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My Path to War Tax Resistance (and Beyond) In December of 1990, I became a war tax resister. Shortly before the first Persian Gulf War, I attended an anti-war rally on the Boston Common. Despite the impassioned speeches by Howard Zinn, Daniel Ellsberg and others that day, I had a sinking feeling that standing out in the cold for a few hours, chanting slogans, and marching through the streets of downtown Boston was not going to stop the war from happening. After all, why should the president or congress care that my toes were frozen and my voice was growing hoarse? But sometime during that afternoon, a young woman handed me a half sheet of paper. On one side was a quote from Alexander Haig: "Let them march all they want—as long as they continue to pay their taxes." (Haig uttered that remark while driving by the massive anti-nuclear demonstration in Central Park in June of 1982.) Well, that quote really hit me! On the other side of the paper was an announcement about a meeting to discuss how one could refuse to pay for the upcoming war and redirect the money instead to organizations that work for peace. I had been groping for a way to step up my level of resistance to U.S. military violence, and this seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. Refusing to pay for war—or war tax resistance—was a way of saying "No" that even the Al Haigs of the world would understand. Yet, there were other, deeper, more personal reasons why war tax resistance (WTR) seemed right for me. Because of my family history, I feel I have a special debt to pay to people of conscience, people who refuse to cooperate with state-sponsored murder. My parents, grandparents, and other relatives were forced to flee Nazi-occupied Europe during WW II. Being Jews, their lives were in danger. On numerous occasions, they were saved by people who hid and protected them, who warned them of impending raids by the Gestapo and their collaborators, who provided them with false identity papers, and who eventually helped them enter Switzerland illegally and thus to relative safety. The people who did these things for my family took great risks. Some of their names I know from stories my grandparents told me; others remain anonymous: a mail carrier, an 8-year-old boy, a priest. Their acts of compassion were strictly illegal. If they had been caught aiding or sheltering Jews or other "enemies of the State," they could have been sent to the concentration camps themselves or even shot then and there. I cannot possibly thank these brave people: most of them have died by now. But I can perhaps honor them by striving to be a little bit like them. Today, I am confronted with the same choice that confronted the gentile bystanders of the Nazi era. Do I remain silent? Do I look the other way? Do I say, "It's not my problem?" Do I obediently pay my taxes so that others can kill in my name? Or do I say "No" and refuse to support the various wars waged by the U.S. government and the weapons manufacturers who export violence to many parts of the globe? I owe it to the people who saved my family to choose this last option. To become a war tax resister is, in some sense, to step into another world. "It will change your life," a fellow resister said to me early on, "but it will be a blessing." He was right. WTR has forced me to think about many things, especially about the meaning of security. In a society as heavily monetarized as ours, security often is taken to mean financial security. Thinking about risk and security has led me to ask certain questions: What do I really need? What are needs and what are merely conveniences or luxuries? What is truly my share? Are there ways of obtaining the things I really need without recourse to money? Many people are fearful of WTR, of the risks involved, of what the IRS might do to them. I asked myself, what if the absolute "worst" happens and the IRS seizes my income and savings—not likely, because there are statutory limitations on how much they can take. But supposing it did happen. Would I be destitute? Homeless? Hungry? I think not. Friends and family would not let me live on the street, just as I would not let a friend or family member of mine lapse into dire poverty. People would help me out until I could get my life back together again. One would discover under such circumstances that security is not predicated on how much money one has in the bank or whether one has purchased "insurance" of various kinds. Rather, real security, to the extent it exists at all—bad things can always happen, after all—has more to do with mutual aid, with friends, family, community helping and supporting one another. Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that whatever bad consequences which could conceivably happen to me as a result of WTR are nowhere near as bad as what happens to people who are on the receiving end of U.S. (or U.S.-sponsored) military violence. At worst I will have some money or property seized by the IRS. My home will not be destroyed by a cruise missile; I will not be lacerated to death by a cluster bomb or burned by napalm or white phosphorous; I will not suffer the debilitating effects of depleted uranium munitions. It seems clear to me that the risks and consequences of not paying war taxes are overshadowed by the risks and consequences of paying them. I've decided that I would rather suffer financial inconveniences than be complicit in the massive suffering of others—or worse, be an accessory to murder. Still, even as a war tax resister, my hands are not clean. War tax resistance has made me think about the violence inherent in our economy. The more I become aware of the violence connected with economic activity—oil is just the tip of the iceberg—the more I strive to live outside the mainstream economy, though this is no easy task. If I have the courage to take these steps, it brings me closer to the type of nonviolence that Gandhi lived and talked about and to what my friends Wally and Juanita Nelson call "the nonviolence of daily living." This awareness, I feel, is the greatest gift, the greatest blessing, that WTR has bestowed upon me. WTR has led me to seek out the root causes of war and violence and not just react to its ugly, outward manifestations. Though war taxes constitute a principal resource for waging war, they are not the cause of war. As I see it, the true causes reside in our lifestyle. Our way of life demands that a disproportionate amount of the world's resources come flowing our way. Markets must remain open to us. Labor must be cheap. All of this is maintained through violence and war and the threat thereof. WTR is not enough: I must change the way I live. Now, my understanding of nonviolence forces me to admit that I am relatively powerless when it comes to changing the behavior of other people. My influence on others, while not zero, is quite limited. However, I have considerable latitude when it comes to changing my own behavior. I have my work cut out for me, then. I credit WTR, and individual resisters I've met, for setting me on this long, fascinating, difficult, risky, arduous, rewarding, surprising, and ultimately liberating journey. Aaron Falbel
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