Salon.com > Strike Debt

Occupy gets into the debt market

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:59:00 +0000

This time last year, Occupy Wall Street participants were regularly storming through Lower Manhattan, snaking around the financial district and beyond in boisterous marches and defending their Zuccotti Park home base in tense street battles with the NYPD. Twelve months later, Occupy is pouring energy into buying up debt bonds.

It's not incongruent.

The Rolling Jubilee -- borne of Occupy offshoot group Strike Debt -- is best considered one among many Occupy tactics that aim to challenge or disrupt our current socio-political economic conditions. And as far as tactics go, this one is pretty clever. The idea is this: Occupy plans to buy up distressed debt -- debt which is in default -- and then forgive it (or, "abolish" it, as the ever-dramatic Occupy parlance puts it). Banks sell on distressed debts at pennies on the dollar (since the debts are in default, they're not making money off them and prefer to get rid of them). There are a number of websites where anyone can go and then buy this discharged, cheap debt. So, you or I or Occupy could buy $16,000 worth of debt for just $500 and then either make a profit by recovering the difference or just cancel it. Occupy and Strike Debt plan to do the latter on a large scale.

Occupy’s new ground: Debt resistance

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 22:37:00 +0000

Amid the marches and arrests during the Occupy anniversary in New York Monday, it was easy to miss the launch of a new and serious campaign. Strike Debt, one of the more interesting Occupy offshoots, aims to bring debtors together to build a network and explore ways to resist life in debt. Underpinning the project is the radical aim of building towards collective acts of debt refusal.

Strike Debt grew out of a series of assemblies in New York's Washington Square Park where individuals would share stories about struggling with crushing debt -- be it student, medical, housing or credit cards. Just four months later, in time for the Occuversary, an anonymous collective from Strike Debt and Occupy have concrete projects underway. On the weekend, 5,000 hard copies of a text, the Debt Resistor's Operation Manual, were handed out in New York. The 100-plus page booklet offers practical advice to defaulters and those struggling in debt. The manual gives a plain language explanation of how various debt structures work -- including housing, student and credit card -- while detailing the debt system's history. It also offers tips on how to challenge debt collectors, errors on credit ratings, and bankruptcy laws.