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Civil Disobedience
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Sep 24 14:11 UTC 2002 |
I caught part of a documentary film recently about some tax protesters
in Western Massachusetts.
As I understand it, this couple had been refusing to pay their federal
income tax in protest against the Gulf War. The IRS eventually
confiscated their house and auctioned it to another couple, who
apparently didn't realize what they were stepping into.
Before the IRS seized the house (as I understand it), the tax
protesters donated the land to a nonprofit corporation they had set up
for the purpose of land conservation, low-income housing, etc. After
the new people moved into the house, the protesters and several dozen
supporters camped out on the property. They put up signs with slogans
like "It is wrong to confiscate someone's house to finance a war."
They started an organic garden. They set up tents, and eventually
built a small heated structure on the property where they could stay
during the winter. Pete Seeger and a few other left-wing celebrities
joined the protesters. There was much publicity, and the local and
national (and sometimes international) media were occasional visitors.
Familiar scenes of protesters holding hands in circle while chanting
slogans and singing "We Shall Overcome."
This went on for several years, during which the couple who now
occupied the house - blue collar and not very political, at least to
start with - were deprived of quiet enjoyment of the home they had
purchased. I think they might've sued the protesters, or maybe they
complained to the police. Eventually, a court ruled that the
protesters were trespassing on the property. The police came and
removed them: familiar scenes of passive resisters being carried
clumsily off by the cops.
In the meanwhile, the original tax protesters whose house it had been
were growing more and more uneasy. The wife, who had been harpooned by
the local media for an early comment that "This is fun" ("I'm glad
*she* thinks so," said the young wife who was trying to live in the
house) started saying that it was no longer fun. The husband could
barely finish a sentence without breaking down. They were plagued by
guilt and fear -- guilt at ruining the lives of the house's new
occupants, and fear that their actions might put them both in jail.
There was also very clear resentment over the opportunism of the
leftist celebrities who had turned their private protest into a public
spectacle from which they now could not withdraw without looking weak
or cowardly.
Also, what was obvious to me and must have been to them, too, was the
fact that all of the protesters were middle-class people in the arts or
the professions -- college professors, lawyers, writers, artists,
musicians, social workers, psychologists -- and the new owners were
honest-to-God proletarians, born and bred. But instead of trying to
see the new owners as unwitting victims of the system, the protesters'
official line was that they were morally irresponsible for buying the
house. This demonizing of the new owners required violations of both
reason and compassion that the former owners, to their credit, weren't
able to make. It also, unfortunately, turned the new owners into right
wing "hippie" haters. All of this took its toll on the former owners.
Eventually, the new owners accepted a mediation offer and moved out.
The protesters built a low-income dwelling on the property, and a
couple of families moved in. The original house became a kind of
communal dwelling, but at this point I had to leave and didn't get to
see the rest of the movie.
Anyway, assuming I've got this all more or less right, did the
protesters handle this the right way? If not, what should they have
done?
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