Strike Debt

suppose the question that I wanted to ask you, Astra, before we started this live podcast, is that you mentioned Occupy.

Obviously, you do a lot of work with Debt Collective.

Do you see there being a sort of through line from the global financial crisis of 2008 to the position being taken by end times fascists now?

Yeah, I think we could narrate it that way.

So I was active in the Occupy Wall Street movement and out of that organized and built the Debt Collective, which is the world's first union for debtors.

So we've been on the front lines fighting for the cancellation of student loans and medical debt and the provision of the things people need to live, like free health care and free education.

and social housing.

Yeah.

And so it set off the so-called Arab Spring, the movement of the squares in Europe, and then the rise to power of some left parties.

And in the United States, I mean, Astra, again, my co-author, she was one of the key organizers at Occupy Wall Street, and out of that formed the Debt Collective, which organizes people in debt with medical debt, student debt.

you know, I think you can draw a pretty straight line from that kind of inchoate sense of like, this is wrong.

We want change, but we don't have a set of demands to Bernie Sanders's campaign in 2016.

Naomi Klein is also an associate professor and co-director of the Center for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Astra Taylor is an award-winning writer, activist, and documentary filmmaker, the co-founder of The Debt Collective, and author of several books, including The Age of Insecurity, Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, and The People's Platform, Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age.

Thanks so much for spending the hour with us.

Naomi, start off with the title.

And that feeling of belonging, you know, I love writing with Astra because she is such a great and serious organizer.

And with the Debt Collective, and they have this wonderful slogan, you are not alone, right? Which is like, you're not alone, but you're also not alone.

And I'm not sure that the left has done a great job of making people feel that.

And that line, you are not alone, I think also captures the fact that Astra and her organizing has addressed the effective dimension of politics, which is so

And as Astra said before, we do see this concentration of wealth as the ultimate WMD.

We need to disarm it.

Astra, do you think that you have drawn particularly useful lessons from all the activism that you've done in the Debt Collective?

So much.

Meanwhile, I know I just say this, too, as a public service.

The Debt Collective posted this the other day.

The Department of Education has been incentivizing people to switch out of the SAVE plan onto a more expensive plan.

SAVE plan is a repayment plan of the Education Department for student loans.

Well, thanks.

That's saying a lot coming from the f- co-founder of the Debt Collective.

[laughs]

[laughs]