On Wednesday April 15th; -“Tax Day”, tens of protestors gathered outside the Internal Revenue Building off Broadway to oppose the use of their tax dollars to finance warfare. Protests took place not only in New York City, but Trenton, New Jersey; Washington, DC; Garland and Dallas, Texas, and Chicago, San Francisco, among other cities across the US, according to Tax Payers against Genocide. The NYPD were present at the hour-long peaceful protest, and no arrests were made.
Protestors in New York held signs saying ‘No Taxes for War’ and ‘They got money for War but can’t feed the poor’, as people chanted and played music. According to the New York City War Resisters League, they estimate the federal budget for the 2027 fiscal year will include 25% to be spent on past military, 33% on current military, 32% on Human Resources, 6% on General Government, and 4% on Physical Resources. This means that a possible 58% of the US federal budget could be spent on warfare, amounting to a whopping $3,500 billion.
Because the current administration has not yet released their budget proposal, this above estimation is based on past analyses, the recent Congressional Budget Office analysis, the President’s recent statements as well as project 25 according to the NYC War Resisters League.
John Breitbart from NYC War Resisters League spoke to WBAI on the picket line about how “large numbers of Americans are pretty horrified at the kind of longstanding military intervention and control that the United States has exercised historically.” He spoke of how “citizens that live in a nation like the United States, an aspiring democracy […] have a moral connection” on how the government spends their money.
He expressed that the amount of “suffering and harm” that has been inflicted by America’s military worldwide is huge, and his message to American citizens is; “your taxes support this.” In reference to President Donald Trump, Mr. Breitbart spoke also of how Trump has threatened to exterminate entire countries “with close to 100 million people; Iran as 92 million people in it.”
Mr. Breitbart concluded with a call to those who might feel moved by their organization to “consider withholding some of your federal taxes to express your opposition to the warfaring history of our country.”
“We're here to remind people that paying your taxes is not a neutral thing. That It's literally pays for the bombs, pays for the fighters that are causing wreaking havoc all around the world.”
Ruth Benn, also from the NYC War Resisters League attended the protest on Wednesday and said she has been doing so since 1986; “but the War Resisters League has been out pretty much since World War II.” She was handing out flyers with a pie chart detailing the above statistics of the estimated 2027 federal budget, and feels that people are mostly receptive to reading them and educating themselves.
