Pictured: Café Pentagon performs a skit as waiters with WRL’s pie chart offer trays of weapons to Easter Parade revelers on NYC’s Fifth Avenue, April 15, 2001; Tax Day march from the IRS to City Hall, New York, April 18, 2023; Ralph DiGia, WRL’s first tax resisting staff member, during 2002 Tax Day demonstration in front of the IRS (photos by Ed Hedemann)
"The founding purpose of the pie chart was to give people an idea of what portion of their federal income taxes contributes to military spending and, if they choose, how much to refuse to send to the IRS, or at least include a letter objecting to having to pay that amount. Of course, in practice, different war tax resisters refuse different amounts ranging from a small symbolic amount to everything, reasoning that anything they send will be spent in part on the military and U.S. wars.
However, percentages can be deceptive since it’s the absolute dollar amounts that really counts. For example, the FY1985 budget proposal called for $431 billion in military spending or 64%, while the FY2024 budget called for $2,297 billion or 37%. This may seem counterintuitive but it’s just an indicator that overall social and other non-military spending — especially during the pandemic — increased sharply, thus shifting percentages, though the dollar amount of military spending virtually always increases.
Numbers aside, the pie chart has proven to be an effective propaganda tool, bringing WRL’s name and politics to people and constituencies well beyond the immediate membership. Around tax day (generally in mid-April) the pie chart is distributed in hundreds of communities in front of IRS offices, post offices, government buildings, military installations all across the United States. Lots of people mail it to their members of Congress and the president.
Long before WRL’s first pie chart was issued in 1984, peace groups picketed the IRS every tax day. For example, in 1953 the New York Times reported the “customary band of pickets” — naming WRL, Catholic Worker, and Peacemakers — protested outside the Manhattan office of the IRS on tax day. This year will also include the customary band of pickets and perhaps many more because U.S. tax dollars help to fuel Israel’s destruction of Gaza and its people."
- Ed Hedemann, longtome war tax resister and former WRL national staff member, wrote WRL's War Tax Resistance book and created the first pie chart flyer for WRL |