From Scared to Debt to Action, Nikki moderates a panel for Sallie Mae Not, the first episode of the Scared to Debt documentary series. Nikki asks panelists Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice, Reggie Harris, musician and educator, and Mike McGuirk, activist, and founder of Bliss Factory about their personal experiences as student debt borrowers. The panel discusses the current activism around student debt cancellation and its connection to the Civil Rights Movement and the use of music, film, and artistic expression as an essential piece to the student debt movement’s success.

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Transcript –

Michael Camoin: Welcome everyone. I love that soundtrack. That is the soundtrack to Nikki Nolan’s podcast Matter of Life and Debt, who I look forward to bringing on momentarily. So welcome to the From Scared to Debt to Action discussion. And what we hope is that this is the first of a series of talks to be announced in the near future.

We wish to thank our sponsors From the Heart Productions, making this possible. And I thank each of you for being here and for your outpouring of generous support and donations. It’s great. People are joining us this evening. “Sallie Mae Not” as the first episode in a docu-series called Scared to Debt, and it will be available on this platform Show and Tell until September 26th.

We will also be screening at the Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival, September 23rd through the 25th. And this just announced, “Sallie Mae Not”, has been invited to screen at the University of Southern California, USC. In association with the Kazdin Institute and the USC cinema studies on October 14th, we’ll be posting some of this information as we get closer to these dates.

Michael Camoin: I do want to announce that Senator Chuck Schumer accepted the invitation to introduce us at the USC screening. We’ll be posting this information on our website scaredtodebtmovie.com. As a filmmaker, we want audiences to decide for themselves whether or not this lending system is fair, just and right for us the borrowers. Or is it time to decide to, to give it its long-overdue reform? And if so, how? Tonight’s discussion is borrower-centric by design. We have a wonderful group of extraordinary panelists and before their introductions let’s watch the opening of our film.

FILM: Who could want to have 10% of the population strangled in debt that kicks them out of the economy, forces them off the grid, and destroys their American green. Who does that benefit? I’m concerned. The guy who made this happen was Al Lord. He really made this happen. Albert Lord took Sallie Mae from being a governmental agency to a completely for-profit corporation.

Albert Lord became the highest-paid CEO in Washington, DC. He had made enough money to build his own personal 18 hole golf course. Nobody wants to think of the federal government as a predatory lender. Nobody wants to think of the Department of Education as a loan shark. By removing the bankruptcy protection from an ethical standpoint and a societal standpoint, you’re taking it from a legitimate business and operation to a scam.

Why did the Department of Education decide to renew Sallie Mae’s contracts when it clearly violates the rules and has done so repeatedly? Who is responsible for putting all these students and parents in these loans that they can’t afford?

Everybody in the education business is making out, on this, on the misery of young people who are entering into catastrophic financial decisions that, when they’re still teenagers, what was their crime? They went to college and university.

That is over $64,000 in loans. And now I owe over $100,000 worth of student loans and I didn’t get to finish school. Three years after the original signing of this loan, that $20,278 is now $136,000 with the payback of $212,000 next to my name.

I didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted to go to college.

The worst decision I ever made was to borrow money for college. I don’t have any other option. So let me just completely forget about it.

So I left my job. I sold my house, bought an RV. I spent seven months traveling the country, 38 states, 20,000 miles. I went to the home districts and the Washington, DC offices of every member of both House and Senate education committees. Is making a quick call to Marco Rubio. Congress was far more ignorant and intransigent than I had ever anticipated.

If I was to quit doing what I did, I don’t see any other citizens out there right now that are doing anything to fight for the, for the people almost.

If the citizens were to lose this fight, it would be a big deal. Really bad for people.

Right now I have just over $180,000 still in that private student loan debt. Are there co-signers involved?

Yes.

I regret ever co-signing that federal student loan.

How is it that America is allowing this to happen, is what’s heartbreaking?

The loan will die when you do, I would hate reading that on those bills. That’s what it would say would stop at your death.

Is higher education in America a racket? No, I don’t think it’s a racket, but the educational loan system looks a lot like a racket.

Michael Camoin: Welcome everyone and thanks for joining us. To the From Scared to Debt to Action discussion. My name is Mike Camoin and I’m pleased to introduce our moderator tonight is the, Nikki Nolan, host of the podcast, Matter of Life and Debt. Please, everyone, check out the 25 plus episodes at matteroflifeanddebt.com. A few words about Nikki Nolan:

She’s a student loan borrower who accrued all of her student debt when she graduated with an MFA in interactive media at Pratt Institute. In 2017, when her student debt peaked at $153,000, she broke down. She had been paying off her loans since 2012, but her debt continued to increase rapidly. Deciding enough was enough, she set about aggressively paying down the debt. After 29 months, she was able to pay off $157,885.12. Her final loan total reached $162,144, including $53,832 in interest. Nikki believes fully that this student loan system is a scam and advocates that all student debt should be canceled, even though she paid hers off.

Thank you, Nikki. Nikki, this is a matter of having a life or having debt. So I’m going to hand it off to you and ask that you take it away.

Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much Mike, and welcome everyone. Isn’t it amazing how terrible this problem is? I’m just so excited to be moderating today.

This extraordinary group of people from the Scared to Debt documentary series. Are you all ready to get into this? To start, I would like each one of our panelists to offer a short introduction to themselves.

Nikki Nolan: I’m going to have Mike go first.

Mike McGuirk: Good evening. Thank you for having me guys and hello everyone out there. Mike McGuirk, I’m a filmmaker here in Brooklyn, New York. I’m also a producer, and I’m also a writer and artist as well. Do all those Brooklyn things. And yeah, happy to be here.

Nikki Nolan: Reggie, I’m going to have you go next.

Reggie Harris: I’m Reggie Harris. I’m a musician, a storyteller or a lecturer, a civil rights advocate. I live in upstate New York and am originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And, I’m happy to be part of this panel.

Nikki Nolan: So happy to have you here. And Alan.

Alan Collinge: Hey, my name is Alan Collinge. I am a pretend musician, so I just want to put that out there. But, I’m the founder of studentloanjustice.org. We’ve been around since 2005. Great to be here.

Nikki Nolan: Thank you, everyone. So just to kick this off, why is this documentary series so important for achieving student loan cancellation? Alan, I’m going to kick it back to you.

Alan Collinge: We know today I’ve been doing this for many years and I can say that all the documentaries made to this point, haven’t really dug deep and identified the problem as it is. A lot of people talking about, oh, the cost of college is so high, but they don’t really get into the anatomy of the actual problem.

This film series pulls no punches. It is, I’d say, fiercely honest. And we look at the facts as the facts are. I can’t think of a better film to bring the people together, particularly the borrowers. This film is looking out for the interests of the borrowers first and foremost. And I appreciate that very much. So hopefully 45 million people will see it.

Nikki Nolan: Hopefully. And Mike, tell us why this documentary series is so important.

Mike McGuirk: We’re seeing the results. And we’re seeing it in the headlines and we’re connecting dots in ways that we never have before. people really need to see this movie.

Mike and I have been working on this for about like six, seven years. I’ve been working on it for about six, seven years plus whatever footage and, it’s great to see that even though we’re this impossible little thing that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, we’re, we’re still affecting our country and we’re making it better. And, we’re doing the work that we should be doing.

Nikki Nolan: Awesome. Reggie, how about you?

Reggie Harris: Well, I also think that this is a very powerful film. It’s a very powerful subject. When Mike Camoin told me that he was working with Alan about six or seven years ago and told me what it was about, I knew in a cursory way what it meant. Simply, I co-signed onto a loan and, and it was still a major regret for me. But I had no idea that it affected so many people. And I do a lot of work in education, and I do a lot of work with colleges and high schools with people who are either involved in this situation or who are, will be involved in this situation. So I think it’s a very, very important time to bring the level of awareness up and also to put pressure on our representatives to do the right thing.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah. Reggie, you’ve done a lot of work in the Civil Rights movement. What do you feel people can draw upon from that movement?

Reggie Harris: Well, the civil rights movement really started, back in the time of slavery. It started with people coming here. Many of them, particularly those who did not come with money, who came, for reasons of trying to get away from where they were. And obviously my relatives, my ancestors came here in slave ships. From the very beginning, our government has found ways to enslave its population. If not by chains then by finances.

And I see this issue as being one of those continual issues. Slavery was ended in 1865, at least by chattel slavery and by legal means, but it went right into enslaving people through sharecropping and through all kinds of other financial indebtment. And much of the white population has kind of been sold a bill of goods that they were outside of that bubble. But at the same time that there was slavery, whites were also being disenfranchised financially, and that did not change with the advent of reconstruction or with the 1900s. So this is just one more way that, as we see in this film, the reveal of how our Congress, which also was complicit in slavery and complicit in, all kinds of other, nefarious dealings with citizenry.

Our Congress has worked to empower those with money and empower those who kickback from finances to them. This is why it is so difficult to get them on the record to talk about these things. And I love the work that Alan has done, and others have done to reveal that it’s a nasty secret in our country, that our representatives are not usually or not always working for us.

So I think that’s why this film is important to bring people aware that this myth, that they’ve been operating on, that our Congress and our state legislators and our government, governors, and even our local governments are working for them. So I think this is a great opportunity and, with all the work that’s been done, I think we stand a chance, a chance to make a difference.

Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much, Reggie. Both Reggie and Mike used music as a method of understanding, how have you been using music to help create change? Kick it back to you, Reggie.

Reggie Harris: Well, music has always been a part of successful movements. Bernice Johnson Reagon, who was a founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, the African-American singing group.

And so many of those who worked not only during the time of the Underground Railroad and at the time of Civil War, but also those who worked in the modern Civil Rights Movement, those who worked in the Women’s Movement understand that music creates community. Music creates an atmosphere and also is a wonderful way of creating a narrative so that people can follow a story.

So I think that for me, it’s been a way to bring history alive and to show the various places in American history and also around the world. But focusing on the American story where we can actually educate our young people and educate their parents. And I think in this time with the debt crisis, sections of our populace need to be educated.

We need to educate young people that this is an intersectional problem, that this problem goes into all sorts of things that will affect their lives. It’s affecting them already, but also for the parents who often find themselves, unaware of, that they’re part of a different reality, at least in terms of what they believe our country to be.

So music is very powerful in creating that narrative. And then also in bringing people together toward a common goal.

Nikki Nolan: Thank you for sharing. Mike, have you been using music to create change?

Mike McGuirk: So music, to me, is, it’s, it’s the greatest therapeutic, type of device that connects us all. And I’ve been inspired by people like Reggie, many other singers, people who tell these stories and we orate them, and we present them. And we try to change the world with that. And I’ve started developing a lot of different things around music. And, I love working with music and technology and trying to build things that, that really, affect and change the world.

And I think because of my student loan debt, I’ve been held back in a variety of ways. I see how, how we can keep building new ideas, that really elevate this country out of, out of the problems that it’s having. And it’s not just our government, it’s the corporations as well.

It is the corporations that have completely turned their back on American citizens that have not done more to help people that are in debt. People that they have impacted. And, I believe in music as a way to change people’s minds, so that it can make us stronger.

Nikki Nolan: Reggie, did you have some more to add to that?

Reggie Harris: Well, I just wanted to agree with Mike that, it is corporations and, it’s not only just here in America but multinational corporations. The reason I focus and say the government is because, in so much of our history, even though our government has not always represented our interests, there was that, that, umbrella protection that government often, certainly in the Civil Rights Movement, desegregation and, and the laws that made it impossible for example, for African-Americans to exercise their rights. It was only through government means that we were able to actually approach corporations who were not doing business in an ethical way in the community and say, “Hey, we are a people. It is about all of us as people.” And to sort of reign those corporations in. We’ve seen in the last 20 to 30 years that the government’s oversight has been removed and allowing corporations to then go for more, for a more profit-based system and with no protections. And now we see that the Supreme Court is being stripped away and has been compromised as well. So, no, I totally agree. But, we now will live in a very predatory society where there are very thin lines as we see them, being, practiced, very thin lines of any protection for those of us who are sitting here.

Nikki Nolan: Very much so. And I feel like this rolls well into our next question, which is directed at Alan. Alan, can you tell us about how this predatory system sort of differentiates between people from gender to race?

Alan Collinge: I’m glad you asked. First of all, a lot of people may or may not realize, women hold two-thirds of student loan debt out there. More women go to college, and I think the borrowing for females just generally is higher than males. Now for African-Americans, I dunno if you mentioned defaults, but we know that in 2007, the default rate for African-Americans was about 500% higher than average.

So I would like to be able to say what that’s become today, but unfortunately, I can’t, because we now know that of 2004 students, the average default rate was 40%. And then, the kids in 2004 were only borrowing about a third of what’s being borrowed today. So today, I think the average default rate for everybody walking around with student loans, regardless of race, ethnicity, is somewhere around 75%. Now by way of comparison, the default rate for subprime home mortgages was only 20%. So we are way up in uncharted territory. Frankly, I don’t know what more I can tell you to say that this lending system has catastrophically failed. Like none other, none, no other failed lending system that we’ve ever seen before.

And in general, I think that, I mean, it’s making lemonade out of lemons. This is a great opportunity for people of all races, all colors, all creeds, all political persuasions to join together because believe me, no true conservative could get behind this lending system. And so I see this as a great opportunity for the people to join together.

As Reggie said, from the days of slavery, the Fugitive Slave Act, believe it or not applied to indentured servants as well. So there were some white people that were being treated, certainly not as horribly as slaves, but certainly, there’s been this economic warfare in our country for centuries. And this student loan problem offers a great opportunity for us to come together.

Nikki Nolan: Awesome. I realized I missed one of the questions. So I’m going to circle back to that. What sort of has been the impact of student debt on your lives and your family, and I’m going to kick it to Mike first?

Mike McGuirk: I honestly can’t go into, what, how difficult it is right now to have student loan debt or anything like that. Being held back in certain ways because of my student loan debt. And it’s not an easy thing to deal with. It’s a very frustrating thing. I think a lot of people are held back that way. Many of my friends have to sacrifice certain things because of that.

But I’ve learned from everybody here and what I’ve learned from being involved with Debt Collective and understanding the history of the Occupy Movement as well. Which I don’t care what side of the line you are on, there’s conversations that exist within that, that solve a lot of our problems.

Michael Camoin: I just want to jump in Nikki and say that Mike does a wonderful job. For those who have seen the video know Mike recorded 10 years of his life before I met him. All his conversations with Navient and Sallie Mae.

And on many occasions, he films his parents on the phone with Navient. And that’s the reason why that shows up in the movie. And to me, that’s just like very compelling evidence of just how predatory this is on families.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah. I think Reggie also has a really complex story. All of us have very complex stories. I want to ask, Reggie, what has sort of been the impact of student debt on your life?

Reggie Harris: Well for anyone who is coming from a community and from a life situation where, there is no, family wealth, the family wealth gap. I am a musician who came into, trying to do what I do, with virtually no resources.

And, that in itself was a struggle, but then to have, my family, trying to get our, our nephews pushed forward into college life and, and to a better opportunity. And to get that call in the middle of the night when my sister and brother-in-law called us up and said, he’s about to be thrown out of school. We don’t have the money to pay the tuition, but we’ve been offered this loan and could, could you help us by co-signing on. And, when that call comes, the emotions of trying to help an African-American male, as you heard Alan say, and so many say that it’s difficult to even get African-Americans into school, let alone keep them there and into a career that will give them some sense of reaching the American dream.

At that moment, you’re just kind of inflamed with passion and you say, yeah, we’ll do whatever we have to do. Certainly things are going to go well. And, this is not going to come back to bite us. We’ll power through this as a family. It’s created great tension around the family. That, this situation has embroiled all of us in debt that does keep us from having resources to further our lives, to further our careers.

Those conversations then are very hard to have. And it’s difficult gathering with your relatives over holidays, with that sitting there behind you and, and not being able to really have a fruitful relationship with them because we’re all involved in this situation.

Nikki Nolan: It’s awful. It’s so important for us to get our stories out there and have these voices heard so that we realize we’re not alone, but realize the damage it is doing to us, our families and the society. I’m gonna kick this over to Alan to answer the question.

Alan Collinge: Oh, well, it’s hard to say I’ve been doing this for 16 years now. Certainly, I never would have started Student Loan Justice had I never had student loans. I knew this was going to be an uphill fight. This battle has been humiliating, but I want to say it in a good way. It made me very humble. It taught me how to live off the grid and survive on nothing. I live essentially like a graduate student now here today, 51 years old. It’s also given me a healthy sense of humor.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah, well, we’re going to roll into our last question before we start taking some Q and A. Do you think cancellation is possible? What do you think the path to cancellation is? Reggie first and then Mike, and then Alan.

Reggie Harris: Well is cancellation possible? Was voting rights possible? Were changes in the workplace for women possible? All of these struggles have been uphill battles. I come from a community that had to work for freedom and justice in the 1700, 1800s with absolutely no guarantee that any of that was going to matter.

People who sang “keep your eyes on the prize, hold on”. People who sang, “oh, freedom over me. And before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave”. People who sang those songs had no evidence that what they were advocating for was ever going to be possible. So yeah, I come out of a community that has a lot of resilience.

I would say I have my days when I think, when I have a little faith in those who can make a difference. But again, I believe that if we do what we are trying to do, not only with this film, but also with telling our stories. If we continue to use music and the arts and film and everything that we have to continue to bring the subject up to put pressure on these people in power and even more importantly, to connect ourselves to people who may not be thinking that this is the issue that will right the struggle.

But maybe they’re willing to listen to what we have to say and realize how connected it is to what they’re working on. All of these issues are human rights issues and they’re all connected in freeing all of us in ways that will make our lives more just and more free. So, I think it’s very important that we are taking a strong vocal line, but the visuals also. I think the interviews on this film are really powerful and I believe in storytelling. I believe that story narrative and song are the things that move us as human beings.

Nikki Nolan: Wonderful. And, and I’m going to kick it over to Mike, is student loan debt cancellation possible?

Mike McGuirk: I would say that it’s inevitable in some sense. I think that this time that we are in, We are, the word trauma and therapy. I keep going back to these notions. These are things that hold us, hold us back in this way. It’s held generations back in this way. It’s stopped ideas from flourishing, businesses starting, people from having families and, as time goes on, unfortunately, this problem is going to get bigger unless we start canceling the debt. So that is the only option I think. And the state of our world with the pandemic right now, and with an economy that does not work for the average person. It’s just not good.

Nikki Nolan: Alan, do you think cancellation is possible and what do you think the path is?

Alan Collinge: Oh, there’s no doubt. Mike is right. It’s inevitable. It’s inevitable. At $1.6 trillion, 45 million borrowers. Before this pandemic, about 50% of all borrowers were not paying on their loans. That’s before the pandemic. 30% who were paying, their loan balances were going up. So this lending system catastrophically failed even before the pandemic. This lending system is done, it’s toast. It’s finished. There is no saving. There should be no saving it. The only question is whether we have a good clean death to this lending system where the President does the right thing, cancels all federally owned student loans by executive order. Which requires not one dime from the treasury, by the way, in which it adds not one penny to the national debt, it’s the obvious way to stimulate the economy.

The obvious way to get rid of this lending system, and also return bankruptcy protections to the loans, private student loans, et cetera, that cannot be canceled by executive order. So that’s the good outcome or whether we have the bad outcome. Which is a year’s long, painful civilly unrestful nation-wrecking economy, a wrecking nightmare. I don’t want that second outcome. I want the first outcome and here’s one very critical, subtle point. We have seen a number of loan cancellation programs come and go since 1993. Millions of people have tried for them. Hundreds of people have actually got the loan cancellation. The trick here is bankruptcy.

Nobody wants to file for bankruptcy. It’s a terrible thing to have to do. But we saw in 2007, the people defending the student loan program and others, they went to great lengths to kill the return of bankruptcy protections, which is called for in the Constitution, by the way. Went to great lengths to kill bankruptcy, and in its place, put loan cancellation programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and IBR.

Well, we now know that in the absence, without the threat of bankruptcy on the side of the borrowers, any loan cancellation that we might see from Congress or the President, it’s going to get bureaucratized to death where nobody, almost nobody will get through the loans canceled by the Department of Education that has no desires, no intentions of canceling loans.

So we will, the good clean death, I think starts with returning bankruptcy protections. With that threat back on the table, well then all of a sudden, Joe Biden’s like, oh, I actually have to do something now. So I think we’ll, I think we’ll see broad, widespread cancellation when bankruptcy is back on the borrower’s side.

Nikki Nolan: We have a few questions that have come in. Bobby Chase asks, how do you talk to someone who doesn’t want to see their tax dollars, pay for student debt forgiveness?

Alan Collinge: The taxpayers paid for these loans many years ago. And most of the loans were many years ago, and they did not pay very much at all, but they didn’t pay $1.7 trillion. They probably paid a couple hundred billion. And remember the Department of Education has been profiting on these loans for 10 years running since Obama federalized the lending program. So the loans could be canceled tomorrow and the taxpayer would maybe even be breaking even. They wouldn’t be making a profit, but why in what universe does it make sense for the government to make a profit on student loans? Even Donald Trump said that. So don’t worry about taxpayers. The taxpayer is fine.

Nikki Nolan: Mike, what is it? You have more to add to that.

Mike McGuirk: Yeah. I just want to also stress that the taxpayer has to pay for this. And where is the money that you have put into the system? Where is that money that you paid for it? Where has it gone? If you’re on a college campus right now or thinking about going to school, anything like that, you need to question the institution that you are at right now, and you really need to stick it to them and ask like, is it, are you really getting your money’s worth? And I, I guarantee you 9 times out of 10, that’s not going to be the case. You’re paying way too much money for school right now. And it is a totally screwed-up system. And you need to shut it down and we will shut it down at some point if we don’t start canceling the debt.

Nikki Nolan: All right. Let me move on to the next question. So Lisa from UNC, is it realistic that we can look to President Biden to be the solution to the people? Who wants to take that one, Alan?

Alan Collinge: I would say yes. I followed Joe Biden for over a year in Iowa, hours and hours and hours I spent on the trail with him. And by the way, he’s not as absent-minded as you think. I think he’s sly like a fox. The way he talks is by design because you cannot pin the man down on anything he says. But the one good thing about Biden is that he is a politician and he wants to win elections. Before this election he was saying, if you went to a public college or HBCU and you earn less than $125,000 a year, I will eliminate your student debt. So, Joe Biden can be pushed. And we see after the election is quite a different story. But Joe Biden can be pushed, and I think when bankruptcy protections are returned to the loans, the threat of a massive wave of filing will be great enough that even Joe Biden, who has serious baggage, going back to the 1970s on the student loan issue, even Joe Biden will be compelled to cancel loans. It becomes a very easy decision when the threat of bankruptcy is returned to the citizens as the founders demanded.

Mike McGuirk: Victoria asks, specifically about Debt Collective NYC. Is there a place where people can go to share their stories? Yeah, you can just direct message us on Instagram @debtcollectiveNYC. And, yeah, you can contact us that way. You can, there’s also debtcollective.org, where there’s a bunch of information where you can get involved with our chapters.

Nikki Nolan: Another question from Victoria. How soon do you think we will see the movement on the bankruptcy fresh start?

Alan Collinge: Well, I’m glad that you asked Victoria, S-2598 is the bill that she’s referring to. So this is a bill from Senator Dick Durbin, Illinois. And believe it or not, this is jointly sponsored with Texas Republican governor John Cornyn.

So, Durbin is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. We’ve already got bipartisan, start to the bill. I’m very optimistic. Ah, I can’t say anything right now, but I can tell you that we are talking with people in the House of Representatives right now, as we speak to get a companion bill in the house. And in a perfect world, we could see bankruptcy return, certainly to federal student loans by the end of the year through this legislation. So that’s, that’s my north star, but I’m not gonna make any promises. this doesn’t happen in a vacuum out there, how hard you push really matters. I would urge everybody to go to a studentloanjustice.org, sign our petition, join our Facebook group, all that stuff. Listen to us when we, when we are persistent.

Nikki Nolan: Alan, you sorta touched on this. What actions can people take today? Like within this week,to work on this movement? And we’re going to go Reggie first.

Reggie Harris: Well two weeks ago, my Congressional Representative Antonio Delgado came to a town, the next town, and I went over and it reminded me that everybody that is in Congress, is not some callous, sham artist.

There are many people in Congress who are there because they really do want to make a difference. I went and brought up two issues with him that day at an outdoor meeting. And, he responded with both compassion and also facts of what he knows about those issues. So I planned to write to him again.

But also I think one of the most important things that we can do is to make connections with people, with whom we have relationships. Those in our families, those who are our neighbors. Most of the people that I talked to about this, some of them, even who have student loan debt over the course of years, are not aware that anybody else is really that interested in it.

And I know that for years myself, I really just had a lot of shame about having fallen into this. And I find that sentiment being very true with a lot of people I talked to. So I’m going to plan to talk to at least 10 people this week that are in my relationship base and write to my Congressman, to just keep pushing on, on the issue.

Nikki Nolan: Thank you, Reggie. And Alan, take us away with what people can do?

Alan Collinge: There’s so many things, but let me, let me keep it very simple. First of all, our website studentloanjustice.org, the petition that we started when the pandemic rolled around a change.org/cancelstudentloans. We are a fiercely nonpartisan group.

This is a nonpartisan problem, but it seems to be getting pigeonholed into the sort of bipartisan divide right now in the zeitgeist. I think that’s a dangerous thing. Anytime you have something that’s the only Democratic, only Republican never really seems to work out that well. So I would urge everybody out there, if you have a Republican governor or maybe pick a Republican governor, if you don’t. I would say people like Ron DeSantis in Florida, Brian Kemp in Georgia, Greg Abbott in Texas, Bill Lee of Tennessee, Christy Noem of South Dakota. Chris Sununu in New Hampshire.

Contact the governor’s office and contact the media in those states and tell them that this is a state problem. Now the governors have to step up and fight for their people against the federal government. It’s gotten to that point. This is becoming a state sovereignty issue in many ways. Republican governors everywhere should be on our side and they can change the entire game for us.

Nikki Nolan: Yeah. And you just talked about the media, you have a link to a bunch of media contacts, correct?

Alan Collinge: We have great media, a fairly good media email list for every state in the union.

Nikki Nolan: Wonderful. Thank you so much. And, Mike, do you have some ending words for us?

Mike McGuirk: I was going to say, please donate, for the film scaredtodebtmovie.com. Anything there helps. Please also check out blissfactory.org. I’m working on a bunch of really cool non-profit initiatives. I have an opportunity to do so many different things here and, some of the things that I have developed, I think can do a lot in this world. so please check that out too.

Nikki Nolan: Awesome. And, Reggie, do you have anything else? I want to make sure before we end.

Reggie Harris: I just want to say that I’m really encouraged by not only the people who have shown up tonight but also the people who are represented in this film. Sometimes we get a little depressed and downtrodden over how hard all of these movements are. but I think a lot of times we also realize that the work that we do, however insignificant it might feel, makes a difference. And, change does come. That’s one of the reasons that music is also good, is that it changes our mood and it changes our attitude about the work that we do.

So if you’re a singer, sing. If you are not a singer, put on some music and change your attitude as we’re continuing this fight. These movements are long, hard, difficult struggles. But we can look back and see where a change has been made. And certainly I see the faces of change on this zoom tonight.

Nikki Nolan: Thank you, Reggie. Thank you everyone. And, Mike Camoin is going to talk us out.

Michael Camoin: Nikki, thank you for doing such a wonderful job moderating and such great questions that have brought out some wonderful ideas on how we can take action this week. Thank you to each of our panelists. Reggie Harris, Alan Collinge, Mike McGuirk, I consider all of you friends. And, thank you for being here today. Folks, you can screen the film here on the website that’s given in the chat until September 26. Follow us on social media, where you can find all our handles on our websites, scaredtodebtmovie.com and listen to matteroflifeanddebt.com.

Yeah, there’s like 25, 26 episode already up there. So do something this week. Take action. I’ll echo what Mike McGuirk said, consider making a donation or buy something from the store here. Which is another opportunity for those who have the means or, or find somebody who has the means. Share this event with a friend, this will be recorded.

Thank you again, thanks to our sponsor From the Heart. Again, we’re, we’re here till September 26th. So take advantage of this, share this link and, thank you all. Have a good evening.

Nikki Nolan: Matter of Life and Debt is produced by me, Nikki Nolan. Special, thanks to Efe Akmen for creating the music and mastering the audio additional support. And thanks to Emma Klauber, who writes the information and transcripts about each episode. This podcast would not be possible without them. Visit our website for more information.

Matteroflifeanddebt.com where you can listen, read transcripts, get additional context for the subjects you just heard about. Subscribe absolutely for free. That website again, matteroflifeanddebt.com. Thanks again for listening.

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