Fellow activists, fellow artists, fellow passionate devotees to peace, Allen and Pete Seeger were standing there together in 1969 [sic] at the founding of WTR (War Tax Resistance), a far-sighted organization founded by The War Resisters League and others, “in the belief that the right to conscientious objection belongs to all people, not just those of draft age”. WTR published a newsletter, two editions of a book, and helped establish 192 war tax resistance “centers” and 40 “alternative funds” across the country, moving to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1972 to become more centrally located. Pete, in his concerts in the early (19)70’s, would often recite Allen’s poem – “No Money No War”
No Money, No War
Government anarchy prolongs illegal planet war
Over decades in Vietnam
Federal anarchy plunges U.S. Cities into violent chaos
Conscientious objection to war-tax payment
is a refusal to subsidize mass murder abroad
and consequent ecological disaster at home.
This refusal will save lives and labor and is
the gentlest means of political revolution
If money talks, hundreds of thousands of
citizens refusing war-tax payments can
short-circuit the nerve system
of our electronic bureaucracy.
No money, no war.
Peter Seeger died yesterday, after being hospitalized in New York for the past six days. He was 94.
He lived an exemplary and extraordinary life.
see here for his New York Times obituary – and here in The Washington Post.
Here’s the AP wire story, The news spreads around the world.