Braxton 🟥

Sad to report that most Democrats haven't just turned their backs on student debtors, they're actively making the system even more predatory. Read this piece by my comrade Braxton Brewington and then join @debtcollective.bsky.social. Without mass action debtors are going to continue to be crushed.

This is a stepping stone to relegating higher education to a select class of wealthy white folks by the way.

For context, the Department of Education functions as the 5th largest bank in the nation—and the largest debt collector. Imagine if Bank of America were to transfer their entire loan portfolio to JP Morgan. The data/privacy concerns here are massive, let alone legality.

Earlier this year, the Student Loan Ombudsman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) wrote her annual report on student loans. It was deeply critical of Trump admin policies. So they fired her. Well, we just hired her.

Democrats shouldn't try to close ICE detention facilities but instead focus on fostering a culture of abundance within those ICE detention facilities

Cannot emphasize enough that Teen Vogue has had stellar reporting, analysis and political commentary over the past several years. This is a huge loss for the media sphere and all of their youth (and former youth) readers.

Begging y’all to not use this as an excuse to feel sympathy for municipal police departments. There’s enough space to have two enemies at once, I promise.

If you owe back rent debt to Equity Residential or *any* corporate landlord in the country, you can now go to backrentdebt.org and begin a debt-dispute process. We just created a new, free, first-of-its-kind tool to help tenants and debtors fight back.

Keep your eye on this. A decade ago, Debt Collective launched a student debt strike. Mainstream media scoffed and laughed. Then billions got canceled. We’re repeating that playbook with back rent debt: strike, shift moral culpability, target bad actors, change consumer protection law for the better.

We’d be in a much stronger position right now if mainstream Democrats had taken a common sense stand for First Amendment principles instead of piling on undergraduate standing up for Palestine.

Horrifying.

We spoke to U.S. Catholic Magazine about debt injustice: [Debt Collective] points out that relief is "literally in the Lord’s prayer." It’s the ultra-rich who are culpable, [they] say— billionaires hoarding wealth, against biblical teaching. They're committing sins.” uscatholic.org/articles/202...

News: With the Los Angeles Tenant Union, we're organizing a historic strike against the 5th largest corporate landlord in the United States — and the largest in L.A. Today, dozens of tenants across two Los Angeles buildings are refusing to pay their utility bills to Equity Residential.

"In a nutshell, this bill says that only the wealthy few can attend college, and that working class students will receive no help from the federal government to learn or pursue a career," Braxton Brewington of @debtcollective.bsky.social says in a statement.

NYT Daily with Chris Rufo on today to just spew right-wing ideology for all its listeners and all Barbaro offers up is the occasional "hmm." I would prefer if the Daily simply renamed themselves to "Heritage (Un)Spoken" or "AEI or DEI" or "The Right Take" or whatever they come up with.

The longest floor speech in United States history at 24 hours and 20 minutes and counting is an economic and moral damnation of billionaires and the wealthy elite.

Older people "are the fastest-growing demographic of student debtors," says @astra.bsky.social of @DebtCollective.bsky.social, who notes that 9 million people over 50 owe $400 billion. "People are aging into their student loans, not aging out." https://www.democracynow.org/2024/12/17/debt_relief

Wrote about Biden, Harris, Gaza and student debt—why the issues are interconnected, and why we’ll need to see significant movement on both from a potential Harris administration. inthesetimes.com/article/bide...

Braxton Brewington, press secretary for the Debt Collective, said the administration’s measures were “a reminder that despite the Supreme Court ruling, there are powers at the Biden administration’s disposal and they use them — but sparingly.” www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/u...

Booyah—go Debt Collective!!!!👇🔥✊

Morehouse College transferred every penny of debt they held in collections to the Debt Collective, amounting to $10M for 2800 students. Instead of collecting on it, we canceled it all completely. This is a no strings attached gift. www.businessinsider.com/student-loan...

"Nobody has retirement security when you’re invested in the stock market. Nobody has housing security when your property, which you think is so valuable, is at risk of flooding or losing its insurance." Insightful interview w/ Astra Taylor + her new book: www.newyorker.com/news/the-new...

“There is already precedent for ignoring the court, and white supremacists are mostly the ones who have set it.” Wrote about the reign of conservative judicial supremacy—and what we can do about it. For Hammer and Hope: hammerandhope.org/article/supr...

Do you have more than a dollar of student loan debt? Than this new debt dispute tool, built by amazing team at the Debt Collective, is for YOU. Take 10-20 minutes to fill it out. Good things might happen. debtcollective.org/what-we-do/c...

New from me: Last month, in a hat-trick for right-wing litigants, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of structural racism, homophobia and mass indebtedness — in that order. https://inthesetimes.com/article/student-debt-relief-biden-supreme-court

some blue sky for your Bluesky

twitter is the submarine of social media

👀 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/26/opinion/student-debt-relief.html

Happy Renaissance World Tour Day to all who celebrate 🪩