Students with up to $230,000 in student debt have decided that they are rich in political power.
At a Zoom meeting hosted by the activist group the Debt Collective, student debtors entering the meeting announced on its chat how much money they owed in debt.
Although the meeting numbered around 300 people at its biggest, the debts of all involved may have been in the millions.
Some students owed over $200,000 in debt. Others owed $95,000. Some of the most debt-free attendees owed $20,000.
“$75k, 40k already paid in interest, nothing to the principal. Can’t refinance due to ‘debt to income ratio,’” one student’s message read.
Students like these, guided by left-wing activist group the Debt Collective, may soon pursue a debt strike.
“The strike, as to federal student debt, is not about using leverage over the federal government by depriving them of money. The federal government does not need our money,” said the Debt Collective’s lawyer, Sparky Abraham.
“What the student debt strike is about is about politicizing our nonpayment, about moving ourselves from ‘can’t pay’ to ‘won’t pay,’ and realizing that this is actually a political issue.”
This approach might not mean that students actually go on strike, Abraham added. Students whose debts are legally on pause may say they are “on strike.”
“If you’re in school, you’re on strike. If you’ve got income-based repayment and your payment is zero, you’re on strike,” he said.
In the face of debts far in excess of the average American’s salary, many of the students in the meeting expressed outrage at the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule President Joe Biden’s debt forgiveness program.
Everything By Majority Opinion?
Democratic Socialists of America activist Astra Taylor said student debt and the Supreme Court were “illegitimate.”“This is not a democratic institution. It’s not a legitimate institution,” she said.
The Debt Collective, a left-wing activist group, believes in “anti-racist” discrimination, radical gender ideology, and dismantling “racial capitalism,” according to its website.
Throughout its existence, the collective has erased $32 million in debt by buying debt portfolios on secondary debt markets, then erasing them.
The Debt Collective doesn’t just oppose student debt. It also opposes medical debt, court debt, rent debt, and more.
“We’re coming to build an equitable, democratic society. And we’re gonna be in solidarity with all these other movements that we know are so important,” Taylor said.
Meeting participants said the Supreme Court was “illegitimate” because it was “undemocratic.”
“Super cool having an unelected body of ghouls overriding the rule of law like we live in a fantasy movie,” one student in the chat said.
It’s unclear what the activists would prefer in place of the Supreme Court.
Biden Responds
In an address on June 30, Biden announced that he planned to offer a new debt relief plan.Biden said payment requirements for student loans would resume in the coming weeks, but he would work under the authority of the Higher Education Act to begin a new program designed to ease borrowers’ threat of default if they fall behind over the next year.
Biden blamed Republicans for the Supreme Court loss.
“I didn’t give any false hope,” he said heatedly. “The Republicans snatched away the hope that they were given.”
Biden told the media his administration would use the Higher Education Act to compromise, waive, or release student loans under certain circumstances.
According to Debt Collective co-founder Thomas Gokey, it’s likely Democrats could find a way to legally forgive student debt.
“It doesn’t matter which legal authority he uses. It matters how he uses it,” Gokey said.
He noted that it would be better strategically to argue legality after forgiving the debt.
“Just [expletive] cancel the debt, and then we'll have legal fights. But it’s gonna be a lot harder to fight once that debt is canceled,” Taylor said.
However, many students at the meeting didn’t trust Biden or the Democrats to deliver results.
Students burdened by debt seemed in the mood for radical solutions.
“Litigation is a joke. Move to have a mass, organized effort for no one to pay their loans,” one commenting student debtor said.
