By living simply, while working hard for justice, he aims to attain what he calls "right livelihood." Brian and his community are striving to consume services and goods that originate in their own local bioregion. Voluntary simplicity, for them, includes refusing to pay taxes, even if that requires living under the taxable income level. They work toward dramatic reduction in use of petroleum for transportation, and they increase their use of solar energy for hot water and electricity. The community is experimenting with creating its own internal currency and has formed a local "peak- oil" action group to alert others to the dire and permanent energy crisis expected when oil reserves start to be exhausted.
Now Brian, at age 65, is in training for a 1200-mile-round-trip journey from his northern California home to the national Veterans for Peace conference this August in Seattle. He's going to use a hand-pedaled recumbent tricycle. "I don't know whether I can do it," he writes. "I'll let you know when I get there."
But his main purpose in writing to me concerned my capacity to "walk the talk." Brian quoted from an article I recently wrote urging U.S. people to slow down and think about where our country is going, to feel remorse for suffering caused in Iraq, to try and stop the flow of funds for the war, and to demand that the U.S. pay reparations to Iraq. Brian urged me to "jack up" my prescription for what people can do in response to the reckless direction in which our country is headed.
Brian is right.
We can't control the U.S. government. It is every bit as reckless as the train which ran over Brian Willson. (This train was believed to be carrying white phosphorus something like powdered napalm-for use in the dirty wars in or own hemisphere). But we can control our personal budgets. Brian suggested asking people to stop fuelling "the train." If we can't control our own government, can we at least stop actively helping it? For most of us who have entered into adulthood, the U.S. government doesn't want our bodies fighting in the war; they don't even care very much about our consent. They do want our labor, and our money. What right do we have to keep giving it to them?
Often, if I'm invited to speak with a group in the U.S., either my host or I will mention that I haven't paid federal income taxes since 1981.
Generally, audiences applaud. Almost always, a questioner will ask: "How do you avoid paying taxes?"
I advise people to visit the National War Tax Refusal Coordinating Committee website, www.nwtrcc.org, and to order the fifteen dollar manual called "A Guide to War Tax Refusal." I urge them to study the manual and then download four pamphlets that offer a practical guide to war tax refusal.
I insist they must get in touch with the nearest war tax refusal counselor before embarking on what is, admittedly, a difficult route.
But I also hold that if we oppose the U.S. government by refusing to fund U.S. war making, the risks are not that high. For several years now, the U.S. has stood on the precipice of all out devastation-of itself and of the world. Throughout modern history people faced far more dire personal circumstances to resist injustices and calamities like those we are tacitly helping our leaders foment. They faced dreadful risks to resist oppression in Nazi Germany, in apartheid South Africa, and in the Jim Crow South of the U.S. (and its horribly segregated Northern counterpart). The risks we face for nonviolent resistance are comparatively trivial. If we refuse to pay our taxes for imperial war, we won't be disappeared by a death squad. We won't be lynched or shot. Our families won't be massacred. People ruthlessly crushed by U.S. foreign policies, beyond our borders, faces such risks. For us, the risk of continued collaboration with the reckless group of warmongers currently leading the U.S. is, however, extremely high.
We fear terrorism. And yet, with our ongoing, unlimited war of U.S. "wholesale" terror against reactive "retail" terror we are creating new, more committed, more dangerous terrorists much faster than we can kill them. But the greatest terror we face is the danger caused by what we're doing to our own environment. We pour pollutants into the air, water and ground, seed the planet with festering hatred and relentlessly deplete irreplaceable natural resources.
In his letter to me, Brian Willson recommends calling for massive and permanent presence of people in particular locations who will not move until the war ends and money is redirected to social needs at home and reparations in Iraq, similar to Martin Luther King's prescription for a permanent "Resurrection City" in Washington, D.C. Many are now planning or enacting such projects, and yet we must become many more than we are now.
It's easy to feel daunted by the tasks ahead. But Ali's responses to extraordinary challenges could guide us: straighten up, smile eagerly, catch courage from one another, and use our gifts to start over, to gain a new lease on life.
Originally published on Counterpunch.org
Now Brian, at age 65, is in training for a 1200-mile-round-trip journey from his northern California home to the national Veterans for Peace conference this August in Seattle. He's going to use a hand-pedaled recumbent tricycle. "I don't know whether I can do it," he writes. "I'll let you know when I get there."
But his main purpose in writing to me concerned my capacity to "walk the talk." Brian quoted from an article I recently wrote urging U.S. people to slow down and think about where our country is going, to feel remorse for suffering caused in Iraq, to try and stop the flow of funds for the war, and to demand that the U.S. pay reparations to Iraq. Brian urged me to "jack up" my prescription for what people can do in response to the reckless direction in which our country is headed.
Brian is right.
We can't control the U.S. government. It is every bit as reckless as the train which ran over Brian Willson. (This train was believed to be carrying white phosphorus something like powdered napalm-for use in the dirty wars in or own hemisphere). But we can control our personal budgets. Brian suggested asking people to stop fuelling "the train." If we can't control our own government, can we at least stop actively helping it? For most of us who have entered into adulthood, the U.S. government doesn't want our bodies fighting in the war; they don't even care very much about our consent. They do want our labor, and our money. What right do we have to keep giving it to them?
Often, if I'm invited to speak with a group in the U.S., either my host or I will mention that I haven't paid federal income taxes since 1981.
Generally, audiences applaud. Almost always, a questioner will ask: "How do you avoid paying taxes?"
I advise people to visit the National War Tax Refusal Coordinating Committee website, www.nwtrcc.org, and to order the fifteen dollar manual called "A Guide to War Tax Refusal." I urge them to study the manual and then download four pamphlets that offer a practical guide to war tax refusal.
I insist they must get in touch with the nearest war tax refusal counselor before embarking on what is, admittedly, a difficult route.
But I also hold that if we oppose the U.S. government by refusing to fund U.S. war making, the risks are not that high. For several years now, the U.S. has stood on the precipice of all out devastation-of itself and of the world. Throughout modern history people faced far more dire personal circumstances to resist injustices and calamities like those we are tacitly helping our leaders foment. They faced dreadful risks to resist oppression in Nazi Germany, in apartheid South Africa, and in the Jim Crow South of the U.S. (and its horribly segregated Northern counterpart). The risks we face for nonviolent resistance are comparatively trivial. If we refuse to pay our taxes for imperial war, we won't be disappeared by a death squad. We won't be lynched or shot. Our families won't be massacred. People ruthlessly crushed by U.S. foreign policies, beyond our borders, faces such risks. For us, the risk of continued collaboration with the reckless group of warmongers currently leading the U.S. is, however, extremely high.
We fear terrorism. And yet, with our ongoing, unlimited war of U.S. "wholesale" terror against reactive "retail" terror we are creating new, more committed, more dangerous terrorists much faster than we can kill them. But the greatest terror we face is the danger caused by what we're doing to our own environment. We pour pollutants into the air, water and ground, seed the planet with festering hatred and relentlessly deplete irreplaceable natural resources.
In his letter to me, Brian Willson recommends calling for massive and permanent presence of people in particular locations who will not move until the war ends and money is redirected to social needs at home and reparations in Iraq, similar to Martin Luther King's prescription for a permanent "Resurrection City" in Washington, D.C. Many are now planning or enacting such projects, and yet we must become many more than we are now.
It's easy to feel daunted by the tasks ahead. But Ali's responses to extraordinary challenges could guide us: straighten up, smile eagerly, catch courage from one another, and use our gifts to start over, to gain a new lease on life.
Originally published on Counterpunch.org
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