Strike Debt Meeting - 6 May 2013

6 May 2013 Strike Debt meeting

Around 9-10 people attending.

We start by brainstorming about future directions.

People really want concrete solutions.

I'd like to campaign for making student loan debt subject to bankruptcy protection.

We should re-do the follow-up meeting. Brainstorm ideas for tackling student debt. The follow-up should be more of a working event than a festive event. We should all do more self-education, and find projects to invest our time in.

More research will lead us to long-term tactics and demands.

Maybe direct action isn't our next step. Self-education, and figure out ways to engage new people.

We could make educational videos and put them up on YouTube, along the lines of Ann Leonard's "Cap and Trade". Place student loan debt in the context of other debt.

Bring in people to speak, or give talks ourselves. Group research. Work with other strike debt movements on a regional level.

Get Wall Street off our campuses. Think of all the ways that Wall Street invades our educational system. Colleges are becoming more oriented towards job training, and less oriented to education.

Is student loan debt a dead end, because of bankruptcy laws, securitization, and such? Would it be beneficial to change course?

A lot of debt is structural. Eventually we'll reach a tipping point.

We've talked about making videos, and doing research. Turn the research into articles; post the articles and video on a web site, and be the independent media.

Education is not an infallible means of advancement.

Big investors (hedge funds, etc) are becoming concerned about the possibility of a student loan bubble.

Debt peonage controls the uppity people who go to college. In past generations, these people were the troublemakers.

Epiphenemenon: something that you can't notice at the individual level, but is very noticeable at the structural or group level. Maybe student loan debt is like that; the problems are more obvious when viewed as part of a larger class war. We have to connect student loan debt to other issues.

Convict Lease System: a set of laws that came into existence after World War II. These laws make it possible to turn inmates into slave labor.

High college costs and ridiculous admission requirements are just ways to filter lower classes out of the education system.

Raise the flag for collapse (of a student loan bubble) and push for concessions.

Do a college road show.

If the student loan bubble bursts, we don't want the banks to be bailed out. What would we want instead?

In some parts of our educational system, there's a lot of pressure to cut liberal arts from the curriculum. But you don't see this in ivy league schools.

Could student loan debt be an entry point for learning about the broader debt picture?

Teach the differences between financial literacy and financial fantasy. Hard work doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to pay your loans back.

Pick a SLAB (Student loan-backed asset), and try to perform due diligence on the security. (i.e., do what the financial industry failed to do for mortgage-backed securities). There's an important difference between SLABs and mortgage backed securities. With the current bankruptcy laws, SLABs basically insure themselves.

Look for an Ed Asner cartoon about the 1%.

There are a lot of ways to tell our story. We just need to come up with a good outline for how the story progresses. When telling the story, emphasize the difference between myth and reality.

Next strike debt meeting: Tuesday May 21st, 7pm (location TBD).