Exposing Cultural Myths at Occupy Oakland

Published in CounterPunch, Nov 15, as "Re-Occupy, ASAP": Exposing Cultural Myths at Occupy Oakland
And in Truthout, Nov 16.

What a welcome relief the Occupy movement’s trend of “leaderless” groups! True, this seemingly contradictory concept is difficult to absorb in a culture the promotes a leadership style that models the strongest, loudest, most persistent, and most vocal monopolizing the microphone – both physical and its cultural equivalent.

But, as Americans know well, repeat something often enough and it becomes part of the cultural vernacular. So, despite the difficulty politicians, media, and many Americans have in grasping this new paradigm, Occupy movements across the country continue as leaderless groups.

After the Oakland camp’s most recent tossing by police word-of-mouth convened about 1,000 people at the main library to strategize. Then they marched the four blocks back to City Hall for the 6 p.m. General Assembly.

There are refreshing and humorous moments at GAs when a random person from the crowd hops the line of speakers, commandeers the mic, and rambles on about the CIA commanding “us all through the fillings in our teeth”, that we’re at the “end times”, or that aliens are watching from outer space and waiting to invade. Then, the mic is retrieved, gently, and GA business continues.

Last night, the group reiterated its commitment to non-violence; anyone unable or unwilling to practice non-violence will be escorted, gently, from the group. It also consensually agreed that Saturday, November 19 is the next major gathering in Oakland for those aching for a different system of governance, society, and relationship to one another.

These peaceful and informal GAs belie the myths perpetuated by local government and the media about epidemics of violence at Occupy sites.

Then again, the movement is exposing other cultural myths and morality tales for what they are, too: formulae for shaming generations of wage-earners into silent compliance.

Presidential hopeful Herman Cain recently reiterated a classic:  “If you're not rich, don't blame Wall St, blame yourself.”

Variations on the theme include:

The rich have what they have because they “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps”.

“God” shows His approval of the righteously hard-working by endowing them with material wealth.

The unemployed have given up or are too lazy to seek jobs.

“The American Dream” is there for the taking by anyone willing to work for it  

Education ensures success.

The planet is a treasure trove of natural resources for bold risk-takers to tap.  

Indeed, even the myth that police maintain social order for business is evaporating in the face of reality.

Jesse Smith lives in downtown Oakland and, at first, he was skeptical of the Occupy movement’s manifestation in his neighborhood. After he reconnoitered, talked with Occupiers, and understood that they echoed his grievances about our country’s direction, he joined the camp's business liaison group.

Yesterday, he stood in the sunshine at the police barricades erected after the police raid early that morning and explained that the business liaison group had surveyed some 100 businesses in a 2 block radius around City Hall.

“We collected data that no one else seems to have: around one third of the business owners report neutral impact on their business by the occupation; another third, owners of convenience stores and pizza joints, report a positive impact – business has gone up; the rest, places negatively impacted, are the attractive retail outlets that tend to be chain stores.”

Most business owners note that the police actions are “the only detriment that they experience to their bottom line.” They say their vendors call and ask them, ‘Is it safe to come to downtown Oakland?’ There's an impression outside of Oakland that there's been a need for a constant police line and that raids and violent police actions are imminent. This, if anything, is what is killing commerce here.”

Dorothy King is the owner of the sixty-year-old Oakland-based family business Everett and Jones barbeque.

“People say small business owners in Oakland suffer because people don’t spend money here. No, if the small business owners who live and work in Oakland suffer it is because the big banks take our money out of our community and do not invest in our city.”

In the sunshine, a protester near Jesse Smith patrolled the police barricades behind which municipal workers picked up debris from the for-now demolished encampment. One side of the sign he carried urged, “Mayor Quan, City Council, how about a little imagination?” The other side read, “Re-Occupy asap.”

Judging by how the majority of people conduct themselves in Oakland these days, peacefully and with determination, it is only a matter of time before the latter comes true. 

(Photos: Susan Galleymore, Nov 14, 2011)

Slideshow of Occupy Oakland, San Francisco, and Alameda

Here are slides from Occupy Oakland, San Francisco, and Alameda from last couple of weeks

Communicating via People Pedal Power

One single bicycle – and many pedaling people -- powers Occupy San Francisco’s media center: three laptops, a handful of cell phones, and wi-fi hotspots.

It is fitting that, on the day when as many of five thousand protested outside Wells Fargo Bank, something as simple, sustainable, and ubiquitous as a bicycle video-streamed and communicated the goings-on to the rest of the country and the world.

This people pedal power demystifies electricity and sends a hopeful message: if one bicycle and a few batteries enable world-wide communication how dependent are We the People on centralized coal and nuclear power plants?

People pedal power encourages the person in the street intuitively to grasp an emergent urban story: each of us is capable of creating decentralized solutions that still allow us to run our beloved electronic equipment. Perhaps we really can outwit and work around the corporations and financial institutions at the heart of OWS movement’s dissatisfaction.

There’s nothing special about the bicycle that was donated by Bay Area business Rock the Bike. It is stationary and rigged to stand about six inches from the ground. When pedaled, the spinning rear wheel, attached to a small motor, transmits people power to a “box” that is connected to a battery…that is connected to inverters… that plug into equipment that requires 12 volts, or 115 AC, or even 5 volts for cell phones.

Kames Cox-Geraghty, one of the Occupiers working on a laptop on Market Street near the Embarcadero BART station, said, “Right now these things are definitely basic but we're getting there; we have people who really want to help build the system who come down here to advise us.”

Earlier in the occupation, the encampment had a generator but police stated organizers needed to apply for a permit from the fire department. According to police, however, the encampment had “too many personal items lying around that constitute a fire hazard” and it was unlikely to be granted a permit. 

“So, at the moment,” Cox-Geraghty explained in a recent Raising Sand Radio interview, “we don't have backup. Instead, we have somebody on the bike almost 24/7. It's an intense system; we go for maybe five minutes without it, then we do a big shout out, ‘I'm done. Who wants to go next?’”

The shout out, also known as the “human microphone,” is another example of a work-around that has become common at occupation sites where “necessity is the mother of invention.” Activist/author Naomi Klein and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Sizizek are among the speakers who have popularized this ingenious urban call and response system that obviates the need to apply for a permit for sound amplifying equipment. Speakers break sentences into staccato sound bites that members of the audience repeat and pass through the crowd. It works for immediate needs – recruiting cyclists to generate pedal power – and it also works to educate and connect the dots between the OWS movement and world events.

One such moment occurred at Occupy San Francisco when someone shouted, “How many… American deaths…. in Iraq and Afghanistan?”

A response popped up and was amplified through the crowd, “About nine thousand.” (A number that includes military contractors killed.)

Then another voice shouted, “What about… the deaths… of people not American?”

There was no answer to that but that the question was asked raises awareness about the terrible swath of war beyond America borders. (The answer? Approximately one-and-a-half million Iraqis. Afghans? Unclear; the American military doesn’t “do body counts”.)

A longtime activist, Francis Coombs, said, “When the husks of the old world fall away we will see that new growth has already taken root.”

The world-wide Occupy movement shows all the signs of new growth taking root as engaged human beings collaborate to create renewable people power.

Yes, for Ecuador! Or, Confessions of a Fired Chevron Contractor

(Came across this anonymous article and want to share it to spread the support for Ecuador's cleanup)
By “Supa Strika”

A resounding cheer for the US appeals court that ruled Chevron cannot escape an $18 billion fine on behalf of Amazonian residents for the corporation’s massive pollution of the rain forest. Needless to say, Chevron will appeal the decision; it has been doing so for 18 years. If it manages to crawl out from under this fine it will not be for lack of effort by activists who keep the spotlight on Chevron for this and other practices that damage the environment and the communities that depend upon it.
I was a Chevron subcontractor during George Bush’s second term and there were many mornings I’d honk and wave to friends as I drove to work while they protested corporate polices at the gates of Chevron’s headquarters in San Ramon, California.
My first day on the job coincided with the Bush junior’s re-election. It was impossible to miss the expressions of corporate jubilation in the hallways, break rooms, and offices that day; someone wrote “WAR” and drew a smiley face on the whiteboard in my office too.
Over two years, I successfully implemented a global website located in a building east of CVX headquarters. My job performance was good enough that, on completion of that project, I was offered another in corporate headquarters – one floor below then-CEO “Dave” O'Reilly where I rubbed elbows with Chevron’s corporate publicists and marketing mavens.
A first responsibility was to put a “lighter, brighter face” on the public website Chevron devotes to explaining its side of the Ecuador story.  My foreboding about my new role was matched by that then-dark and dreary site branded with Texaco’s black and red palette. Moreover, it was populated with self-serving legal rhetoric about why Chevron was blameless in the horrors wreaked by oil spills and lax environmental controls in Ecuador’s forests and on its people.
It was difficult to pretend to enjoy my work or that I had much in common with my colleagues. As a life-long social justice activist I was aware of corporate malfeasance around the globe and I was not good at keeping my emotions hidden. Moreover, my only son was serving in the US Army – to my mind the element used to project US might in foreign lands and safeguard oil fields for corporations like Chevron. (Eventually, my son was honorably discharged after serving one tour of duty in Afghanistan and two in Iraq.)
I was fired within three months. Had I been a true believer I’d have fired someone displaying my attitude too. For example, meeting with the marketing team in 2006 about Chevron's strategy to be beat Proposition 87 – the Clean Alternative Energy Act – I quipped that Chevron create a marketing campaign to promote a new gas standard: instead of “miles-to-the-gallon” it use “number-of-dead-Iraqis-to–the-gallon”. (Chevron contributed over $34 million to “No on 87” – and won: that Clean Alternative Energy Act failed.)

My experience convinced me that corporations like Chevron act like a cults. There’s the isolation: believers do not mix with “non-believers”; isolation ensures believing members do not doubt or question the corporate mission or the corporation’s role in his/her life.
For days prior to protesters arriving at the gate for a permitted protest, employees and contractors were sent emails decrying the action, warnings about traffic congestion and frustrations, and offering assurances about personal safety that implied protesters were intrinsically violent people.  (Actually, the majority of left activist groups espouse and practice non-violence as a matter of course.)
Corporations pay (or donate?) decent salaries that allow members to entertain themselves shopping, consuming, and keeping up with the Joneses. The threat of being cut off from the corporate tit is terrifying and employees obey and believe corporate messaging -- in Chevron’s case, “Human Energy” – even when faced with conflicting evidence.
In 2005, the ChevronToxico Campaign for Justice in Ecuador somehow convinced the management of Mudd’s Restaurant, right across the street from Chevron Headquarters, to  exhibit “Crude Reflections: ChevronTexaco's Rainforest Legacy”. This series of 50 photographs documented the human and environmental impact of what experts believe is the worst oil-related environmental disaster on the planet. Few, if any, Chevron employees attended.

Who is Supa Strika?
I have never hidden from my activist friends that I contracted with Chevron…or any corporation. Indeed, I believe that those of us who espouse “left” ideologies ought to work in corporations at least once. Then, when we denigrate corporations’ activities around the globe, we also understand how the mindset operates at home, how employees’ minds are colonized by fear: fear of losing their jobs, fear of knowing, and fear of speaking the truth in meetings. Fear keeps publicists and marketing mavens churning out campaign messages that white- or green-wash corporate misdeeds too. 
I chose Supa Strika as my pseudonym partly because I am fearful: being known for criticizing the corporate-hand-that-feeds does not put bread on my table. (I’ve been unemployed for more two years as it is!)
Additionally, Supa Strika is a wildly popular comic series in Africa, South America and Asia Pacific that features a fictional soccer team -- all brown-skinned -- that sports Chevron’s Caltex- and Texaco-branded jerseys. I grew up in South Africa so I know that the vast majority of soccer-crazy South African children cannot afford real soccer balls; they improvise by stuffing plastic bags that litter the streets into other plastic bags until they form something hard enough to kick. Instead of Caltex- and Texaco-branded jerseys they wear rags.
Ironically, Supa Strika editions originate in the very office I worked in at Chevron headquarters where employees churn out and distribute thousands of these colorful and well-executed comics to hoodwink children. Indeed, Chevron has taken global sponsorships to a whole new level with an innovative animated version of Supa Strika for television. Chevron reports that this “extends beyond traditional sports sponsorship and results in significant brand recognition.”
But, activists can, and do, fight back. We expose these companies’ internal workings and understand what keeps employees enthralled; then we support decisions like that of the recent appeals court.
What’s our message? Corporations like Chevron might hide for 18 years or more but they will not escape their fines.
In other words, activists re-frame and re-apply Human Energy. 

(Another unhappy but resolutely outspoken member of the fallen-from-corporate-grace.)

Deep Costs of War Trauma

(Published August 11 in Counterpunch and Sri Lanka Guardian as "The Deep Cost of War Trauma: Destroying Personalities.")

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, is a serious problem for America and its war veterans – and that does not bode well for a society that supports war and militarism as a means to generate capital. The high prevalence of civilian assault, rape, child abuse, disaster, and violent incidents also makes PTSD a public health problem -- as borne out by the 1995 national study that estimates at least five percent of men and ten percent of women experience PTSD at some point in their lives; and roughly thirty percent develop a chronic form that persists for life.

War trauma is not new: “soldier’s heart” was the term used to describe it during the American Civil War; “shell shock” during World War I; “battle fatigue” or “war neurosis” during World War II; and “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome” during Vietnam. Then a “syndrome” (“a group of signs and symptoms that collectively characterize or indicate a particular disease or abnormal condition”) evolved into a “disorder,” that is, an “illness.” Post Traumatic Stress Disorder formally entered the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM III) in 1980.

DSM IV describes PTSD as a psychological condition experienced by people who face traumatic events that cause “catastrophic stressors outside the range of usual human experience” (such as war, torture, rape, or natural disaster). This is different from “ordinary stressors” (such as divorce, failure, rejection, and financial problems) characterized as Adjustment Disorders.

Embraced by scientific and clinical communities (if not wholehearted by the U.S. military), PTSD today is among the panoply of acceptable modern ailments for which treatment exists.

Whether they seek treatment or not American military personnel and their families have access to mental health services. Yes, it may be difficult within the “suck-it-up” military culture to admit the need for psychological care; yes, it may be difficult to receive high quality, ongoing care from an overburden VA; and, yes, perhaps military mental health care relies too heavily on prescription medications…but systematic care is available.

But PTSD is not confined to America. It is prevalent in countries experiencing natural disasters and the social upheaval war brings: loss of home, family, and cultural identity; constant threat of sudden and extreme violence; and impoverishment, scarcity, and displacement. UNHCR 2011's refugee statistics indicate almost 44 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced.

An insidious legacy develops for families in countries too war-torn to offer systematic mental health treatment: PTSD is handed down to future generations.

Iraqi psychiatrist Dr. Ali Hameed explains, “Parents who are victims of war trauma themselves are often incapable of addressing their children’s trauma since no one addressed their trauma.”

Iraq. Before the 2003 invasion, Dr. Ali Hameed researched PTSD in children at the University of Baghdad. He found it difficult to measure Iraqi children’s psychological health since Iraq has experienced decades of conflict: the Iran-Iraq war, Gulf War I, a dozen years of U.N. sanctions followed by the invasion and almost a dozen years of violent occupation, and millions of internally and externally displaced people.

 “While Americans and adult Iraqis were jubilant at Saddam’s demise, children witnessed a mythical figure disappear, someone who loomed larger than life, for whom songs were sung and holidays celebrated. They saw statues topple, mass graves exhumed, families huddled in bombed-out buildings, and mothers and fathers humiliated by terrifying invaders. No child should witness such events.”

Palestine/Occupied Territories. East Jerusalem’s Palestinian Counseling Center works with Palestinian families whose symptoms of acute and chronic trauma include withdrawal, academic regression, aggression, affect dysregulation, hopelessness, helplessness, mania, depression, and suicide.

Former counselor Rashid says, “It has to do with seeing people wounded on the streets, violence at military checkpoints and during curfews, tear gassing, overcrowded living conditions, and growing up in refugee camps. With Israel’s increasing use of high-tech weaponry and home demolitions we see increasing incidences of selective mutism among children. Not surprising since a home is not just a collection of bricks stuck together but a place of safety and security that a child relates to: my books, my toys, my birth certificate, my pictures, and so on.”

Unrelenting shock stuns children into silence; unrelenting violence and deprivation may keep them there.

Lebanon. Mrs. Fadiah Jobeily is principal of a girls school in Sidon with programs geared to socialize children of different backgrounds.

“We want our country to be united and what we do at school is a reflection of what we want in the greater society around us.”

Yet a constant state of warfare or anticipated warfare destroys infrastructure and “also destroys personalities.”

“Girls are not growing normally; they’re more aggressive and unable to see a future worth struggling for. Why study when another war will start?”

Teachers once engaged in civic and school activities are depressed and withdrawn too.

“They tell me, ‘I feel everything is bad.’ This is a recurring theme throughout the country. People are losing the will to live. Or they flee their homeland for safer places. We fight against the disastrous sense that even as we fix things another war can begin any time and destroy our lives again. This has been our situation for the last 25 years.”

Afghanistan. Rahima Haya promotes literacy and cultural understanding in the U.S.

“Today Afghanistan has close to two million widows – 70,000 in Kabul alone -- many of whom are illiterate and mothers to five or more children. It’s shocking to see children and women -- young, old, beautiful – all begging on the streets.”

With three million refugees, one out of three of the world total, Afghanistan continues to be the prime country with the most refugees under UNHCR. Growing up in refugee camps inflicts privations; the seeds for ultra-conservative, black-and-white thinking of the Taliban, for example, began in refugee camps.

The financial cost of war is appallingly high but it is relatively easy to tally. It is not easy to tally the complex cost of evolving psychological traumas generating every minute around our distressed world.

Perhaps PTSD diagnoses will become more nuanced and, in the future, another DSM term and theory will be published. But what harvest will we reap tomorrow from seeds of unresolved trauma sown in today’s increasingly deadly wars on increasingly fragile human beings? And, can our world afford it?

A New American Dream This Mother's Day

 Also published in Counterpunch, May 7 ...
...and in Commondreams, May 8

Every Mother's Day we mothers are subjected to the same consumer brainwash: that we deserve a “day off”, and flowers, and brunch – or at least breakfast in bed.

But Mother's Day originated as a call for peace after the grisly, divisive carnage of Civil War. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe wanted to appoint “a general congress of women without limit of nationality...to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

On May 10, 1908 Anna Jarvis presided over the first official Mother's Day celebration at Andrew's Methodist Church... then was arrested trying to stop women selling flowers. She wanted to “keep the day one of sentiment not one of profit”.

In 2005, Israeli Nurit Peled-Elhanan, whose 13-year-old daughter was killed in a Jerusalem suicide bombing, said, “Mothers have always been rebellious. In the Bible, in Greek mythology, there is always a mother who defies authority. The Talmud described mothers as prophets, because they looked ahead and understood what would happen to the children....”

Mother's Day is for the rebellious who concur, “Not for me flowers force-fed for profit in greenhouses built on land that ought to grow non-GM crops to feed the world's hungry and homeless”; “Not for me a day off, rather a day on...shutting down the -isms that thwart life's everyday ecstasy: neoliberalism, globalism, racism, sexism, elitism, oligarchic parasitism”, “Not for me a day in fealty to consumerism but to remember Wordsworth: “getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”....

Instead of sitting down at the brunch table Mother's Day could signal the first day of the rest of our lives pledging to sit down in our nation's streets, blow our whistles, bang our pots, sound our alarms, and tell our politicians: “Stop bowing to the almighty corporate dollar, bring home our troops, tax the corporations and the rich to educate our children and ensure the health and well-being of all members of our society... or we will force you from office!”

Pledge to tell it like it is: profiteering shatters our society, tears up our earth, and contaminates our communities; sloganeering destroys our native intelligence, dumbs down our instincts, dulls our wits; careerism fogs our ethics, corrupts our morals, betrays our humanity; waging war kills the souls of all humans – whether made in America or where America makes war.

Fellow Americans may call us tough nuts, or a nut-busters, or just plain old nuts but remind them that another tough nut, United States Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler told us, even before transnational corporatism's firm grip on our time, our wallets, and our children, that:

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Nurit Peled-Elhanan said, “Mothers, women in general, are not used to saying, “No! No, I am nobody's property. No! My children are nobody's property. No, my uterus is not a national asset.”

Lets try it. All together now: “No! No more wars promoted by patriotism but parlayed into profit.”

For, oh, we still have such a long way to go, baby!

(Nurit Peled-Elhanan tells her story in my book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror. Buy a copy on this blog.)

Confronting The System through Taxation

Each year unknown thousands of law-abiding American citizens refuse to pay taxes, driven by an ethical compunction not to pay for war. Nailing down the exact number of war tax resisters is difficult – as one resister explains, “we tend not to cooperate with those sorts of endeavors” – but it is just as difficult to know how much of each tax dollar goes to the military.

Even progressive organizations devoted to public education do not agree on how much of each tax dollar goes to war. The National Priorities Project shows 27 cents of every tax dollar paying for war while the National War Tax Resisters Coordinating Committee shows 30 cents paying for current wars and 18 cents paying for past wars. Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England Dr. Joseph Gerson calculates nearly 60 cents of each 2010 tax dollar “will pay for our present and future wars.”

War tax resister David G asks: “Why should I have to pay for these criminal wars anyway?”

He adds, “If I choose not to pay why should that affect my desire for a peaceful life and my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? After all, that's defined in our Bill of Rights and guaranteed by our Constitution.”

Looking for a way “not to go along with what I think is the criminal enterprises that we as a country do in other countries using our foreign policy”, David G reorganized his life, cut back his work hours, and adjusted to reduced take home pay.

“Now, even without the tax considerations, I like my simpler life without a stressful job and big bucks.”

Instead of driving a car he takes public transportation or rides his bike. Instead of eating out at expensive restaurants he learned to cook. Unexpected benefits emerged: more time and energy for exploring neighborhood grocery stores; learning about ethnic ingredients and how to cook them; and meeting people he never had the opportunity to meet when he worked long hours.

He found that scaling down doesn't mean living in poverty. “A common misconception about tax resisters is that we live at or below the poverty line. If we do that it is because we choose to, not because that's the only alternative. I have created a life rich in family and friends and I have the time to enjoy them and to engage in local groups and communities.”

The question for anybody considering tax resistance is: should I resist covertly or overtly? 

To confront or not to confront – that is the question

Overt confrontations with the system are conscious acts of civil disobedience in which a resister understands the risks and potential consequences and takes the opportunity to engage with and confront the system directly: “here's what you say I owe and here's why I say I do not owe it....”

Many resisters who choose overt confrontation design their lives to reduce their vulnerability to government intrusion. Some decide not to own property or they use available laws – such as land trusts – to protect any property from IRS liens or appropriation.

Susan Q has paid little or no federal taxes since her first job more than 25 years ago. “I decided that I wasn't going to work at cross purposes with my ethical commitments. That meant that, if they came after my salary, I would leave a job. I've only had to do that once. I choose not to own anything so I live in community with family, friends, and other people and make myself vulnerable to them instead of to the government. Sure, this has its pros and cons but I live a very wonderful and comfortable life.”

Resistance methodologies can change over time as a resisters' life circumstances change. Elizabeth B

protested war by sending letters to her representatives, marching in the streets, and signing petitions.

“But,” she says, “the government doesn't care how much we march in the streets, etc. as long as we pay taxes.”

So, at the start of the so-called War on Terror, she settled on a method that suited her ethics, religious beliefs, and her pocketbook: paying a percentage of the amount the IRS claims she owes. Then she sends a cover letter along with her check explaining, “Sorry folks, I am not paying all you say I owe. I am a good citizen...and one of the roles of citizens of a democracy is to tell our government when we think they are making a mistake.”

This is Elizabeth's second round of tax resistance. For years she had refused to pay the 79-cent hidden war tax tacked onto every Californian telephone user's phone bill that supported the U.S war effort in Vietnam. She had heard from other war tax resisters that the IRS probably would not come after her for such a small amount of money. But, after several years, they did come after her – for an amount less than $50 plus penalties and interest – and put a lien on her house. As a single mother raising four children Elizabeth would not risk losing her family's home so she paid up.

Fear is a strong motivator...and it is built into a system that intimidates by anonymity, apparently conflicting and arcane rules and regulations, and “take-no-prisoners” reputation.

A fear based system

Confronting a monolithic system like the IRS takes courage. But, as Susan Q states, “It can be very dis-empowering to get up each morning to news of terrible things being done with the fruits of our labor. We [working people] are out there trying to survive while resources are being taken from us to do harm both to us and to those in faraway lands. When we take a stand against that it feels really good.”

Susan goes on to describe how Americans, she believes, tend to “let our fears get the best of us.” We are not, however, facing the fear of bombs raining down on us but, as war tax resisters, “we're facing the fear of a letter...or perhaps an angry knock on our door. This fear is not life-threatening yet we respond as if it is. What is life-threatening is what's being done with our money. The rundown condition of many neighborhoods across our nation is a direct result of money taken out of our local economies and sent off for war. When you come down to it, the risks [of confronting the IRS] are not that big.”

Susan Q concludes that the IRS “Spends a lot of energy scaring people with threats of all the terrible things that will happen...you'll lose your house... you'll land in federal prison...but what they really want is to get your money. At what point do you continue to resist or say, 'Okay, let's work out an Offer of Compromise or something like that'?”

Susan explains that human individuals really do maintain a lot more control than the IRS wants us to believe. “It is not that you won't feel fear but that you can put fear into perspective and make the choice, if possible, to stand up to them and maintain your ethics while doing that.”

A method for every non-tax payer

There are many different ways to resist and people choose their method based upon their life considerations.

Some use the W4 form and take the maximum allowances … or fill out the paperwork and declare themselves tax exempt.

Some – and this method works well for 1099 independent contractors – eliminate withholding at the employment level then, at the end of they tax year, choose to file – or not – and an amount to pay.

Some pay a symbolic amount and withhold the amount they believe goes to pay for war and divert it to a chosen charity or not-for-profit organization.

Some earn only enough to stay below the federal tax limit (in 2011 it was set at $22,350 per year for a family of four).

Some use all the loopholes available through tax laws although with far less success than corporations. Considered a “legal person” General Electric is the latest in a long line of corporations benefiting from this designation. According to ABC News, GE “earned $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but paid not a penny in taxes because the bulk of those profits, some $9 billion, went offshore. [Moreover] GE got a $3.2 billion tax benefit.”

Struggling Americans who will file taxes may be further outraged to know that, while GE employs more than half its workforce outside the United States, closed 20 US factories between 2007 and 2009, and laid off 21,000 American workers, President Obama takes advice on job creation from GE's CEO Immelt.

Confronting monolithic systems like war and taxes takes endurance and courage. Everyday, thousands among us pursue life, liberty and happiness doing just that.