Local War Resistance Pictured: Part 2
The Hoka Hey Encampment & War Tax Resistance
In our recent post “Local War Resistance Pictured: Part 1,” we wrote about the role of popular education in anti-war movements of the past. We also began unearthing a rich history of mass protests and direct actions targeting the military industrial complex in Minnesota for its role in the Vietnam War. Today, we broaden our understanding by diving into two additional anti-war tactics: protest encampments, and war tax resistance.
Hoka Hey Encampment
As the worldwide anti-war movement’s resistance to US imperialism and war mongering gained traction, groups diversified their tactics and protest encampments blossomed.
There were student encampments in Minnesota and across the country, like we saw this past school year in response to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
Following the arrests of the Software Pair for their disruption of the Sperry Corporation’s nuclear weapons operations, the Minnesota Women’s Peace Camp was set up outside of the company’s headquarters. This peace camp remained intact for over a year, welcoming women from different backgrounds and nurturing ritual, song, and sage smudging, all in resistance to empire.
The Hoka Hey Encampment, a response to the Honeywell Corporation’s intention to test their weapons in the Black Hills, was assembled in Thunder Eagle Canyon, (colonizers called it Hell Canyon), South Dakota. After the Forest Service destroyed a sacred sweat lodge at Honeywell’s request, Lakota organizers, Indigenous to the Black Hills, or Pahá Sápa, built the encampment on “Honeywell property” to protect their land.
The following excerpts detail some of the profound history of the Hoka Hey Encampment and Honeywell’s actions in Thunder Eagle Canyon.
“Honeywell did order the destruction of a structure that is held sacred to the practitioners of the Lakota religion. The structure, a sweat lodge built by Reginald Birdhorse and other members of the Hunkpapa Lakota Band, has been used around the area for religious ceremonies. It is located in Thunder Eagle Canyon (formerly Hell Canyon) where Honeywell wants to install a weapons testing site. Honeywell ordered that the sweatlodge, which is most likely on land owned by the Forest Service, and not Honeywell, be knocked down. The Fall River County Sheriff’s department complied on July 17th. In response a band of Sioux people from the Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River, and Standing Rock Indian Reservation, set up an encampment adjacent to the Honeywell site. The Hoka Hey Camp (which means camp of strength) has pledged to stop Honeywell from installing the facility, which was to begin testing in early September.”
“Sydney Keith, a Rapid City Lakota elder who recently prayed at the canyon said the real nature of the conflict in the canyon was prayer versus weapons. ‘I want to give a warning to all who are for destroying things for the sake of a few who are intent on going ahead with this project. How could you take this place of prayer and use it to test weapons that will kill so many innocent people? How can you do this?’”
“Peace, religious, Native American, and environmental groups in the Twin Cities are joining together on this issue. On August 27th over two hundred people gathered in Peavy Park in Minneapolis for a tobacco offering. The group, led by the AIM patrol drummers, marched down Franklin Ave to a Honeywell Security Systems office on Bloomington… The group then went to the Minneapolis American Indian Center, where local activist Larry Cloud Morgan led a pipe ceremony and participants donated food and supplies for Hoka Hey Camp. The event was sponsored by a coalition of groups including the Honeywell Project, Women Against Military Madness, Clergy and Laymen Concerned, the American Indian Movement patrol, Northern Sun Alliance, the Big Mountain Support Group, and Veterans for Life.”
War Tax Resistance
Minnesota also has a strong history of war tax resistance, in which conscientious objectors refuse to pay taxes during war times. This tactic is a rejection of the military industrial complex, fueled by American foreign policy, a country where more than 20% of tax dollars go directly to the military. Instead of funding schools, food, healthcare or public transit infrastructure, these tax dollars are given as subsidies to military contractors such as Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, B.A.E., and Honeywell, who use this money to build bombs and profit shareholders (for more information about present-day war manufacturers in Minnesota, see our previous post). Organizers resisting America’s facilitation and unequivocal support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza look to our Minnesotan anti-war organizer forebears, who bravely said, “Not on my dime,” in resistance to the Vietnam War, U.S. destabilization of governments in Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cambodia, and Laos, and the military’s escalatory behavior in the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. Below are images and newspaper clippings displaying the war tax resistance tactic.
“Throughout the world, however, people are resisting economic and political domination, as in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala… Protecting the foreign interests of American Corporations against resistance often requires intervention in the affairs of other nations. The US Government intervened in Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961-1962, The Dominican Republic in 1965, South Africa, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1954-1975, and today (1985) in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Cuba.”
“Witness a past ad Honeywell ad in the Ordinance Journal: ‘We stand ready to build weapons that work, to build them fast and to build them in quantity.’”
“Honeywell gets MILLIONS in tax money each year from American working people through the Defense (WAR) Department to develop weapons systems, hire workers at minimal wages to produce the weapons, then make large profits by selling the finished weapons to the government, which pays them with the taxes of working people.”
“On average it costs about the same: to arm and train one soldier as it does to educate 80 children, to build one modern bomber as it did to wipe out smallpox over a 10-year period, to launch the latest nuclear missile submarine as it does to build 450,000 homes.”
We hope that reading “Local War Resistance Pictured: Part 2” has left you feeling as inspired as we are from researching and writing it. We believe that the movements of the past offer snippets of a roadmap for navigating the present. This three-part series is an exploration of the wide range of available tactics to organizers and activists who find the war machine unconscionable. May our history remind us of the pre-existence of effective tactics, and also inspire novel modes of resistance.
Stay tuned for Part 3 of “Local War Resistance Pictured,” in which we will highlight employee-focused tactics.