• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
permaculture forums growies critters building homesteading energy monies kitchen purity ungarbage community wilderness fiber arts art permaculture artisans regional education skip experiences global resources cider press projects digital market permies.com pie forums private forums all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
master stewards:
  • r ranson
  • Carla Burke
  • Nancy Reading
  • John F Dean
  • Jay Angler
  • paul wheaton
stewards:
  • Pearl Sutton
  • Burra Maluca
  • Joseph Lofthouse
master gardeners:
  • Timothy Norton
  • Christopher Weeks
gardeners:
  • Jeremy VanGelder
  • Maieshe Ljin
  • Nina Surya

Sovereign Citizens?

 
pollinator
Posts: 287
55
  • Likes 3
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Hey guys, making full use of my pie gift this month post in the cider press haha
Do we have any Sovereign Citizens on here? Or anybody that knows someone that is? I would love to learn more about it, preferably from someone who has made it work, or not. Of course anything I find online is sensationalism. In person, I have heard a little of both sides, one side saying They're cheating us out of our privileges and that it's our human right to be freer than we are. The other side says that it's just an illusion of freedom, and that you're always constantly battling police/courts/government officials over legal semantics for the littlest things.
(Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting violent anarchy or anything like that.)
Thoughts?
 
master gardener
Posts: 5064
Location: Upstate NY, Zone 5, 43 inch Avg. Rainfall
2213
monies home care dog fungi trees chicken food preservation cooking building composting homestead
  • Likes 8
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Ohh, I love messy topics.

A little background from me, I studied American Political Science in college with a specialization in Constitutional law as well as minored in Homeland Security. My knowledge and assumptions come from this sort of background.

The Sovereign Citizen Movement is super varied with different interpretations by individuals involved. The movement (At least in the US, I have seen it spread to places such as Canada) GENERALLY is based off of an idea that the system that our goverment is run on (Legal framework) is illegitimate and there is a common-law loophole that they seek to utilize in order to delegitimize the governments power over them. I have seen a few varieties of trying to legitimize this superseding common law system through trimmed snippets of words from the Founding Fathers as well as historical events but the arguments in my opinion are quite flawed.

Some things to look up to try and understand their reasoning would be history related to the Reconstruction Period (Post Civil War). The gold standard abandonment is a big driver as well.

Groups to research include the Moorish Nation and The Aware Group.

I hope this might help?
 
Almond Thompson
pollinator
Posts: 287
55
  • Likes 2
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Those resources sound awesome Tim, I'll look into them Thanks for weighing in!
 
Almond Thompson
pollinator
Posts: 287
55
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Does anybody here have any personal experience?
 
pollinator
Posts: 1253
Location: Chicago
426
dog forest garden fish foraging urban cooking food preservation bike
  • Likes 16
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Not sure what you mean by “personal experience.”  I am an attorney with some anarchist leanings. I have had consultations with people who ask about Sovereign Citizen ideas and I have seen the boilerplate filings that “sovereign citizens” often use in federal court in order to try and get out of taxes etc.

Conceptually, it is like an individual cessation movement. Hence the name. An individual citizen cecedes from the nation to be their own sovereign.

As far as any actual argument under U.S. law there’s no “there there.”  No court or agency or government body is ever going to say “yes, you’re right and our laws do not apply to you, congratulations on finding the magic words.”

So I am not trying to argue for or against anyone taking such a stance, but it is a political stance at odds with the entire idea of government. And at least in the early 2000s there were quite a few incidents of people claiming to be sovereign citizens ambushing and killing law enforcement officers. So people proclaiming themselves sovereign citizens may find themselves under scrutiny.

 
steward and tree herder
Posts: 9489
Location: Isle of Skye, Scotland. Nearly 70 inches rain a year
4533
4
transportation dog forest garden foraging trees books food preservation woodworking wood heat rocket stoves ungarbage
  • Likes 2
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I know this isn't really relevant but thought this link may bring a smile: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2020/jun/15/we-rule-ok-englands-independent-island-kingdoms I've got a feeling I read about another 'island kingdom' recently too...
 
Posts: 386
Location: Eastern Washington
100
  • Likes 3
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Back in 92, I worked an IRS case for a sovereign citizen. He owned five cedar mills. He battled the IRS, federal OSHA types and the state Labor and Industries types for decades. When I came on board, he was under a federal, grand jury indictment for evasion.  In the end, he was able to get the jury served with documents that countered the filed indictment, resulting in the grand jury reaching the conclusion he was correct, he was not a tax payer.

The case went all to the U.S Supreme Court. It was one of 13 Writs of Certiorari (a cute name for reviewing a case) it picked up that year. It backed the grand jury determination.

A major take-away I got from working that case is, when people ask me if they should quit paying taxes, I tell them they should study law, local, state and federal agency procedures, and court rules for at least two years, including by getting with others who were deep into such things, and who had won battles, before making a decision.

Other things my experiences taught me are:

(1) Learn to write motions, discovery requests, complaints and, especially, declarations/affidavits.

(2) Learn and use the laws of those you are in battle with. Applying patriot arguments you pick up in groups or off line get a lot of people in deep trouble.

Meanwhile, it is fact few agents can follow their own agency's policies and procedures.

(3) Use the kitchen sink. That is, if you know something that could be damaging to the agency, the town / city / county / state or federal government and its agents, even if it has nothing to do with the case, consider using it.

Even if you use the information elsewhere, but it is tied to you and those you are at war with know about it, it can inspire interesting things.

As an example, I helped a fellow acquire permits for five, seven acre plots of land. The county (translation: agents) was playing major games. I used the disclosure laws to dig deep into their records and found many things that were more than a bit problematic for the county. Things like:

(a) The law requires money taken for permits or fees to go back to what t was charged for, or it becomes a tax, and an illegal use of the county's police powers.

And there is that country prosecutors, routinely, go after community (family) bank accounts based on that funds were comingled. What's good for the goose. . . .

(b) Superior Court administrators, clerks and judges allow guardians ad litem [G'sAL] to work for the court without a business licenses otherwise required by the county and state. First, the courts do not have the authority to waive law to further the business of the court.  This, essentially, opens the door for treating the guardians as employees, but for whom the court's administrators failed to withhold income taxes, Labor and Industries taxes, Social Security taxes. . . .

(c) Public defenders and others have been known to use court's letterheads to conduct their business, and to withhold information required by court rule, CR11  (i.e., their names, place of business. . .).

(d) Court clerks, frequently, violate the protected right to access the courts, by refusing to release court case files unless the requester comes back on another day.

(5) I tell people to run, as fast as they can, from patriot schemes like, the Strawman argument and the Consensual Liens arguments.

I see these things resurface every few years. It's always the same, and like the socialism arguments - "[t]hey just didn't do it right."

(6) The fellow, mentioned above and who took on the IRS and others, did not take any benefits from the state or federal government. He did not use a Social Security Number. He did not use ZIP Codes (one judge overseeing an IR case, declared the man was subject just based on that, alone). He did not use business, drivers, marriage or any other licenses. He did not pay his employees in Federal Reserve Notes (limited liability discharges of the debt via the use of promissory notes). . . .

(7) Regarding the above mentioned grand jury target's battles, a majority of his life was spent fending off the agents, as they went after him and his, then, five million a year business (cedar mills).

In the end, we could write [more] books on this.
 
When I was younger I felt like a man trapped inside a woman's body. Then I was born. My twin is a tiny ad:
Fed up of Silicon Valley Social Media? Join Retalk, the place of great conversation
http://retalk.com
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic