Debtor's Revolution: Are Debt Strikes Another Possible
Tactic in the Fight Against the Big Banks?

What does it mean to stop cooperating with the banks? Some
activists, organizers, and technologists think the answer
might be mass refusal to pay debts.

November 3, 2011  |     
http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152963 

In the gorgeous, purple-and-green-lit Lower East Side
headquarters of the Angel Orensanz Foundation, nearly 300
techies, activists and thinkers gathered, shouting out
ideas for social justice-minded Web projects that they
would break into small groups to attempt to hash out in a
day.

A man in a plaid shirt stood up and told the moderator and
the crowd, "I want to create a tool for organizing debt
strikes."

The man was Thomas Gokey, an artist and adjunct professor
at Syracuse University, and his idea wound up one of the
four "winners" at ContactCon, a conference hosted by
Douglas Rushkoff that urged people to think of solutions
to the problem of the corporate-controlled Internet--and by
extension, the world. The project, nicknamed
"Kick-Stopper," is in the works, but Gokey notes that he's
far from the only person out there suggesting, especially
in the wake of Occupy Wall Street's successes, that it's
time for some more serious, organized direct action around
the issue of debt.

"I wanted to do this project because I kept having the
same basic conversation with everyone at Zuccotti and
everywhere else," Gokey told me. "When I talk to people
about what we could do that would really compel Congress
and Wall Street to meet our demands or really alter the
current system, we inevitably start discussing what
non-cooperation with our own oppression would look like.
What does it mean to stop cooperating with the banks? What
we inevitably end up describing is some variation of a
debt strike, simply ending our own participation in a
system that exploits us."

Are debt strikes, then, the next logical step in the fight
against Big Finance's domination of the 99 percent?

for the rest of this, go to
http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/152963

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