About Hang Up on War!

Hang Up On War! began with telephone conversations between activists who were looking for further ways to resist the U.S. war on and occupation of Iraq, as well as opposing the larger policies of “pre-emptive war” and the “endless” war on terrorism.

We believe that these policies will increase rather than decrease terrorism and violence, kill and injure tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and erode our civil liberties at home as they steal hundreds of billions of dollars from our towns, cities and states. The war and occupation have already cost us over $160 billion, and this is only one part of the dramatic increase in the U.S. military budget — even as states and cities are faced with unprecedented deficits and are cutting back on vital services and programs.

The Iraq Pledge of Resistance network, which coordinated nonviolent civil disobedience actions to oppose the war, agreed upon antiwar phone tax resistance as a next step for the larger campaign. IPOR then worked with the War Resisters League, which has supported war tax resisters at all levels since World War II, and the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, a network of organizations that provide resources, information, and support for war tax resisters, to create Hang Up On War!

The networks and individuals who came together to create this campaign believe that nonviolence is a powerful form of resistance. Following the examples of Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., we created this campaign as a way to practice nonviolent noncooperation with our government’s foreign and military policies.

While the federal tax on your monthly telephone bill is relatively small, this tax raised $89 billion from 1966 to 2001, and about $6 billion per year since. As more and more people refuse to pay this tax to protest and resist the policies outlined above, we will be sending Washington an increasingly strong message that cannot be ignored, a message backed by our action.

Staff support for Hang Up On War! comes from the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, based just outside Washington , D.C., and the National War Tax Coordinating Committee, based in Brooklyn, NY.