Americans owe $1.7tn in student debt. Even before the pandemic, a million people defaulted on their loans every year
I’m on strike.
This is not a typical strike. I’m not on a picket line, holding a sign while withholding my labor, showing a sense of united strength with my colleagues to win changes at work and in our lives. No, a different kind of strike. A debt strike. I’m still uniting with others to withhold something that gives someone else power. But this time, it’s my money.
Related: ‘It’s the right thing to do’: Biden urged to cancel student loans in first 100 days
Student debt is not an individual problem. It’s a political problem rooted in reactionary Republican ideology and systemic racism
Umme Hoque is the organizing director at the Debt Collective. She has spent the past decade organizing with low wage workers and social justice movements in the US and Australia and is based in the American south-west