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https://rozsixties.unl.edu/files/original/9ed9a0a2485bd2c90a6e687699fcfbe5.jpg
1ed31f6a272bc52bf6ad4e8adfd2907e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Buttons
Description
An account of the resource
Buttons were one of the most popular and pervasive forms of political messaging during the 1960s, combining brief messaging and memorable graphic designs. Buttons were inexpensive to produce on a mass basis and easy to distribute. They afforded any individual an opportunity to voice their opinions and, potentially, reach a broad audience. As Hunter Oatman-Stanford has written, “From discreet lapel pins to oversized buttons on purses or backpacks, pinbacks invite conversation by declaring potentially controversial viewpoints to complete strangers.” In this way, buttons were (and still are) a particularly democratic form of political propaganda.
As button collector, John Aisthorpe, has put it, buttons offer “a little snapshot of history.” During the 1960s, buttons were vital to the visual identity of a range of movements. “There were many protest groups who put their views on buttons,” Aisthorpe recalls, “from the early ’60s with the Free Speech Movement (FSM) to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and, later, the Veterans for Peace, the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, and the Yippies.” The political impact of buttons in the 1960s is hard to gauge, though their popularity suggests some modicum of significance. And, as Aisthorpe has asserted, “It’s hard to say what impact they had, but the text of buttons worn at protests were often used as antiwar chants, like ‘Hell no, we won’t go!’… They must have had some effect.” The buttons of the 1960s have remained some of the most enduring relics from this important past.
This collection includes buttons from a wide array of movements from the Sixties, including the student movement, civil rights and Black Power movements, women's liberation, environmentalism, the anti-nuclear movement, gay liberation, electoral politics, the Chicano movement, the labor movement and the counterculture, with a strong emphasis on the anti-war movement. In addition, a few buttons date from Roz Payne’s activist efforts in the 1970s and 1980s, including the early political campaigns of Vermont politician, Bernie Sanders.
Physical Object
An inanimate, three-dimensional object or substance. Note that digital representations of, or surrogates for, these objects should use Moving Image, Still Image, Text or one of the other types.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Resist Vietnam War Taxes
Description
An account of the resource
One tactic that anti-war activists used during the Vietnam War was to refuse to pay taxes, arguing that those monies went to support what they saw as an unjust war. Founded in 1965, the No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee campaigned for people to resist paying their 1964 federal income taxes. The campaign continued through 1967 and the group was successful in getting about 500 to refuse to pay taxes. After the Johnson Administration successfully pressed Congress to levy a 10% telephone tax to pay for increased troop levels in Vietnam, Chicago Catholic Worker activist, Karl Meyer, wrote the influential “Hang Up on War” pamphlet, which was distributed by national peace groups and became the basis of a War Resisters League national tax resistance campaign. In 1967, Gerald Walker of The New York Times organized Writers and Editors War Tax Protest. About 528 writers and editors pledged to refuse to pay the 10% Vietnam War tax surcharge, but only three publications — the New York Post (Jan. 30, 1968), the New York Review of Books (Feb. 15, 1968), and Ramparts magazine (Feb. 1968) — agreed to publish an ad publicizing the campaign. The New York Times did publish an early article about the protest on Sept. 17, 1967. In 1969, the National War Tax Resistance was organized and a press conference to announce the group was held in New York, featuring Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Kennett Love, and Bradford Lyttle. The group, which lasted until 1975, published a newsletter, two handbooks and established chapters across the country. Dr. Benjamin Spock was also a well-known tax resister during the Vietnam era.
The poem, "The Money Missing from Our Paychecks," by Stephen Wing, explored the issue of tax resistance:
We who eat
lest we go hungry, we who
lie down to sleep
because we know to the minute
what time we rise,
a bomber is blinking
across our bathroom mirrors that does not sleep,
a sentry walks the perimeter of our dim bedrooms
till the alarm rings
and we reach out to stop it
A truckload of soldiers comes leaping out
into smoke and noise when we
tear open our paychecks every Friday in the bar,
a bomb drops away from the black wing
even while we curse with ritual laughter the government
which has siphoned our blood in the night again
to fuel helicopters and tanks
A distant flame is casting those faint shadows
on the TV screen, a burning
that does not stop for Happy Hour,
while the bodies untangle from the pileup
and the referee bends to retrieve a fumble,
the family scattered
by an American bomb does not get up
The bodies are brown
as the football
waiting at the scrimmage line, but broken
like the field they farmed
they are too busy giving their
blood back to the soil
to blame us, but it is our battle they fight
for every breath, the money missing
from our paychecks every Friday has bought us
the pumping of their hearts to dip our
chips in and wash down
with our beer
it is our war
and only our waking hands can reach out
to stop it.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Roz Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Button
Language
A language of the resource
en-US
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Physical Object
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
ca. 1960s
Subject
The topic of the resource
Anti-War Movement
“Hang Up on War”
Allen Ginsberg
Anti-War
Benjamin Spock
Bradford Lyttle
Catholic Worker
Gerald Walker
Karl Meyer
Kennett Love
LBJ
National War Tax Resistance
New York Post
New York Review of Books
No Tax for War in Vietnam Committee
Pete Seeger
poetry
protest
Ramparts
Stephen Wing
tax resistance
The New York Times
Vietnam War
War Resisters League
Writers and Editors War Tax Protest