April 2006
Taxes, Revelations and the Politics of Jesus
A Common Ground Interview with Julia Butterfly Hill
By Gar Smith
“Taxes are not inherently evil. When we come together as a community and collectively pool our resources, the good we can do is absolutely inspiring. On the other hand, the devastation we can wreak upon the planet and its people is horrific.” — Julia Butterfly Hill
In 2003, Julia Butterfly Hill, the arboreal activist who spent two years living atop Luna, a threatened redwood tree, faced a new moment of truth. Hill had won a hefty lawsuit against a corporation that expropriated her tree-sitting fame to market cell phones in a TV ad. The government subsequently informed Hill that she had incurred a tax liability of more than $150,000. This news came as the Bush administration was balancing its soaring military costs by cutting $13 billion from Food Stamps, $93 billion from Medicare and $14.6 billion from veterans’ benefits.
After careful deliberation, Hill strode to the steps of the SF Federal Building on October 15, 2004 and declared that she would no longer pay taxes to support “the largest death machine humankind has ever known.” She announced plans to redirect more than $150,000 in Federal taxes to environmental and social causes. With that act, she initiated the largest individual act of war-tax redirection in US history.
Julia Butterfly Hill now heads Circle of Life in Oakland. Common Ground recently sat down for an hour-long chat with Hill in the loft of Circle of Life’s home-office.
Tax Resistance and the Wages of Peace
Gar Smith: Could you talk a little about your family upbringing and how that brought you to your decision to refuse to pay federal taxes. I understand that your father was a minister.
Julia Butterfly Hill: Yes, my father was a traveling preacher. He and my mother were both raised Catholic and converted to Baptist and later became nondenominational so I was raised in a nondenominational evangelical upbringing. My father always taught from a place of “How does this book known as the Bible apply to who we are today?” He was really about teaching what it means to be a loving, committed, active spiritual person in the world.
That upbringing, I feel, has been very core to who I am because it has really become my foundation. How do I keep a core sense of the sacred as my foundation in everything I do and everything that I say?
GS: A lot of us grew up with that and it’s not just a core feeling that we share as a family value but it’s something we think of as a core set of beliefs that used to apply to this country as a nation. I’d like to hope that we could find our way back to that.
Two years ago, you stood on the steps of the Federal Building and issued your formal public statement about why you were resisting taxes — joining people like Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky and others. What were the repercussions of that act?
JB: I have to say I “redirect” my taxes rather than “resisting” my taxes. Because I actually take the money that the IRS says goes to them and I give it to the places where our taxes should be going. And in my letter to the IRS I said: “I’m not refusing to pay my taxes. I’m actually paying them but I’m paying them where they belong because you refuse to do so.” They are not directing our money where it should be going, they are being horrific stewards of that money.
If we had an investment with a fund-management system and they were doing a terrible job of investing our funds, we would pull those funds and re-invest them with a management fund that was stewarding our money properly. Yet, for some reason, we don’t do that with our taxes and with the IRS and with our government. So I said, “Well, I’m sorry. You’re not managing these funds appropriately and you’re not balancing them wisely and you’re not investing them properly, so I’m going to have to take this money from you and invest it myself.
GS: This is an argument that supports not just environmentalists and pacifists, but anybody with good business sense should not be investing in this “company.”
JB: That’s right! I majored in business in college and so I’m always looking at where is the wise investment — in time, in energy and monetary resources. What is the smartest investment? And anyone who is a smart businessperson should look at how much is being invested in our government and where that is actually being spent. I don’t think anyone but a select few people will think that the rate of return on that currently is a wise investment.
GS: What local organizations are you giving money to? How does that happen?
JB: I have learned so much in collaboration with War Resisters network. The Peoples Life Fund is one of the ways people can give money to help a myriad of causes (as well as help people who suffer negative responses from the government for taking this step of conscience and redirecting their taxes). I’ve directed this money to all the places where our money should be going — after school, arts and cultural programs, community gardens. A huge portion of my funds (not only from my “redirection” but also from funds that I raise speaking at colleges) goes to Indigenous peoples in this country. All of the wealth in this country is built on what was stolen from the original peoples and then through slavery. I look to redirecting money back to where our money comes from — from human and planetary resources. So a large portion has gone to support Native Peoples’ subsistence, sovereignty and spirituality. I’ve redirected money into the Alternatives to Incarceration Program. I believe our Prison-Industrial Complex is a clear-cutting our diversity and clear-cutting our youth and our humanity. That’s a big passion of mine.
And, of course, environmental protection. Particularly endangered, old-growth forest issues, wetlands (which are a very threatened area) and some prairie protection as well. The list goes on.
GS: I was at a War Resisters League meeting a couple of weeks ago at the St. Martin de Poores food kitchen in San Francisco and one of the startling statements that cropped up at the meeting was that at least 25 percent of American people don’t pay taxes — legally. And somebody asked: “Does that include corporations?” Well, of course not: the figure is much higher for corporations. It is possible to legally not pay taxes by using available deductions and small-business options. Are you trying to use any of those legal strategies or is this an outright redirection of tax money?
JB: I’m currently not employing the various forms of legal ways of tax [resistance] because, for me, it was important to take the conscious, conscientious, political stand. Not just to work within the system but to say that the system is inherently flawed and highly destructive. It was absolutely crucial that I also take a stand outside that system. It’s a devastated system and, just as we look at a devastated ecosystem and think about how to restore it, the same thing applies with this [tax] system. That’s part of why I’ve chosen to take this very public, political stand ...
Taxes are not inherently evil. When we come together as a community and collectively pool our resources, the good we can do is absolutely inspiring. On the other hand, the devastation we can wreak upon the planet and its people is horrific. And currently [the US tax] system is doing that. Because of that, it is absolutely crucial that more and more of us take the political stand and say it’s time to transform the system.
GS: Has your public statement inspired others to consider this as a moral option?
JB: It’s been incredible how many people have come out of the most surprising places saying “I want to know more about this! Is it safe to do? Is it not safe to do?” [There are] organizations like War Resisters and the network of the War Tax Resistance community I can direct people to. I became well-known for living in a tree for over two years, but that tree-sit — although it was the longest in history — was only able to be that tree-sit because of wonderful history of a movement that built it to a place where we could carry out an action like that.
It’s exactly the same with [the war-tax resistance] movement. For over 30 years, the war-resistance community has been saying “Here’s the plethora, the rainbow, of information. You can sit with that information and find out what most resonates for you and cultivate from that list a way for you to take your next step.” It’s great to have that network to be able to direct people into.
GS: Now for a question about the response from the other side of the spectrum. How has the government responded?
JB: Well, I knew when I took this action that the government was going to do one of two things: they were either going to come down quick and hard or they were going to ignore me. And I felt the same would probably happen within the media. The media pretty much ignored me. The IRS responded very, very quickly.
My lawyer asked me: “What did you do to upset them? They never respond that quickly? What did you do?” And I said, “I think it’s partly because of who I am and partly because of the letter I wrote.” He got back to me and said: “Yes, you’re right. I asked them: you’re right.”
At this point, I’ve gotten through the first round of hearings. They’ve gone well. It’s “in the process.” In this process, anything can happen. There can be compromises that are reached; there can be an endless amount of paperwork that never turns into anything at all (just back-and-forth paperwork and lawyers talking to each other); or there can be a mandate into court.
It’s been a joy for me. Every time I see another newspaper headline about yet more war and devastation happening, there’s such a joy for me — even being caught in the “process” right now, as noxious and time-consuming as that can be. There is such a sense of liberation and joy every time I see one of those headlines and know that I can say: “I am not contributing to that. I’m contributing to a healthy world and a happy planet and a world that works for all.”
A little bit of headache and some legal fees and whatever may come it’s absolutely worth it to me every time I walk down the street and I’m able to say: “I’m contributing to a different headline.
GS: The great American pacifist A. J. Muste once said: “People are drafted through the Selective Service; money is drafted through the Internal Revenue Service.” So, you’ve “liberated” your money (or, at least it’s standing its own — against the assault of a government that would take it hostage). What are your thoughts about the environmental rationale for refusing taxes and, also, the spiritual nature of it?
JB: I was in Luna when the war, under the Clinton administration, broke out in Yugoslavia. I was praying on how to help because I felt it so deeply. I’m that kind of person: I feel the interconnection of issues very deeply and very profoundly. I’m not just an “environmentalist.” I’m not just a “joyous vegan.” I’m not just a “war-tax redirector.” I’m not these segments. I’m about the interconnection.
And as I was praying I saw a bulls-eye. At that time [in Yugoslavia], people were running out on bridges with bulls-eyes painted on their shirts because their communities were being targeted by the US and other [NATO] countries. What the people were saying is: “Hey, you’re turning us into targets. This isn’t some war on some evil dictator.”
The answer that came to me is that, in the war of politics, power and profit, all of life becomes a target. And what people need to realize is that [given] where our taxes are currently going, we are actually supporting an unprecedented war on the planet and all of the life on it — the human life, the plant life, the animal life. We are a global community and this war being perpetuated with our money, under our name if we pay taxes under our name, under our watch, for this unprecedented war. It’s happening to the forest. It’s happening to ecosystems across the country. It’s happening around the world.
The devastation of Iraq! That land that is now being devastated by war under the guise of “freedom and liberation” used to be known, in Biblical times, as one of the most decadently rich, life-giving areas in the entire region. And now it’s a desert wasteland because war does not discriminate — it affects everything. And now, with our money, we’re having a war on kids, we’re having a war on education, we’re having a war on elders, we’re having a war on healthcare, we’re having a war on the planet and all of its life-giving systems. We’re having a war on our global family around the world.
Every time that we pay taxes or spend a penny on anything, we’re either voting for that war or we’re voting for peace and healing. And, if we want to stand up and say: “Shame on the Bush administration! Shame on these corporations! Shame! Shame! Shame!” we have to remember, as we point our fingers at the Bush administration, that there’s three fingers pointing back at us.
If we are not holding ourselves accountable, I don’t feel that we actually have the right to say “Shame!” unless we include ourselves in that shame. I would rather include ourselves in a stand — in a real stand for peace, for healing, for justice — where we are actually living it, not just talking about it.
Eco-morality, the Book of Revelations, and the Politics of Jesus
“In the beginning, God’s original intention was to hang out in a beautiful garden with two naked vegetarians. What a great vision!” — Julia Butterfly Hill
Gar Smith: It’s a particular sadness that we have been raining destruction on Iraq, the home of the Biblical Garden of Eden. The First Commandment, which some people call “the Greatest Commandment,” says: “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” And, as human mammals, in our vainglorious way, we tend to assume that it just refers to killing your “fellow man,” as they say — a fellow member of your species. But is there any Biblical tradition that extends that commandment to all life or is it implicit?
Julia Butterfly Hill: I always like to remind people of Genesis, which is the first book of the Bible (in its current form, we should say): “In the Beginning,” God’s original intention was to hang out in a beautiful garden with two naked vegetarians. That was the Original Commandment! That was the Original Vision! What a great vision!
My connection to the Divine is so much bigger than just what one religion can hold now. But, if you look for those who are called by the Christian faith-based tradition, if you look at the very first book of the current form of the Bible, that’s the original intention. Our choices have lead us away from that Garden of Eden and everything that that stood for.
And what we need to understand is that, when I look at the Commandments, I ask: “What’s it really saying about us ?” When we say “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” for me its that partly it’s because we are a thread that is connected to everything else on this planet and when we kill indiscriminately — when we’re out there dropping bombs from thousands of feet in the air and a person then becomes a statistic instead of a person — we’ve just killed off a part of ourselves.
[When we see] big-biz agricultural farming animals and plant life for food, we’re killing off a piece of ourselves as we kill in this way. Every time an old-growth tree is cut down, something in the depth of our soul is destroyed. For me, that’s a deeper meaning of “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” It’s not just “Don’t do this because you need to be a good person.”
When I talk to people who’ve been in the military like the Veterans for Peace, they tell me they started the Veterans for Peace because of the things inside of themselves that were killed and destroyed when they were sent to kill and destroy. That’s the deeper meaning of what we’re talking about.
GS: The National Council of Churches has issued a statement called “God’s Earth Is Sacred.” They make the argument that protecting life on Earth is a sacred and religious duty. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholemew was quoted in this statement as saying: “To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin.” I think that’s pretty progressive religious thinking.
JB: I always remind people that the tradition I was raised in (that actually carries over into other traditions) says that, in the Beginning, there was nothing but God, the Divine. And then the Divine created. Now we’ve come to this point where we say: “Well, it’s a ’gift from God’ and we get to dominate it. We get to be the masters of this ’gift’ from God.” But if you actually look at it, it’s not just a gift from God, it is a gift OF God.
My mother used to tell me, “You know, Julia, we’re supposed to worship the Creator and not the Creation.” I told her, “Well, momma, if you go back to the origin, there was darkness and void and the darkness and void was filled with nothing but God. Then God said: ’I want to be an artist. I want to create!’ That means that Creation is the manifestation of God. When we disrespect the Creation, we are disrespecting the Creator. When we worship the Creation, that is one of the ways we have for worshiping the Creator because Creation is the Creator manifested as tree, manifested as animal, manifested as human, manifested as micro-organisms in soil, manifested as water, manifested as sun. All of that is the master paintbrush-strokes from the original palette called “Nothingness and God.”
GS: What do you make of what has been called the “rogue book” of the Bible — Revelations and the Rapture Cult?
JB: It’s an interesting phenomenon. One of my understandings from studying various faith-based traditions is that, first and foremost, the Bible is a historical book, a document from a specific period of time. That’s why most references to women are how they bear children and who they’re married to. The historical reference from that time no longer fits who we have evolved into being. But some people still mandate that it stay stuck there; that women’s value is only based on breeding capabilities and who we’re married to. It’s not just references to women, there’s many things Throughout the Bible, it talks about goats, a sheep, and cattle, because that’s how a person was valued at that time. It’s a historical document.
We have evolved so much as a people. Our ability to travel has given us a broader perspective of what the world actually encompasses. Our ability to become mini-creators, allows us to run around on this planet sometimes creating beauty and magic and at other times creating horror and devastation.
For me, Revelations was a prediction of what is coming if we remain addicted to our disconnections; if we remained disconnected from that original intention of living in a beautiful garden, having plenty for all if we adhere to living simply, living from the fruits of the Earth — instead of raping and pillaging and destroying everything for our insatiable appetites.
We made choices that lead us away from that and now we’re headed towards this pretty horrific ending. And there’s this myth that says “If your soul is saved, Heaven is the eventual Ending.” But for me, Revelations is this brilliant commentary on the consequences of being disconnected from the Divine. It’s a sacred conversation. How could we indiscriminately clear-cut old-growth ecosystems and turn them into mudslides and toxic dump lands? How we can be the largest incarcerator of people on this planet? And how can this not be somehow a magnifying glass for the dis-ease of spiritual devastation that’ lies inside ourselves? Revelations is a powerful manifesto that the more you disconnect from the sacred interconnected divinity of all life, this is what you’re going to witness. It’s not about some heaven hereafter; it’s about connecting ourselves to the Divine right here.
But there are a lot of people who are looking forward to Revelations happening and who are helping make sure the Apocalypse is Manifest Destiny. They are on the path of making sure that the absolute devastation of the planet is our predetermined, ordained future. Those who have a different belief are trying to create another end to the story.
GS: The Rapture has developed into what seems to be a very large Suicide Cult. And people who read Revelations as a warning are picking up the axes to accelerated the process — in a belief that the final act will give them privileged seats “in the balcony” as one of the elites that will be floated up to the clouds.
JB: I think that’s our mission as conscious, caring, committed, active people. We need to tell a different vision. Fear is a very powerful vision and it is a powerful way to get people to act in very specific ways. We need only look at our own lives and think about all the small choices that we make that are ultimately guided by fear. We don’t want to be too uncomfortable, so we’ll make a choice that we know is not the most conscious we could make. We’ll come up with excuses and reasonings to support why, for example, we chose to use a paper cup that came from a forest somewhere with a plastic lid that came from made from petroleum that came from the devastation of a community somewhere. We’ll chose to use that over using a reusable mug because we’re “just too busy” or “I didn’t think about it today.” Or whatever.
Ultimately, it’s our fear of letting go of our addiction to comfort. None of us are exempt from the power of fear in our lives. It’s a very powerful controlling vision.
That means the solutions we come up with cannot be based in doom and gloom and fear and retribution and “Oh, my goodness, the sky is falling.” (Even if the sky is falling!) Our vision has to be more powerful than fear.
It’s our call to action to tell a more inspiring vision. What would it look like to put the heavens back, even if the skies were falling? What would it be like to restore a scared and hurting Earth and human soul? What would it look like to replant the Garden of Eden on the wasted lot on the corner of our inner city? This is the vision that gives me goose-bumps. To those who are committed to making sure that the “End Times” come, our response must be a life-affirming, joy-filled, heart-centered vision that is a call that is more powerful than fear.
GS: What we should work on is a Green Book of Revelations. Instead of the End Times, the Unending Times. There’s a book called The Bible According to Noah that attempts to reinterpret the Bible in a new midrash of green awareness. In this version, the animals play an equal role with humans. It’s a wonderful concept and I think that’s one of the limitations of the Bible, that its prophetic chapter is blood-soaked and Apocalyptic.
JB: I think probably if Jesus were alive today, he’d pull that book out. You know, Jesus is given very few quotes of his own in the Bible. I always found that very interesting. I think it’s because his message was too powerful and that’s why they murdered him. Just like they murdered Gandhi, just like they murdered Martin Luther King. Jr. You could spend days just listing the names of people who have been killed for the power of their beliefs. The common thread that I find among people like that.
In the Bible, Jesus gives a whole list of things and ends by saying: “and the greatest of these is love.” He taught love and consciousness as a verb — as a way of being in the world, not just as something you talk about. Gandhi had a similar message: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
And Martin Luther King, Jr. was attacked when he dared to talk about the military-industrial complex and how that was directly tied in to what was happening to his people. In the Bible Jesus preached: “Get rid of all your belongings and go out into the world. Live simply.” He was the original Hippie.
The only time that he was ever shown to be angry — absolutely, uncontrollably angry was when they were dealing with money in the churches. The church was supposed to be the sacred place where you could come together to have fellowship and they dirtied it with a non-sacred thing called money and power. Jesus said, “Fellowship may not be tainted that way” and he lost his temper.
It’s such a powerful story for me. Here is this guy who is come to Earth as God’s son to show us the way, and all we’ve done is silence that message — beginning with when he was killed. And we’ve made sure to celebrate his killing ever since so we can celebrate his coming back. So we can celebrate where we get to go [to Heaven] and all the while we do everything we can to not pay attention to “What was his message about How To Live and Be On... This... Earth.”
He came to bring a message here to say that Heaven is here. It’s already here. It’s already within you. And here are the ways you should be to have Heaven on Earth.
And it’s such a powerful message, they took him out.
GS: And that is why we celebrate his birth and his death but not what happened in between — his life and his teachings.
Julia Butterfly Hill and Circle of Life can be reached at www.circleoflife.org. Photo courtesy Circle of Life
For more information
There are dozens of ways to legally resist war taxes. For more information, contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, the War Resisters League, and the Northern California War Tax Resistance, (510) 843-9877.
The pie chart at right is drawn from the War Resisters League’s line-by-line analysis of tables in the “Analytical Perspectives” book of the Budget of the US Government, Fiscal Year 2006.
The war in Iraq is costing America $4 billion a day, but the full impact of that spending doesn’t show up in the $2.57 trillion federal budget. Nor does the impact of Washington’s war spending show up in the familiar federal “Tax Pie” chart that the IRS sends out with their annual income tax mailings.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan attempted to keep his campaign pledge to “balance the budget” without raising taxes. To do this, Reagan’s advisors created a new “Unified Budget” that, for the first time, included Social Security and other trust funds in the federal budget. The Reagan administration redesigned the familiar “Tax Pie” graphic accordingly. This fiscal hoax not only made the deficit appear smaller, it also hid the mounting costs of Reagan’s military spending and the overall burden of war’s financial impact. (Interestingly, this precedent-breaking act goes unmentioned in the Treasury Department’s official “History of the US Tax System.”)
This bogus graphic is still used today but, as George W. Bush recently confessed, his war spending has bankrupted the trillion-dollar trust fund. In Bush’s words: “There is no trust.” To see the fiscal impact of Bush’s confession, strip the nonexistent trust funds from the pie graph (see above). The result: the military’s claim on the budget expands from 17 percent to 30 percent. Add the continuing costs of all prior military expenditures and the military’s cut quickly climbs to 48 percent of the budget pie.
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