Turning a Nation Around

In the hills of Western Massachusetts, Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner have been engaged in a remarkable effort to turn their country around, and they have been paying a heavy price for it. What they won't pay is their federal taxes which are used to finance weapons and war. Instead, they pay all their state and local taxes and donate their federal taxes to programs that serve war victims and the poor. They call it "tax re-direction." Joyce Hollyday told the story in the May 1990 Sojourners of how the IRS had seized Randy and Betsy's house and threatened to evict the couple and their 12-year-old daughter, Lillian.

In early December, IRS agents entered their Colrain, Massachusetts farmhouse; both husband and wife were arrested, all their furniture and belongings were taken, and Randy was put in jail for a six-month sentence, which the judge threatened to renew indefinitely unless the family promised never to return to the home they had lived in for more than 12 years.

What the IRS probably didn't count on was the people who decided to support Randy and Betsy and their conscientious actions by moving into their home to block the IRS claim on the house. The arrest of the first group (who were later released) has not deterred new and successive waves of supporters (from the area and from hundreds of miles away), who have come every week since to occupy the house and show their own determination to change the priorities of this country. Groups are already scheduled through the summer.

This little frame house is rapidly becoming a powerful symbol of the commitment of a growing number of citizens to turn their nation around--away from massive military spending, repeated interventions, and dangerous arms races; toward a fundamental conversion of our politics and economy in ways that address our most urgent needs and national crises, especially now, with the opportunity provided by the end of the Cold War.

But this didn't start as a tactic or a strategy for Randy and Betsy. Refusing to play their part in financing wasteful and destructive war policies and instead taking personal responsibility for changing our national direction simply was something they felt compelled by conscience to do. Both are very active citizens who have participated in a variety of efforts to transform political policy through traditional means. But along with those efforts, their own moral sensibility has moved them to take more personal responsibility and direct action.

IT HASN'T BEEN EASY. I spoke by phone with Randy in jail on Christmas Eve when he was separated from his wife and daughter. I spoke with him again after he was released in late February after the IRS had found a seemingly unwitting young couple to buy the Kehler-Corner house at a bargain price and, therefore, try to close the case.

It isn't working. The occupying supporters keep coming, and now the couple used by the IRS in its illicit sale is being gently and sensitively drawn into an extraordinary dialogue that reportedly is having a profound effect on everyone involved (see "Groundswell," April 1992). Those who insist to their government that there are better and more practical ways to resolve conflict are practicing nonviolence themselves in a very intense and potentially volatile situation.

Randy and Betsy admit they don't know what is ultimately going to happen, but they have announced that they will continue to resist paying their taxes for war. Says Randy, "If we want a country that uses its resources to help people rather than kill them, then we as citizens must assume some personal responsibility for turning things around. If ordinary citizens can make monumental changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, I know we can do it here."

In jail, Randy read these words from Czechoslovakian playwright and now President Vaclav Havel's book, Disturbing the Peace: "When a person tries to act in accordance with his [or her] conscience, when he tries to speak the truth, when he tries to behave like a citizen, even in conditions where citizenship is degraded, it won't necessarily lead anywhere, but it might....Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance."

Randy told me, "Even when we do something least for its effect, it can grow to have a significant public impact. But there are no guarantees. That's why you just have to have faith."

People like Betsy and Randy are blazing a trail, paying the price, and turning things around...one family at a time. April 15 is tax day. Each of us might examine the personal responsibility we are taking.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.