Life After Debt: A Gathering of Refusal
Posted 11 years ago on Sept. 9, 2012, 11:54 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
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strike debt
This is a reminder to join us TODAY for Strike Debt's inaugural action!
Come with your bills, debt notices, city budgets, and other symbols of debt to burn.
Life After Debt: A Gathering of Refusal
Sunday, September 9th, 4-6pm
East River State Park. 90 Kent Ave at N.8th Street.
facebook invite
Debt is a way of life; it is the bedrock of a rotten system. From birth, we're told that in order to achieve success, we have to get into debt. This happens to individuals, towns, cities and countries alike. It affects us all, whether we actually have debt or not. Some of us take out huge mortgages and student loans under the assumption that doing so will allow us to achieve the elusive dream of success. We buy things we can't afford and work jobs we don't want, striving towards promises of success that seem to be getting emptier by the day. Despite our best efforts, we struggle to find meaningful work, secure housing, and accessible healthcare. We've been buying into the system, but getting very little in return. Meanwhile, banks and credit card companies get rich off our debts and the debts of our communities. Our labor props up a system based on illusory rewards, and we find that we have less and less time for our lives and each other.
It's time to turn our backs on this system of debt and create something new in its place. In a gesture echoing the draft card burnings of the 1960's, we will be burning symbols of debt to express our refusal to be conscripted into a life of exploitative work and empty consumerism.
Being in debt can make us feel alone, trapped and inadequate, hopeless in the face of endless bills and service cuts. But debt can also bring us together. We believe we can be free if we invest in one another, rather than in a system that seeks only to take from us. Burning our debts is a celebration of that possibility.
Join us on Sunday, September 9th, at 4pm in East River State Park as we burn our debts and share our stories and hopes for the future. Together, we can step out of the shadows and light the way towards something better.
Let's imagine life after debt.
Wear your Sunday best. Refreshments will be served.
About Strike Debt:
Strike Debt is a network of students, artists, academics, and organizers who are sparking conversations about how debt affects us all and what we can do about it. Through militant research, direct action, and mutual support, we are exploring ways that we can break the chains of debt and create new bonds of solidarity.
Very well written article by the way, I think I will share it on my Debt Neutrality blog.
We can make a much larger statement, if we stopped getting into debt in the first place.
Only if we could rewind the clock to when credit cards were just beginning to blanket the U.S, and simply demanded that monthly minimum payments were 12% instead of 2%, people would have only borrowed what they could afford to borrow.
Unwinding that is next to impossible now. If all penalties, fees and interest rate charges were waived on all credit card and student loan debt, it would still take 4 to 10 years to get consumer debt down to a manageable level.
It would probably take longer than four to ten years, but that is all the more reason to start now. One can start simply by us all ripping up credit cards. (I'm not exactly sure what to do with student loans. Kids do need to invest in their future, but hopefully they can somehow learn to step away from this debt culture that is "consuming" us. Maybe they need to get realistic plans in place to pay student loans off before they take out the loan, and if they can't come up with a plan, they should not take out the loan.) Debt should never be a way of life.
Instead of burning our bills, we should rather be burning our credit cards, and loan applications!
It is our debt and spending which fuels the power of the 1%. Should we get control over our debt and spending not only does that enlighten our own personnel economic positions, it will also drain the 1% of their power.
Chucking away a cell phone, or a TV cable line should not be too much of a sacrifice for the cause of economic freedom.
yes, except that the interest rate is not zero percent. So if it's a five to ten year battle (sounds like a prison sentence) at no interest rate charge, it's easily a 15 to 20 year battle with interest rate charges.
when I applied for college financial aid , I was given a loan
And how did you pay it back? , or if you are still in school, how do you plan to pay it back?
RIGHT-ON Do It To It. Too bad we don't have draft cards to burn.
Action Alert
https://www.facebook.com/events/147115705449521/?ref=14
Solidarity!
Solidarity!
why don't you just pay your debts instead?