resistors, the government would notice us, but, you know, taking away 2% of the military budget is not going to stop them. But what you're already doing, and which can make such a tremendous difference, is redirecting, because the peace concerns, the kind of life-affirming concerns, are getting such small amounts of money that if you take 2% of the taxes that are normally going into the military and put those towards peaceable efforts, it can make a tremendous difference. And so what you're already doing is making that kind of significant difference. Uh-huh, yeah, really. So if you can find an effective way to do it, like you have, then it's tremendously powerful. Well, it works for me, but I think if I had a regular job, it could be really complicated. And then maybe I would have more IRS letters and stuff like that. But I can sort of hide, because their system isn't that good. I'm just kind of surprised, Heather, at your description of how many people just don't get, how virtually no one, except a couple people you mentioned, get what you're about, and why you would do this. I'm just kind of stunned that, as I think you put it, that so many people would think that you're crazy, because you're doing something that I think represents really high morality. And maybe I just don't understand what your angle is like, it could be very different. But it's just very surprising to me that you're not finding more support, more people who recognize the deep spiritual wisdom of what you're doing. Oh, on that level, I think that they can understand, but I mean, crazy in the sense that they would never do that. You know, they're too scared of the IRS, or they have too much to lose. Are you just a completely fearless person? No, actually. Every April, I kind of shake in my boots, and hope for the best. I'm actually probably what's going to happen with me is I'm going to end up liquidating everything that I own, and really scaling my life further down than what it is now. I just finished raising a kid. Yeah, and then I'll disappear even more. Well, yeah, then you can just come visit us up here in Wisconsin, and we'll take care of you. You know, we know how to take care of our fellow war tax resistors and people who are working for bees. [laughs] Yeah, you know, I would probably have more support if I reached out a little bit more. And that's something, you know, I've been a little bit reclusive on that level. And the WTR website has helped me feel like, "Oh, well, maybe I can talk about this a little bit more." And then here, sitting with you, maybe it will be okay to start to verbalize some of this and get a little more clear. And put it out there. Well, Heather, I think it's just really impressive what you've been able to do to make this principle really, really right, just step. Almost all the time without appreciable local support. And I'm really pleased for you that you've been able to find some kind of support online through the extended war tax resistance community. And my wish for you is that you find increasing visible local support as well. This is great to see the life-affirming path that you've chosen and that you can so clearly pursue it. So thanks for serving us, that kind of witness for our world. Thank you, Mark. That was really enjoyable talking with you. That was Heather, a war tax resistor in Colorado. Earlier, we were visiting with Daniel, who was a war tax resistor over in North Carolina. This is part one of a series about war tax resistance, called Praying for Peace and Paying for Peace. You can hear this interview again via my website, northernspiritradio.org. And on that site, you can find helpful links, like to the groups mentioned in this interview, and hear my other programs as well. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher call for you than this. To love and serve your neighbor. Enjoying selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor. Enjoying selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor. [Music]