How can a discussion of the enormous debt and looming homelessness faced by ordinary people in the US, once the covid pandemic is ending, be inspiring and visionary?
In preparation for that fight Thomas Gokey and the Debt Collective have begun organizing debtors into a union. They already had victories canceling $2.8 billion in student debt, medical debt, payday loans, probation debt and credit card debt.
Today the sheer magnitude of the problem we will have to deal with soon – over 40 million people in the US facing eviction once Covid moratoria disappear – is seen as an opportunity.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor at Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister. He interviewed Thomas Gokey on the July 22, 2021 edition of his weekly TV program On Contact.
Thomas Gokey, is a visual artist, adjunct professor at Syracuse University, activist and cofounder of the Debt Collective. Their website is debtcollective.org/. And the title of the new Haymarket book is: Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay – The Case for Economic Disobedience and Debt Abolition, written by the Debt Collective. They are creating a debtors union and sign up is easy at their website, debtcollective.org.
Thanks to Chris Hedges for permission to re-broadcast.
You can watch the 27 minute video of the interview by searching for Chris Hedges – On Contact.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 39.8MB)
