26 Weekends in County Jail

In 1995, after hearing Madeleine Albright say on national television that she felt sacrificing 500,000 children to punish Saddam Hussein was “worth it,” Quaker pacifist Joseph Olejak became a political activist. As a form of civil disobedience, he refused to pay income tax, since his tax dollars would go to fund a war he opposed. This was the beginning of a twenty-year journey towards peace–initially by non-compliance with the military industrial complex. Sentenced to 26 weekends in the county jail for failure to pay income taxes, Olejak kept a journal and wrote about his experiences, as well as his growing awareness of peace, justice, and the U.S. prison system.