Astra Taylor

Over the last decade, we organized campaigns of economic disobedience, namely debt strikes, first with former students of predatory for-profit colleges and then with student debtors more broadly. Various strikes against the Department of Education secured billions in relief for hundreds of thousands of struggling debtors and paved the way for the latest cancellation announcement.

We also slowly reshaped the conventional narrative. We built an organization with real members. We do direct service provision while also offering political education that helps people put their financial struggles into a larger context: the root problem is that capitalism forces us to individually debt finance what should be free and universal public goods.