Grex Hippie Conference

View Responses

Grex Hippie Item 85: Civil Disobedience
Entered by md on Tue Sep 24 14:11:36 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?

2 responses total.

#1 of 2 by cmcgee on Tue Sep 24 18:44:37 2002:

Well they could have tried to demonize the IRS for misleading the poor
proletarians.  

But I don't get whether the group they donated the land to.  Was the tax lien
already on the property?

#2 of 2 by orinoco on Tue Sep 24 18:57:10 2002:

Good point.  If the land wasn't theirs to give, then the demonstrators don't
really have a leg to stand on.  If the donation was legitimate, then I don't
see why the land was confiscated because of the original owners' tax problems
-- wouldn't the non-profit become responsible for taxes on the land once it
became theirs?  Seems like something weird is going on either way.

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.