Peacemakers

Peacemakers was an American pacifist organization. The name of the group is taken from a section of the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

The group was founded following a conference on “More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity” in Chicago in July, 1948 to advocate nonviolent resistance in the service of peace, particularly draft resistance and tax resistance. [Gross, David (ed.) "We Won’t Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader" ISBN 1434898253 pp. 446-447] The group’s members vowed:

(1) to refuse to serve in the armed forces in either peace or war; (2) to refuse to make or transport weapons of war; (3) the refuse to be conscripted or to register; (4) to consider to refuse to pay taxes for war purposes — a position already adopted by some; (5) to spread the idea of peacemaking and to develop non-violent methods of opposing war through various forms of non-cooperation and to advocate unilateral disarmament and economic democracy. [http://www.manasjournal.org/pdf_library/VolumeI_1948/I-32.pdf]

Among the organization’s founding members were A.J. Muste, Ernest and Marion Bromley, Ralph T. Templin, Juanita and Wally Nelson, Roy Kepler, Cecil Hinshaw, Milton Mayer, Bayard Rustin and Horace Champney.

The “Tax Refusal Committee” of Peacemakers is credited for founding the modern American war tax resistance movement. Peacemakers published the first guide to war tax resistance in 1963.

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