Last night I had the good fortune of attending a play called The Mountaintop at Rochester’s GEVA Theater, with students from three of our nonviolence clubs and my hardworking colleague David Sanchez.
The play focuses on Martin Luther King Jr ‘s last night on earth. I found it very powerful, especially as much of it focuses on the exhaustion and isolation he experienced as his focus widened beyond civil rights to include poverty and militarism. In the year before he died, Dr. King called racism, poverty and militarism a triple evil, pointing out that the use of resources for war impoverishes us at home as well as harming countless innocents abroad. As the years pass, King’s systemic awareness of the interplay between these forces has been called prophetic.
Fast forward to today: April 15, 2015. According to the Nobel-prize nominated nonprofit, the National Priorities Project, 55.2% of US federal tax dollars goes to funding past and present military expenses. We are starving our communities at home through this focus, while maintaining and growing a military that is larger than that of twenty other countries combined. If we were prosperous at home, and had the money we need for education, healthcare and the environment, perhaps this focus could be justified. If we were doing even a fair job caring for veterans, perhaps this focus could be justified. Rising rates of poverty, illness, environmental problems and weaker academic performance says different. The agonizing suicide rate of one veteran every day says different.
If you are reading this blog, you are likely interested in nonviolence. If that is true, become informed about tax resistance as a venerable and effective form of nonviolent protest. To learn more, please check out the websites below or contact me. The Gandhi Institute has hosted two workshops on tax resistance with NWTRCC (below) and we will gladly find ways to support your interest.
I invite you to make use of whatever frustration or irritation you feel today, when giving up your hard-earned cash. There must be leaders who would shift resources away from military expansion and toward communities at home if they felt supported to do so. The U.S. two party system is essentially a one party system in terms of its inability to resist militarism. Imagine freeing up billions of dollars to take care of people here at home, from the very young to the very old. Imagine using resources to shift away from fossil fuel dependence entirely. Leaders need support and a mandate to resist militarism and to end poverty and racism. Tax resistance may be what it takes to help make Dr. King’s vision a reality.
Check out these websites for more information:
National Priorities Project https://www.
National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee http://www.nwtrcc.org/
by Kit Miller
