26 Weekends in County Jail - Joseph Olejak

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 country 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.