How many ______ could your debt buy? Student Debt in Perspective

This is an amazing visualization tool from The Young Invincibles.

click it

h/t to my dear friend Ingrid.

Sandra Nurse's Interview (Part II) on Occupy Theory Radio

WBAI hosts the interview here:http://archive.wbai.org/files/mp3/wbai_120620_183216owsr.mp3



This is a short blog post, but an AMAZING interview. I can't actually host the player on my blog here, so just click the image of the player above, and it will take you to WBAI's website.

Bernie Sanders - Student Loans

ART RESISTANCE - I need financial backers

UPDATE: Thanks to two very generous donors, we should have more than enough money to do this right. If you'd like to still donate money for future art resistance actions, we'll gladly take it, but at this point, we don't need it.

Stay tuned for more here: WearYourDebt.tumblr.com

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I know that many of you already donate as sustaining donors. You help me keep food on my plate and me making videos.

I normally don't beg so blatently for money, and I always feel weird about doing so, but there's some upcoming art resistance actions that I'd like to do, and I really need about $200 to make it happen. Can you give like $10?

One art resistance action is planned to be during Senator Olympia Snowe's speech to my graduating class at USM, and I need funds to do them. Think posters, giant banners.

That shit costs money- canvass, paint, etc. And I need it quick. Like before May 8th. I will have video for you, for sure, it will be fucking awesome, and there will probably be national news coverage as well. And you can be sitting at home watching it on your computer, or on your tv, and say to yourself, "HEY! I helped make that happen!"

Olympia Snowe's husband, by the way, is currently under investigation for financial fraud. What for? Bilking college students, that's what.

From Truthout:

In November 2011, after three years of study, Washington was provided notice by the "college" that she had reached the federal loan/grant aggregate limit of $52,340 and that it would cost $37,000 to complete the degree. Washington dropped out with $52,160 in debt. Because The Art Institute's credits are not transferable, Washington has been swindled out of $52,000 and three years of her life.
The only way to describe $89,000 for a four-year degree with non-transferable credits from a non-academic college is as a fraud and a swindle, and that characterization possibly fails to convey the frustration and downright victimization students like Washington must feel.
Like subprime mortgages, for-profit colleges are a scam driven by payment of commissions to sales staff known as recruiters. The payment of commissions to high-pressure salespeople is so central to the scam that the umbrella trade group for for-profits, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU), has sued the federal government to overturn its ban on incentive pay.

And She's our commencement speaker. It's audacious that she is speaking to a crowd of graduating seniors at USM.
Anyways, please donate so that me and my crew of awesome people can call her out for her bullshit:

Thank you!

Rev Billy Exorcises Student Debt at #OWS

"Fight fight fight fight, education is a right!"

Default: The Student Loan Documentary

In the film “Network” the protagonist, Howard Beale’s makes a to arms: “First you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a human being goddammit-- my life has value!’ I want you to get up now, I want all of you to get up out of your chairs, go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!’”

If you’re like me, you’re a twenty something who has gone to college in the USA, and are currently trying to pay thousands of dollars of student loans, have been in forbearance on multiple occasions, and have paid in interest the value of some of your loans multiple times over. You probably have floating around in your subconscious an unfocused notion that you and everybody you graduated with, everyone you work with, is getting swindled.

Default: The Student Loan Documentary draws on the stories of individuals like you, expert testimony, and simply runs the raw numbers to bring that unfocused notion into crystal clarity.

This film takes the elephant in the room that has been invisible right in front of our faces, and highlights it with neon orange spraypaint. YES you are getting swindled! YES our higher educational system is broken. YES the USA is becoming a debtors prison. YES it really was easier to get a college degree and a good paying job when your parents were your age. What’s more YES there is something you can do about it!

Just as Howard Beal’s call to arms rallied a nation, Default: The Student Loan Documentary has the potential to be a flashpoint for an entire generation to organize around. It is my hope that this film it will spawn a generation-wide economic justice movement.

Check the trailer:

I have a homework assignment for you

Yup.

In the UK, students prepare to Kill And Eat the Rich

Live Stream of the UK protests from Fox News (no audio)

Footage of the riots as they unfolded. Students say, "This is just the begining."

Live Newsticker from the Guardian.co.uk

Despite the raging fires, and the smashing of windows, the protesters at large have managed to keep fairly cool heads, as demonstrated by the crowds reaction when one student who made his way to the top of the building threw a fire extinguisher down onto riot police:


Now some may think that these protests are a bit extreme.


But I admire these student protesters in their restraint, as they have not yet Killed And Eaten the Rich.