mathbabe

This is super cool. Occupy Wall Street’s Strike Debt group has bought up almost $15 million dollars worth of mostly medical debt which was owned by 2,700 people across 45 states and Puerto Rico. They used donations they’ve been collecting over the last year. There’s more information about this action in this Guardian piece.

Here’s what I like about this. By freeing people of medical debt in particular, which is the biggest cause of bankruptcy filings, it emphasizes the lie of the “moral sin” often associated with crushing debt.

In other words, instead of imagining poor and debt-ridden people as lazy and glibly unable to keep their promises, the Rolling Jubilee action bestows a much-needed act of compassion for some of the millions of the unlucky people in this country caught in a dysfunctional health and credit system.

And while it’s true that it is making a small dent in the debt problem, in dollars and cents terms, I think the Strike Debt’s debt action, and its Debt Resistors’ Operation Manual, has made huge strides in how people think about debt in this country, which is tremendously important.