Last year's granting cycle was another adventure in hard choices -- groups from around the country (and world), doing fine work, all worthy of being funded. But we wrestled the list and ourselves down to the final seven we were able to grant.
Once again, we gravitated toward the funding of counter-recruitment efforts. Many people, NACCers included, consider CR work to be a vital part of the larger anti-war, and even anti-militarism campaign. Providing clear information that undercuts the glorified image of the military in our culture weakens the foundation of militarism. We had several more CR apps than the four we chose.
Three of the four CR grantees this year have a rural focus. Appalachian Peace and Justice Network is growing their CR work, focusing on the poorest county in Ohio that is an obvious target for recruiters. APJN consistently focuses on the basics and creates achievable goals for their work, and their CR campaign shows this. They intend to reach most students by gaining school access, working with school personnel (incl. guidance counselors), and also educating the wider community with more public efforts (letters to the editor, tabling, and pickets).
The Currents project in Eastern Washington is a new effort growing out of anti-war work in the area. As such, NACC funding will help them get off the ground through the purchase of basic literature and some other outreach materials, esp. videos. Their core group hopes to grow from a focus on the largest local high school to the outlying, smaller ones.
The Military Draft & Counseling Project in Portland is a well established group -- in the '90s they were able to ban recruiters from high schools in Portland! The No Child Left Behind act forced Portland to resubmit to recruiting, and MDCP has been doing CR work since. They make themselves well known as a CR information resource, handing out bookmark-sized literature that has a few clear CR statements and their contact info in bold. In addition they go into classrooms with presentations, as well as protest recruiter stations and the annual warship hoopla that most big cities are subject too.
The South Dakota Peace & Justice Center has the most ground to cover -- they lead statewide efforts in SD, a large state. Last year NACC funding helped to develop their CR literature and program. SDPJC is like APJN above -- they do good organizing by focusing on the basics and having achievable goals. As they travel the state they will help grow local core groups to get the work done. And they have a history of working with Native Americans, so doing CR work on the reservations is a significant focus.
The other three groups NACC funded are quite disparate. Justice Works! is a nearby group working on prison issues, the harsh underbelly of U.S. "justice". This project grew out of political work done inside by the Black Prisoners Caucus, and this 3 yr. old group has established a number of programs for those still inside and those working outside. The NACC funding is going toward their campaign to stop prison expansion, and grow alternatives to incarceration.
NACC is an affiliate of the national war tax group NWTRCC, and we helped to fund their effort to get the word out about WTR. Since we have delayed this newsletter, you can now see what was accomplished -- go to the NWTRCC website and check out the three short videos!
And NACC again funded a project overseas -- The Peacemakers Society in Cameroon. Their project is to train selected women leaders in nonviolent conflict resolution, so they can return to their homes and train others, and then set up an early intervention group to defuse and solve ethnic inter-tribal conflicts. They also have built in evaluating how well this project works as it unfolds. Peacemakers has chosen the regions, and their focus on women through a survey and analysis of who is involved in, and a victim of, violence. And Peacemakers, started 11 yrs. ago, exposed our U.S. wealth and privilege -- their application was typed and literally cut and pasted. Good organizing does not rely on computers.
So that's resisted tax dollars at work! Keep those donations and escrow account dollars flowing in and we’ll be able to fund even more great organizing next year.
-- Scott McClay
For links to the recipient organisations' websites, see our main index page.
As most of our readers know, NACC administers the Escrow Account for the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign (CMTC). This fund, the largest fund of resisted war taxes in the U.S., has been in operation since 1979. Begun by war tax resisters on Long Island, New York, the fund was originally an adjunct to a petition campaign to urge Congress to enact Peace Tax Fund legislation. CMTC's original goal was to collect 100,000 signed statements from individuals who pledged to resist war taxes. The Escrow account was set up to facilitate the immediate withholding of war taxes and increase pressure for passage of a Peace Tax bill. The early 1980s were an important time in the history of war tax resistance. There was a lot of interest, activity, and creativity in the movement, and many new groups and tactics were initiated. As a movement, we considered large-scale campaigns, and several were tried. Phone tax resistance was our most effective mass strategy, and the CMTC petition drive was an effort to mobilize a mass strategy campaign tied to passage of Peace Tax legislation.
Sad to say, only a few hundred folks signed the CMTC petition (still treasured in the NACC archives). While many of us like the idea of a large-scale WTR campaign, war tax resisters are individualistic by nature, notoriously bad at signing on the dotted line and joining a crowd. And the larger peace movement has yet to embrace WTR as an effective and practical tactic. So the petition campaign gradually faded away, but the Escrow Account grew and continued to thrive. It turns out that it filled an important niche of being a national alternative fund, especially useful for those WTRs without a local fund. CMTC also published a popular newsletter that became an important resource of information and support for WTRs around the country.
After several years on Long Island, the founders decided to work on other projects and looked around the country for a new group to take over CMTC. WTRs in Western Washington agreed to set up an office and a board, and in the mid-'80s, CMTC moved to Seattle.
We opened shop in the University District, continued to publish the newsletter, and worked to promote war tax resistance and related peace and social justice issues. Our staff kept records of all the account holders, tried hard to stay in touch, and became managers of the funds in our custody.
In the early 1990s, CMTC changed its name to the Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia (NACC), a move reflecting our desire to widen the circle of our resistance to war. WTR remained a key program, however, and we continued to operate the Escrow Account. At that time we had paid staff, and used the escrow account interest to pay for our operations and activism. In 2001, we stopped paying staff, and began a grants program with our interest earnings. Now we have an annual grants cycle, where we solicit applications and award grants to local, national, and international peace and justice groups. This has been a very satisfying program, as it has redirected thousands of dollars from military spending to support for important projects to resist militarism and build a more just society.
In most ways, operation of the Escrow Account has stayed the same over the years. Depositors send in funds or make withdrawals, and we keep track of it all.
We keep enough money in a local credit union to cover potential withdrawals, and invest the rest in certificates of deposit with socially responsible credit unions and community development funds around the country.
The principal in the fund has grown recently. For a long time, we had about $300,000 on deposit, more or less, but in the last five years the total has grown to over $400,000 dollars.
As a result, we’ve evaluated our investments, and bought some new CDs with higher interest rates to maximize earnings for the grants program. In a lot of ways, the Escrow Account functions as a private bank, a situation we find both scary and amusing. Who would pick a group of anti-war activists to manage their money?
While it's not a lot of money in the big, bad world of capitalism, it's a pile to us, so we work hard to be responsible. And so far, it's worked out well for all of us.
We're always interested in feedback and suggestions from account holders. If you have questions or ideas about the present or future operation of the Escrow Account, please drop us a line or give us a call.
-- Carolyn Stevens
Dismal though the Democratic Congress has been on the Iraq war, the House appears to be taking a stand against funding the expansion of the US nuclear arsenal under the guise of modernizing that horrifying weaponry. Citing the lack of a “strategy for post-Cold War nuclear weapons”, the House approved plans on June 19th to halt funding for the so-called Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, a program to develop a new generation of nuclear warheads. They also approved an increase in funding for non-proliferation activities. The Senate is due to take up the issue the end of June.
Perhaps the Democrats have heard the message from anti nuke activists including such names as Kissinger, Nunn and Schultz...
In May, Peter J. Visclosky (D-In.), Chair of the House appropriations subcommittee, said, "There is a need for a comprehensive nuclear defense strategy and stockpile plan to guide transformation and downsizing of the stockpile and nuclear weapons complex."
Visclosky also cited the "serious international and domestic consequences of the U.S. initiating a new nuclear weapons production activity."
Former secretaries of state Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz, former defense secretary William J. Perry, and former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) raised that very issue in a Jan. 6 Wall Street Journal op-ed article. Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and current chief executive of the non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative, told Visclosky's panel in March: "If Congress gives a green light to this program in our current world environment...I believe that this will be misunderstood by our allies, exploited by our adversaries, [and] complicate our work to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons."
They also called for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons as key to U.S. security. The RRW, a new nuke, would take us away from that goal.
Even so, Nunn and other arms-control experts have suggested that if the United States eventually does proceed with the RRW, it should do so only after ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would mean the warhead could be introduced into the U.S. stockpile without new underground testing.
On the other hand, officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the nuclear program, claim that the RRW would offer a way to build "safer" warheads for 30 years and perhaps half the total stockpile, currently at about 10,000. Over the next several decades, RRW proponents have argued, it would redesign and replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with fewer, new, warheads They argue that once the U.S. builds this weapon, it could get rid of a large portion of the current stockpile.
This argument is a red herring. There's no reason the U.S. can't reduce the current stockpile without building the RRW. Furthermore, studies have shown our current weapons are perfectly reliable and in fact are certified as such every year to the President.
First funded at $9 million in 2005, costs and engineering studies for the RRW were scheduled for completion by 2008. Continued funding of the program would have allowed a congressional vote next year on the RRW1 -- a warhead for the submarine-launched Trident missile -- and would have permitted delivery of the first ones by 2012. Such plans hit close to home for those of us in the Pacific Northwest where we are pleased with the recent House move.
Within 20 miles of NACC's Seattle office, the Bangor Trident submarine base has become home to the largest single stockpile of nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal. In November 2006, the Natural Resources Defense Council declared that the 2,364 nuclear warheads at Bangor represent about 24 percent of the entire U.S. arsenal. Each Trident nuclear submarine housed at Bangor is armed with as many as 192 nuclear warheads.
Each year NACC joins the dedicated folks out at the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in their demonstrations at the Trident base. So far this year, Ground Zero's 30th anniversary, vigils with civil disobedience were held on MLK day and Mother's Day. One banner read: "CREATE A PEACEFUL WORLD FOR ALL CHILDREN, Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Scrap Trident." The goal is to eliminate nuclear weapons, not build new ones.
While approving most portions of the $32 billion fiscal 2008 appropriations bill for energy and water development, the House put off final passage until later this summer while it works out details of funding for local Army Corps of Engineers flood-control projects.
Overall, the recent House bill reduced President Bush's budget request for nuclear weapons programs by $632 million, to $5.9 billion. It eliminated about $82 million for continuing development of the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program and reduced spending for the upgrade and modernization of facilities in the nuclear weapons complex that are involved in refurbishing deployed bombs and warheads, storing older ones, and dismantling those no longer needed. At the same time, it raised by $491 million, or 75 percent, the amount available for non-proliferation activities.
In giving his support to the House measure, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) emphasized that the weapons program cuts were made "because there's been no strategy for post-Cold War nuclear weapons."
Meanwhile, two advocates of the RRW program, Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R) and Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R.), both from New Mexico, spoke out against the House action. Two of the nation's three nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia, are in that state.
Wilson, during the House floor debate, described the action as "the most radical shift in U.S. policy on nuclear weapons that I've seen at least since the mid-1990s." (Guess she considers this shift a bad thing.) At that time, during the Clinton administration, the decision was made to create a stockpile stewardship program that, with the aid of billions of dollars in new scientific equipment, could keep nuclear weapons reliable without testing them by refurbishing their non-nuclear parts.
Domenici, in a Senate floor speech, said the House bill would "send American nuclear-deterrence strategy in a new and absolutely unknown direction." He agreed that the RRW program deserved study but said it "must involve far greater resources than those involved in the House report language." He also said the House reductions do “irreparable harm” to the stockpile stewardship program by cutting funds for some needed facilities.
As the ranking minority member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds the nuclear complex, Domenici will be in position to restore some of the funds the House cut, including some money to keep the RRW going. The Senate Appropriations panel is scheduled to mark up the energy measure imminently. Visit Democracy In Action to send a letter to your Senator.
Naming this weapons system was clearly part of the strategy to get it built. Even so, many understand that there is no sound rationale for the program. A panel of eminent scientists recently found that the plutonium in our current nuclear stockpile, in which the oldest weapons are 60 years old, will last at least 100 years, if not longer. There is no "reliability crisis".
The Reliable Replacement Warhead and Complex 2030 (the factory where the bomb would be built) are estimated to cost over $150 billion. This is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a program that's not needed. We should spend that money on dismantling our current stockpile instead.
Though Congress has tried to ensure that the development of the RRW won't lead to a resumption of nuclear testing, the administration has refused to rule out that possibility. Also, many experts believe the military would not allow a new weapon into the U.S. arsenal if it hadn't been tested.
The recent House vote is a step in the right direction to getting this country to rethink its nuclear weapons policies. Activists will need to keep the pressure on the Senate as it takes up this particular issue and continue the education of our legislators.
--Erica Kay
Ground Zero will be celebrating its 30th anniversary on August 4-6, 2007. Ground Zero also recently launched its capital campaign to raise funds to replace a new house on the property that abuts the base and was lost in a fire in April of 2005 (to contribute, log on to its website).
The community purchased the property in 1977 and was incorporated as a land trust. On August 4, they will welcome the arrival of Peace Walkers, gather to recall the past and plan for the future including a groundbreaking ceremony for the new house. August 5 will be a day of nonviolent training, vigiling, and planning for direct action at the Trident Submarine Base. August 6 will be "Take the Day Off for Peace".
An exciting new tactic in the struggle against the war in Iraq has emerged in the Pacific Northwest, specifically in Olympia and the state of Washington's South Sound region. Protests and direct action, aimed at stopping the transshipment of equipment and weaponry from Fort Lewis to Iraq through public ports, has forced the US Army to move to three different ports in Western Washington in the last year in an effort to avoid protesters and publicity.
The current wave of protests targeting ports drew its inspiration from an April 7, 2003 protest at the Port of Oakland, shortly after the war began, in which several hundred anti-war and labor activists were abruptly fired upon by police with rubber bullets at close range while protesting a shipment from nearby Concord Naval Weapons Station.
In 2004, Olympia activists learned that the Port of Olympia was being used for similar shipments from nearby Fort Lewis. After two years of unsuccessful letter-writing and petitioning to Port and city officials to stop the shipments, in 2006 the group Olympia Port Militarization Resistance (PMR) decided that, with a large pending shipment of Stryker armored combat vehicle to Iraq, they would switch to more direct protests. Because soldiers are flown to Iraq while equipment goes via sea, the equipment leaves several weeks earlier; activists reasoned that if they could delay or even prevent the equipment from reaching Iraq, the soldiers, as well, would be unable to be deployed.
What started as a relatively small protest in May 2006 gained momentum over the 10 days it took for the Army to move the Strykers to the Port and load them on the ship. The protests culminated on May 30, when 22 activists were arrested for trying to block access to the Port and police used pepper spray to break up the demonstration. Over the ten days, nearly 40 people were arrested for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience.
What began as a series of protests developed, over subsequent months, into a campaign to pressure the Port and City of Olympia to stop the shipments. A major focus became the cost, to the city, Thurston County, and the port, of law enforcement for the May 2006 protests -- estimated for the various agencies at about $23,000 that the small city had not budgeted for. It helped that an Olympia city councilman, T.J. Johnson, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, became not only an ally but a significant organizer within Olympia PMR.
In early 2007, Olympia activists learned that another shipment was pending in advance of the deployment of 4,000 soldiers from the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division from Fort Lewis. Activists, the city, and port officials braced for another round of protests and direct action at the Port of Olympia, but it never came -- the Army had been deliberately leaking mis-information. Instead, the Army chose not to confront the protesters, and began moving 300 Stryker vehicles to the Port of Tacoma on March 2.
The protesters moved with them. Tacoma PMR was born, and Tacoma, Olympia, and Seattle activists -- and beyond -- converged on the Port of Tacoma. As did law enforcement agencies throughout Western Washington.
From the beginning, the police presence at the Port of Tacoma was large, arbitrary, and violent. Since the vehicles were being moved from Fort Lewis late at night, generally between 10 PM and 6 AM, the protests were happening in those hours, too. By March 5, police were using rubber bullets, and three protesters were arrested and roughed-up for no apparent reason. A legal observer was arrested on March 6. On March 9, there was another arrest, for carrying a backpack in an area where police decided backpacks should be banned.
By March 11, activists had developed a "Citizen's Injunction to Halt the Shipment of Military Material to Iraq". Fifteen activists, including the Olympia councilman, T.J. Johnson, were arrested trying to deliver the injunction; another eight were arrested for challenging the backpack ban, including a Buddhist monk carrying his traditional pouch for religious reasons.
Protests of up to several hundred people per day, and random arrests and police violence, continued through March 15, when the USNS Soderman set sail after ten days of protests. In all, 37 people were arrested, and this time law enforcement agencies estimated their costs as being up to a half-million dollars -- a price tag that again became an issue at Tacoma's City Council. The Olympia and Tacoma protests both got widespread regional media coverage, and even though Tacoma activists had not been preparing for either the shipments or the protests, the events of March gave local anti-war organizers there a huge boost.
So for its next shipment, the Army turned to the small timber city of Aberdeen, on the Pacific Coast, 40 miles west of Olympia and 60 miles away from Fort Lewis.
The twin towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam, combined, have only a third the population of the Olympia area, and less than a tenth that of greater Tacoma. As a more isolated, rural area, the anti-war activist community there is also smaller. But even at Aberdeen's Port of Grays Harbor, the Army did not get a free ride.
When a report in the local Aberdeen newspaper alerted activists on May 2nd that Strykers and Apache helicopters bound for Iraq had started arriving at the port, Olympia and Tacoma activists began to meet with local Aberdeen activists to mount a response. Aberdeen PMR was born, and on May 5 and 6 more than 100 protesters (and dozens of police) massed on short notice at the port in what was almost certainly the largest anti-war demonstration in the county's history.
Meanwhile, the Olympia and Tacoma protests, each of which drove the Army away from their city's port, continued to reverberate. All but 15 of the original Olympia arrestees had either settled or had had their charges dropped, and after an initial mistrial, in a second trial on June 16 charges were dismissed against the remaining defendants. At this writing, of the 37 Tacoma arrestees, 24 are being charged. Six had charges filed long after the original arrests, three as apparent retaliation after the activists had filed lawsuits alleging police abuse. All of these developments have generated extensive additional local media.
In the aftermath of the move to Grays Harbor, PMR activists from Olympia, Tacoma, Aberdeen, Seattle, and points between are attempting to regionalize their movement, so that no matter where Fort Lewis officials try to ship out their equipment next, there is a swift and coordinated response.
The port protests have also reverberated outside the region. Back in Oakland, site of the original 2003 protest, a new generation of activists took inspiration from the PMR movement this year and shut down the Port of Oakland during another Concord Naval Weapons Station transshipment on May 19 -- Armed Forces Day -- when International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) dockworkers refused to cross the activists' picket line. Oakland activists also managed a letter of support for their protests from Mayor Ron Dellums -- underscoring the utility of reaching out to both labor and elected officials.
Such protests can happen almost anywhere. One of the results of military pork barrel politics is that almost every community has a military base or military contractor nearby that provides some sort of logistical support for the war in Iraq. And in every single case, those goods need to get from Point A to Point B, often through public facilities. Protesting or blocking such shipments does not endanger any soldiers, because the equipment is shipped before the soldiers are even in Iraq. (The 4th Brigade's 4,000 soldiers arrived in Baghdad on May 2, nearly two months after Tacoma protests began.) And the protests highlight the fact that every community has a stake in this war, that taxpayers are all paying for this tremendous and criminal waste of life through the staggeringly expensive use of federal and even local tax dollars.
The experience of the PMR protests has yielded a lot of useful lessons. Among them: the importance of alliance-building with labor unions and workers, city and port officials, and even soldiers themselves; the utility of adhering to a code of nonviolence even in the face of extreme police provocation; the importance of observation in knowing when and where materials will be shipped; using the Internet to mobilize and organize people at new locations quickly; and, as the protests moved from city to city, the balancing requirements of offering the experience of activists from other locations while respecting the local needs and circumstances of the community hosting the protests.
A super-majority of the American public opposes the war in Iraq. Taking direct action against shipments to Iraq is a reminder to all that ordinary people are willing to do the job that Congress and the White House will not: to end the war. Until the war ends, every shipment, every base, and every military contractor should be fair game.
-- Geov Parrish
For more information regarding this issue, please visit Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace.
Nonviolent Action is published biannually by the Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia (NACC), formerly the Conscience and Military Tax Campaign.
NACC, 4554 12th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98105, (206) 547-0952, nacc (at) drizzle (dot) com, http://seanacc.org/.
The Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia is a Seattle-based organization which uses nonviolent direct action to create political and social change. NACC acts to interrupt and transform militarism and other forms of violence, and to build a society based upon community, economic justice, environmental awareness, personal empowerment, and feminist, queer-positive and anti-racist principles.
NACC uses creative nonviolent direct action, war tax resistance, public education, grants to activist groups, and coalition building towards these ends, creating community and developing empowerment and conflict-resolution skills in the process.
NACC has an office staffed part-time by Geov Parrish, Scott McClay, and Eddie Tews. We welcome new members. For more information, contact us at the address, phone number, or e-mail address above.
NACC is an affiliate of the War Resisters League, the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, and the Northwest Disarmament Coalition.
The Nonviolent Action Community of Cascadia
4554-12th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98105. An affiliate of the
War Resisters League and NWTRCC
Tel: (206) 547-0952, Fax: (206) 547-2631. E-mail: nacc (at) drizzle (dot) com