After the April 4th Day of Action, President Biden announced another extension of the student loan pause. But what does this mean for student debtors? Host Shanna Bennett speaks to three members of the Debt Collective about what this means, how it’s affecting student debtors, and what efforts will continue between now and August 31st.

Note from the editor: It is currently disputed as to whether this is the 4th or 5th or 6th pause extension.

Reference with links to articles

 

Transcript:

[00:00:10] Shanna Bennett: Hi, I’m Shanna Bennett. And I’m here with Thomas Gokey, Talia Millay and Justine Hecht. Today we’re talking about the student loan payment and interest extension announced recently after the Day of Action protest, organized by the Debt Collective on April 4th. And hey, if you weren’t able to make it, we got you. Go back and listen to episode 40.

[00:00:33] Hi everybody. Thank you so much for being here. You’re on Matter of Life and Debt. Welcome to the podcast!

[00:00:40] What do we think the pause suggests about the necessity of student loan payments to the government?

[00:00:45] Thomas Gokey: The pause that is now over two years just shows that the government doesn’t need these payments. They have never needed these payments. And, if they ever do decide to restart the payments, that it is completely artificial and arbitrary. That’s a political decision. It’s not an economic decision.

[00:01:08] Shanna Bennett: Right. I think I read, this is the fifth pause since the pandemic started. So clearly we’re okay. I’ve also read that there are various student loan servicing companies that are spending millions of dollars to lobby the government to get payments to be turned back on. So clearly they’re doing okay.

[00:01:28] Talia Molé: Yeah, I agree with Thomas and I feel that I’m on the other side. It also shows the great power that we have as organizers, because now we know that they don’t need our money. So it’s a matter of do we just want to go along with it and play their game? Or do we want to set the rules of our game and be like, no, you don’t get to take advantage of us anymore?

Justine Hecht: I really agree with what both Thomas said and Talia have said, and that it also shows the power, like kind of going off what Talia said. It shows the power of organizing as well. Right?

[00:01:59] I mean, we had the action in DC on April 4th. Then immediately after we saw another payment pause.

[00:02:05] Shanna Bennett: Right.

[00:02:05] Justine Hecht: There’s a lot of commentary about how that suggests we’re winning.

[00:02:08] And so what we’re doing is working and we should keep doing it.

[00:02:11] Shanna Bennett: Right. And I think it speaks to the fact that clearly there’s some acknowledgement that something has to be done. You know, so the pause went into effect. Does it make sense? Not necessarily. Is it what we asked for? No.

[00:02:25] So let’s speak to the pause being used as a political strategy.

[00:02:30] Thomas Gokey: There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense to me about August 31st. I know that the Democratic party hasn’t necessarily covered themselves in glory when it comes to competence, but they even, they would not be so incompetent as to restart student loan payments a mere months before the midterms.

[00:02:55] Shanna Bennett: Yeah.

Thomas Gokey: But that does put us in a position in the next few months of maximum leverage. You know, I think that we have a unique period of time and it’s really go time. So, if you’re listening to this, please get involved in the fight. You can join the Debt Collective. You can fight with a bunch of other debtors. Because it’s go time. What we win, we will likely win in the next few months.

[00:03:23] Talia Molé: Yeah. And to go off of what Thomas was saying, this period is very, very important to stress what it is that we’re calling for, which is full cancellation. Because we all know that Biden has always been about the banks, and that’s not going to change overnight.

[00:03:39] He’s not just going to shift his ideology. And so I think that right now, you know, something as obvious as cancellation of student debt would be a major win and plus for the Democratic party, but it’s not happening. And I think it’s because he’s trying to figure out how to please the banks and please the votes.

[00:04:00] And right now he finds himself in that sort of weak point that we can totally push. I think this extension, what it offers us is a longer period to be loud. And to be outraged. And to really hit the streets and social media and all of our platforms to say we’re not going to let you choose banks if you will. Something’s gotta give.

[00:04:27] Shanna Bennett: In terms of how it’s described by the administration, it seems to me this thing that’s supposed to be a favor to us, right? Like we understand this is difficult. So we’re going to give you some reprieve from this process. But really when you look at it from the political strategy perspective, it feels like we’re playing games. It feels like where I’m being used. Because what other examples do we have where we have a deadline, then we just continually push it back? I read last week that if there were to be another extension, it’s trying to get there at the biggest bang for their buck.

[00:05:10] Because clearly they could’ve just said, okay, December 31st, we’ll start again in January. This concept of having one delay and then another delay again in a month or two, it just feels really silly to me. In some of the documentation that SOFI is using to lobby the government, they are even acknowledging that more than likely we won’t see payments restart in 2022. More than likely it will be 2023. They had a quote by Miguel Cardona recently and even he said, oh, but clearly we’re okay with pushing this deadline. So if we need to we’ll do it again.

[00:05:46] Meanwhile, we’re trying to budget and live our lives and you know, is the burden there? Is it not there? It just seems extreme.

[00:05:52] Let’s talk about campaign promises and how this factors into that. Any thoughts?

[00:05:59] Thomas Gokey: I feel a question, a pull on the whole promises front, because on the one hand he made some promises that he would cancel student debt and he has the ability to do that with a signature. But some of the promises he made were not that great. You know, they were like, these means-tested like excluding people. And if he were to try to actually carry that out in an executive order, it would probably break the process. Like it just on an operational bureaucratic level, it would be really difficult to actually cancel student debt that is also means-tested.

[00:06:41] So I think we should push for justice, which is full cancellation. Biden said a minimum of $10,000. So canceling it all fulfills that promise. And zooming back a little bit like on a philosophical basis, a debt is just a promise, right? It’s a promise to pay something back. And the Department of Education has made many promises to us and has broken it every single time. Biden has made promises to us that he’s broken. And then there’s a basic sort of social contract where you go. You know, you work hard, you get good grades, you go to school and you’ll get a good job that will liberate you and you’ll be able to do things. And that is just a promise that has not been kept with the current generation. So why is it only poor people who are forced to keep these promises?

[00:07:36] And why is it only poor people who are forced to make promises that everybody knows they can’t keep? That everybody knows if they’re being honest, that the $1.8 trillion of student debt is not going to get repaid. And so it just becomes this like moral sadism to try to say that when we bail out Wall Street.

[00:07:55] I still remember when Joe Biden was a Senator and they bailed out Sallie Mae, and they were quick to do that. The other really quick to act when it comes to bailing out the 1%, but they’re constantly kicking the can and it’s almost like we’re watching them go through the stages of grief where they’re gradually coming to accept they’re going to have to cancel a lot of student debt. But they really, really don’t want to. They could do it today, but they’re like, oh, we’ll kick the can.

[00:08:25] Maybe we’ll figure out what to do by August 31st. I want to be sympathetic, they’re grieving this failed policy experiment. And a lot of the people who built this failed policy are still in the mix.

[00:08:40] Their fingerprints are all over this. And I think it’s a little bit hard for them to admit that one) that they’re bureaucratic fantasies failed and two) I think it’s hard for them to confront the real pain that they’ve caused to millions and millions of people. I think they’ve got to block that out in order to continue because it would crush them if they were to really confront that. I mean, they wouldn’t be able to function.

[00:09:05] But these are the folks who should be asking for forgiveness. Right? We don’t need any forgiveness. We didn’t do anything wrong. It is frustrating to see some of the same people behind these decades old policy failures still blocking the path to the real solutions.

[00:09:21] Shanna Bennett: I completely agree. I think that the bankers need to be held accountable and all the economists have signed off on this very failed experiment, we’ll call it. I’ve heard student debt referred to as a bad financial product. I mean, if you know that, then why would you even be engaging in this kind of behavior?

[00:09:41] I love what you said, the stages of grief because it does feel like that. Your point about kicking the can down the street as we walked around the Department of Education on our Day of Action, we had folks physically kicking cans to represent just that. And that’s exactly how it feels.

[00:10:00] Talia, any thoughts about campaign promises and how these extensions fit into that?

[00:10:06] Talia Molé: Biden is one of these people that put a lot of the legislation that we’re currently suffering through. But as far as one campaign promise, that really gets me. And I don’t know if you’ll pick up on this, is I remember that when Biden came out of nowhere, he was going to be this grandfather that was going to bring the country together. I just think that, if that’s the image that he wants to be remembered by, if that’s the legacy that he wants to leave behind, he’s not doing a very good job. I’m not seeing any grandfatherly actions, and if anything, I am again, outraged by the cruelty of this administration.

[00:10:54] And I’ve often given this example that it’s like, imagine I walk into an emergency room with a bear gash and I’m sitting in front of the surgeon with all the tools in hand and this person can sew me up and make me feel better. And instead they choose to put on a bandaid. And so for me, Biden, right now he has an opportunity to go down in history as a president that actually did something for the people. And this could be it. I mean, cause this is major. Or he’ll just be another cruel, not cool, cruel president. Because honestly, to understand and know the suffering that is occurring right now, of people living in this country with this burden that is never going to go away because we all know that it just keeps on growing and growing, and we always pay more than what we owe.

[00:11:54] So to know that this burden and this suffocation is over us and to have the authority to take that away and not do it. It’s just absolutely cruel. There’s just no other word. It’s monstrous.

[00:12:11] Shanna Bennett: I completely agree. I think someone recently was highlighting the fact that for the wealthy, they are paying the sticker price for higher ed. Whereas we’re paying that plus interest. I think that’s a really nice way of looking at it and reframing it for folks that maybe don’t understand what we’re being so loud about.

[00:12:32] I think what’s really disturbing too, is this idea of taking, I think most recently, the 16 billion that they plan to quote unquote forgive. Right? We have nothing to feel bad about. We have nothing to be forgiven for, but the 16 billion that they’re saying will be canceled.

[00:12:49] They’re touting that as a really big deal.

[00:12:51] Like hey, look at what we’ve done for you. And it seems as though Biden might think that he’s fulfilled some of these campaign promises by this debt, that he’s quote unquote, forgiven. But that’s a fraction. It’s a fraction of the debt that exists. I think the American people that might not be so familiar with the 1.8 trillion dollar number, they might be thinking, wow, what a great guy. This is awesome. No, it’s barely 1% of what we all owe and it’s not enough.

[00:13:21] Justine Hecht: Hm. Yeah. I mean, it was such a fraught election already.

[00:13:25] You know, one of the hopes that I had, which is while the administration might be crushing it, but the Debt Collective certainly is not, is that, maybe we would get some meaningful financial relief for a vast majority of people in this country, through student debt cancellation.

[00:13:40] The more often I see him kick the can, as everybody is saying, the more it’s like you’re just throwing our lives down the street. Like they don’t matter, right? People are struggling right now. And the burden of this debt that’s hanging over all of us, looming is like, are we going to have to pay this back?

[00:14:00] What is this going to look like in the future? As inflation, continuous flooding, corporate greed, whatever we want to call it if it continues to rise. All these kinds of different things, it’s just like, if they want, if the Democrats want to get reelected in November, this is not the way to do it.

[00:14:15] You know, like they actually have to fulfill, at least one campaign promise would be really nice. Going back to what Thomas said about the social contract, which is, we take out this debt and agree to pay it back with the promise of being able to get a meaningful job that pays a living wage right after we’re done with school.

[00:14:33] When I finished my master’s degree, I had about $80,000 in student debt. Now I have more because I decided to continue on to a PhD program. I worked at a cafe for $7.25 an hour, for a brief period of time. And then I worked as an adjunct instructor at a community college. And at that point, with the amount of hours that I worked, I was making less than minimum wage.

[00:14:56] And so we often think like, oh, these people with these fancy degrees, they go and they can get a living wage. So why do they need student debt forgiveness? But it’s like, no, with the state of education right now. So many of us who tried to go into higher ed so we could give back to the students and the way that we gained from higher education ourselves, we’re not even able to do that because we have to work two or three jobs just to support what I like to call our teaching habit.

[00:15:19] Rather than being able to actually survive. And it’s really frustrating and hurtful, and it’s kind of terrifying about the future, you know?

[00:15:29] Shanna Bennett: That’s actually a really nice segue into kind of going more inward and talking about how the pause has affected us personally. And I think you touched on that a little bit. Do you want to talk more about currently, like how these extensions have affected you personally?

[00:15:45] Justine Hecht: Yeah, definitely. Right now I have about $150,000 in student loan debt. My partner has about $10,000 in student loan debt. So we’re kind of in this place, I’ve been in school. And so I’ve been on an in-school deferment. I’ve been on a debt strike, almost my entire life.

[00:16:01] I’ve never had to make payments on my debt at least. My partner is on the debt strike right now. But for me, my funding is up this year in my graduate program.

[00:16:10] So I have no more funding next year. And so I’m forced to take a leave of absence so that I can continue my education and hopefully be able to figure out a way to afford it. And so when my leave of absence starts in August, when the payments are supposed to restart is August. And at that point I will be facing unemployment or facing a big move for a job that also won’t pay a living wage. And so, that doesn’t help me at all.

[00:16:38] Shanna Bennett: Right.

[00:16:38] Justine Hecht: Like that causes a ridiculous amount of stress. Cause I’m already worried about moving. I’m already worried about how I am going to keep a roof over my head, you know? And like the payment pause has been great. My partner doesn’t have to pay. But he has such a small amount of debt.

[00:16:52] Shanna Bennett: Hmm.

[00:16:53] Justine Hecht: That payment is something we could afford.

[00:16:55] We could probably afford it, even though it’s not just that amount. But like to pile on like the payments for- I just saw the payments for my $150,000. If I can get on an income-based payment plan might be like $300 a month. If I can’t get on one, there’ll be like close to a thousand dollars a month. And as an instructor or professor, I only make like $3,000 a month and rent is $2000.

[00:17:19] Shanna Bennett: Right. Right. And I think that’s one of the most frustrating things about reading some of these articles. There’s always that tagline of well, you know, higher educated people have higher incomes. And I keep saying yes, but how much are their student loan payments? You can’t just look at the income if they’re paying $1000, $2,000 a month. That’s outrageous to me.

[00:17:39] Thomas, anything to add? How are the, I should say deferments, or the pushing back of these deadlines, how do they affect you personally?

[00:17:47] Thomas Gokey: I mean, I think the biggest thing is that, you know, we’re organizing a student debt strike if ever they turn the payments back on.

[00:17:54] Shanna Bennett: Right.

[00:17:55] Thomas Gokey: We want to make sure that this is big enough and powerful enough that they can never turn it back on. So if people go to bit.ly/studentdebtstrike, they can learn about how we’re structuring it.

[00:18:07] We’re trying to be really thoughtful and responsible about how we’re doing it. We don’t want people to default and destroy their lives. We want people to pay $0 a month in a safe way, an act of collective refusal. At the same time, I hope we never have to do that. And so I’m relieved.

[00:18:26] I’m deeply relieved that we are not facing that in just sixteen days. I’m going to be worried again when we get close to August 31st.

[00:18:37] And then, you know, April 4th, we put a lot of energy into it. It was taking a lot of our resources and time and lives. Then there’s a little bit of like, okay, now we have to gear up and do this again.

[00:18:52] And then the looming threat of repayments is just out there. It’s this ax hanging over our heads. And it’s something I don’t think that the Biden Administration realizes how people wake up with that sort of hanging over them every morning. And people have the knowledge that he could take it away.

[00:19:12] Shanna Bennett: That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is just, just money. And how we conceptualize money. I mean, I think for a lot of politicians, you know, a $100, $200 is no big deal and casually saying, oh, the average college student is graduating with $30,000 in student debt. Not a big deal.

[00:19:31] That’s like chump change to some people. But what folks aren’t realizing is that that $30,000 can take the entirety of someone’s lifetime to pay off. So it just doesn’t make any sense. But Talia, I know, in other conversations you’ve mentioned the psychological and the emotional toll of these deferred deadlines.

[00:19:53] Do you want to speak to that?

[00:19:54] Talia Molé: Yeah. I mean, everyone has been sharing up to this point, that stress of this pending stressor, you know, it’s still looming over you. It affects your sleep. It affects your relationships. And when you center student debt as the mechanism that influences your choices, you don’t feel like you have a sense of agency anymore.

[00:20:24] It’s just, well, I move in the world according to what this student loan debt lets me do. And that’s a very terrible way to live. You know, I also want to point out that, sometimes -I have a PhD- and sometimes, even though I believed and played into the social narrative, that with more education the better I will be, it’s actually bit me in the butt.

[00:20:58] Now I’m overqualified. And since we don’t pay people living wages here in the United States, when I go and I apply for a job or whatnot, many times I’m hiding my credentials. Just so that I can do whatever jobs I can to get paid and I can pay a bill or pay for food, pay to just survive.

[00:21:24] And it shouldn’t be like that. I shouldn’t have to hide any part of my experience or who I am just to live. And so right there, psychologically and emotionally, an erasure happens. I’m erasing part of my experiences, you know? That obviously plays into a much larger problem, right? It’s the system in itself, you know, this idea of, how do I put it? I mean, capitalism is quite simple. You have the owners that basically don’t do anything, the wealthy 1%, and then you have the workers. And our bodies are continuously used and extracted from, and it just sucks when part of what is extracted is also our joy and our dignity and our will to live. And celebrate. And so, yeah, I’ll leave it at that.

[00:22:24] Shanna Bennett: No, I appreciate that. And just to piggyback, there definitely is a psychological toll. It does feel like there is a carrot being dangled in front of our faces. But to what we’re all saying this provides an opportunity. There’s an opening here to kind of have this conversation and have it reach more people. Cause we’re not paying. And so clearly there was a pause. And so what are we going to do with this time?

[00:22:49] Let’s switch gears. Do we feel that the payment pause has addressed any of our concerns regarding student loan debt?

[00:22:59] Has anyone been able to save? I know you can’t see listeners, but I’m seeing heads shaking in and out. People, are everyone saying no? I thought that I was able to save, but what does that mean if payments are turned back on? It’s just gonna be rerouted back to Great Lakes. And Great Lakes if you’re listening, just erase what entire balance. It’s not necessary. Some of the talk is that, well, the student loan borrowers are in a better place now. They’re more stable now. They’ve been able to save. They’re in a better place. So let’s go ahead and turn on payments. I know the CEO of SOFI said in his documents that he’s using it to lobby the government, we’ve got to get things back to normal and this is what a return to normal looks like. And everyone’s in a better place now. Does anybody agree with that sentiment?

[00:23:52] Justine Hecht: No, no.

[00:23:55] Shanna Bennett: No.

[00:23:56] Justine Hecht: I mean, you know, it’s so funny that you say that, right? Because anything that I saved, I saved because I had to take out more student loans in order to make sure that I was going to be okay. And so it’s not a real savings. It’s like a fake savings. I’m going to have more in theory, but we’re going to cancel it.

[00:24:16] As often said, I subsidize a lack of a living wage with student loans. Right. And that is just the case here again. So my bank account currently might look like I’m ahead, but it’s not real.

[00:24:26] Shanna Bennett: Right. And I think in some of these graduate and PhD programs, you’re advised to not work. Like they want your full attention and all your time. And I don’t think folks realize that when they’re just saying, don’t get a job. I mean, now they’re telling us not to. And so, like you’re saying we have to fund, you know, our living spaces and food someway.

[00:24:46] What can the current administration do? What are we expecting from them? How do we know that we’re being heard? What kind of action could they take?

[00:24:55] Talia Molé: They can start by connecting to the people. Because the disconnect between the administration and the people is just enormous. I mean, how can they address anything that we’re asking for, if they’ve just tuned us out. And it’s not just this administration, it’s prior administrations as well. I mean, clearly we’ve arrived at this point, because we’re not being heard and I would say they need to connect.

[00:25:26] I know that that sounds so simple and it’s going to that point about how they addressed our issues. I don’t think they can. It seems like they’re only talking about themselves and the lobbyists that they want to make happy, the corporations that they want to make happy.

[00:25:45] We’re this little mosquito in their ears being really, really, really annoying. I feel dismissed, you know, I feel like what they’re doing is just dismissing us. If it weren’t for the lone voices of Bernie Sanders and the progressive caucus, I would honestly feel hopeless. But you know, when I think of the administration and I think of them, I really feel like, okay, we’ve got an in and we can do something about this and obviously grassroots mobilization.

[00:26:15] If the administration and Congress, if they only understand incorporation you know, throw us a bone and treat us like they do. Like you treat the corporations.

[00:26:28] Shanna Bennett: Right.

[00:26:28] Talia Molé: I mean, here we have bodies, right?

[00:26:31] We have entities that have devoted their time to creating cracks in our system, huge gaps of inequality. They’re destroying the earth. They’re causing so much turmoil. They get bailed out time and time again when they can’t pay right? We are a body of people that are actively wanting to contribute to society.

[00:26:56] We want to contribute to the community. We want to contribute to the economy and we’re being treated as the criminals. We’re the ones being treated like we’ve done something bad. We just want to do good in the world. And so, you know, I always laugh at that. I’m like, damn, you know? Yeah. If you need to think about our position then maybe just, I don’t know, think about us as a corporation.

[00:27:22] I mean, that’s not good, but you know, what I’m saying is just, I don’t know what to think anymore. And this is, so is so twilight zone-ish.

[00:27:31] Shanna Bennett: Socially, I think we do ourselves a disservice by burdening our most educated citizens. Our most educated people, just as a construct, as a system, it doesn’t make sense.

[00:27:43] Thomas, anything to add about, how do we feel seen? How do we feel heard? What can this administration do to move this forward?

[00:27:51] Thomas Gokey: Well, I would be really curious to hear from Justine about the local action that happened. Cause I think this is one thing that’s really effective and that we can really focus on in the coming months is having more actions across the country.

[00:28:08] Justine Hecht: So essentially what I’m trying to attempt is to form an Arizona Debt Collective chapter. So if you’re in Arizona and you’re listening to this, please get in contact with me.

[00:28:16] And so part of the way that we started doing that, we just started hosting bi-weekly chapter meetings or over zoom.

[00:28:23] So that way, anybody in Arizona state, anybody really can come, but you know, it’s probably most effective if you’re from Arizona. So we have three major metropolitan areas, Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Tucson. And there’s a university in each of those. And, so what we kind of got together and we’re like, okay, what’s our capacity to do right now?

[00:28:40] We can’t get to DC ourselves. Although one of our members did get to go and was very excited. What we can do is we can raise awareness that this is something that people in Arizona are interested in working on. And so we just created a really simple social media campaign.

[00:28:55] And I think that’s something that often gets missed. When we think about social justice organizing, we think, oh, it has to be this big giant thing, but like no one does it. It can start really small. And from there it grows.

[00:29:07] And so we created social media graphics that we posted through my unions, various social media platforms on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. It started a really amazing conversation. Like what we started to see was people sharing their debt stories. Sharing what they could do if they were able to have their student debt canceled. One person said that they could save money for their sons. So that their son could go to college and that they could have a good life.

[00:29:33] Another person said they could travel, like all of these things that enrich people’s lives. And one of the really exciting things too, is that our union has a faculty or a Twitter for the contingent and adjunct faculty. The Twitter handle if you want to find us, is just @ContingentUCWAZ.

[00:29:53] That got so many people engaged because as a contingent or adjunct faculty member, you do not have financial security at all. And I’ve been on both ends. I’ve been an adjunct faculty and I’m a grad student currently. As contingent, you get yearly contracts and they’re not necessarily guaranteed to be renewed.

[00:30:11] And so when people saw that we were talking about student debt, they were like, yeah, this is not going back to those promises. This is not what we were promised. We’re still in this awful situation. And it got people really mobilized. We’re also now planning a debt assembly for May 2nd. We wanted to do it on May 1st for International Workers’ Day, but we want to do it on campus and there’s nobody on campus on Sunday. So here we are and we’re going to be hosting a debt assembly at the University of Arizona in Tucson on May 2nd from 1:00 to 2:00 PM. And this is open to everybody.

[00:30:44] You don’t have to be a student. You can just be a regular person with student debt, without student debt. And just like, come hang out with us, talk about your debt. And let’s figure out what in Arizona can we do to continue supporting this movement?

[00:30:58] The cost of living, inflation is obviously happening everywhere, but Arizona has been particularly hard hit. Our housing costs have increased by over 30%, just in these last couple of months alone.

[00:31:09] We have inflation broadly, that’s over 10% at this point. And so there’s a deep connection to the cost of living and the inability to pay our debt back. Our wages are not going up. The wages in Arizona are only $12.50. That’s the minimum wage here.

[00:31:28] And there’s been studies that show that in order to afford a two bedroom apartment in the state of Arizona, you need to be making at least $25 to $27 an hour. Those studies were pre-inflation. I promise you that’s gone up now.

[00:31:40] So these kinds of things matter, and we need local people to get involved so we can continue to get the student debt canceled.

[00:31:46] Shanna Bennett: Wow. So you have been busy. That’s all I hear. You’ve been busy.

[00:31:49] Justine Hecht: Yeah.

[00:31:50] Shanna Bennett: Does anyone have anything to promote?

[00:31:53] Thomas Gokey: The first issue of Debt Collective zine is out, In the Red Out of Darkness. This is something that Collective members took on and created of their own initiative. And it is fabulous. I highly recommend people check it out.

[00:32:11] If you’re new to the Debt Collective, we are having regular new member calls. The next one is April 25th. If you’re listening to this after April 25th, check the website because we’ll be having these calls regularly. And if you haven’t already considered joining the student debt strike, go to bit.ly/studentdebtstrike and consider joining. We’re going to make sure that they never can turn the payments back on and that they are forced to cancel all student debt.

[00:32:41] Shanna Bennett: Anyone else have anything to promote?

[00:32:42] Talia Molé: I would just like to say,we’re at a pivotal moment right now. We need to come together. There’s power in numbers. You know, you are not alone.

[00:32:52] Right now, especially the Debt Collective ,we’re everywhere. Everywhere, everywhere you turn. That’s such a big thing. In most media outlets, we are in people’s ears and mouths everywhere.

[00:33:07] And we got to ride that tsunami wave. There’s power in that.

[00:33:12] So join us. Join your local chapter if you can. Anything that you can do, nothing is small. Even if you can’t leave your home because of the pandemic or whatever situation, know that you can do something. If this is something that calls you, go ahead and join us because we can, you know, we can use that force.

[00:33:37] Shanna Bennett: That’s a very good point. And that’s something too that we’re always saying activism can have very different forms. If you’re not thinking of yourself as an activist and you’re sitting at home there, you know what Talia is saying? There are so many different ways, especially with the Debt Collective that you can get involved.

[00:33:54] If you have any talents, any skills, bring them to the Debt Collective. It’s beautiful to see folks using their training and their education to kind of push this movement forward.

[00:34:06] So we welcome you and we want you to get involved.

[00:34:09] Thank you all so much for your time. Thank you for doing this. Thank you. for your thoughts. Thanks for being here.

[00:34:16] Justine Hecht: Thanks so much for having us.

[00:34:17] Thomas Gokey: Thank you.

[00:34:18] Shanna Bennett: If you liked this episode of Matter of Life and Debt, subscribe and share it with a friend. It really helps people discover us. Matter of Life and Debt is hosted by me. Shannon. It is produced by Shannon Bennett, Emma Klauber, and Nikki Nolan.

[00:34:32] It is edited by Nikki Nolan, transcripts and writing is done by Emma Klauber. Efe Akerman created the theme music.

[00:34:37] Visit our website www.matteroflifeanddebt.com, where you can listen to more episodes, access transcripts, and get additional context for the subjects you just heard about. Absolutely for free the website again, www.matteroflifeanddebt.com.

[00:34:53] Thanks again for listening.

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