'We Shall Not Be Moved'

IT'S A WINTER SATURDAY MORNING like many others in western Massachusetts. The snow outside is deep, but the sun beats in through the picture window and warms the dining room, aided by the heat of a wood-burning stove. Betsy Corner serves ginger tea and keeps plates heaped high with hot pancakes, topped with canned peaches that came from the trees in the yard in a warmer season. Her husband, Randy Kehler, is battling the flu. Their 10-year-old daughter, Lillian, eats quickly and takes off on her bike to see the lamb just born on the neighboring property.

It is January 20, 1990. If there is any fear or apprehension here, it isn't perceptible. But, as of midnight the night before, Betsy, Randy, and Lillian could be put out of their home at any moment.

They live in Colrain, Massachusetts (population 1,595). The town is tucked in a valley spread with apple orchards and maple trees, tapped this time of year for their sweet sap. A cluster of a few dozen homes at Colrain's center is marked by a diamond-shaped, yellow road sign proclaiming "THICKLY SETTLED."

The homes are mostly clapboard, and all three of Colrain's churches have standard New England-fare white steeples. Among the town's residents are many hard-working laborers and a few artists, trustworthy dairy farmers "in the best of the Old Yankee tradition" (according to Randy) and -- during the summer -- Richard Nixon's former ambassador to South Vietnam (owner of the only tennis courts in Colrain).

A cotton mill that specialized in hospital bandages stands silent, its business moved south. An old covered bridge crosses the frozen North River, and a small graveyard on the side of Colrain Mountain has headstones dating back to the mid-1700s.

This is an area rich in history. Perhaps most notable of local events was Shays' Rebellion. In 1786, as a result of an act of wealthy legislators in Boston, homesteading farmers in western Massachusetts found it impossible to pay off their debts and taxes; most had fought in the Revolutionary War and had been sent home from battle without any pay. Consequently, some farmers had their cattle and land seized, while others were sent off to desolate debtors' prisons. Daniel Shays organized hundreds of armed farmers, including a few from Colrain. Their rebellion was short-lived, but before it was over, they won the right to pay some of their taxes in goods instead of money.

This state's problems with taxes began even before the founding of the republic, when the Boston Tea Party made famous the rallying cry "No taxation without representation." In 1846 Massachusetts citizen Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail for his refusal to pay taxes that supported the Mexican War, claiming the war was unjust and had been undertaken to extend slavery. Today, a century and a half later, there is a new tax revolt in the making in western Massachusetts, founded on principles that would make Daniel Shays and Henry David Thoreau proud.

'We Shall Not Be Moved.'

"The federal government's policies regarding nuclear weaponry and military interventions contradict our deepest moral and spiritual values." Thus begins a statement by Betsy Corner and Randy Kehler, written on March 15, 1989, two weeks after the Internal Revenue Service officially seized their home.

Their statement continues: "We struggle to accept and live by the proposition that we are all children of God ... For us, this applies especially to the poor, including our sisters and brothers in Central America who are suffering and dying as a result of U.S. policies and U.S. arms, and our sisters and brothers here in our own country who are hungry and homeless while our government pours billions of dollars into an insane nuclear arms race that threatens to kill us all.

"How can we willingly give money to the federal government when we know that it will be used to cause, or threaten, so much harm to other members of our human family? Our answer is that we can't."

Randy and Betsy are convinced that our government's policies are not only immoral, but also illegal: "The Nuremburg Principles that resulted from the trials of Nazi war criminals, and which were subsequently ratified by the U.S. government, hold that individual citizens who commit or collaborate with 'crimes against humanity' must be held responsible for their actions ... We believe that preparing for nuclear war, and waging actual war against people in countries such as Nicaragua and El Salvador, are both crimes against humanity -- and that helping to pay for them is a form of collaboration."

The first year after they were married, in 1977, Randy and Betsy's federal income tax bill came to exactly $32. Through the years, that bill has accumulated to $26,917.11, including some $6,000 in penalties and interest. They will not pay it to the federal government. Instead, they have donated half of that sum to local human service groups and the other half to victims of U.S. policy abroad.

In the fall of 1987, they donated $5,000 to Walk in Peace, a Georgia-based project that raises money for people in Nicaragua who have lost arms and legs as a result of contra land mines and attacks. Walk in Peace coordinator Don Mosley wrote to them: "Your contribution all by itself is nearly enough to finance the complete rehabilitation (including the making of artificial limbs) of five people. I hope you can grasp that in human terms."

Betsy and Randy ended their March 15 statement this way: "For us, that's what it all comes down to: human terms. And that's what keeps us going."

Betsy has lived in this county for 21 years. She is a landscape architect and sees nuclear weapons as a threat to the environment as well as to humanity. She hopes that someday federal funds will be channeled toward remedies for acid rain and ozone depletion rather than toward preparations for the destruction of the Earth.

Randy is a founder of the Traprock Peace Center in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and works with the Study Group on Electoral Democracy, committed to electoral reform in this country. He helped to found the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and served as its first national coordinator from 1981 to 1984.

Randy was jailed for 22 months during the Vietnam War for resisting the military draft. Just before going to prison in 1969, he delivered a speech that was heard by Daniel Ellsberg, then a consultant with the Rand Corp. who worked with the Pentagon on national security and nuclear war planning. Ellsberg was so moved by Randy's courage that he asked himself, "What could I do to help shorten the war if I were ready to go to prison for it?" Later he released the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the government's lies, crimes, and secret escalations and eventually led to an early end to the war and the resignation of President Richard Nixon. "Randy changed my life by his example," says Ellsberg. And many other lives were changed as a result.

The publicity around her parents' war tax resistance has brought attention upon the family that Lillian prefers to avoid. She has found a way to live a very normal 10-year-old existence in the middle of the controversy. Her schoolmates say little to her about it -- although her friend Rachel bravely volunteered to chain herself to Lillian's house if the IRS should try to evict her family.

Betsy was pregnant with Lillian when the family moved into their home on June 1, 1979. Less than a year later, an olive green car pulled up one afternoon, and the men inside told Betsy they were from the Internal Revenue Service. It was not a good time to talk about taxes -- Betsy was holding infant Lillian, and a neighbor's brush fire had gone out of control and was sweeping toward their home. Surveying the nearby field -- filled with fire trucks, as well as curious and concerned Colrain citizens -- the IRS officials decided their business could wait.

Since that time, Randy and Betsy have received piles of letters and levies. They became self-employed to avoid having wages garnisheed. The $743 they had in their bank account was seized. For a while they parked their two aging cars behind a nearby sand pit to hide them at night. It turned out that the effort was unnecessary; when Randy recently asked a local agent why the IRS had never seized the cars, the agent just smiled and said, "We've seen your cars."

On February 23, 1989, as Betsy was about to go off to work, the phone rang. William Gorcyzca, from the local IRS office in Greenfield, was calling to say that the IRS was going to seize their house. The day before, Betsy had received a letter from a friend with Witness for Peace in Nicaragua, describing how she had come across a contra land-mine explosion that had killed four people and found the lower half of a good friend.

"So I had this image in my mind when the IRS called," Betsy says, adding, "How can you back down when this is where the money goes?" Randy was away at a conference in Milwaukee, and when she called to tell him the news, he said, "I have a feeling this is going to change our lives dramatically."

Betsy scheduled a meeting for the evening Randy was expected back. His plane was delayed by snow. He walked into his living room late in the evening and found 50 people just ending their gathering. "There was an incredible sense of solidarity and excitement," Randy remembers, "as well as apprehension." As his friends filed past him out the door, one smiled and said, "Don't worry about it -- we've got it all taken care of."

IRS officials announced July 19 as the date for a sealed-bid auction on Randy and Betsy's home, publicizing it widely. They set the minimum bid at an astoundingly low $5,100 (the house had recently been assessed at $45,000), justifying the low minimum by the fact that the land on which their home sits belongs to the Valley Community Land Trust and cannot be sold with the house.

Randy and Betsy's community of support prepared for the day. They ran ads next to the IRS' auction announcements, asking that no one make a monetary bid on Randy and Betsy's home. In-kind bids were collected at the town dump on Saturday mornings. Families went out and bought food. On the day of the auction, a huge pile of baby food and peanut butter, rice and dried beans, cereal, canned vegetables, and spaghetti was loaded on the sidewalk in front of the Greenfield IRS office, site of the auction.

Inside, on the other side of a glass window, three IRS agents opened a stack of 86 sealed bids, one by one. In the envelopes were folded-paper peace cranes, offers of home-baked blueberry pies, and a bid of 12 pints of blood to be donated to the Red Cross. One man bid 10 toilet seats, which, he explained, if priced according to Pentagon procurement standards, would far exceed the $5,100 minimum.

The only monetary bid received was 100 Nicaraguan cordobas, offered on this 10th anniversary of the Nicaraguan people's triumph. In all, the "in-kinder-and-gentler bid" by supporters came to 4,411 hours of community service -- ranging from carpentry work at a women's shelter to massage and psychotherapy "for IRS agents experiencing on-the-job stress" -- calculated at minimum wage to be worth nearly $30,000. Coupled with more than $6,000 worth of groceries, their bid was seven times the minimum required. But the IRS insisted on accepting only cash.

About half an hour after the auction began, an IRS agent walked out into the hall and quietly announced to Betsy and Randy's 500 supporters, "The property has been purchased by the United States government for the minimum bid of $5,100." The crowd broke into exuberant cheers and applause. A home may have been lost -- that result was inevitable -- but an astounding moral victory had been won.

Randy handed Betsy a bouquet of pink roses, and the two walked arm in arm outside, tears in their eyes, while jubilant supporters sang "We Shall Not Be Moved." In front of a swarm of TV cameras, Randy announced with great emotion, "They received not one monetary bid on our home."

Betsy offered her heartfelt thanks to all their supporters. Her voice cracked as she thanked her parents, who had come to the auction, her father watching the morning's proceedings from a lawn chair. She invited everyone to their home for a party, as the strains of "Amazing Grace" drifted over the crowd from a bagpipe.

BETSY AND RANDY NOW HAVE two thick files full of letters from all over the country -- and even other parts of the world. The letters are from acquaintances and strangers, from an old family friend who knew Randy as a child, from a man Randy met on a train once. Some include poems and prayers, others donations.

One is addressed simply "Betsy Corner and Randy Kehler (Patriots), Colrain, Mass." A class of junior-high students discussed their situation and sent a letter. A young man who as a teenager was the groundskeeper at the Bush summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine wrote to say he had sent Barbara Bush a letter on their behalf. By far, the overwhelming sentiment in the letters is, "I wish I were as brave as you ..."

Responses in conservative Colrain and the surrounding towns were a bit more mixed. Randy and Betsy's tax resistance spawned a barrage of letters-to-the-editor in the local newspapers. Some suggested that they leave the country, or that Randy step down from his elected position with the Colrain School Committee.

But support also came, particularly in the form of offers of a place to stay if the family should be put out. A Guatemalan refugee couple gave a $20 bill to a friend and said, "Give it to that couple about to lose their home." School teachers and supermarket clerks offered words of encouragement, and the mail carrier smiled and said of the IRS, "I think you've got 'em over a barrel."

At Christmas the pastor of the conservative Colrain Community Church invited Randy to organize a brass ensemble to accompany the choir as it went caroling. In the living room of some conservative mainstays of the community, the husband said to his wife, "This is Randy Kehler ... You've heard of Randy Kehler." His wife smiled, offered Randy some hot chocolate, and said, "Oh, yes, I have -- and I'm sure it's not all bad."

Some town skeptics turned around when they discovered that Betsy and Randy pay all their state and local taxes and had donated a portion of their federal tax money to the local veterans' center. And many found it compelling when Randy pointed out that in one year alone, Colrain residents paid $1.7 million in federal taxes to the Pentagon, yet suffer with an outgrown and substandard elementary school, with no auditorium or gymnasium and its library and cafeteria in a windowless basement. The school children are bused for gym classes to Colrain's Memorial Hall, which was recently repainted when the Colrain branch of the Kehler/Corner Support Committee and the Colrain Veterans of Foreign Wars worked side by side for three Saturdays on the project.

Even one local IRS agent admitted to Randy and Betsy, "We're not wholly unsympathetic to what you're doing." Perhaps most surprising of all, an officer of the local National Guard near Springfield invited Randy to come and talk to the recruits about nonviolent civil disobedience. The first sergeant apologized for the fact that all the men were holding their guns -- they were in the midst of cleaning them for an inspection and couldn't leave them out of sight.

A very animated discussion ensued, with the recruits acknowledging that Randy and Betsy's actions were part of a long tradition that included the civil rights struggle and union organizing. One recruit said to Randy when it was over, "If they order this unit up to your house, I won't go." When Randy thanked him, he said, "Hey, there are some things you just don't do."

The IRS granted Betsy and Randy a 180-day "redemption period" from the time of the auction to pay their back taxes and buy back their house. They chose to redeem neither themselves nor their home. As far as they are concerned, it is still theirs.

A MONTH AFTER THE JANUARY 19 deadline for redemption, they are still in their home. Betsy nods at two shoeboxes filled with photographs, sitting by the piano. "This is my effort at packing," she says.

Although the temperature is plummeting close to zero at night, daffodils and morning glories have begun to bloom in the greenhouse. It is time to start seedlings for the tomatoes, broccoli, and peppers that will cover the garden in the summer. "If you start thinking 'I'm not going to be here,' you stop doing these things," says Betsy.

An ice storm has hit the valley, spreading a bright glaze over the deep snow. In an effort to embarrass negligent residents, the Greenfield Recorder has published the addresses where sidewalks haven't been cleared. Betsy looks at their half-shoveled driveway and says, "I got too busy to finish it." She grins. "But the IRS is responsible -- they own the house now." And jokes are made about how much money they could get from the federal government if someone would just be willing to go out and break a leg.

The Internal Revenue Service's ownership of the house is complicated by the reality of the land trust, established by Randy, Betsy, and others to limit land speculation and keep housing affordable. The land trust's lease "requires occupancy of the leasehold premises as the primary residence of the lessee," and residents must "share the philosophy, spirit, and goals of the organization." Otherwise, the Valley Community Land Trust can terminate the lease at any time.

The legal technicalities are complicated, but members of the land trust are entertaining the thought that, if the IRS should put Randy, Betsy, and Lillian out of their home, this group of people who believe housing should be a right rather than a profit-making commodity (many of whom practice war tax resistance) would be put in the position of landlord over the IRS -- with the power to evict. Furthermore, a federal provision states that any unoccupied federal property shall be used to house homeless people -- which at that point would include Betsy, Randy, and Lillian.

No one is sure what will happen next. In the last few months, more than 150 supporters have received nonviolence training and organized themselves into groups in preparation for a series of occupations of the house if Betsy, Randy, and Lillian are evicted.

All the publicity around the case makes it difficult for the IRS to back down -- or to evict. Randy and Betsy never thought it would go this far. They never asked for the publicity, never considered war tax resistance a strategy or even a major part of their life. "It was an act of conscience," says Betsy. Paraphrasing the monk Thomas Merton, Randy adds, "In the end, all we can really do is the best we can, and let God make something good of it."

The Proud -- but Concerned -- Parents.

"We had very mixed feelings about it in the beginning," says Martin Cornman, Betsy's father, "particularly because we've always been what you'd call law-abiding. We were afraid Lillian would suffer."

Dorothy Cornman looks at Betsy and smiles. "Ever since you kicked that little boy who was pestering you on the playground -- the principal called me in and said, 'Your little girl kicked a boy in the shins' -- ever since then, I figured you could take care of yourself." She laughs and adds, "And our second son said, 'Don't worry about Lillian -- she'll grow on this and write a book someday."

The laughter comes rather easily now. But it wasn't always so. Fear and objections were strong when Betsy's parents first realized the potential consequences of her tax resistance.

Dorothy and Martin Cornman were both teachers for many years, and Martin was a school principal. They have always been active in community affairs; they hosted their town's nuclear freeze meetings in their home.

Dorothy is astounded at the support she feels from friends and neighbors: "A lot of people I would think would never agree with them say, 'I think what your daughter and son-in-law are doing is wonderful!'" She adds, "Sometimes I'm very proud."

She had just been at a tax-form preparation office, working on income tax filing for 1989. She said to the preparer, "Well, I wouldn't have to do this if I were my daughter." When he appeared puzzled, she mentioned all the publicity around Betsy and said proudly, "Well, that's our daughter!"

Dorothy and Martin will be moving out of their home soon. Martin was diagnosed last May with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as "Lou Gehrig's disease." A year ago he was cutting wood with a chain saw; now even walking is difficult. Dorothy explains that their new condominium will have ramps and larger doorways, with their bedroom on the ground floor. "It's bigger than we need," she says. She pauses and then adds, "But, well, we have room for Randy and Betsy and Lillian." She smiles affectionately at her daughter.

Martin adds, "They're our children, and we love 'em." Nothing more needs to be spoken.

Outside in the car after the visit, Betsy says, "Relative to losing my father, losing my home is nothing."

The Homesteaders.

Four more lambs -- two sets of twins -- have been born since the first arrived in January. Pat Morse describes how for a week on 10-below winter nights she got up every three hours to bottlefeed a weak newborn lamb. She shears her sheep every spring and sends the wool off to a family mill in Maine, then weaves gorgeous sweaters and tapestries with the yarn that comes back. Her looms take up most of the space in a large, open room in the home that she and Bob Bady have built on land-trust acreage adjacent to Randy and Betsy's.
Bob and Pat lived with Pat's 17-year-old son, Casey, in a tent while they finished the foundation of the house. They milled all their own wood for the completing of their home. Bob, who worked as a registered nurse for 15 years, now does plumbing and carpentry work.

Bob Bady has been a war tax refuser for 19 years and Pat Morse for eight. They received an official IRS form 2433 Notice of Seizure in mid-October 1989. Six weeks later, their home was up for auction. Their statement says in part: "For 10 years we have been building our homestead with our own hands. This place we call home is our joy, our nourishment, our security.

"The federal income tax is not only the main source of monetary support for the war system but also the chief link connecting each individual's daily labor with the tremendous buildup for war ... We stockpile hay for winter feed for our sheep, and we stockpile firewood for winter heat. We have no need to stockpile nuclear weapons and threaten our planet Earth under the guise of 'security.'

"We are simply trying to do the right thing. It is part of our belief in nonviolence that when individuals act upon that which they perceive to be the truth, and when they pursue that truth with compassion toward others, and with perseverance in the face of intimidation, then the good of that truth will prevail."

Supporters gathered again in front of the IRS office in Greenfield, this time on a bitterly cold November day. In a moving "Procession of Conscience," 45 war tax resisters stood one by one before the crowd and made public statements about their resistance.

A pall descended on the crowd when an IRS agent announced that Pat, Bob, and Casey's home had been bought for $4,846.16 by "L.A. and S.A. Watts." The IRS had required the full payment (not just a down payment, as in Betsy and Randy's case), advertised the second auction much less widely, and allowed a shorter period of time. "I suspect they had somebody lined up, or they wouldn't have gone ahead," says Bob.

Various people tried in vain to track down "L.A. and S.A. Watts." Then one day a reporter called and said the IRS had given him the address of Stephanie Watts in Greenfield -- L.A. is apparently a relative who helped her with the purchase. The renamed War-Tax Refusers Support Committee wrote to Watts to inform her of the numerous complications with her purchase: the publicity and nonviolent civil disobedience that would ensue if she should try to evict, the terms of the land trust, and the fact that the IRS was only acting against Bob and not Pat in its seizure. "At best, Stephanie Watts has an undivided half-interest in the house with Pat Morse," says Bob.

Watts lives in a subsidized housing development, and the support committee graciously offered to help her find another affordable home. As far as they know, she has never even seen the property; there is some question as to whether the IRS was clear with her about the house's situation.

Pat and Bob's "redemption period" is up on May 30. There is a good chance that they could win their right to the house in court because of Pat's legal half-interest in it. "But," says Pat, "we would like to keep this on moral ground, and not get sidetracked into a legal battle."

They have poured much of their lives and dreams into this home. "The stronger the connection, the stronger the resistance," adds Pat.

The steep path from their homestead to the road is a sheet of ice at this time of year. Randy comments, "You should see it in the spring -- it becomes a mudslide." He calls back to Bob, who is throwing firewood into the cellar, "I guess Stephanie Watts never saw the entrance to the house." Bob laughs, "Not to mention the moat filled with alligators."

The Official Story.

Robert Ruttenberg, official spokesperson for the Internal Revenue Service, insists that the agency is going to evict the tax resisters, but he will not say when. Ruttenberg, who has referred to Betsy, Randy, Pat, and Bob as "freeloaders," says, "They're breaking the law, that's all. What more can I tell you?" He is forthcoming about little else, except to say that it is unfair for other citizens to have to pick up the resisters' share of the taxes.

When it is suggested that many people in this country share their concerns and wish the government would have different priorities, he responds, "Well, we all do. But Congress is the one that makes the laws."

Robert Ruttenberg says that the IRS actions against Randy, Betsy, Bob, and Pat are not part of a crackdown against resisters: "They're the ones who called it upon themselves. They're the ones who said, 'Come and get us.' They're the ones that said, 'We don't pay our taxes.' So for the 95 percent of those people who pay their taxes, I think it behooves us to go against people who don't pay their taxes -- especially when they say, 'We don't pay our taxes.'"

'Lien on Me.'

Eileen Sauvageau picks up from the dining room table the yellow slip of paper that arrived with today's mail. It is an announcement of a certified letter waiting at the post office. "This is the last one," she says. "We already got the 'You have left us no alternative' letter."

Eileen and her husband, Stephen Broil, have a lien from the IRS on their home. They, along with Betsy and Randy, Pat and Bob, and another couple in a similar circumstance, Dvora Cohen and Alan Suprenant, have formed a support group they call "Lien on Me."

When the IRS seized Betsy and Randy's home, the other couples wrote individual letters-to-the-editor to the Greenfield Recorder, saying essentially, "If you take theirs, you might as well take ours." Reading those letters in the paper brought tears to his eyes, says Randy. It is likely that the Sauvageau-Broll and Cohen-Suprenant homes will be seized next.

Like Bob and Pat, Eileen and Stephen have built this home themselves. And like many of the houses in this valley, their home has large picture windows, exposed wooden beams, hanging ferns, a cat, and a teakettle always filled with water keeping hot on the wood-burning stove. Their 4-year-old daughter, Audrey, was born here. A large valentine she made hangs on the wall across from the couch.

They have been practicing war tax resistance since February 1981, says Stephen. Eileen wonders how he remembers the date so well. "I just remember it -- like the day we were married, or your birthday," he says.

Eileen credits the Sermon on the Mount for their decision to refuse to pay war taxes. "We had decided to take the teachings of Jesus seriously. And if he said don't kill another person, that meant you don't pay someone else to do it, either." She adds, "I thought our lives were over the day we decided to do that -- I thought we'd never have a home, never have children."

Nine years ago Eileen worked as a hospital laboratory technologist, and Stephen worked for a stationer in Amherst, Massachusetts. When he heard a public service announcement on the radio for the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters, he took down the phone number -- it belonged to Wally and Juanita Nelson. He went to a meeting of the group one night. "Eileen was worried," he says.

"I was distraught," Eileen corrects him. "We had only been married a year. It was a period of turmoil between us, working through our fears.

"I've never regretted being a tax resister," she continues, "though I do have feelings of anxiety about it -- having to deal with the disruptions, the seizure." She adds, "Tax resistance is one of the best things I've decided to do with my life. I've been true to myself and my values in a concrete way. We'll never be homeless -- I know that. We have support; we have family."

"For the last 10 years we have surrounded ourselves with people who care deeply for us," says Stephen, "so I don't feel anxious or fearful."

Eileen adds, "A lot of people go through their lives feeling alone. One of the things we know we'll never be when we're old is lonely -- or unsupported. When I look at tax resistance in that light, I wonder, Why doesn't everyone become tax resisters?"

Stephen smiles. "High membership dues," he says.

The Bicycling Dentist.

Tom Wilson is standing before a crowd of friends gathered around Randy and Betsy's dining room table. His arms sweep through the air as he describes how he stepped up to a blackboard in court and explained himself to the judge.

His courtroom appearance had nothing to do with his years of war tax resistance, however; he had been caught driving without his license. "You see," he explains, "I was returning a rental car, and I had my bike in the back for riding back home. I was wearing my bicycle pants without any pockets ..."

The story grows, and grins circle the table, until Randy calls out, "I thought you didn't cooperate with the law on principle, but it seems --"

"-- it's just a personality disorder!" breaks in Bob. The table erupts in laughter. If there is one thing this group has learned, it is how to maintain a sense of humor in the midst of uncertainty.

In March 1977 Tom Wilson attended a weekend on nonviolence at Traprock Peace Center. "I went to learn how to relate to my son -- how to embrace him rather than roughhouse," Tom explains. "And I found myself in the middle of a role play for the occupation of Seabrook [nuclear power plant]."

Tom had quietly donated money to anti-nuclear causes, and he had also been a strong opponent of the Vietnam War, involved in local organizing efforts and draft counseling. That weekend Wally Nelson put the question to him: "If you feel so strongly about it, why pay for it?"

Every April 15 after that, you could find Tom parading in front of the Greenfield IRS building with a sign saying "Don't Pay War Taxes." Wally was right by his side with one reading "You Don't Gotta."

Tom Wilson has served the people of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, as a dentist for 29 years. He frequently rides his bike to get places. He owns no house and has no bank account or retirement fund. "I don't intend to retire," he explains.

The federal government hit a dead end in its efforts to seize the back taxes it claimed he owed, so federal officials turned to the state. When Tom submitted vouchers to the state government for payment for his dental work on Medicaid patients, state officials wrote checks out to him and then turned them over to the federal government. Undaunted, Tom simply stopped submitting the vouchers and did Medicaid work for free. "I didn't want to refuse low-income people," he says.

When the Pledge of Resistance, a national network opposing U.S. policy in Central America, called for local actions nationwide at federal facilities, the only options in Greenfield were the post office, the military recruiting office, or the IRS. When the choice was made, "IRS agents took it personally," says Tom. As he was being arrested along with a large group of others, one agent said to him, "Dr. Wilson, how could you?"

Tom Wilson has in fact taken it upon himself to meet and befriend his persecutors. He often waited outside the IRS office at 11:30 when he knew agents would be going to lunch, inviting himself along. "I had the theory that if I touched the humanness in some of these agents, that could bring about change," he explains.

He got to know agent Nick Nelson particularly well. It was an especially moving moment at the auction of Randy and Betsy's home when Tom offered his in-kind bid in the memory of Nelson, who had recently died in a snowmobile accident.

Tom Wilson's war tax resistance eventually led him to Boston to a hearing before the Board of Registration in Dentistry for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. His license to practice dentistry was officially suspended on November 9, 1987.

A week later, a car showed up outside Tom's dental office. The man in the car took down license plate numbers of Tom's patients, questioned one patient, and even followed her partway home. Tom assumes the man was working for the government or police, trying to document the fact that was practicing without a license or perhaps coerce a patient to lodge a formal complaint against him.

Has he lost any patients? "No more than I've gained," he says. He continues to serve a wide array of loyal patients, from political activists to the superintendent at the nearby Yankee Rowe nuclear power plant.

"For awhile I used to think about it every day," Tom says of the suspension of his license and the possibility that he might be jailed for his refusal to submit. "Now I have little anxiety."

Tom Wilson does, however, keep a chain and padlock around his dentist's chair, in case the authorities should confiscate it. "And I have another chain and padlock for myself in case they come to take me," he says. "I figure I would have just enough time to make a phone call and get the phone tree going before I lock myself in."

Without a doubt, Tom Wilson's friends would come running.

'Not Since 1948.'

"Wally and Juanita." That's the answer you get no matter who you ask about how this all got started.

At a recent gathering at the Traprock Peace Center, the moderator asked everyone who had been refusing taxes for more than 40 years to stand up. Wally and Juanita Nelson rose.

Then he asked all those who had been influenced by the couple to stand. A significant portion got up. And finally he asked everyone who had been influenced by any of the people standing to get up. By that point, virtually everyone in the room was on their feet.

Wally and Juanita's simple home is lit by a gas lamp. No electricity or telephone intrudes into their life; they draw all their water from a well. Dried chili peppers hang from their ceiling, and jars of canned fruit stock the shelves. Potato soup is simmering on the wood-burning stove for dinner.

On one wall is a photograph of Wally dancing. "He's fierce," says Juanita. And Wally chimes in, "If there's a place where music is playing, people ought to be dancing."

When the heat of the stove gets too intense, Juanita picks up the table and moves it a few yards. "This is our heat regulation," she explains. "We move." She smooths the edges of pieces of her homemade soap with a large knife as she talks. Wally is cracking hazelnuts from the trees in their yard.

"We met in jail," says Juanita. Wally was a conscientious objector during World War II. He had been sent to a Civilian Public Service Camp in Ohio in 1943, but then decided that even by accepting CO status he was cooperating with a war-making government. He and five companions walked out of the camp.

During a 33-month stay in prison for his action, Wally, who grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas and had spent several years on a plantation as a child, smuggled out information of segregation in the jail. Juanita, a 19-year-old reporter on a weekly newspaper and a field worker for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), was assigned to write a story about it. Wally was released from prison after a 107-day hunger strike, having been force-fed through a nose tube for the last 87.

In 1948 Juanita and Wally joined Peacemakers, a groups committed to non-cooperation with the military draft and non-payment of war taxes. In the 42 years since, they have never filed an income tax return. Juanita writes in her essay "A Matter of Freedom" that she refuses to pay her taxes "because most of the money goes for H-bombs and other combustibles capable of setting off conflagrations which cannot be extinguished by the average hook-and-ladder company. I balk at the notion of contributing so directly to making atomic hash of others and perhaps of my own wonderful self."

In 1950 they formed a household with longtime peacemakers Ernest and Marion Bromley in a community outside Cincinnati. "We moved into the neighborhood and all hell broke loose," says Juanita, "after the neighbors realized we weren't the servants!" They both managed to land themselves in jail -- this time for obstructing an entrance to a segregated amusement park. And later, when Wally insisted on being served at a Cincinnati restaurant, the racist manager came at him with a meat cleaver; Wally diffused the threat with a nonviolent posture.

Wally remembers meeting Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery bus boycott. A group was talking in the wee hours of the morning about nonviolence. At one point King, Wally's junior by 20 years, looked straight at him and, recognizing experience and wisdom, asked, "Just how far do you think we can go with nonviolence?"

Juanita and Wally moved to Philadelphia, after a four-month stint at Koinonia Partners in Georgia. Wally was a traveling salesperson for a bookplate company and was out of town in March 1959 when two men rang the doorbell at 6:30 in the morning. Juanita was determined not to cooperate in any way with the tax men.

Five law-enforcement officials joined the other two men and literally hauled her down to a holding cell at the court. She appeared before a magistrate sitting in a wheelchair and wearing her bathrobe. The powers-that-be evidently recognized that they had a determined woman on their hands; they eventually dropped the case.

During a 21-day fast for exploited California farmworkers, they decided to "move out of the city onto the land, so we could begin to learn and live in a peaceful society," according to Wally. He and Juanita made another move, to New Mexico, where they lived in a three-room adobe house, determined to produce everything they consumed and thus withdraw their participation from the economic system they found so destructive. "It's been a challenge -- and a very interesting life to live," says Wally.

The IRS eventually caught up with them, arriving in their yard with a tow truck to haul away their two aging vehicles. But Juanita and Wally each sat down in front of one, and the IRS agents finally left in exasperation. In 1972 Randy Kehler, who had read about them while in prison, stopped by to see them one day and invited them to come and homestead on Woolman Hill, next to the Traprock Peace Center.

They accepted the invitation to live on the hill named after John Woolman, the famous Quaker tax refuser. They have named their three-quarter-acre garden plot "The Bean Patch," and from it they grow enough fruit and vegetables to feed themselves and supply a local farmers market. That provides their only income -- "except for $25 a year from my soap," laughs Juanita.

Juanita and Wally were instrumental in founding the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters. "We used to call a meeting," says Wally, "and invite people, and have two people come." But that has changed. Now Wally says he's "riding on cloud nine" with all the war tax resistance that's going on. "Living in this area with these people is a terrific inspiration."

Three years ago Wally, now 80, was diagnosed with cancer. They have no medical insurance. "We're just two silly people who don't have enough sense to plan for their old age," he says, and then smiles. "I don't know if we'll ever reach it."

Their friends at Traprock planned a potluck supper and then passed the basket. "We returned some, because we didn't need it all," says Juanita. "If you take a step because you believe in it, sometimes you find resources you never thought about. Whatever little I have, it's for whoever needs it. There is no security unless everyone is secure together." Adds Wally, "If you act in the present, the future will take care of itself."

Many people in this valley have immense respect for Wally and Juanita for taking a stand and never turning back. "But they don't understand," says Wally with a hearty laugh, "that that's from stupidity!"

Juanita says, "It's easy to know our own failings, the ways we fall short of our commitments. I think all of us can do better than we're doing."

"Even me?" asks Wally with a smile.

"Well, there are exceptions," answers Juanita. Then she adds, "All of us can always take another step -- we have to challenge each other."

Wally and Juanita never go anywhere without wearing their "Don't Pay War Taxes" buttons. And you can be sure that come April 15, Wally will be parading in front of the IRS office in Greenfield. He has another sign. This one says "Haven't Paid Taxes Since 1948."

Giving Courage.

On a snowy Saturday evening, Randy and Betsy, Pat and Bob, Wally and Juanita, and Tom are gathered around the Kehler-Corner dining room table. Discussion is animated around a topic that is dear to all of their hearts.

One opinion acknowledges that not many people in this country are willing to risk their jobs or their homes in order to stop paying for the killing our government carries out, and therefore less risky options have to be encouraged if the idea of war tax resistance is going to take hold more broadly. Another side says that the important thing is for those with strong convictions to keep all their money out of the hands of the federal government and be willing to pay the consequences. "It's the most important thing a patriot can do in this day and age," comments Tom. "Someone who's absolutely saying no -- that's the thing they fear the most."

"The IRS thinks everybody has a breaking point," adds Juanita. "If you don't give up, that gives courage to others."

Indeed, the actions of this handful of people in western Massachusetts gathered around the dining room table are giving others courage. And they are just one part of a movement; estimates of people practicing war tax resistance in this country range from thousands to tens of thousands.

Randy observes, "Changes elsewhere in the world are causing us to imagine large, previously unthinkable changes here; it makes what we're doing seem more plausible. With a formerly imprisoned playwright as president of Czechoslovakia, the time is ripe to stir people's imaginings of what is possible if they are willing to step outside their normal attachments and fears."

Will their brand of tax revolt sweep the country? The people around the dining room table are humble enough to acknowledge that they are simply following their consciences; the rest is out of their hands.

But wouldn't it be nice?

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor at Sojourners when this article appeared.