Speaker 1: Microphone. Chuck, you're listening to waiting on reparations and production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio one to want to factor chandelier
Speaker 1: on the beach. Oh yeah, uh yeah yo yo Yo,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, who the hell is
Speaker 1: this calling me? A waken me up at night in
Speaker 1: my slumber looking at my phone. I don't recognize this number, Yo,
Speaker 1: I can't say it. I'm looking at that ship. I
Speaker 1: think of Bill. They want me to pay it. I'm like,
Speaker 1: funk that. I don't know who they're trying to find, yo,
Speaker 1: because I don't even know nobody who live in Ohio.
Speaker 1: So now I gotta ducking dodge you probably getting another
Speaker 1: job that want to get my neck? No battle, what's
Speaker 1: the cost? He collectors? I ain't paying you ship. Telly
Speaker 1: May Yeah, she stay on my dick. These niggas be
Speaker 1: up in my damns. She said. He trying to reap
Speaker 1: hiss my priest. But I'd be sipping orange so that
Speaker 1: like my name was Keenan. You have to notice how
Speaker 1: everyone you used to vote, and all your family and
Speaker 1: your friends where y'all got the student loans. Everybody shares
Speaker 1: the pain. It's not just you a loan. That's while
Speaker 1: we always write these robs and give you all this
Speaker 1: moving pole. Imagine you're pulled over in the car for
Speaker 1: the map. You're the curse of the police to get
Speaker 1: fucking charged with the threat. You come the book and
Speaker 1: swept inside the carseral net. So now you got this
Speaker 1: lawyer fees and finds carsoral debt. But if we all
Speaker 1: came together about the hundred thousands, we could get them
Speaker 1: to cancel all the mortgages on the houses. But it's
Speaker 1: only possible if you're willing to be loud and too
Speaker 1: people know you're done with that, no longer allow it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fuck yeah, it's dope, knife, I'm legal, Francay. We are
Speaker 1: waiting on reparations. That was that was fired that I
Speaker 1: was still basking a little bit and forgot to say,
Speaker 1: Harry up, it's all good. So how you been, man, Man,
Speaker 1: I've been good. Yeah, just same. We'll keeping up on
Speaker 1: this election fiasco while you know, trying to do my thing.
Speaker 1: But geez, you know, it's almost like you can't even
Speaker 1: really make any plans right now until the election gets resolved.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of where I'm at right now. When's
Speaker 1: that going to be I mean, I'm at least talking
Speaker 1: about election night. I mean, who knows how long that
Speaker 1: mess that old pipe dream which one election night? No,
Speaker 1: I mean you know what, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know now with the with the new poll numbers, I
Speaker 1: mean obviously none of this matters. Every you know, people
Speaker 1: gotta vote, you know, so poll numbers don't mean ship.
Speaker 1: But right now it's looking like he might not even
Speaker 1: really be able to achieve. But you know he's gonna try.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying, and revised my previous statement in
Speaker 1: that on election night, we should know who are new
Speaker 1: d A is. We shouldn't know who our senators are
Speaker 1: going to be, and that's definitely matters. Does stuff really
Speaker 1: really matters to take back the Senate? We have somebody
Speaker 1: who in Athens a least is going to be pushing
Speaker 1: for a sort of justice practices and for you know,
Speaker 1: not prosecuting like minor drug offenses and ship like that.
Speaker 1: That's the ship y'all gotta get out and vote for.
Speaker 1: It's like the down ballot races are the really important ones.
Speaker 1: If you want to see, like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: the real change happened. Yeah, like your carseral debt. We're
Speaker 1: talking about debt this week. If you're thinking about your
Speaker 1: lawyer fees you gotta pay and the fines you still
Speaker 1: owe the courts in the county and uh all that ship.
Speaker 1: That ship is not determined by who your president is.
Speaker 1: That's determined by who your d a ends up being,
Speaker 1: whether or not you go to jail for smoking weed
Speaker 1: or I don't know, doing doing a little math talking
Speaker 1: about debt, I mean, even the president of debt. I
Speaker 1: can't believe. I don't even know if we were prepared
Speaker 1: to get into that in this episode, but we absolutely
Speaker 1: should not much to get into. President owes hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars and barely paid any taxes in the
Speaker 1: last ten years. Not much more to it. I gotta
Speaker 1: pay my I got six grand. I gotta pay my
Speaker 1: payoff on my car. I know friends that are still
Speaker 1: paying off on like d uys from almost a decade ago.
Speaker 1: So and and here we have a president who just
Speaker 1: received world class medical care, the best medical care you
Speaker 1: can probably receive in the entire world, without having to
Speaker 1: pay a single penny. Thinking about how many people go
Speaker 1: into medical bankruptcy every year. You want to know what's
Speaker 1: even more wild, think about this. He didn't even pay
Speaker 1: for that ship. You did, like literally because this is
Speaker 1: this is like like he just got government run healthcare,
Speaker 1: not government run health insurance. He got government run healthcare.
Speaker 1: Doctors are paid by the st the state. The lights
Speaker 1: were kept on on the crystal chandelier and his executive
Speaker 1: suite by the state, by us, by me, and you
Speaker 1: damn sure wasn't eager to drop any ducats on that ship.
Speaker 1: Then Nicka paid yeah, nothing, nothing. So all we're asking
Speaker 1: for is for all of us to receive that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't even need the chandelier, I don't even need
Speaker 1: the sixth room suite and the best doctor. Give me
Speaker 1: a decent doctor for free. Fucking I'm there, I'm in.
Speaker 1: But that's what we're talking about this week, using our
Speaker 1: debts to organize for a better world where we all
Speaker 1: have access to free healthcare, we all have access to
Speaker 1: free college and things like that. We are so this
Speaker 1: week we speak with Astra Taylor and author, documentarian, organizer
Speaker 1: with the decollective debt affects all of us, from those
Speaker 1: who make it big and mismanage their money and lose
Speaker 1: it all to those of us who've never had any
Speaker 1: in the first place, and the decollective offers a radical
Speaker 1: new organizing strategy for racing these that's and establishing a
Speaker 1: new societal order where debt doesn't exist at all. So
Speaker 1: before we talk with Astro, we're gonna go through a
Speaker 1: couple of interesting stats and facts about debt in America
Speaker 1: and this debt based economy and what hip hop has
Speaker 1: had to say about it. All Right, So, per Business Insider,
Speaker 1: the average American debt totals fifty one thousand, nine hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: and that includes mortgage loans, home equity, lines of credit,
Speaker 1: auto loans, credit card debts, student loans, and personal loans.
Speaker 1: Student loan debt in is now about one point five
Speaker 1: six trillion dollars. The latest student loan debt statistics from
Speaker 1: show how serious the student loan debt crisis has become
Speaker 1: for borrowers across all age demographics and age groups. Therefore
Speaker 1: five million borrowers who collectively owe almost one point six
Speaker 1: trillion dollars and student loan death in the US. Research
Speaker 1: shows that about a hundred and thirty seven point one
Speaker 1: million Americans have faced financial hardship because of medical costs.
Speaker 1: According to a two thousand nineteen survey conducted by Gallup
Speaker 1: in the nonprofit West Health, Americans borrowed and estimated eighty
Speaker 1: eight billion dollars last year to pay for healthcare. In
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, the United States spent about three point
Speaker 1: five trillion dollars, or eighteen percent of the GDP, on
Speaker 1: health expenditures, more than twice the average among developed countries.
Speaker 1: Of that three point five trillion dollars, one point five
Speaker 1: trillion is directly or indire actually financed by the federal government.
Speaker 1: Prison parole and probation operations generate about eighty one billion
Speaker 1: dollars in annual costs of the u S taxpayer, while
Speaker 1: police court costs, bail bonds fee, and prison phone fees
Speaker 1: generate another hundred billion dollars in court costs, and those
Speaker 1: are paid by the individual. And so I've read a
Speaker 1: lot about out the way that like there's private companies
Speaker 1: that UH contract out to provision UH monitor ankle bracelets
Speaker 1: to people on probation or house arrest, and they have
Speaker 1: to then pay every month. And this is like an
Speaker 1: extra bill if they if they fall behind on paying
Speaker 1: the company for their ankle monitor they can get sent
Speaker 1: back to jail. And so these cars rule forms of
Speaker 1: debt the you know, in addition to bail bonds, fees
Speaker 1: or court costs um but all of these things were
Speaker 1: involved with like probation and house arrest and like being
Speaker 1: on parole, like with like paying your roll officer and
Speaker 1: things like that. Like in the fact that you can
Speaker 1: get sent back to jail if you don't pay them
Speaker 1: are like a really ominous and like a cruel form
Speaker 1: of debt that we put people into a country like
Speaker 1: that that it's like ship like that is why I'm
Speaker 1: not overly harsh on people who believe like wild conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories and ship like that, because the ship just seems deliberate.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. It feels like in this
Speaker 1: net that it's just like layers upon layers of deliberate
Speaker 1: fuckering to just make life as uncomfortable as it can
Speaker 1: possibly be. Said, A chill go down my spine. But
Speaker 1: do you likened like believing we live in this net
Speaker 1: to like a conspiracy theory? I was like, this isn't
Speaker 1: just what everyone believes. It's not everyone realized you live
Speaker 1: in this net where they're trying to drag us down
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper. Would you would you say, it's commonly
Speaker 1: known that police, uh you utilize citations and the revenues
Speaker 1: they generate from that, and a lot of money from
Speaker 1: us and like little ways, not just from the president
Speaker 1: industrial complex, but just general revenue from finals and fees
Speaker 1: and uh forfeitures so a. Porting to a national database
Speaker 1: compiled by Governing magazine, at least five hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: three cities and towns have collected ten or more of
Speaker 1: their general fund revenue from fines and forfeitures. Among those jurisdictions,
Speaker 1: eighty relied on fines to generate over half their budget revenue.
Speaker 1: Most of those municipalities came from just four states, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and Oklahoma. Yeah. I mean, if if Athens were you
Speaker 1: collect ten percent of our general fund revenue from fine
Speaker 1: cent forfitures, that'd be about thirty million dollars. Not that
Speaker 1: I I should know if that's true, but I don't
Speaker 1: think it's that bad here um. According to the New
Speaker 1: York FEDS Household Debt and Credit Report from the fourth
Speaker 1: quarter of two thousand nineteen, Americans owed one point three
Speaker 1: three trillion dollars in outstanding vehicle debt. So financing these cars,
Speaker 1: I mean, not even these fancy cars. We live in
Speaker 1: such a car centric like infrastructure spear that just to live,
Speaker 1: you gotta go into debt to buy a car, just
Speaker 1: to be able to get to work. Like your car
Speaker 1: breaks down, you lose your job because you don't have
Speaker 1: a stable form of transportation anymore. That means you can't
Speaker 1: pay rent, which means you become homeless, which means then
Speaker 1: you lose your kids, like you have, Like having a
Speaker 1: car is so critical, and so many like having a car.
Speaker 1: It's like how many Yeah, so you have to Like
Speaker 1: you're you're paying your car off month after month, You've
Speaker 1: got your monthly payment, and then all you accidentally, like
Speaker 1: you get hit and then you've gotta and your insurance
Speaker 1: won't cover it, and now you gotta pay five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars and you already have like a three five car
Speaker 1: payment every month, and your insurance costs every month, and
Speaker 1: now you can't even use the car that you own,
Speaker 1: but you still owe the fucking bank for it. That's
Speaker 1: one of my worst fears, not the worst, but like
Speaker 1: I think about it, So these are all topics I mean,
Speaker 1: from financing cars to financings moans that many rappers have
Speaker 1: touched on. And I just want to bring up how
Speaker 1: uniquely touched by this the hip hop generation is because
Speaker 1: older generations have, like I really feel like they have
Speaker 1: no idea what it's like to be this and debt.
Speaker 1: They grew up when they could get cheap loans for
Speaker 1: houses to the Federal Housing Administration. College cost near to
Speaker 1: nothing before Reagan us to be graduated thousands in debt
Speaker 1: into her reception. For the love of God, the prison
Speaker 1: industry didn't boom until then eight to the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: So all these fucking boomers got to like do all
Speaker 1: the drugs imaginable without being swept into the car sinoral
Speaker 1: net and you know, saddle with all these fines and
Speaker 1: fees and this debt, and then us we're just fucked spucks,
Speaker 1: and so like, I feel like, why perhaps in our
Speaker 1: investigation of like the lyric escape for this episode, there
Speaker 1: wasn't as much reference to debt as I might have
Speaker 1: imagined given these realities. I mean, I think it speaks
Speaker 1: to hip hop somewhat as well, that like people don't
Speaker 1: want to flosol, they don't got They don't want to
Speaker 1: like flaunt what they lack, so like they're not I mean,
Speaker 1: they might be talking about getting out of debt, but
Speaker 1: they're not going to be like I gotta leave it
Speaker 1: on my car. But it's kind of like when we
Speaker 1: were talking about labor, you know, it's just it's just
Speaker 1: one of those no one to the fact they work
Speaker 1: at dairy queen exactly. It's not necessarily I guess trope
Speaker 1: would be the right word to use for it. It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a trope that's used in hip hop, the
Speaker 1: trope of like, um, well, maybe I should say mainstream
Speaker 1: hip hop, because you know what they're you know, I do,
Speaker 1: like you said, not necessarily rapping about being in But
Speaker 1: I definitely used to know a lot of indiects used
Speaker 1: to wrap about being broke. Yeah, and then we have
Speaker 1: a good example today, life and debt from Seattle spreaders,
Speaker 1: blue scholars. I mean, they're more conscious for apperis and
Speaker 1: music and lyrics frequently focus on struggles with socioeconomic classes
Speaker 1: challenging authority. UM often rooted in the MC geologic history
Speaker 1: as an activist within the Filipino American community, dealing with
Speaker 1: issues immigration, racism, US imperialism the Philippines. But in This
Speaker 1: Life and Debt, they talk explicitly about working class struggles
Speaker 1: like working a nine to five, eight hours a day,
Speaker 1: coming home, your bills are late, your interest accumulates, collection agency,
Speaker 1: waits paycheck to paycheck. Let's listen a little bit of
Speaker 1: this time working five. Sometimes they also find it really
Speaker 1: interesting that they have a subtle critique of like the
Speaker 1: nonprofit industrial complex. At one point, he says, uh, five
Speaker 1: oh one c three community plantations, non nonprofit sector propped
Speaker 1: up to kill the movement for the changes in production relations.
Speaker 1: So he's talking about how like these charities that are
Speaker 1: meant to like you know, aid the poor really aren't
Speaker 1: impacting like the power dynamics and society or like who
Speaker 1: controls like the profits of like the working classes labor
Speaker 1: and Uh. I just thought that was really interesting, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially with relation to like this idea of debt that
Speaker 1: we're talking about today, where so many things are privatized, education,
Speaker 1: housing market, getting a car, uh, healthcare that where we
Speaker 1: will rely on like the we're like we as the needy,
Speaker 1: like rely on nonprofits, like oh may I have some
Speaker 1: more please, like for the food banks and the diaper
Speaker 1: banks and the job skills training and the the homeless
Speaker 1: shelters when it's not really like organizing us to push
Speaker 1: back on the fact that it's just really a rich,
Speaker 1: greedy fox are the reason why we don't don't have
Speaker 1: in the first place. Yea, for whatever reason. I don't
Speaker 1: know why. But the part where he's like, but woman,
Speaker 1: you're my comrade, ride or die and the revolution making
Speaker 1: other earth standing with me in the grocery line, I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I just love that you're my comrade part.
Speaker 1: Just with the the whole tone of the song, it
Speaker 1: just kind of gives it like this sort of socialist flare.
Speaker 1: This is like, I don't know if that's what you've
Speaker 1: been by it, but I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take it. Just another observation about the song. This is
Speaker 1: definitely one of those sort of songs and you probably
Speaker 1: could hear it when you heard the little snippet, but
Speaker 1: it's like, if you put it on, it's definitely something
Speaker 1: that could just be on and you would wouldn't even
Speaker 1: think twice about what it's about. You just kind of
Speaker 1: that's a pleasant song. Samples and the dramatics like like
Speaker 1: that but then it's one of those ones were upon
Speaker 1: closer listening, you're like, oh, ship this is about Then
Speaker 1: what's the name of this that mass political, educational potential
Speaker 1: of hip hop? Or you just put the song on
Speaker 1: maybe twenty times in the car, then it like gradually
Speaker 1: radicalizes you just slowly. Yeah. Then we got New York
Speaker 1: rappers Sammy's with Schools Out. A lot of rappers touch
Speaker 1: on particularly issue of student loans. I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of like the post hip hop generation, not the
Speaker 1: first people to grow up with hip hop, but like
Speaker 1: the second generation of people grow up with hip hop.
Speaker 1: A lot of us grew up, we graduated into a
Speaker 1: recession where it's become difficult to make those payments on
Speaker 1: the education we just received. Um. And so SAMs is
Speaker 1: one of many rappers that touches on the money that
Speaker 1: we all fucking Oh Sally, may students tap for another
Speaker 1: year at a name at home need to sneak around
Speaker 1: in the middle, Like you were talking about the generational
Speaker 1: divide in how we perceived debt to be and in
Speaker 1: her in the beginning of a verse, she was mentioning
Speaker 1: living at home with your parents because of student loans,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of something that I think is you know,
Speaker 1: for people in our generation, is a lot more of
Speaker 1: a common theme and feeling like, I know, like my parents,
Speaker 1: Like the notion of oh, someone who's a grown man
Speaker 1: or woman moving back in with their parents still has
Speaker 1: a certain taboo to it, whereas for our generations, like, yo,
Speaker 1: you know how many bills we got, Like that just
Speaker 1: might be the necessity of hell bills our parents got
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, why don't you stay living at
Speaker 1: home with me? She later in the song talks about
Speaker 1: how she had to buy a new MacBook and like
Speaker 1: the need to like have access to really expensive technology
Speaker 1: just to like access to your access to your workforce,
Speaker 1: access to your schooling right now, etcetera. And so it's
Speaker 1: like so many bills following up in addition to as
Speaker 1: she references just purely what you got to pay to
Speaker 1: get your credit hours and build up your network to
Speaker 1: try to get a good job when you get out
Speaker 1: of school. You mentioned how she references Sally May, which
Speaker 1: is a common reference in hip hop. Very yeah. So
Speaker 1: from Rhapsody to oil A Deonte Hitchcock, Big Cred Corday
Speaker 1: all over the place. In fact, in Corday has been around,
Speaker 1: uh he has. He does this interesting thing where he
Speaker 1: sort of he's like sort of just like Braggadoccio, a rhyman.
Speaker 1: But then he has this moment where he jumps back
Speaker 1: to like seeing I think in the I pertect, I
Speaker 1: interpreted it as the perspective of a fan. Although it
Speaker 1: might seem so bittersweet when you ain nothing to eat
Speaker 1: and Sally may call him a phone for like the
Speaker 1: fifth time this week and all your bills are overdue,
Speaker 1: Like I know, we stop talking about himself there, let's
Speaker 1: hear that. It's like, yeah, that's the sting would seem
Speaker 1: a sweet you ain't got nothing to eat, Sally make
Speaker 1: call your phone for Like the fib I misinterpreted that
Speaker 1: maybe it is talking about himself. I mean, it sounds
Speaker 1: like he's talking about himself. But I mean, even if
Speaker 1: it isn't, it's kind of like a universal feeling. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's like you're saying, everybody has that feeling. It
Speaker 1: could be he knows somebody and he's just drawing from
Speaker 1: somebody else's experience, but either way, it it totally makes
Speaker 1: sense with who he is being. Yea, it's got that
Speaker 1: kind of like backpack realness. I feel like backpackers are
Speaker 1: like a little more straight up about like he yo,
Speaker 1: I'm working on a dairy quean. Well, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the backpack or indie aesthetic is kind of geared around
Speaker 1: just being more earnest and realistic with what your circumstances
Speaker 1: are as far as what you draw from to, you know,
Speaker 1: to inspire you to write your rhymes and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So Lacoari has a similarly like, uh, how should I
Speaker 1: say this, like pensive vibe on this song. Well, let's
Speaker 1: listen to it first. This is always new by La
Speaker 1: Craz professes couple of thousands and graduated in recession. Sadly
Speaker 1: may just want to check it, expressing us it's on
Speaker 1: a tree now, I'm in a session. The very thing
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, like this debate about whether or not
Speaker 1: we should go to school and try to get an education.
Speaker 1: It's like worth it. We never saw ourselves there, we go,
Speaker 1: we leave thousands and debts. How it may is calling
Speaker 1: stressing out and then chasing music as like the way
Speaker 1: to finally make it out of this situation, even if
Speaker 1: not even necessarily that is, uh, how having the chain
Speaker 1: of something like you're the debt of getting your education.
Speaker 1: How that can prevent you from pursuing things that you
Speaker 1: would rather be pursuing, you know what I'm saying. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, whether that be music or maybe whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's a fucking burden. It's a it's
Speaker 1: another thing you have to do, you because it's like,
Speaker 1: I know, I know cats who who were trying to
Speaker 1: do their art but did the full Monty full ride
Speaker 1: through school, you know, and getting out. It's like they
Speaker 1: don't really have time to funk around. They gotta immediately
Speaker 1: start paying that ship back. So like pursuing something fun,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not necessarily in the cards anymore. So
Speaker 1: we got another song that's kind of actually fun in
Speaker 1: celebratory in that the the protagonist uh is really excited
Speaker 1: about having paid off Sally May. And this is Sally
Speaker 1: made Back by Do You Want the White Lady? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I really love that Sally May And this music
Speaker 1: video it's depicted as the stern, older, suburban looking woman
Speaker 1: black nails, which oh fucking funny, because that's absolutely how
Speaker 1: I picture Sally May office before I got it in
Speaker 1: my mind, as like a sufficient enough adult to realize
Speaker 1: like Sally May wasn't like a living person to like,
Speaker 1: we know money. I was like, oh man, this fucking
Speaker 1: pitch while he has like an ascot. So the next
Speaker 1: song that we got is World, World, Let's go a
Speaker 1: little Sally May reference that. I think it's energy we
Speaker 1: need to keep regarding our debts in the spirit of
Speaker 1: the de collective. So when he says he talks about,
Speaker 1: you know, making a lot of money off of shows,
Speaker 1: maybe then I could pick Sali mate, So I'll be
Speaker 1: dealing with some real like we're not. So that's the
Speaker 1: energy that we need for the same energy be we'll
Speaker 1: keep for our landlords. I am so excited today to
Speaker 1: be talking to Astra Taylor, author, organizer, documentarian, and fellow
Speaker 1: former Athenian, which I think is actually how I came
Speaker 1: to know about your work. I was at the Nation
Speaker 1: offices in Manhattan in two thousand eighteen, uh meeting with
Speaker 1: their editorial board, and upon leaving, they said, oh, we
Speaker 1: have this book from this woman from Athens that we
Speaker 1: want to give you as a gift, and it was
Speaker 1: democracy may not exist, but we'll miss it when it's gone.
Speaker 1: I all of a said, needed when it's gone, which
Speaker 1: is not wrong, but UM, And so I took it
Speaker 1: home with me and I put it on my bookshelf.
Speaker 1: And it was a couple of months later that I
Speaker 1: was switching medications under the orders of my psychiatrists and
Speaker 1: had like a suicidal like break essentially, and I was
Speaker 1: sent to a hospital and they allowed me to bring
Speaker 1: a book, but they had to be softcover. So I
Speaker 1: sent my mom to the house. I was like, find
Speaker 1: me a softcover book to read while I'm in the
Speaker 1: lunear bin, and she brought me. Democracy may not exist,
Speaker 1: but won't miss it when it's gone. And so I
Speaker 1: spent four days the only thing I could do was
Speaker 1: read your book, UM, and it was transformative. It was
Speaker 1: it was like my lifeline and otherwise cold and sterile
Speaker 1: world for like four days. UM. And that brings us
Speaker 1: to our topic of discussion today, because UM, I still
Speaker 1: am in debt from being in the mental hospital. I
Speaker 1: owe the hospital a couple of thousand dollars and they
Speaker 1: called me and they send me mail and I am
Speaker 1: not alone. And that I realized, especially through reading the
Speaker 1: dec Collective's new book, I can't pay, won't pay. So
Speaker 1: we're here today to talk about debt. How did we
Speaker 1: get here with it? And what do we do now?
Speaker 1: So if you could to start out with first, I
Speaker 1: have to respond to that amazing introduction though, because I
Speaker 1: think that was probably the most powerful introduction I've ever
Speaker 1: been given. And I just want to say out of
Speaker 1: the gate, the admiration is mutual. And one of the
Speaker 1: wonders of the Internet, which brings many terrible things into
Speaker 1: our lives, is that I've been able to watch Rise
Speaker 1: rise and get to know her from afar uh. And
Speaker 1: you know how much you captured to me the ideal
Speaker 1: spirit of Athens, right, which is this town of creativity
Speaker 1: and music that it's you know and um and enjoy,
Speaker 1: but you know, it is also a community that you know,
Speaker 1: I always felt really needed to be politicized and should
Speaker 1: be more radical than I felt it was growing up there. Um.
Speaker 1: So the fact you're bringing those two straight rounds together
Speaker 1: is really, um just moving and important to me. And
Speaker 1: your story about reading the book um again, the mental
Speaker 1: hospital and it leaving you in debt is amazing. So
Speaker 1: thank you to the nation editors my friends over there
Speaker 1: for for giving it to you. Okay, so we're in
Speaker 1: this debt based economy and just the way I look
Speaker 1: at it is very few things are coincidences and very
Speaker 1: few things are accidents. So it kind of tends, you know,
Speaker 1: makes me believe that this all has a reason for it.
Speaker 1: So why why is our economy structure this way? Why
Speaker 1: are so many people in debt? I mean, it says
Speaker 1: it says so much, right, it ties into the bigger
Speaker 1: question about the debt based economy. We are in a
Speaker 1: situation where as individuals, we have to debt finance what
Speaker 1: should be our basic rights and our our basic entitlements.
Speaker 1: You know, we shouldn't ever experience. Indebtedness is a consequence
Speaker 1: of any sort of health crisis, whether it's a physical
Speaker 1: health crisis or a mental health crisis. I mean, most
Speaker 1: countries don't have medical debt. It doesn't exist because they
Speaker 1: have universal healthcare. So and this is something that we
Speaker 1: take for granted as a feature of American life. You know,
Speaker 1: there's lots of research on this. You know, Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: on the campaign trail often, you know, made a lot
Speaker 1: of noise about the fact that medical debt is the
Speaker 1: number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States. It
Speaker 1: is a leading driver of poverty in this country. It's
Speaker 1: what tips people over the edge, the fact that something
Speaker 1: happens you don't have control over, you know, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly you're buried in debt and your your life. The
Speaker 1: tenuous threads by what you're holding on fray and you know,
Speaker 1: things fall apart and it's just you know, a moral outrage,
Speaker 1: but it ties to these bigger dynamics. I mean, the
Speaker 1: thing about debt, once you start kind of cracking it open,
Speaker 1: is you can go all the way back like that
Speaker 1: that precedes capitalism. That is a tool of domination and
Speaker 1: oppression proceeds capitalism as we know it. So if you
Speaker 1: go back to um, you know, ancient Greece, ancient Rome,
Speaker 1: what you had was people being driven into debt by
Speaker 1: the wealthy and then having to sell themselves into debt, slavery, debt, peonage.
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's like a very ancient violent form
Speaker 1: of economic control. UM. But it's really you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's really essential to our our modern economy. And the
Speaker 1: insight I think from the debt collective is just that
Speaker 1: you know, we are as we move away from what limited,
Speaker 1: imperfect welfare state supports we had in the twentieth century, right,
Speaker 1: we're moving away from a welfare state to a debt
Speaker 1: fair state. So a world in which we have to
Speaker 1: take on the cost as individuals of uh provisioning for
Speaker 1: ourselves through mechanisms of debt. What we should be entitled to,
Speaker 1: so education, healthcare, housing, I think, which should be a
Speaker 1: human right. UM, food, basic sustenance right. That's people are
Speaker 1: putting their um, you know, their their food and basic
Speaker 1: necessities on their credit cards around paiday loans, especially now
Speaker 1: in the age of COVID, and so it's like and
Speaker 1: basically people are getting robbed twice. You're underpaid at your
Speaker 1: job if you have a job, and then you don't
Speaker 1: make enough money, so then you have to borrow and
Speaker 1: you end up paying interest in fees. And that's driving
Speaker 1: the incredible unethical concentration of wealth and power in this country.
Speaker 1: So it's a huge problem. And our principal and the
Speaker 1: same I'm speaking as the Debt Collective, as a founder
Speaker 1: of the Debt Collective, which is a union for debtors,
Speaker 1: is that debtors have power. They're not utilizing that when
Speaker 1: you say that they can't pay, won't pay um that
Speaker 1: if we do that collectively, then actually what we can
Speaker 1: do just as a labor union withholds its labors can
Speaker 1: withhold their payments and exerts some countervailing force on the
Speaker 1: powers that be. And you know, we're at a point
Speaker 1: where we can't afford to leave power on the table.
Speaker 1: So US talked a little bit about what the debt
Speaker 1: collective is. Could you tell us where it came from?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of these crazy things that only
Speaker 1: happens in a collaborative setting, right. So when one thing
Speaker 1: I say in the preface to the book, I wrote
Speaker 1: the preface and then the rest of the book is
Speaker 1: co authored, is that individually, not paying your loans isn't
Speaker 1: a debt strike. Right. So I defaulted on my student
Speaker 1: loans in two thousand and eight because I just didn't
Speaker 1: have enough money to pay them. And so what happens.
Speaker 1: I get a phone call from the collector and they say,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, you haven't paid your loans and two
Speaker 1: days so guess what, now you have more. So now
Speaker 1: you have forty dollars and now your credits destroyed. And
Speaker 1: you know, that wasn't a dead strike. That was that
Speaker 1: was just you know, me, UM being unable to pay
Speaker 1: and then being penalized. But that UM kind of precipitated
Speaker 1: this political awakening. I mean I think I just thought, well, hey, like,
Speaker 1: why do I have so much debt from going to it,
Speaker 1: you know college anyway? And I really bristled. I felt like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the fact I'm having to pay this for the next
Speaker 1: three years is gonna constrain me. It's gonna make me
Speaker 1: make choices I don't want to make. It's gonna control
Speaker 1: my life, you know. And um, it's gonna be this
Speaker 1: thing I'm always having to manage and worry about and
Speaker 1: like and just work basically just to like pay this
Speaker 1: inflating balloon of interests albatroz or something, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think I was ready. It just took
Speaker 1: it took me finding others before I could, you know,
Speaker 1: begin on the path that led to the detllective. And
Speaker 1: so what happened is in the early days of Occupy
Speaker 1: Wall Street, I started collaborating with people. We realized that
Speaker 1: indebtedness was something that we're was really galvanizing. It was
Speaker 1: bringing people to the encampments, not just in New York
Speaker 1: City where I was, but around the country. And one
Speaker 1: person whose name is Thomas goki Um said this thing,
Speaker 1: I vividly remember it because we were talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of what campaigns or actions we'd like to see
Speaker 1: come out of the Octopills Street movement, and he said, unions,
Speaker 1: debtors need to make unions just like they're labor unions.
Speaker 1: And for me, it was like one of those moments
Speaker 1: when a light bulb went off in my head, just
Speaker 1: like in a cartoon, and I was like, whoa, you're right.
Speaker 1: Like the model of unionization of like workers coming together
Speaker 1: in the workplace to argue, uh argue, but to fight
Speaker 1: for higher wages, benefits, more time off, right, that model
Speaker 1: should be applied to other arenas of the economy. And
Speaker 1: and it's true, like if we don't pay, they don't
Speaker 1: get their money. And that's that's what they're banking on.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've they've projected our future payments into their
Speaker 1: you know revenue uh forecasts, right like they they need that.
Speaker 1: And it flipped. What it did was it cause a
Speaker 1: whole transformation of how I thought things. So suddenly my indebtedness,
Speaker 1: instead of it just being this burden and this albatross,
Speaker 1: I realized that it was actually some one else's profit
Speaker 1: that every payment I was making month after month after month,
Speaker 1: I was paying more than the original principle, the original
Speaker 1: amount of world, because that's profit for someone else. So
Speaker 1: I started to see the way our collective debts are
Speaker 1: an asset of the ruling class, but then also an
Speaker 1: asset that we could leverage to demand change and demand
Speaker 1: the abolition of debts, but also the provision of public goods.
Speaker 1: In other words, give us that universal healthcare so we
Speaker 1: don't have medical debt, give us the universal education so
Speaker 1: we don't have to have student loans. And I think
Speaker 1: give us social housing because we shouldn't have to live
Speaker 1: in a commodity. And you know, give people the um
Speaker 1: goods and services that they need to live dignified lives.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm I'm for mass decommodification of
Speaker 1: basically everything. Yeah, but I think I mean on the
Speaker 1: front of like where does it come from? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Growing up in Athens to you know,
Speaker 1: my parents were like always, you know, on the brink
Speaker 1: of economic catastrophe. Even though my dad was a professor.
Speaker 1: They they declared bankruptcy when I was a teenager. My
Speaker 1: dad had tons and tons of student loans, you know
Speaker 1: that he was just paying off like far far into
Speaker 1: his career. There, my mom was just recounting how we
Speaker 1: used to go out to the mall on like Atlanta Highway.
Speaker 1: I guess it's college, Yeah, and eat at this one
Speaker 1: terrible restaurant. I never knew why we would go there
Speaker 1: at the end of the month, Like it was horrible,
Speaker 1: and she was like, because it was like the one
Speaker 1: place that took this one credit card, you know. So
Speaker 1: I think there was this sense, like I think I
Speaker 1: just had this sense that, you know, something wasn't working
Speaker 1: with this system. It's like, you know, if you're somebody's
Speaker 1: gonna work a full time job, they should at least
Speaker 1: to be able to make it to the end of
Speaker 1: the month, you know. Um, so yeah, you're saying kind
Speaker 1: of like Occupy Wall Street was kind of going on
Speaker 1: around like the inception of the debt collective. So I
Speaker 1: was wondering, Um, what do you think is like if
Speaker 1: you could pinpoint any particular public policy that's led us
Speaker 1: to this moment in the debt crisis, Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously we know Corona is is, you know, doing what
Speaker 1: it's doing to the economy, But we were in a
Speaker 1: bubble before Corona happened, you know. It was looking kind
Speaker 1: of timid before that. But what what what condition led
Speaker 1: us to to being in this is it? Is it
Speaker 1: merely just the people at the top want to grab
Speaker 1: power or is it more just individual systems that kind
Speaker 1: of add up to being this monster that it is
Speaker 1: where everyone's in debt. I mean, it's a complex array
Speaker 1: of forces got us here. And I think you you know,
Speaker 1: in a really expansive sense, we have to look back
Speaker 1: and look at the history of capitalism, especially you know,
Speaker 1: what we would call the history of racial capitalism, and
Speaker 1: look at the way debt and credit have played out politically.
Speaker 1: So if you go back to, you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of golden age of American capitalism in the mid twentieth
Speaker 1: century and look at how the middle class was formed,
Speaker 1: you know, it was we the white middle class was
Speaker 1: formed because there was easy access to government subsidized credit
Speaker 1: in the form of government backed mortgages. Right that a
Speaker 1: program of giving a certain community, a racialized community, access
Speaker 1: to credit on fair terms is what sort of built
Speaker 1: that the sort of cliche of the American dream for
Speaker 1: a certain set of people, and it was very exclusionary.
Speaker 1: So I think something like or of betterly secured mortgages
Speaker 1: in that period went to white patriarchal you know last
Speaker 1: on last week's episode, and so access to credit, you know,
Speaker 1: has um access to credit, then the inverse, which is
Speaker 1: denial of predator redlining or or predatory lending, you know,
Speaker 1: have created this unequal, the unequal, racialized economy that we
Speaker 1: live in today. And so I think it's important to
Speaker 1: put that twentieth century history like sort of as the foundation,
Speaker 1: even though we could go further back, right, we can go,
Speaker 1: we can go back to the abolition of slavery and
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, formerly slave people, then the
Speaker 1: dominant economic relationship with sharecropping, pen and farming, right and
Speaker 1: and in debt there as a form of of suppression
Speaker 1: of the drive for you know, true egalitarian democracy. So
Speaker 1: but in the seventies, something definitely happened, you know, and
Speaker 1: scholars talk about neoliberalism, we talk about financialization, but basically,
Speaker 1: you know, what happened was the ruling class went on
Speaker 1: a war with the welfare state, you know, and wages,
Speaker 1: wages were suppressed. And what happened is we cover that
Speaker 1: up by giving people access to credit. You know, That's
Speaker 1: that's when people started having credit cards. Um, that's when
Speaker 1: tuition became more common at public universities. People started you know,
Speaker 1: taking on debt to go to college. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: there was like an economic shift that's not just one policy,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of reorganization of the economy that
Speaker 1: diminished the state, that um short of corporate power, that
Speaker 1: covered up inequities with credit. And now we're you know,
Speaker 1: in a situation where that system is kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: well that system is dominant. But then with COVID, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, incredibly disastrous because you know, when people can't
Speaker 1: when people don't have paychecks, when they don't have when
Speaker 1: they're unemployment, benefits dry up, like you're just gonna have
Speaker 1: mass delinquency, mass default, and you know, debt and despair
Speaker 1: as a consequence. And it's like, so we are living
Speaker 1: in a moment of record consumer debt. I mean it's
Speaker 1: something like fourteen trillion dollars and that's a symptom of
Speaker 1: just the mal distribution of wealth in this country. It's like,
Speaker 1: so you have people who just dream of literally like
Speaker 1: we the average you know, American now just dreams of
Speaker 1: having zero dollars, Like, oh my god, if I could
Speaker 1: just have zero and not negative, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, you have you know, these billionaires like Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 1: who's really just like, you know what, I dream of
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars and he's almost sucking there, Like he's
Speaker 1: almost there. But I think that the depth of this
Speaker 1: model of debt financing UM is, you know, it sort
Speaker 1: of knows no bounds. I mean, one thing we talk
Speaker 1: a lot about in the book and are working at
Speaker 1: more as as the decllective is the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: people go into debt for their own incarceration, right, and
Speaker 1: that connects with this larger moment where people are discussing
Speaker 1: because an abolition and you know, our criminal injustice system
Speaker 1: or whatever we want to call it. But you know,
Speaker 1: the fact is people have to take on debt to
Speaker 1: pay cash bail. So often you know, it's not cash bail,
Speaker 1: it's credit fail. So people's family members and loved ones
Speaker 1: end up um going into debt to get people out
Speaker 1: of people they love, out of cages. The average bail
Speaker 1: debt in California's fifty dollars, you know, and often you
Speaker 1: have to have that even if you're found not guilty
Speaker 1: and you're the charges are UM, you know, charges are dismissed,
Speaker 1: people have to pay for probation. I mean, so it's
Speaker 1: this insidious model that's in its tendrils are in you know,
Speaker 1: all aspects of our life, and it is ultimately is
Speaker 1: a way of it's a form of just allowing people
Speaker 1: who are already rich to extract more. And that's the
Speaker 1: thing we're trying to We're trying to like get people
Speaker 1: to see the economy in this way as to de
Speaker 1: naturalize debt and ask, you know, why it's so omnipresent
Speaker 1: and whose interests it serves Because we're told this lie
Speaker 1: that we take it on ourselves, and we take that
Speaker 1: risk on so we can better ourselves and better a future.
Speaker 1: And I think we want to say no, it's it's
Speaker 1: imposed on us, and it's a form of control, and
Speaker 1: it's a form of um enriched. It's it's a means
Speaker 1: of enriching those who are already in a position, um
Speaker 1: you know, already who already have the upper hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So talk to us if you get a little bit
Speaker 1: about the impacts of debt or organizing to date and
Speaker 1: some of what you hope it can achieve. Pretty rearly
Speaker 1: interested in like y'all have scored some some wins already
Speaker 1: and then you know a few years since this got
Speaker 1: off the ground. Yeah, So the idea of this idea
Speaker 1: of the decollective and as as a union, um, you know,
Speaker 1: we tried to see if that concept would actually take off.
Speaker 1: So we launched what we call sort of our pilot
Speaker 1: Debtors Union in two thousand fifteen, and basically we made
Speaker 1: contact with students who had gone to one of the
Speaker 1: big for profit college chains, so people probably know like
Speaker 1: University of Phoenix and I T. T. Tech. It was
Speaker 1: one of those companies. It was called Corinthian Colleges. They've
Speaker 1: been totally like lied to, defrauded. So they went to
Speaker 1: these vocational programs and came out of them with like
Speaker 1: seventy thousand dollars a hundred thousand dollars hundred fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of debt, and you know, and their resumes were
Speaker 1: laughed at um and the abuses of these companies was
Speaker 1: well documented. The thing. The thing is that for profit
Speaker 1: colleges on the back end, like if you have a
Speaker 1: student loan, whether it's from University of Phoenix or Harvard,
Speaker 1: it's the same financial it's the same financial structure leading
Speaker 1: straight to the Department of Education, right, so you're you know,
Speaker 1: one degree might be fancy and get you access, and
Speaker 1: one degree might be kind of risible, but the the money,
Speaker 1: the system that matters is all the same and and
Speaker 1: you know, so that's ultimately what we're targeting. But basically,
Speaker 1: we organized the first ever student debt strike. It began
Speaker 1: with only fifteen people. We also developed the legal strategy
Speaker 1: um that has so far been put to use by
Speaker 1: we just got numbers three hundred and sixty thousand people
Speaker 1: because these for profit colleges are huge, and you know,
Speaker 1: we ended up being the first group to ever win
Speaker 1: debt relief from the federal government, from the Department of
Speaker 1: Education first under Obama, and we've been fighting Betsy Divas
Speaker 1: ever since and we've won well over a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: That's with a b billion dollars to date. And then
Speaker 1: in doing that we devised this legal What we realized
Speaker 1: in our research was actually the Department of Education has
Speaker 1: the ability Congress already vested The Congress already vested the
Speaker 1: Department of Education with the power to erase every penny
Speaker 1: of student debt. And yes they can do it. There's
Speaker 1: literally like a destroy button in the form of education.
Speaker 1: We wrote like this one page letter that if the Department,
Speaker 1: if the Secretary of Education would just sign it, all
Speaker 1: of our federal student loans would be obliterated. Um, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, then we could start trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to actually solve our problems. But what's amazing is
Speaker 1: that this theory that it was admittedly pretty fringe, because
Speaker 1: of course that hasn't been done before a few years ago.
Speaker 1: When we started pushing it. A couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: um in the bizarreness of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck
Speaker 1: Schumer from New York. So Chuck Schumer, for I mean,
Speaker 1: is not a liberal guy, he's a bad man. But
Speaker 1: they announced a Senate resolution basically saying, uh, yeah, use
Speaker 1: this legal argument and erase fifty dollars per borer in
Speaker 1: the country. And so they you know, it was quite
Speaker 1: the surreal moment where these ideas that fundamentally came from
Speaker 1: the Debt Collective, which is this group born of Occupy
Speaker 1: Wall Street, suddenly Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren are there
Speaker 1: saying exactly what we've been saying for the last four
Speaker 1: years and and acknowledging and acknowledging they have we have
Speaker 1: the power to do this, and this will cost nothing.
Speaker 1: So there's no you know, because what it does if
Speaker 1: you just cancel student debt, you're not if there's no expenditure, right,
Speaker 1: they don't need to do any cost analysis. What it does.
Speaker 1: That means all that money that people would be otherwise
Speaker 1: paying to their loan servicer, they can help pay their rent,
Speaker 1: they could buy some music, they could eat well. Right,
Speaker 1: that money would be in the economy. So it would
Speaker 1: be a huge economic stimulus. That's like the capitalist argument
Speaker 1: for it, because all that money could go to things
Speaker 1: people actually need and you know, quote unquote get the
Speaker 1: economy moving again instead of sending it back to the
Speaker 1: federal government via these like predatory collectors and mediators. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: also be good for people's mental health if not, Like
Speaker 1: the majority of the population was walking around stressed out.
Speaker 1: People are like open the economy the supicide, right, it's
Speaker 1: going there's all these deaths of despair, Like you just
Speaker 1: cancel all the debt. I mean, I it's I mean,
Speaker 1: I just heard of a friend's dad like last week,
Speaker 1: and he killed himself because he was so indebted, and
Speaker 1: then with COVID he was isolated and he couldn't see
Speaker 1: a way out right. Um and then he's so indebted
Speaker 1: that you have these creditors basically um like buying for
Speaker 1: a piece of whatever, like limited little estate he had,
Speaker 1: right like whatever things he had after his death. So
Speaker 1: one statistic in the book is the average American dies
Speaker 1: with sixty dollars of debt and um and I think
Speaker 1: you're totally right that it's a it's a mental health crisis.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's something that like you feel the anxiety
Speaker 1: in your body and in your mind right when you
Speaker 1: are worried about how you're going to pay your loans
Speaker 1: or whether or not you're going to be evicted. I mean,
Speaker 1: forty million people are at risk of eviction now in
Speaker 1: the rent even with the moratorium. What they know is
Speaker 1: that they're just gonna be a massive rent bill at
Speaker 1: the end of this and um and so it has
Speaker 1: total uh psychological effects and those are not incidental. So
Speaker 1: this is one thing that's really important, the fact that
Speaker 1: this there is a disciplinary function of debt. So and
Speaker 1: and people say this, you know really clearly, so Alan Greenspan, right,
Speaker 1: the um uh, the economist you know it said, you know, right,
Speaker 1: if you have if you have people who hold mortgages,
Speaker 1: you're not going to have a country that's like going
Speaker 1: on stripe. You're not going to have a populace that
Speaker 1: is going to be, you know, demanding more. You're going
Speaker 1: to have people who are right, they can't come to
Speaker 1: the demonstration because they've got to be at work, because
Speaker 1: they're not to get kicked out of they have so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a renter, you get kicked out
Speaker 1: of your house, it's bad. But if you have someone
Speaker 1: who and you've been paying your mortgage for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: you don't want to lose all of that you know,
Speaker 1: wealth that you imagine that you've you've invested in there,
Speaker 1: right you know. Um, and so this is so you
Speaker 1: know that was well appreciated, was that a nation of
Speaker 1: mortgage holders would be what is the word I'm looking for,
Speaker 1: more subdued, right, um? And and more docile. And then
Speaker 1: with student loans, this history is really clear. I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan was governor of California. Um. You know, the
Speaker 1: University of California system was the crown jewel of the country,
Speaker 1: was public, it was free and then what happened while
Speaker 1: there was there was student arrested Berkeley. Famously, there was
Speaker 1: also at this at the junior college system, uh, the
Speaker 1: formation of basically black radicalism, I mean, the Black Panther
Speaker 1: Party emerged at Merrick College and these free public colleges,
Speaker 1: and Reagan was like, yeah, no, he really truly was like,
Speaker 1: this is not you know, this is not a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: He basically was like, hell no, and we're going to
Speaker 1: kick those bumps off campus and when they pay for it,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna um, they're not going to engage in
Speaker 1: this kind of behavior. And so there was a you know,
Speaker 1: Neil Liiberal economists, Um, we're like, okay, this is how
Speaker 1: you control that is that you impose tuition and debt
Speaker 1: and then you get you know, and then your college
Speaker 1: students stop being rebels. And so it's always I mean,
Speaker 1: it is it is a tool of of of control.
Speaker 1: And you know, in the psychological effect of that of
Speaker 1: like make a population that feels like they're constantly on
Speaker 1: the brank of economic collapses, like to some people, that's
Speaker 1: a benefit, you know, And and the challenge for organizing
Speaker 1: debtors then is that what you first have to do
Speaker 1: is say, Okay, I know this makes you like, I
Speaker 1: know you can't can't face that bill. I know that
Speaker 1: it makes you sick to open that envelope because it's scary.
Speaker 1: And I know that you've been indoctrinated into this world
Speaker 1: view that tells you that it's your fault and that
Speaker 1: if you had done something better or been a better person,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be in debt. Hey, you'd be a millionaire.
Speaker 1: But you know, let go of that shame and stigma
Speaker 1: and realize you are not alone, which is our slogan,
Speaker 1: and and come together. So one thing I think we
Speaker 1: offer as a as a union, as an as an
Speaker 1: organization is not just the possibility that your debts will
Speaker 1: be erased, but also that you can erase that shame, right,
Speaker 1: and that that's also a huge value. He started to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the challenges of debtors organizing
Speaker 1: and so I'm really curious how it differs from other
Speaker 1: forms of organizing. In the book, you will talk about
Speaker 1: how like we're all spread out across geography and all
Speaker 1: different walks of life, and look at as an asset
Speaker 1: being able to connect with folks who have shared experience
Speaker 1: even though they might be different than in either other ways.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that might also make it harder even
Speaker 1: that in Athens, like you know, last week there was
Speaker 1: a video of a young man getting painted by the cops,
Speaker 1: and now we're all on the street together, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of days later, because it's like geographically bound,
Speaker 1: like we all live in this place together, we're all
Speaker 1: going to stand up for changes in this place. So
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, like what the two sides of the
Speaker 1: coin are with the sort of distributed nature of the
Speaker 1: demographic of debtors, I guess my my thought in response
Speaker 1: to that, though, is that even to how people mobilize
Speaker 1: locally with that sense of consciousness, you still have to
Speaker 1: do you stop to do work. It's not spontaneous, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like neighbors. Neighbors don't just naturally like spontaneously
Speaker 1: or naturally rise up or have solidarity. Like that's something
Speaker 1: to me as someone who used to live in Athens.
Speaker 1: You hearing you say that, I'm like, well, that means
Speaker 1: that you've done the work and other people have done
Speaker 1: the work of organizing to even to get people in
Speaker 1: Athens to see themselves as a political community. That should
Speaker 1: respond to something like that, right um. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: you know organizing regionally is also it also takes effort
Speaker 1: um and you have to form those bonds and that
Speaker 1: consciousness um and and uh and so in that sense,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not that different to organize people at
Speaker 1: a distance, UM, because you know, we're we're what we're
Speaker 1: doing is we're exposing a commonality. Right, It's like, Okay, actually,
Speaker 1: you know at the end of the month, you're all
Speaker 1: stressing out over making this payment, and that's something that
Speaker 1: that that that brings you together, and UM can unite you.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think for people on the left
Speaker 1: or people who want to engage in activism, like the
Speaker 1: building the bonds of solidarity is just it's always really hard,
Speaker 1: right UM. And I guess for me, like one of
Speaker 1: my naive questions, so I was like, why is it
Speaker 1: harder to divide us than unite us? Why? Why? Um?
Speaker 1: And And then I think I'm also just interested in like, well,
Speaker 1: what new forms of uniting can we invent, like to
Speaker 1: approach it as like a creative question or problem, like
Speaker 1: what what other ways can we identify? What ways can
Speaker 1: we identify that that that UM bring these unlikely alliances
Speaker 1: uh into being, and I think that, you know, I
Speaker 1: think we have to not universalized too much about indebtedness.
Speaker 1: Like that's why it's important to keep that lens that
Speaker 1: that reveals, uh, the way that racism has shaped indebtedness.
Speaker 1: So one of our phrases at the beginning was that
Speaker 1: is the tie that binds, but it doesn't bind everybody equally, right,
Speaker 1: Like that is common, but it's not an equalizer. It
Speaker 1: amplifies inequalities in lots of ways, is um Nevertheless, you know,
Speaker 1: for example, with our for profit college union, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a really it was a really diverse group.
Speaker 1: I mean there were people who lived in rural areas,
Speaker 1: and there were urban youth, and there were um, you know,
Speaker 1: middle aged grandmas who had kind of gone back to
Speaker 1: college after the economic crisis in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and then there were young people just starting their lives out.
Speaker 1: And you know, they were black, they were white, a
Speaker 1: lot of them were first generation, a lot of single mothers.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think when you when you do
Speaker 1: organize with a material analysis and you follow those chains
Speaker 1: of debt or you know, look to where people are
Speaker 1: being exploited in the workplace, you will kind of you
Speaker 1: will end up with a diverse coalition, right because you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's the real that's who's being exploited in this
Speaker 1: world and taken advantage of. Um. Yeah, there are there
Speaker 1: are real There are definitely colleges in debt or organizing
Speaker 1: and there you know, and I'm not sure they're not
Speaker 1: that different than organizing. UM in general, I think we have.
Speaker 1: I think the thing about that or organizing is just
Speaker 1: that it's it's a new framework, right, Like we're customs
Speaker 1: of thinking, Yeah, we're a customed to thinking okay, organized
Speaker 1: electorally organized at the workplace, get out and vote or
Speaker 1: join a union. Yeah, and this is like, okay, hey,
Speaker 1: here's this whole new set of not just of corporate
Speaker 1: targets and government targets, because there's the sense of like
Speaker 1: you could organize against the bail bond's company or the
Speaker 1: paida lender or the bank or the government apparatus that
Speaker 1: enables their behavior or could potentially regulate them or implement
Speaker 1: a policy that could put them out of business. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's but it's it's so I think that's I
Speaker 1: think right now we're still in the proselytizing phase of like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is how the economy is organized. It's organized to
Speaker 1: put you in debt. So we should then use this
Speaker 1: as an opportunity to organize ourselves in a new way
Speaker 1: to transform it. M absolutely. I was also curious in
Speaker 1: terms of challenges UM. In my lifetime, at least I've
Speaker 1: seen movements emerge at if acute moments of injustice. The
Speaker 1: murders of like of Michael Brown or George Floyd has
Speaker 1: some personally impactful examples. I wonder if you see a
Speaker 1: potential matchstick moment for debtors organizing the way that we've
Speaker 1: seen previous UH moments of a justice spark these huge
Speaker 1: movements UM around a certain kind of organizing or in
Speaker 1: a certain UM frame or areas. Such a good question.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I think sometimes those moments can be made.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a whole theory of organizing UM.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't know if you followed like the
Speaker 1: momentum model which has influenced the UM groups like Sunrise
Speaker 1: for example, but their whole thing is that you can
Speaker 1: generate those galvanizing moments of crisis UM instead of kind
Speaker 1: of waiting for one UM. So my my impulse is
Speaker 1: you know, debt or organizing. Um. You know, I think
Speaker 1: one of the things about debt, I mean it's a
Speaker 1: little bit like the wage, right, it's kind of part
Speaker 1: of part of the ideology of capitalism is, oh, that's private, right.
Speaker 1: You don't talk about that. You don't you don't go
Speaker 1: around talking about what you're paid, you don't go around
Speaker 1: talking about what what you owe. And so it's kind
Speaker 1: of insidious in that way. It's a little invisible. Um.
Speaker 1: So it challenges my imagination to think, like what would
Speaker 1: be the big spark. But on the other hand, you know,
Speaker 1: I think with COVID, our economy is like going off
Speaker 1: the rails. I mean, once again, fort allion people in
Speaker 1: this country are going to be an imminent threat of
Speaker 1: eviction and homelessness and have these massive back rents do
Speaker 1: and you know, something like that can't spark and like,
Speaker 1: you know, a movement about this, then I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it would take, um, but it
Speaker 1: feels like we might be heading to heading into a
Speaker 1: different um like just different terrain because of the crisis
Speaker 1: that we're in right now. Um. And that's why I
Speaker 1: think we're having moment. It's their dog and their Mailman.
Speaker 1: Everyone needs to read Can't Pay. Well, that's I'm serious,
Speaker 1: it's really good book. But and then we'll have the
Speaker 1: frame work I which to understand the moment we're going through,
Speaker 1: and the moment itself will be the match thing. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's I mean, that's sort of you know,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm like, I don't want to be too
Speaker 1: prophetic or optimistic, but I think that is the that's
Speaker 1: the wage that we're trying to make. What you know
Speaker 1: is that we know that tens of millions of people
Speaker 1: are going to be in the can't pay scenario and
Speaker 1: already are like that's where we are in this moment.
Speaker 1: And so you know, if we can rise to the
Speaker 1: occasion as the debt collective and his organizers and turn
Speaker 1: that can't pay moment into a won't pay moment, right
Speaker 1: because you shouldn't have to pay anyway, Like these debts
Speaker 1: are immoral because their their debts related to your basic
Speaker 1: survival and you know, things you should be entitled to
Speaker 1: as a human being, then yes, that could be our
Speaker 1: match stick. Right. So it's you know, I think I'm sorry, no, no,
Speaker 1: but I think that's right. I mean that you know,
Speaker 1: we want the proposition we're making is like, you know,
Speaker 1: skip the shame, skip the self reproach, and like let's
Speaker 1: get angry and get organized and indignant about this. In
Speaker 1: a way, I think it might. I think COVID kind
Speaker 1: of might help out with that because one of the
Speaker 1: things that I worry about sometimes is with everyone's lives
Speaker 1: kind of with everyone's lives being you know, built around
Speaker 1: hustle and bustle, and everyone has to grind and grind that.
Speaker 1: I feel that sometimes when things get so outrageous that
Speaker 1: that can some sometimes dampen people's want to fight. You know,
Speaker 1: you were talking about how being in debt can be
Speaker 1: a form of keeping the population subdued. Like I feel like,
Speaker 1: just using Trump as an example, if we were to
Speaker 1: wake up one morning and see that Trump did something
Speaker 1: like completely completely outrageous, like more outrageous than the normal,
Speaker 1: that most people would be mad on their phone in
Speaker 1: the morning and then have to go to work. And
Speaker 1: I feel like COVID, now the economy now don't have
Speaker 1: shipped to do. So It's like, let's like, how how
Speaker 1: would the would the George Floyd protests and the protests
Speaker 1: that have followed since, would that have been as massive
Speaker 1: and widespread. If forty million people didn't get lose their
Speaker 1: job before him, well, what do you think have that
Speaker 1: to tie them down? I'm I don't think so personally.
Speaker 1: I think I think it kind of goes hand in him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I think that's what I think.
Speaker 1: That's right. I think there was something about people living
Speaker 1: in a different time scale because of the pandemic that
Speaker 1: enabled a deeper reflection for some people who might otherwise
Speaker 1: have just ignored it or um like moved on more quickly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I think I do think pandemic time influenced
Speaker 1: people's responses. I think the thing for me is that,
Speaker 1: you know, I just want people to be have a
Speaker 1: better analysis of power. It's like, how where is the power?
Speaker 1: What power do we have, what leverage do we have?
Speaker 1: And so that's it's like, because I actually think there
Speaker 1: are lots of people who are pretty awake and who
Speaker 1: care about things in a disgusted by injustice. I think
Speaker 1: what we don't have in this country are you know,
Speaker 1: solid organizations that are geared towards like um class conflict
Speaker 1: on the side of the working class, right, like unions
Speaker 1: are really really incapacitated by the legal regime we're in.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you go back to the beginning of
Speaker 1: this country, imported from British common law, is basically this
Speaker 1: idea like workers organizing was a conspiracy, it was illegal,
Speaker 1: But the legal regime has always been set up to
Speaker 1: encourage you know, investors and bosses to collaborate, right, Like
Speaker 1: what is an LLC but just basically a legal mechanism
Speaker 1: so that like you know, people can collaborate and have
Speaker 1: a business and have limited liability. Right. So from the
Speaker 1: very beginning of this country, it's like there has been
Speaker 1: uh an assault on people's capacities to collaborate and have
Speaker 1: some literarity and and organize um organizing their interests. So
Speaker 1: I guess that's where you know, I think if we
Speaker 1: need to make an intervention, it's like, okay, we all
Speaker 1: we you know, a lot of people care enough of
Speaker 1: us care about what's going on in the world that
Speaker 1: if we were just organized, we could change things together, right,
Speaker 1: bearing together in a strategic way. That actually is like
Speaker 1: where is the power, you know, where can we stop
Speaker 1: the flows of capital, Where can we interrupt exploitation? Where
Speaker 1: do we have political leverage? Which is why it's so
Speaker 1: important for people like Maria and others to be running
Speaker 1: for office and you and um and having skin in
Speaker 1: that game. But I think, you know, it's really for
Speaker 1: me the power analysis that we need to be developing
Speaker 1: and like building the organizational and institutional might to get
Speaker 1: in the way of business as usual. Um, you know.
Speaker 1: And and protests are amazing and I moved by them,
Speaker 1: and I've been at my share of them in my life,
Speaker 1: but like I want, I want different forms of institutional power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I wouldn't be respectful for your if your
Speaker 1: time first stance. We're getting in towards three thirty, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've got to run a Should we
Speaker 1: get to the last question? I'm really curious for the
Speaker 1: second to last question. Then second to last question, I
Speaker 1: do want to say one thing about the racial justice
Speaker 1: then really quick is you know it's interesting that the
Speaker 1: phrase we always use as reckoning, that we're having a
Speaker 1: reckoning around racial justice, now that that word actually means
Speaker 1: it's actually a reference to debt. Right, it's a settling
Speaker 1: of accounts, it's a calculation, and so it's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, for me, as someone involved in debt or organizing,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that our moral language is steeped in indebtedness
Speaker 1: and the payback of debts. Right, So one thing the
Speaker 1: debt collective is trying to do, and what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do with campaign Won't Pay, is like challenge the
Speaker 1: morality of debts. Right, we don't we don't, uh, we
Speaker 1: don't always have to pay. In fact, the rich walk
Speaker 1: away from their debts all the time. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at the revelations about Trump. Right, we knew Trump had
Speaker 1: like six or seven bankruptcies behind him, but you know
Speaker 1: he's like he's like four million dollars in debt or
Speaker 1: something like that, and he's been able to use it
Speaker 1: to just get richer and get more powerful. Um. But
Speaker 1: I think you know the the the flip side of that, though,
Speaker 1: is like, well, what debts do we want to pay?
Speaker 1: Like we don't want to pay these student loans, we
Speaker 1: don't want to pay these medical bills, but we want
Speaker 1: to pay reparations. We want you know, to like we
Speaker 1: want to pay the climate debt that you know, we
Speaker 1: as this rich, industrialized question country oh for you know,
Speaker 1: burning up more than our fair share of carbon and
Speaker 1: to help pay back debt so we can build a
Speaker 1: new green economy. So I think that the yeah, the
Speaker 1: language of reckoning in this moment is interesting. Um, you
Speaker 1: know in this question of like okay, yeah, in a
Speaker 1: reckoning like what like we need receipts. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not just if the perspective that's required that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: You know as a linguist, that's just like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like a linguistic and etymological link between
Speaker 1: like this moment we're having and the language we are
Speaker 1: using about it. But we can we could do a
Speaker 1: whole interview, just like Love for Etymology, because they like
Speaker 1: because where words come from, like the meaning, like the reckoning.
Speaker 1: It's like that meaning is even if you don't know
Speaker 1: it consciously, it suffuses it. Like that's part of why
Speaker 1: we're going to that word. Um, I love words were
Speaker 1: just so good and you're good at words. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I really appreciated that. I really if you if you
Speaker 1: were rhyming, it would probably make some ill verses. My god,
Speaker 1: that episode we would be. So that's not even fair
Speaker 1: to say that because now you might not do it.
Speaker 1: It's not every episode. Since it's about hip hop and politics.
Speaker 1: We wrap in the intro and I the show, and
Speaker 1: so for many weeks, a lot of times we freeze out,
Speaker 1: but for many weeks we like right versus about the topic.
Speaker 1: So I this weekend, I'm gonna sit down, let's see
Speaker 1: what I got for that, and then I'll have to
Speaker 1: have another dance party. I had one question about scaling
Speaker 1: that strikes to like various institutions from a local governmental perspective.
Speaker 1: I was really intrigued by the chapter about governments refusing
Speaker 1: their debt and wondered if you could speak to that
Speaker 1: a little bit, just give me a little piece of
Speaker 1: ice about how to bring this to bear in my
Speaker 1: local legislation. So, um, where do we start? I think
Speaker 1: one one thing? Okay to begin, Well, you see hear
Speaker 1: a lot about debt from the right wing, and the
Speaker 1: argument from the right wing was the national deficit. We
Speaker 1: as a country are so in debt, and we're just
Speaker 1: like a household. When a household is in debt, we
Speaker 1: need to like tighten our belt. We need to cut
Speaker 1: our spending right and uh, and so therefore we're going
Speaker 1: to have to cut some security and cut funding education
Speaker 1: and cut you know, everything except the military, accept the police.
Speaker 1: So that is as we've seen post COVID fundamentally wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, what did the federal government do. They just
Speaker 1: came up with trillions and trillions of dollars for corporations
Speaker 1: overnight without any discussion. So at the federal government level,
Speaker 1: that's wrong. At the state level and the municipal level,
Speaker 1: governments aren't able to just print money in the same
Speaker 1: way the Feds are. Right, So there are real vegetary constraints,
Speaker 1: But we have a dynamic where um, the rich people win.
Speaker 1: Why because we don't tax wealthy residents, right, States and
Speaker 1: local governments don't tax rich residents enough, don't tax corporations.
Speaker 1: Um end up imposing regressive taxes right sales tax or
Speaker 1: whatever else. And then what do we do. We issue bonds,
Speaker 1: which is a basically borrowing from rich residents. So you
Speaker 1: say like, hey, rich people are not going to tax you,
Speaker 1: but we'll borrow your money and we'll pay you interest
Speaker 1: and um and in Wall Street will will get a
Speaker 1: cut for brokering the deal. And so what we have
Speaker 1: today is situations where you know, people communities have to
Speaker 1: issue bonds for schools, for roads. But also like there
Speaker 1: was a big paper recently about police brutality bonds. So
Speaker 1: essentially city governments issuing bonds, borrowing millions of dollars um
Speaker 1: so that they can pay when the cops kill people.
Speaker 1: In other words, residents are paying, yeah, for killer cops,
Speaker 1: but the investors in those bonds and a k a.
Speaker 1: The rich residents get their dividends in Wall Street gets
Speaker 1: a fee off of these, you know, bonds covering police brutality.
Speaker 1: So I think that's that that is a vivid example
Speaker 1: of just how messed up the system is. So um
Speaker 1: so one thing, you know, I think it's it's these
Speaker 1: deals are really commonplace, and so we are organizing. We
Speaker 1: have a Hub Debt Collective Pennsylvania that's sort of centered
Speaker 1: in Philly. I'm engaging in in campaigns that are focused
Speaker 1: on renegotiating these municipal debt deals. Right. So, you know,
Speaker 1: school systems lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year
Speaker 1: because they're paying interests on these bonds, and Wall Streets,
Speaker 1: you know, getting a cut, And that's money that I
Speaker 1: can go to patching the roof, or hiring more teachers,
Speaker 1: or giving the students the computers they need to learn remotely. Right,
Speaker 1: So I think I think there are some potential really
Speaker 1: interesting campaigns of municipal debt resistance. One dream we've had is, well,
Speaker 1: what if multiple cities went on strikes? My dream too,
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking about, like finding other cities
Speaker 1: that are that are done bonds with a certain you know,
Speaker 1: and maybe you've all done bonds with Goldman Sacks and
Speaker 1: then there's like a five city municipal strike against Goldman Sacks.
Speaker 1: I think that there is another thing that cities and
Speaker 1: states could do that would be really cool, which is
Speaker 1: how do you protect your citizens from predatory lenders and
Speaker 1: debt collectors. UM, Well, there's something called eminent domain. Right.
Speaker 1: Eminent domain is where the government right see the hotels,
Speaker 1: se seize the debts that people owe because you're you
Speaker 1: know those those sheets of all of the money. That's
Speaker 1: so that's an asset. That's property that could be seized
Speaker 1: by eminent domain. And E raced UM and we've been
Speaker 1: working working and we've been working with so this. We
Speaker 1: have been working with UM, any leading economist on this.
Speaker 1: And there's a wonderful assemblyman in New York named ron
Speaker 1: King him from Queen's New York Assembly. When we were
Speaker 1: we ron Kim on this idea. UM and so, I
Speaker 1: mean there's so many things. This is this is the thing.
Speaker 1: We have lots of rights on the books that aren't respected.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the story of America, right, It's like
Speaker 1: you know, so I think one thing is people need
Speaker 1: to get organized just to have the rights they have
Speaker 1: on the books enacted. Like that's that's that's true. And
Speaker 1: there's there are consumer protections, um and and things that
Speaker 1: that we can mobilize and organize around. But then there's
Speaker 1: so much that, uh, there's so much that could be
Speaker 1: done if people were actually brave enough to use the
Speaker 1: state power at their disposal. Right, I mean this is
Speaker 1: why we have built this whole movement pointing out the
Speaker 1: fact the Department of Education has the power to cancel
Speaker 1: all student debt, Like, should Democrats control the Department of
Speaker 1: Education next year? Right, We're not going to let them say, oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell, won't let us do it. Right, the Republicans
Speaker 1: are obstructing us. We're gonna say no, you actually unilaterally
Speaker 1: have the power, and you're just cowards or worse than that,
Speaker 1: you like to see people suffer. Right, So I think
Speaker 1: this question of what what power do people have? What
Speaker 1: rights do people have that they can you know, fight
Speaker 1: to enact. What power do people have that they should use?
Speaker 1: And then how can we push the envelope and imagine
Speaker 1: using some of these things like eminent domain or you
Speaker 1: know the power of municipal finance to renegotiate the terms
Speaker 1: and start democratizing the economy. Is like where our movements
Speaker 1: need to go next, because I think, you know, victors
Speaker 1: like that are inspiring to people. You know, that's the thing, um,
Speaker 1: and it would terrify Wall Street, which would also be fun,
Speaker 1: super fun my favor. Well, Yo, this was amazing. I
Speaker 1: feel like we need to talk for hours. This is
Speaker 1: set out, but we probably you know what, will probably
Speaker 1: have to ask you to come back on for something else.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I would love that. But we get to
Speaker 1: hang out in person one day, so I would really
Speaker 1: like that when hanging on in person happens again, it
Speaker 1: will happen, I think it's going to happen. But I'm
Speaker 1: so honored to be on here, and I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm talking to like an old friend. So really I
Speaker 1: feel the same. Where can we uh? Where can people
Speaker 1: find you? All? Right? So, well, first of all, so
Speaker 1: what do we do? I've got hospital bills. You got bills, Yes,
Speaker 1: I got bills, hospital bills. So everybody listening, we all
Speaker 1: got bills. What do we do now? W W you
Speaker 1: debt collective dot org, sign up, join the union. If
Speaker 1: you don't have money to pay your dues, that's fine,
Speaker 1: you know. I think it's important that people. I think
Speaker 1: it's important people pages because we don't want social movements
Speaker 1: that are funded by philanthropy, and we don't want social
Speaker 1: movements that are funded by people who are ultimately invested
Speaker 1: in maintaining the status quo. That's why it is important
Speaker 1: that we UH own our organizations. But there are dispute
Speaker 1: tools that you can use for free UH to dispute
Speaker 1: any sort of wage, wage garnishment, so security garnishment, tax
Speaker 1: garnishment you might be suffering if you're in default, to
Speaker 1: dispute any debt in collections UH and join especially the
Speaker 1: student loan that is union, because we want to force
Speaker 1: the hand of the government in the year ahead and
Speaker 1: make them abolish all one point seven trillion dollars of
Speaker 1: student loans. And as someone who has been working on
Speaker 1: this issue for the last eight years, I can tell
Speaker 1: you we're closer than we'd ever thought we'd be. So
Speaker 1: let's push it over the edge and make the Republican
Speaker 1: nightmare come true. Because what they always tweet is what
Speaker 1: you raise? Student loans? What's next? Credit cards? Auto loans? Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: like follow that line all the way through, buddy, that's
Speaker 1: where we're going forever. That's how it should be. Bring
Speaker 1: it back, that's how it should be. Social housing. You
Speaker 1: should be able to live in a home and not
Speaker 1: in a commodity. Your life will be better. But that's
Speaker 1: where they find us. On the internet, where you find
Speaker 1: everything in these days. At debt strike on Twitter. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: at strike, debt on Twitter, strike on Twitter? Got it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much? You really dope talking in here.
Speaker 1: I feel like reparations. Let's get a beat. You waiting
Speaker 1: on reparations? Do and I fighting for collective liberation. Yet
Speaker 1: we're taking on the titans by tell them the big
Speaker 1: bankers we're making any payments for our hospitalizations or our
Speaker 1: cars and work credit card. Tell them they should thank
Speaker 1: us for every dollar they're making up the way the
Speaker 1: ball us different load, can't bay, won't BA have to
Speaker 1: tell them? Louis No from Seattle to Nevada. Louis worked
Speaker 1: a lout b and privatization and the race of that.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't oh straight up abolish it. Give us three
Speaker 1: comments in joblessness to give free healthcare to all of us.
Speaker 1: We can't pay till we won't pay. You not get
Speaker 1: that straight, because together we owned the whole bag. Put
Speaker 1: the lean on my whip. I'm afraid when a part
Speaker 1: at eight team wanted kicks put it straight in the
Speaker 1: car started racking the bill. Still, it was confusing to
Speaker 1: see stuck in my dad up to my neck like
Speaker 1: I'm through in the sea. Couldn't think long term what
Speaker 1: the future could be. No, I can't unlearn the fucking
Speaker 1: users agree, I gotta pay that the hope of my fortune.
Speaker 1: Don't want to say jack with all the old make
Speaker 1: me feel like I'm stuck in a straight jack. But
Speaker 1: then told the state tax the rent wise stays that
Speaker 1: will I survive? I bet if I will. I wish
Speaker 1: that I didn't once I see that medical bill, don't
Speaker 1: jesus damn reph. Hey, my name's dope knife Franca, and
Speaker 1: we are waiting on reparations. Hurry the fuck see you
Speaker 1: guys next week. Waiting on reparations is a production of
Speaker 1: I heart Radio. Listen to Waiting on Reparations on the
Speaker 1: I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.