198 Sundays: I'm Never Going To Retire Anyway

Figured I'd go with another financially-related Method today since it's something I've decided to do as another step in my tax resistance: 86. Withdrawal of bank deposits.

Money deposited in private or government banks or government savings systems may be withdrawn either as an expression of protest against the government or as a means of noncooperation intended to help overthrow an unsteady government.

For example, the withdrawal of bank deposits was called for at least twice during the 1905 Revolution in Russia--first by the All-Russian Peasant Union at its founding conference in midsummer 1905, and second, by the St Petersburg Soviet on December 2, 1905.  This was designed to weaken foreign confidence in the Russian economy and government and thus prevent the government from obtaining a foreign loan to be used to combat the revolution.  To the embarrassment of the government, there were extensive withdrawals of funds from banks in the following weeks, apparently as a result of the call.

In a very different context, in December 1966 a moderately successful appeal was made to depositors of the First National City Bank and Chase Manhattan Bank, urging them to withdraw their deposits from those banks and to place them elsewhere, because of the banks' financial involvement in the South African economy.

My alma mater divested from South African-related holdings just a couple years before I matriculated.  Did that act end Apartheid?  No, but Nelson Mandela was released from prison my senior year, and FW De Clerk did during my tenure as well and went about the work of dismantling the system that gave him advantages.  Hitting pocketbooks at any level can help effect change.

Personally, I've decided to finally divest from the system a bit more by withdrawing all the last vestiges of my pre-existing IRAs.  First of all, I could really use that money now--ironically for taxes, but local property taxes that I do still pay because they go to education and roads, basically--and second, the IRA system is part of the whole IRS structure and allows me another chance to take money that I can refuse to pay taxes (and penalties) on now as protest.  Sure, when they catch up with me it adds to my pile of infractions, but that's part of the point, and I'll have pulled even more of my consent from the matrix of control and war enabling the government's revenue represents.

ntodd

Covered on previous Sundays:

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION  

1. Public Speeches
2. Letters of opposition or support
5. Declarations of indictment and intention
8. Banners, posters, and displayed communications
9. Leaflets, pamphlets, and books
10. Newspapers and journals
11. Records, radio, and television
14. Mock awards
15. Group lobbying
18. Displays of flags and symbolic colors
19. Wearing of symbols
21. Delivering symbolic objects
22. Protest disrobings
23. Destruction of own property
26. Paint as protest
30. Rude gestures
31. "Haunting" officials
32. Taunting officials
33. Fraternization
34. Vigils
35. Humorous skits and pranks
37. Singing
38. Marches
44. Mock funerals
45. Demonstrative funerals.
50. Teach-ins
52. Silence
53. Renouncing honors
54. Turning one's back.
55. Social boycott

THE METHODS OF SOCIAL NONCOOPERATION

57. Lysistratic nonaction
61. Boycott of social affairs
65. Stay-at-home
66. Total personal noncooperation

THE METHODS OF ECONOMIC NONCOOPERATION

71. Consumers' boycott
88. Refusal to pay debts or interest
90. Revenue refusal
91. Refusal of a government's money
97. Protest strike
117. General strike

THE METHODS OF POLITICAL NONCOOPERATION

120. Withholding or withdrawal of allegiance
122. Literature and speeches advocating resistance
124. Boycott of elections
135. Popular nonobedience
137. Refusal of an assemblage or meeting to disperse
140. Hiding, escape, and false identities
147. Deliberate inefficiency and selective noncooperation by enforcement agents
148. Mutiny
150. Noncooperation by constituent governmental units

THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION

158. Self-exposure to the elements
159. The fast: a) Fast of moral pressure; b) Hunger strike; c) Satyagrahic fast
160. Reverse trial
162. Sit-in
164. Ride-in
170. Nonviolent invasion
171. Nonviolent interjection
174. Establishing new social patterns
177. Speak-in
178. Guerrilla theater
179. Alternative social institutions
180. Alternative communication system
189. Selective patronage
193. Overloading of administrative systems
195. Seeking imprisonment
196. Civil disobedience of "neutral" laws