Karl Meyer (activist)

Last updated

Karl H. Meyer (born 1937 in West Rupert, Vermont) is an American pacifist, activist, Catholic Worker, and tax resister. He is the son of William H. Meyer, a former member of the United States House of Representatives from Vermont. He is the founder of the Nashville Greenlands Catholic Worker community in Nashville, Tennessee.

Contents

Life

Karl Meyer grew up in West Rupert, Vermont. His father first worked there as a soil-conservation agent, later he became a member of the Congress. In 1953, Karl went to the University of Chicago with a scholarship at the age of only 16. Rather soon, he dropped his study and went to New York City where he worked as a stock clerk at a bookstore. Due to recommendations of his former resident head, Meyer read books of several catholic authors just like Ammon Hennacy and Dorothy Day, who were engaged in the Catholic Worker Movement. According to his own words, Meyer found in the Catholic Worker "the most authentic American movement for change." [1]

In 1961, Meyer participated in the Peace March to Moscow, together with a group of activists across the US and then across Europe into the Soviet Union. In 1965, Meyer opposed the death penalty by walking from Chicago to Springfield, Illinois, dragging a mock electric chair on a cart. [2]

In 1984, he defied the IRS's "frivolous filing" penalty by filing what the agency considered to be a "frivolous" return every day that year. He was assessed $140,000 in penalties, but the IRS was able to recover only a little more than $1,000. He coined the name "cabbage patch resistance" for this technique, naming it after the then-popular Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, that, like his daily returns, were each a little different. [3]

In the 1990s, Karl Meyer used the "Peace House", a mobile home and educational center, in which he drove around the United States. In 1997 he founded "Nashville Greenlands", a catholic worker-affiliated community in Nashville, where he still lives. [2]

Meyer has been arrested more than 50 times while protesting, among other things, against the Cold War, the Vietnam War, conditions in East Germany, the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the death penalty and UN sanctions against Iraq. According to Richard Mertens of The University of Chicago Magazine, Meyer has committed his work to embrace peace by "living much of his life in voluntary poverty while trying to serve the poor and the unemployed." [1]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Berrigan</span> American anti-war activist (1923–2002)

Philip Francis Berrigan, SSJ was an American peace activist and Catholic priest with the Josephites. He engaged in nonviolent, civil disobedience in the cause of peace and nuclear disarmament and was often arrested.

Anarcho-pacifism, also referred to as anarchist pacifism and pacifist anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates for the use of peaceful, non-violent forms of resistance in the struggle for social change. Anarcho-pacifism rejects the principle of violence which is seen as a form of power and therefore as contradictory to key anarchist ideals such as the rejection of hierarchy and dominance. Many anarcho-pacifists are also Christian anarchists, who reject war and the use of violence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Dellinger</span> American pacifist and activist

David T. Dellinger was an American pacifist and an activist for nonviolent social change. He achieved peak prominence as one of the Chicago Seven, who were put on trial in 1969.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Lawson (activist)</span> American minister, educator, and activist

James Morris Lawson Jr. is an American activist and university professor. He was a leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his civil rights activism in 1960, and later served as a pastor in Los Angeles for 25 years.

The Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) was an American anti-war group, formed in 1957 to resist the US government's program of nuclear weapons testing. It was one of the first organizations to employ nonviolent direct action to protest against the nuclear arms race.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Berrigan</span> American poet and religious activist

Daniel Joseph Berrigan was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.

Ammon Ashford Hennacy (1893–1970) was an American Christian pacifist, anarchist, social activist, and member of the Catholic Worker Movement and Wobbly. He established the Joe Hill House of Hospitality in Salt Lake City, Utah, and practiced tax resistance.

Peacemakers was an American pacifist organization founded following a conference on "More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity" in Chicago in July 1948. Ernest and Marion Bromley and Juanita and Wally Nelson largely organized the group. The name “Peacemakers” was taken from a section of the Bible, the Beatitudes or Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." The group’s organizational structure adopted a multidivisional organizational structure with a loose hierarchy, prioritizing local committees including but not limited to the Tax Refusal and Military Draft Refusal Committee. The Peacemakers were social anarchists whose organizational beliefs are largely attributed to Marxist philosophy. Peacemakers aimed to advocate nonviolent resistance in the service of peace.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tax resistance</span> Refusal to pay a tax in opposition to a government or policy, rather than taxation itself

Tax resistance is the refusal to pay tax because of opposition to the government that is imposing the tax, or to government policy, or as opposition to taxation in itself. Tax resistance is a form of direct action and, if in violation of the tax regulations, also a form of civil disobedience.

Marion Bromleynée Coddington was a pioneer of the modern American tax resistance movement and a civil rights activist.

A tax protester, in the United States, is a person who denies that he or she owes a tax based on the belief that the Constitution of the United States, statutes, or regulations do not empower the government to impose, assess or collect the tax. The tax protester may have no dispute with how the government spends its revenue. This differentiates a tax protester from a tax resister, who seeks to avoid paying a tax because the tax is being used for purposes with which the resister takes issue.

Tax protesters in the United States advance a number of conspiracy arguments asserting that Congress, the courts and various agencies within the federal government—primarily the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)—are involved in a deception deliberately designed to procure from individuals or entities their wealth or profits in contravention of law. Conspiracy arguments are distinct from, though related to, constitutional, statutory, and administrative arguments. Proponents of such arguments contend that all three branches of the United States government are working covertly to defraud the taxpayers of the United States through the illegal imposition, assessment and collection of a federal income tax.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William H. Meyer</span> American politician

William Henry Meyer was an American politician and Member of the United States House of Representatives from Vermont.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frances Crowe</span> American peace activist and pacifist (1919–2019)

Frances Crowe was an American peace activist and pacifist from the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathy Kelly</span>

Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.

Karl Meyer may refer to:

A tax protester is someone who refuses to pay a tax claiming that the tax laws are unconstitutional or otherwise invalid. Tax protesters are different from tax resisters, who refuse to pay taxes as a protest against a government or its policies, or a moral opposition to taxation in general, not out of a belief that the tax law itself is invalid. The United States has a large and organized culture of people who espouse such theories. Tax protesters also exist in other countries.

Thomas C. Cornell was an American journalist and a peace activist against the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. He was an associate editor of the Catholic Worker and a deacon in the Catholic Church.

References

  1. 1 2 Mertens, Richard (April 2001). "A Radical Takes Root". The University of Chicago Magazine.
  2. 1 2 "Karl Meyer". Never The Same. December 26, 2014.
  3. Gross, David M. (2014). 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns. Picket Line Press. p. 123. ISBN   978-1490572741.

Further reading