Due to the financial challenges of the last year, we regret to announce that the People’s Life Fund won’t have the resources for our regular 2023 Tax Day granting session. Our apologies to everyone who has been eager to apply for a grant.
We appreciate your work, and will get back to supporting your groups as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Meanwhile, if you have received a PLF grant, and haven’t yet given us a brief report on your accomplishments, please do so now, using this form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeFfcPPUesGvbeIs7YA3edKS2PML-M5YX-DTjFDs3qtN8843w/viewform
War Tax Redirection In the Face of Yet Another War
As Ukraine joins the many nations around the world being devastated by war, the People’s Life Fund invites you to join us as we redirect resisted war taxes to local efforts that counterbalance the harms of the war economy. It will be an uplifting evening that will highlight the possibility of what is possible when our resources and efforts are devoted to peace and justice.
While we love holding our annual potluck and event in person, we will again celebrate our Tax Day event on Zoom as a precaution against COVID exposure.
People’s Life Fund War Tax Redirection Granting Ceremony!
Thursday April 14, 2022 from 6:00 to 7:30 PM PDT, virtual
Please email nowartax@riseup.net for the Zoom link and password.
The People’s Life Fund is excited to give grants of $2,000-$5,000 each to fifteen exceptional Bay Area groups offering critical services in Northern California communities. We welcome you to attend our virtual Granting Ceremony, where a spokesperson from each of these groups will receive the grant and tell us about their mission and their work.
Those of us who challenge our national spending priorities lament the fact that the health, housing and social services so desperately needed in this time of global crisis have been depleted over the years because so much of our taxes are devoted to militarism and war. As we struggle to address the magnitude of the Coronavirus epidemic, along with so many other health disparities here and around the world, we also know that the crisis of climate chaos deepens every day, and urgently needs to be addressed. The US military is the single largest driver of climate change.
We are proud to support the following groups with our 2022 war tax redirection:
Self Help People’s Hunger Program
Northridge Cooperative Homes – Youth Garden Program
Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
Radio B’alam – Mayan Voices / East Bay Sanctuary Covenant)
California Poor People’s Campaign Bay Area
Nevada County Harm Reduction Coalition – Mobile Distribution Project
People of Color Sustainable Housing Network
Soul Food Shack/The Village in Oakland
We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For – Arm The Girls Femme Defense
Alliance of South Asians Taking Action
Arab Youth Public Art Project/Art Forces
People’s Life Fund will Redirect $60,000 to Local Groups on April 15th!
Please Join Our Virtual PLF Granting Ceremony
Thursday, April 15th, 6:00 to 7:30 PM
(Please log in at 5:45 for videos)
Zoom Meeting ID: 848 6187 3552. Passcode: 739561 One tap mobile: +16699006833,,84861873552#,,,,*739561# US (San Jose) +12532158782,,84861873552#,,,,*739561# US (Tacoma)
The People’s Life Fund is proud to support the following Bay Area groups:
Arab Film and Media Institute
Canticle Farm
East Bay Cohousing
East Bay Solidarity School
Foodz Mutual Aid
Frailty Myths
Gill Tract Farm Coalition
Green Life project of Earth Island Institute
Hand to Hand Self Defense Center
KXSF.FM / San Francisco Community Radio
Movement Rights
North Oakland Mutual Aid Network
Oakland Print Shop
Omni Commons Collectives
PLACE (People Linking Art, Community, Ecology)
Prevention at the Intersections
Restoring Justice for Indigenous Peoples
Rogers & Rosewater Soup Company
SOS -Village in Oakland
The Berkeley Friends Church Food Pantry
The Refuge
Thrive Street Choir
We Are Their Voices
Weekend-Adventures
Youth vs Apocalypse
as well as the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
Those of us who challenge our national spending priorities, know that our complete lack of preparedness to respond to the COVID crisis is directly related to the fact that the health, housing and social services that would have slowed the spread of the virus have been systematically depleted because the lion’s share of our taxes are devoted to militarism and war. Last year along, over $1.7 Trillion in tax dollars was spent on the US military. And even as we struggle to comprehend the magnitude of the Coronavirus epidemic, we also know that the crisis of climate chaos looms larger every day, and urgently needs to be addressed. The US military is the single largest driver of climate change.
Since Tax Day has been extended till May 15, we now have an extra month to get out the word that we are standing up against paying for these deadly priorities. Please use your social media, email, or any creative means you can come up with, to spread the word “Don’t Pay for War!” Join war tax resisters around the country and post a picture of yourself with a homemade sign. Add the hastags #NoTaxes4War and #NWTRCC to help connect with the National War Tax Resistance campaign. Find more ideas and information about Tax Day Actions around the country at NWTRCC.org.
Call for 2021 People’s Life Fund Grant Applications
The People’s Life Fund will be granting up to a total of
$50,000 in 2021.
Groups may apply for a grant of up to $2,500.
All grant application materials must be received by:
Friday, March 12, 2021 at 5 pm.
Please use the online People’s Life Fund Application Form to submit your request.
Check here for more information.
If you have trouble using the online form, or if you have questions, feel free to reach out to us at nowartax@riseup.net or 510-842-6124.
If you have received a grant and haven’t already sent in a report, please submit a PLF Grant Report Form for your most recently received grant before reapplying.
July 15, 2020 Special Granting Session
On the extended Tax Day, July 15, 2020, we made a second round of grants totaling $12,000 to groups that directly address the issues of racism and police violence as well as providing relief for those most vulnerable to the impacts of the Coronavirus epidemic.
We held a virtual granting ceremony to honor the recipients which were selected:
- Black Organizing Project
- HOMIES Empowerment Project FREEdom Store
- Oakland Communities United for Equity & Justice – Food & Hygiene Distribution
- Feed the People/The Village – Hotels Not Graves Fund
- Anti-Police Terror Project
- Moms 4 Housing
- Jerralynn Brown Blueford, mother of Alan Blueford, killed by OPD
- Maria Moore, sister of Kayla Moore, killed by BPD
- Barbara Doss, mother of Dujuan Armstrong, killed at Santa Rita Jail
- Encampment for Citizenship
Additionally, on April 15th of this year, we redirected a total of $21,850 in small grants to eleven local social justice organizations that are providing human services that the government is not adequately supplying.
For more info on our April 15th, 2020 grantees, please go HERE.
As war tax resisters, we are united in our opposition to war and militarism, both at home and abroad. We use the redirection of our tax dollars as both a statement of our conscientious objection to state violence, and as a concrete way to “put our money where our mouths are.” The People’s Life Fund is an escrow fund, founded by Bay Area resisters in 1971, to redirect refused war taxes and other contributions toward life sustaining purposes. On April 15th of this year, we redirected a total of $21,850 in small grants to eleven local social justice organizations that are providing human services that the government is not adequately supplying. On this extended Tax Day, July 15, 2020, we are making a second round of grants to groups that directly address the issues of racism and police violence as well as providing relief for those most vulnerable to the impacts of the Coronavirus epidemic.
Today, as Americans find ourselves facing a triple pandemic—the COVID virus, rampant institutional racism and the economic crisis—the underlying damages caused by state violence is laid bare. We have allowed the lion’s share of public resources to be devoted toward systems of violence—the military, the prison industrial complex, immigration enforcement and the police. As a direct result, our life affirming systems of public health, education, environmental protection, infrastructure and our social safety net have been critically underfunded. The role of racism is integral to each of these systems of state violence at the local, regional and international levels.
Black, Brown, and Indigenous organizers in our communities are leading—and have been leading for generations—fierce campaigns to end state violence, dismantle white supremacy, and eliminate all forms of oppression. As war tax resisters, we see poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, economic exploitation, environmental destruction and militarization of law enforcement as integrally linked with the militarism which we abhor. Our July 15th act of war tax redirection is focused specifically on groups, led by people of color, who are actively working in the spirit of the Movement for Black Lives’ call to divest in state violence in order to invest in true community safety.