Like most folks I talked with, I had only a vague idea of what “Strike Debt” was before showing up today to the Nov 11 Debtor’s Assembly in Love Park. Like them, having enough crippling debt in my life, the event piqued my interest.
Pretty quickly, before it even started, I got a good gist, looking over the literature on the table in front of the sound system, and asking random questions. Apparently, Strike Debt is a new movement coming out of Occupy Wall street, focusing on the predatory lending system and the ‘debt servitude’ of the 99%. The latter is both individual (as we know, from medical bills, credit cards, school loans, and on and on) ; and collective, in terms of our cities and communities’ own ‘debt servitude’. Reading these paragraphs here and there before the first speaker, I thought, here is a heartland issue of the Occupy movement. If this really takes off, it could be powerful.
A bit after 2 in the afternoon, the first speaker came on, to a gathering crowd of about 45 or so.
