Debt Strike Update

[Thomas Gokey]

Hi everyone,

As many of you might already be aware, debt resistance has become one of the central themes of Occupy Wall Street as it moves into it's second year. There are a number of working groups who are starting to work towards the kind of debt strike/divestment project we were discussing at ContactCon last October. If you want to actually help build a global debtors movement that has the ability to carryout large-scale debt refusal, I strongly suggest you subscribe to the Strike Debt listserve: http://lists.occupy.net/lists/subscribe/strikedebt

If you live in NYC Strike Debt has been holding weekly debtors assemblies on Sunday afternoons. They are usually in Washington Square Park but this Sunday Aug 26th we are meeting in Prospect Park at 2pm for a BBQ and open assembly.

Strike Debt is an umbrella term embracing a diversity of tactics for debt resistance, including a debt strike and divestment campaign. Strike Debt is working on a number of exciting projects including a Debtor's Operation Manual full of tricks and tactics for resisting debt which should be published by Sept 17th.

If you don't live in NYC consider creating a debtors assembly in your own city. From reports I'm getting San Francisco is planning debt-related actions on Sept. 17th and I'm sure other cities are also working on debt resistance as well.

The Invisible Army is a brand new campaign which is just getting going to organize the millions of people who are already in default.

The Occupy Student Debt Campaign is about to reboot their campaign to organize students to refuse to pay back their student loans. The OSDC listserve is occupystuden...@lists.occupy.net

The main project that I've been working on since Oct has been renamed the "Rolling Jubilee" and will hopefully launch within the next several months. We're going to try to raise as much money as we can, buy as much debt as possible for pennies on the dollar (banks sell defaulted, charged-off debt to debt collectors for 1%-5% of the principle) and then abolish it. We're going to send reports to one of the three credit reporting agencies that these debts have been paid as agreed ending collection and somewhat restoring their credit. When it launches I'd appreciate your help to spread the word.

What we started talking about at ContactCon is being talked about by a lot of other people. If you're still on board, I'd say it's a good time to plug into Strike Debt.

-Thomas

651.249.8029

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Thomas Gokey
w: thomasgokey.com
e: thoma...@gmail.com
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