[We get a lot of questions by email, and we do our best to respond to each and every one personally. Though we have a short FAQ on the Rolling Jubilee website, many questions deserve more in-depth responses. We've decided to post longer answers to some of the more common questions on this blog, in a regular feature titled 'Commonly asked questions'. Check back regularly for updates!] The Rolling Jubilee is project of Strike Debt where we buy debts for pennies on the dollar. But instead of collecting on that debt like a debt collector would, we just abolish it. A common criticism of Rolling Jubilee is that we’re buying “bad” debts that would never have been collected anyway. We assure you that this is not the case. Here’s why. We are stepping in to the process at precisely the same point as other participants, the debt buyers and debt collectors. These are investors, who buy this debt precisely so that they can collect on it and make a profit. And they are succeeding. The New Economy Project looked at just 26 debt buyers in just New York City over a two year period and documented how they extracted $1.1 billion dollars of wealth from the poorest New Yorkers. Debt buying is a very lucrative industry. If they’re valuable, why sell them? If it’s possible to collect on these debts, why do the lenders sell them in the first place? It turns out that large lenders like banks and credit…
The Rolling Jubilee
We buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals' debt—instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. All proceeds go directly to buying people's debt and cancelling it.