You’ve probably heard the story about the Internal Revenue Service spending $21 million to send out letters telling taxpayers that the IRS and George W. Bush are giving them a rebate. Tom Daschle wondered out loud if 30 million people will get a letter from the president reminding them they won’t get a rebate. We groan and move on, it’s just another indignity to which we are subjected. Worse things are happening.
Last week, Frontiers of Freedom, a group funded by tobacco and oil companies, petitioned the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of Rainforest Action Network, the San Francisco-based environmental group. Tax-exempt groups – called 501(c)(3)s, after the section of the tax code outlining their exemption – are allowed to engage in public education, but are barred from other activities, such as lobbying.
Frontiers of Freedom maintains Rainforest Action Network deserves to lose tax-exempt status because it engages in direct action – hanging banners with environmental messages, staging demonstrations outside the corporate offices of logging companies, blocking cargo ships laden with wood from old-growth forests. By engaging in such activities, say the people at Frontiers of Freedom, the activists at Rainforest Action Network create patterns of criminal behavior and – ipso facto – people who donate money to Rainforest Action do not deserve a tax deduction.
It’s an interesting argument, and if the IRS accepts it and acts against Rainforest Action, it means a new landscape for activists on the right as well as the left. There’s no doubt about the timing of the petition. If a Democrat occupied the Oval Office, I’d be talking about something else this week, but seeing how Mr. Bush is politicizing the IRS with his letter-writing campaign, the friends of oil and tobacco can be forgiven for assuming the revenue service is now at their disposal for use in corporate vendettas.
Before we get carried away, let’s look at the facts. Rainforest Action Network is a public education organization. Its means of public education may be theatric, but solidly in the tradition of the First Amendment to the Constitution. People are sometimes arrested in the course of direct actions staged by Rainforest Action. Significantly, people are sometimes NOT arrested in the course of direct actions staged by Rainforest Action.
People who engage in non-violent direct action rarely do so for the sake of breaking the law. Usually, the goal is public education, to draw the public’s attention to an issue and to shape public opinion around that issue. Some people take direct action to bear witness to what they consider an injustice, some to place themselves between an aggressor and the object of aggression.
People do get arrested and charged, some are convicted. Whether or not this happens has less to do with the activists than it does with the police and prosecutors in a given jurisdiction. There were moments in my own career when I was sure I was about to be arrested, only to have the police shrug and walk away. At other times, I was handcuffed and whisked off in a squad car without really knowing why.
Certainly, the Internal Revenue Service will agree that one of the most sacrosanct manifestations of First Amendment rights and public education is door-to-door canvassing and yet I doubt a week goes by without a canvasser being arrested somewhere in America.
If Rainforest Action Network restricts its activities only to those things which it can be sure will not result in arrest by police or harassment by corporate front groups, it won’t do much of anything, certainly nothing worthwhile.
On the other hand, if Frontiers of Freedom is truly interested in the activities of those who break the law – I mean, big time – they might want to take a look at their funders.
A Tax on Speech
You’ve probably heard the story about the Internal Revenue Service spending $21 million to send out letters telling taxpayers that the IRS and George W. Bush are giving them a rebate. Tom Daschle wondered out loud if 30 million people will get a letter from the president reminding them they won’t get a rebate. We groan and move on, it’s just another indignity to which we are subjected. Worse things are happening.
Last week, Frontiers of Freedom, a group funded by tobacco and oil companies, petitioned the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of Rainforest Action Network, the San Francisco-based environmental group. Tax-exempt groups – called 501(c)(3)s, after the section of the tax code outlining their exemption – are allowed to engage in public education, but are barred from other activities, such as lobbying.
Frontiers of Freedom maintains Rainforest Action Network deserves to lose tax-exempt status because it engages in direct action – hanging banners with environmental messages, staging demonstrations outside the corporate offices of logging companies, blocking cargo ships laden with wood from old-growth forests. By engaging in such activities, say the people at Frontiers of Freedom, the activists at Rainforest Action Network create patterns of criminal behavior and – ipso facto – people who donate money to Rainforest Action do not deserve a tax deduction.
It’s an interesting argument, and if the IRS accepts it and acts against Rainforest Action, it means a new landscape for activists on the right as well as the left. There’s no doubt about the timing of the petition. If a Democrat occupied the Oval Office, I’d be talking about something else this week, but seeing how Mr. Bush is politicizing the IRS with his letter-writing campaign, the friends of oil and tobacco can be forgiven for assuming the revenue service is now at their disposal for use in corporate vendettas.
Before we get carried away, let’s look at the facts. Rainforest Action Network is a public education organization. Its means of public education may be theatric, but solidly in the tradition of the First Amendment to the Constitution. People are sometimes arrested in the course of direct actions staged by Rainforest Action. Significantly, people are sometimes NOT arrested in the course of direct actions staged by Rainforest Action.
People who engage in non-violent direct action rarely do so for the sake of breaking the law. Usually, the goal is public education, to draw the public’s attention to an issue and to shape public opinion around that issue. Some people take direct action to bear witness to what they consider an injustice, some to place themselves between an aggressor and the object of aggression.
People do get arrested and charged, some are convicted. Whether or not this happens has less to do with the activists than it does with the police and prosecutors in a given jurisdiction. There were moments in my own career when I was sure I was about to be arrested, only to have the police shrug and walk away. At other times, I was handcuffed and whisked off in a squad car without really knowing why.
Certainly, the Internal Revenue Service will agree that one of the most sacrosanct manifestations of First Amendment rights and public education is door-to-door canvassing and yet I doubt a week goes by without a canvasser being arrested somewhere in America.
If Rainforest Action Network restricts its activities only to those things which it can be sure will not result in arrest by police or harassment by corporate front groups, it won’t do much of anything, certainly nothing worthwhile.
On the other hand, if Frontiers of Freedom is truly interested in the activities of those who break the law – I mean, big time – they might want to take a look at their funders.