The following is a copy of a letter to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.:

Would you be willing to fully inform your constituents that almost half of their income tax dollars are used to support the military-industrial complex, even when the United States is not involved in a major military engagement?

Would you be willing to identify for them which major corporations are profiting from this outlay?

Would you be willing to share the research that shows peaceful negotiation to be more effective than war for resolving conflict situations?

Would you be willing (with the help of the National Priorities Project) to inform your constituents exactly the negative effect the allocation of their tax dollars to the military is having on education, health care, research to prevent global warming, maintenance of infrastructure and support for the indigent?

We, the people, need this kind of information.

Even without it, a majority of us, I believe, have indicated clearly that we want our tax dollars spent for domestic needs, not for war.

I refuse voluntarily to pay for war. Like those in the past who refused military service on religious grounds, I am a conscientious resister to war.

Although I live in a “democracy,” I feel unheard when I write, petition, vote or march for peace. Therefore, I am undertaking considerable personal effort and risk to commit civil disobedience in the matter of my income taxes. For six years now, I have sent only half of the “tax due” shown on the bottom line of my IRS 1040 forms. I hide nothing, and lie never. I am not opposed to taxes. I would readily pay the other half if it were allocated to the domestic needs of our people.

I am aware of your liberal voting record, Senator.

But would you be willing adamantly to stand up against the military-industrial establishment, many of them among the 1 percent, those legislators who persist in the primitive ideas that might makes right, and richer is better?

Elizabeth Boardman
Davis

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