Strike Debt!

Debt is a tie that binds the 99%.

As individuals, families, and communities, most of us are drowning in debt to Wall Street for the basic things we need to live, like housing, education, and health care. Even those of us who do not have personal debt are affected by predatory lending. Our essential public services are cut because our cities and towns are held hostage by the same big banks that have been bailed out by our government in recent years.

We are not a loan. Strike Debt came from a coalition of Occupy groups looking to build popular resistance to all forms of debt imposed on us by the banks. Debt keeps us isolated, ashamed, and afraid. We are building a movement to challenge this system while creating alternatives and supporting each other. We want an economy where our debts are to our friends, families, and communities — and not to the 1%.

Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.

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Current Initiatives

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.

We kicked off this effort on November 15 with The People's Bailout, a variety show and telethon in NYC. All proceeds will go directly to buying people's debt and cancelling it.

The Debt Resistors' Operations Manual

This manual—written by an anonymous collective of resistors, defaulters, and allies from Strike Debt and Occupy Wall Street—aims to provide specific tactics for understanding and fighting against the debt system. You'll find detailed strategies and resources for dealing with credit card, medical, student, housing and municipal debt, tactics for navigating the pitfalls of personal bankruptcy, and information to help protect yourself from predatory lenders. Recognizing that individually we can only do so much to resist the system of debt, the manual also introduces ideas for those who have made the decision to take collective action.

The Strike Debt Organizing Kit

The information and advice in this kit can be used by Strike Debt affiliates, or by existing groups who would like to affiliate because they have shared goals. It is a living document, which means it will be revised periodically to reflect the experience and input of new affiliates.

Blog

Strike Student Debt, Not Just Interest Rates

Once again, Congress is talking about how to fix student debt without actually talking about student debt or the cost of higher education. To date, the negotiations have been focused on where to set the interest rate charged to students. It currently stands at 3.4% but is set to double on July first to 6.8%. This is like arguing about how to save a person drowning in a lake by quibbling over how deep the water should be: 100 feet, or 200 feet? In May, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) proposed a bill to cut the rate to 0.75%—the same amount that the Federal Reserve charges to banks. She has recently called for a grassroots movement to back her bill, recognizing the futility of trying to get it through a Congress hungry for campaign dollars from the likes of Sallie Mae. [Influence Explorer, 2012]

While we are of course deeply in favor of building a movement around the debt crisis, we think that any such movement must target the root of the problem, rather than pruning the foliage. In a truly democratic society, nobody would have to go into debt to earn a diploma. Education should be empowering, but debt-financed education serves only to ossify inequalities. Higher education should be available to all, regardless of ability to pay. Public two- and four-year colleges should be free, funded as a public good, and all current student debt should be erased.

 

To understand how this would work, it…

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