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I sent our tax information to our accountant this week so I have taxes on my mind. The thought of paying taxes to our criminal government is more than I can stand at the moment. I remembered a blog post of mine from 2019 and went back to reread it. I talked about being a war tax resister back in the day. Here is the last paragraph from it. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Not long after the 2016 election, I reread Thoreau’s essay “Civil Disobedience,” which is his reflection on spending one night in jail in 1846 for refusing to pay his poll tax in protest against the American invasion and occupation of Mexico in the Mexican-American War and the institution of slavery (in particular the expansion of slavery into the Southwest). In truth, the poll tax was a more localized tax that was not used to pay for any federal shenanigans, but Thoreau was apparently a bit fuzzy on how all that worked. He stood on principle. Much to his chagrin, his aunt paid his poll tax and he was released in less than 24 hours. How ironic that I dearly wish I could withhold my income tax 173 years later for similar reasons – to protest the military, the nonsense at the Mexican border, and the institutionalized racism in this country. I never went to jail for refusing to pay my taxes. (The government eventually absconded with my back taxes by forcibly seizing the money from my bank accounts.) I did go to jail once in protest against nuclear weapons, and I spent three days in Santa Rita Jail, and I have written about that experience. I want to point out that I spent more time in jail than Thoreau. Plus I was handcuffed (he was not, the bum). He managed to turn one night in jail into a 173-year bestseller and all I got was a T-shirt. (Seriously, I have a Livermore Action Group T-shirt that says “Santa Rita Peace Camp.”) If Thoreau could get published writing about one night in jail, you would think I could get published writing about three days there. But I can’t seem to catch a break. What’s more, the food at Santa Rita was dreadful, and Thoreau got oatmeal for breakfast. Is there no justice?
