The assertion that Trump is an aberration in this nation’s history presupposes that the U.S. system is actually based on democracy, or that the country functions as a democratic state and that Trump is trashing that great tradition. It is more accurate to say that Trump is a manifestation of the very type of product that the U.S. system is capable of churning out.

Donald Trump is hardly a grand symbol of democracy. He lost the popular vote in the U.S. by millions of votes and became president through the arcane, right-wing giving tree that is the Electoral College. He is clearly using the office of the presidency to promote his family business and wage war on his political opponents. He has advocated for xenophobia and sexism and racism from the most powerful podium on the planet. His entire career has been based on being born into extreme wealth, exploiting poor people, taking advantage of tax loopholes, and engaging in crooked scams and schemes. But, there is a real danger in assessing Trump as an American anomaly — that one really, truly corrupt president we had after Richard Nixon.

Filmmaker, author, and organizer Astra Taylor has spent a lot of time analyzing these issues and fighting against the bipartisan system that masquerades as democratic. After organizing with the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, Taylor co-founded the Debt Collective, an organization that has developed some very effective tools to help people dispute and challenge their debt. She is also a documentary filmmaker and her latest project is titled “What is Democracy?” Her latest book is “Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.” An excerpt of this conversation aired on Intercepted. What follows is the complete, extended conversation.

Under our current, duopolistic political system, the partisan alternative to Trump’s presidency is not democracy. On a whole range of issues, almost any Democrat may likely be better for many, many millions of people than Trump, but it doesn’t mean establishment Democrats are, on their own merits, good for the masses. Far from it.

When it comes to health care, housing, and education debt in particular, the United States is a dystopian nightmare that has no relationship whatsoever to democracy. Trump didn’t create that reality. It was built up by Democrats and Republicans.

The 2020 presidential campaign is the perfect laboratory to analyze this. On the one hand, you have Bernie Sanders and, to a lesser extent, Elizabeth Warren, offering up some pretty serious challenges to the ultra-corporatized, legalized bribery and corruption systems on which this country, under both Democrats and Republicans, operates. Their candidacies and ideas and proposals are not just scary to Republicans and Trump. They are terrifying to the Democratic Party establishment and its preferred candidates in this race. On the other hand, you have Joe Biden, the Clinton machine, and the ascent of the candidacy of someone like Pete Buttigieg, all of which feel a lot like a corporatized version of activism on behalf of entrenched power and corporate interests.

Jeremy Scahill: Astra Taylor, welcome to Intercepted.

Astra Taylor: Hey, thanks for having me.

JS: So, I wanted to ask you just because there’s all this discussion about polls, and the Democrats, and everybody was in Iowa recently, and I don’t want to get into the poll thing with you, that’s boring beyond belief. But the response that we’ve seen to the candidacies of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and specifically their proposals on issues like health care, debt elimination, increasing social services, and going after radical privatization or corporate influence, not the reaction from the GOP and Trump but from the Democratic establishment. Given the work that you’ve done in your new book, and on film and the other writing you’ve done over these years, what does it say about the nature of power in the system in this country, the kinds of attacks that we’re already seeing — from the Pelosis, the Bidens, the Clintons of the world — on some of the ideas being put forward by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?

AT: I think we have to be skeptical of the polls, we’ve all learned that since 2016, but I think these numbers are so overwhelming. What they show us is there’s broad majoritarian support for progressive social policy. This is what the people most want. And we’ve entered a phase where that is sort of undeniable, if you look at the numbers. But as you just pointed out, there is a whole establishment, centrist Democrat, corporate establishment that absolutely is opposed to the will of the majority. So I think that’s how we have to think about this. Right now, it’s commonly said, we’re in a moment of democratic crisis.

And that conversation has been framed around populism, warnings about unruly people we can’t trust. But I think for me, the problem is actually that we’re living in the age of minoritarian politics, minoritarian control. You see that very strongly with the GOP and the fact that they want a politics of hierarchy, basically a return to aristocracy, right? They’re willing to gerrymander and disenfranchise voters — they absolutely don’t want people to go out and vote. But we see it with the Democrats as well, right? We see that they want to tell their constituencies, sorry, you can’t have these things that are not only popular, but actually pretty commonplace in other industrial democracies.

JS: And it seems like the ascent of Mayor Pete, Pete Buttigieg, is largely linked to this idea that he’s emerging as like the grand pooh-pooh-er of all of the ideas of young people in this country that caused the ascendancy of Bernie Sanders after his many decades in politics to this household name status and potential to win the nomination.

AT: Okay, Mayor Pete, that guy. I mean, he’s like auditioning for the gerontocracy. He’s basically — like, what is motivating him to run, right, if you’re basically going to be the candidate of anti-transformation? But the thing is that people aren’t buying it. I mean, he’s incredibly unpopular with his demographic, with people under 40, and he’s not that popular overall. But the thing is, the media is invested in him and propping him up because that’s the message that wealthy, powerful people want to hear, which is, sorry lowly people, you can’t have nice things.

JS: Just to get more to the heart of this, Nancy Pelosi, you can tell she’s trying to be careful in some ways about how she talks about the primaries, but there has been this pretty militant pushback on the idea that health care should be available to everyone, Medicare-for-all, that it should essentially be socialized healthcare in this country and as we know, a lot of people in this country want that regardless of if they consider themselves a socialist, Democratic socialist, or even a Republican. When asked about it, people want that. This pushback, though, from the Democratic establishment a year away from the election seems to be really that they’re operating from a place of fear against this change. It’s clear what the GOP wants. But what do Pelosi and Biden and Clinton, what do these people want if they don’t want that kind of change?

AT: God, what do they want?

JS: I don’t mean get into their head. What is it that they’re saying then to the country by so quickly just dismissing the idea that we should eliminate debt, that we should have healthcare for all?

AT: I mean, it’s interesting because you can have a conversation that’s like, this is going to be difficult given the American political system and the number of veto points and the way that it’s structured and the way that money is a form of political speech, and the fact that we essentially have a system, an electoral system where bribery is legalized in terms of campaign contributions, right? You could say, there are lots of obstacles in the way of this. That’s not how they’re framing this, right? They’re framing this as just an impossibility and not driving home the point that, I think, Bernie Sanders is making beautifully, that Elizabeth Warren is making almost as well, which is that this is a basic democratic right and plenty of other societies work this out. So I mean, I think there probably is something deeper. There’s a threat to their authority, right, and to the system that helped them rise to power and stay in power.

I mean, look at Biden’s background from Delaware. What are his accomplishments? Overturning bankruptcy protections? In 2005 on behalf of the credit card companies, right? This is their constituency. Thinking about democracy writ large, I mean, there’s a bigger thing they’re afraid of though because what this means to have universal health care is to decommodify this huge industry, and it’s to connect decommodification with democratization, right? Maybe there are huge areas of social life that should not be not just subjected to the market extremes but actually taken off the market completely, right? And that’s very threatening to the status quo.

Because once you start decommodifying one area, well, why not others? Let’s take education off the market, right? Let’s take housing off the market. What would it be like to live in a home that you don’t have to pray appreciates in value that’s not actually a speculative asset or someone else’s speculative asset? So, I think to me, the deeper issue is that we’re trying to make inroads. We’re trying to say more of social life should be public, should be decommodified. That’s what democracy entails and that is deeply threatening to a ruling class.

JS: So much of your work takes place on a micro level in one way, but [is] very much concerned with the macro politics of our time. And I’m wondering if you believe it’s actually possible to fundamentally change anything about this country politically through the ballot box for president?

AT: I think you could change some things politically through the ballot box, right? Because we’ve seen that there are changes when Donald Trump gets elected, and he’s in the White House because he has the power of those executive orders and also he has the power that then [gets] the republican party to basically rally around him because we’re in a two-party, winner-take-all system. So, I think it really does matter. The problem is that for too long we thought democracy was just the ballot box, was just electoral politics, right? I mean, all sorts of forces have colluded to make that our impression of what democracy is. I mean, the media is obsessed over elections. Political scientists try to measure democracy through these metrics of like, does it have free and fair elections and can people vote?

So there’s been this reduction of democracy to that: to whether or not you can just get to the voting booth without even a deeper conversation of well, is your vote counted? How is the election structured? Is it winner-take-all? Is it proportional representation? Are you automatically registered? Or do you have to struggle to be registered? So there are all these deeper questions you can have around elections, and even those are off the table. So I mean, my view is that there’s a kind of dialectic, there’s a two-part process and we have to be attuned to that. I think if democracy — this is what I’m saying in my book “Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone.” I’m saying democracy is paradoxical.

Now, first and foremost, I see there’s a class component to democracy. The best definition of democracy in my mind comes from Aristotle and he said, democracy is the rule of the poor because poor people will always outnumber the rich. And if democracy is rule of the many, then it is by definition, the rule of the poor. So that’s something we’ve definitely forgotten today because we live in something much closer to an oligarchy, rule of the rich. So beyond that class dimension, I look at democracy as this series of tensions. So, the tension between freedom and equality, between the present and the future, between the local and the global, between choice, but also coercion. When is coercion legitimate?

So democracy has to wrestle with these tensions and one that I think is really important is spontaneity and structure, revolt and then ruling, right? So we have to do them at the same time. Somehow we have to be completely ungovernable while also seeking to govern. I think we see activist movements getting that right now with people engaging in climate strikes while also pushing for candidates who want a Green New Deal. We have to be able to think, yeah, it matters who represents us in this system that falls so short of any definition of true democracy. And yet, we also need to be in the streets, emboldening, whoever it is who’s there, because one side isn’t going to get us to a more just world.

JS: On that point, and in reading your work and also watching some of your films, if we were to erase all of the pretenses and propaganda that are woven into the story of what America is, what the U.S. is, and we acted as though we were just aliens that landed here, how would you describe the form of government that we have in this country?

AT: Oh, I love that idea. I mean, it’s difficult for me to get in the mindset of it, of an alien. How would I think we were governed? I mean, can I change your question a little bit?

JS: Go ahead.

AT: Let’s imagine that I was someone coming from ancient Greece, ancient Athens. So, a time traveler from 2,500 years ago, and of course, the Athenians didn’t give us the practice of self-government or democracy, but they gave us this word that we come back to the demos, the people, kratos, or rule. So I think you can safely say that if an Athenian was plopped down in Washington, D.C. in 2019, they’d be like, this is not democracy. Like, no way. Because, yes, that society had major problems, was built on slavery, women were completely excluded, foreigners were excluded, but they absolutely again, thought democracy was the rule of the poor.

They compensated artisans and farmers to participate in the assembly, right, this idea that you couldn’t go vote because you have to work your job, or you can’t keep a roof over your head, would have struck them as crazy. But more than that, they would have thought that our obsession with elections was just a sign that we were actually living in an aristocracy. Aristotle said very clearly, elections are aristocratic selection, or basically mass participation is democratic because who wins elections? Rich people, charismatic people, well-born people, right? I mean, look at who is actually in Washington today. The average Congressperson or senator is an aging, white male millionaire. That is not who he’s ostensibly serving, right?

And the Greeks totally knew. They were like, that’s the problem with elections so what we have to do is create all these strategies to encourage participation from every class, right, within their limited idea of what citizenship was. I mean, to me, that’s a helpful mental experiment. It’s like, we invoke this word, this Greek word and play around with that tradition, but they would have absolutely thought that we were out of our minds to think we’re living in democracy. They would have seen that this is an oligarchy.

JS: It’s also when you talk about Republicans — and I’ve read some other interviews with you recently — you’ve described the current GOP, but also it’s ideological figures, conservative columnist, pundits and others as being, and this is how you describe it, “tired of democracy and the equality that it demands.” I want you to explain that but at the same time, aren’t they continuing to win?

AT: Oh, yeah, right. Because the thing is, they have power. I mean, this is the thing, this is what the left always says, right, yes, they have money, but we have the many, right? [But] somehow we need to organize. It’s a collective action problem. I think we’re in a really interesting moment. And we’re similar ages and so yeah, we grew up under this neoliberal, end of history hegemony, right, this idea even if we didn’t believe it, but it was there in the ether with capitalism and democracy go together. This is liberal democracy, markets, increased prosperity, lift people up, elections will follow. And that’s it, right? This is the pinnacle of human evolution [and] that marriage is breaking apart.

And we see that in some really positive ways, I think, with the resurgence of socialism as something not only that we can discuss, but it’s actually gaining traction, politically. But what I found when I went out with the film, and I started interviewing people and just talking to people from all walks of life is that young conservatives, people in their early 20s, I just assumed that as Republicans, they would still speak in terms of the link between capitalism and democracy, right? They would still say, hey, markets are democratic. We get to choose. Choosing is good. Choosing is what democracy is all about, and talk in terms of a kind of Reagan freedom of the marketplace kind of rhetoric.

That’s not what I found at all. I found young people who are keenly aware of their own status as an economic and social elite, who recognize — they had no delusions — they recognize that the empowerment of the majority of people would mean that they would lose some of their privilege. They would lose their economic privilege, that they would lose what is essentially the sort of affirmative action that they take for granted. It’s just how the universe should be. And so they mock democracy outright. They mock democracy, they mocked urban centers with their large populations. And they basically said, we don’t want democracy. We want the Electoral College. We want the Senate. We want the Supreme Court. And we want to tell you all what to do with your lives and we do not want you fighting to increase our taxes or fighting for better treatment in the workplace, or fighting to expand the number of refugees and immigrants in this country.

So, that was interesting for me because the gloves are off and conservatives are returning to their aristocratic roots. There was a strange moment, 20th century with the USSR facing off against the United States where it was convenient for capitalists to speak in terms of democracy, to wrap themselves up in that mantle, right. They don’t need it anymore and that’s where we’re at. So if they want capitalism, and they understand that it’s not a democratic framework, then all then I think that radicalizes democracy.

[Crosstalk.]

AT: I’m saying that radicalizes democracy, because it means that we don’t have to pretend that definition, that 20th century definition is the definition. We can say what democracy, it is rule of the poor, right? It is inclusion. It is public decommodified goods. It’s all the things that you rich, privileged asshole are afraid of and that’s why I think we have to fight more passionately for the idea of democracy. Because for me, and I bet you’re the same as well, it’s like, our democracy in the aughts, like 2001, two, three, four, was such a sold-out word, just taken by George W. Bush, by all of the hawks, claiming to democratize the Middle East when really they were just imposing like, when really they were just engaging in this imperial project and extracting what wealth there was and giving a shit about the people who actually live there. So democracy actually had this really hollow ring to me. But I think in this context, I think times change and I think we’re in a moment where, yeah, democracy, the radical implications of it are becoming more clear, not just to the left but to the right.

JS: On that point, I assume you’re not spending too much time watching Fox News, but Donald Trump Jr. was on Fox the other day because he has this book “Triggered” coming out. But he was talking about his favorite — Yeah, exactly. For people that can’t see Astra’s just shaking her head like, what? So yes, this book “Triggered” coming out. And, in fact, on Monday of this week, Donald Trump tweeted that everyone should buy his son’s book, but Donald Trump Jr. with no sense of irony or shame said in an interview about his forthcoming book on Fox News that if he were like Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, then he would be able to run around the world making millions of dollars off of his father’s presidency.

He actually said that Fox News but it so cuts to the heart of the point you’re making. I mean, democracy is convenient when it is for their agenda. But then the kind of, how they actually see the world is that they’re the hard workers. And they’ve had to step on a lot of skulls and you know how hard it is to keep your balance when you’re stepping on the skulls of the poor. I mean, that’s essentially what Donald Trump Jr. was saying. And he’s using Joe Biden’s son as the example when in fact, the personification of his point is the Trump family.

AT: That’s amazing. I mean, this one woman says, a young woman says in the film, and I quote her in the book, “I don’t care about democracy. I care about the American dream and that ability to climb.” And whenever I hear that phrase, I think — like your skull climbing — it doesn’t matter who I’m climbing over, doesn’t matter who I’m climbing on. I want to climb and be on top. I want a pyramid shape society where I’m on the top. And that’s why I think we’re on the left. We’re trying to create a society that takes a different shape, that’s not a pyramid, right? And not a rainbow oligarchy, not a rainbow pyramid with some diversity at the top but a totally different shape, where equality is fundamental.

And yeah, the arrogance is out of control. That’s why I said, they want this kind of affirmative action that white people have and don’t, the majority of us, don’t account for. All of the, individualized subsidies and advantages that we get based on our class and our skin color. So, I think we’re in a scary moment, though, because the one thing you said that I didn’t really respond to is, yeah, but it’s working, they have power. And this is where we do need to take a sort of, cold hard look at what we’re up against. I mean, one is just the intense accumulation of wealth, how much wealth is at their disposal. And I think we’re in an interesting moment where we’re seeing how people’s politics flow from their economic interest. I mean, look at Silicon Valley right now, right? I mean, in the Obama era, liberals could deceive themselves that these guys were forces for good and forces for change. And now we’re seeing the mask come off and people are going, oh my God, Mark Zuckerberg is not this boy genius. He’s actually ready when the shit hits the fan to align with the Trump administration, basically.

So they have economic power at their disposal, but the way our political system is structured makes it really difficult to enact the kinds of changes we want. And we do have a system that is bizarrely minoritarian that does not weigh votes equally based on the geography that you inhabit. We have a Supreme Court that has completely gone in this right-wing direction. So it makes it all the more urgent that we build this mass power.

JS: I want to talk about some of the projects that you’ve been involved with particularly on issues of debt. But just a couple of other issues on what we’re talking about right now. You’ve also said that you don’t think you can persuade people through argument. It’s better to use action and you continued saying “What brings people the Trump rallies in part is a desire for solidarity but they can imagine only a kind of exclusionary solidarity, us against them. There are very few institutions that show them otherwise.” Explain what you’re talking about there.

AT: Yeah, solidarity is this beautiful concept. I mean, I really think solidarity is what will save us. So, what is solidarity? It’s people coming together and exercising power collectively to improve their conditions. I mean, I think what comes to mind, you reading that quote, is the attack on labor unions that has been going on not just for the last 40 years, but the last century. I mean, why does the right-wing despise labor unions so much? Because that was not just a place where workers could come together and fight for higher wages or the weekend or benefits but also where they could have a kind of political education and recognize their common interest and then maybe recognize their interest with people in other industries. And that’s really dangerous, which is why secondary strikes and boycotts are illegal in this country.

So, solidarity I think is, I do think it’s something that it’s not just an intellectual epiphany. It’s something that you experience and that experience is transformative and that’s why for me, I am a nerd. I love my philosophizing. I like to write. I like to make my arty films. But ultimately, I think we need to engage in political organizing, and try to say, hey, you actually have common interests despite your differences. The enemy isn’t who you think it is. It’s not the person who’s willing to take a shitty job for lower wages than you. It’s actually the boss who’s exploiting you, and who’s lobbying against regulations and against minimum wage, and if you work together, you have a chance of improving your lot. And so to me, I think, yeah, it’s like, we’re not going to win by just berating people or shaming people or being smarter than them or having the right argument, like we really have to do it. It’s a practice.

JS: As you were talking, I also was thinking about 2016 a bit and the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and the issue of Wisconsin. I’m from Milwaukee, from Wisconsin, and a lot of my friends who travel around the state regularly, they’re local journalists, were saying Trump’s gonna win. And they were explaining why but also, the way that the success of Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin versus Hillary Clinton was portrayed in a lot of social media, but also by the Clinton campaign, was this notion that Bernie also appealed to misogynist men or that there was something similar between Bernie and Trump that caused this overlap. In reality, it’s much more what you’re describing. Bernie was talking about the devastating impact of these trade agreements and he was talking about issues that actually mattered to a lot of struggling formerly working class people or formerly blue collar households.

And to me it made perfect sense why some people would be vacillating between Trump and Bernie if their entire existence has been wiped out because of trade agreements or corporate policies or companies fleeing. And Hillary Clinton was so closely tied to her husband’s role with NAFTA — and we’ll talk about Seattle [in] a little bit and the World Trade Organization — but it made perfect sense to me that it was about economic issues.

AT: It’s interesting. So, I went to a couple of Trump rallies because I was doing research for my film and one of them is in the film and it was gutting because 30 percent of the rally was Trump railing against hedge funds. Talk about ironic. Thirty percent was him rallying against the endless wars. And then the other 30 percent was anti-immigrant, racist fear mongering, and it was terrifying. And there was, I think, an element of misogyny and for me, misogyny is such a lively force in this society. But I think what your point is that we were in an anti-establishment moment, and we had two anti-establishment candidates and the thing that Bernie Sanders would have done if he had won is that all of these people who are rightly angry and disaffected and know they’re getting a shit deal would have identified with a Democratic socialist, and with a completely different project, a project of building solidarity, right, and naming a different enemy naming the 1 percent of as the enemy. And of course, the Democratic establishment can’t handle that because they’re getting their donations from the 1 percent.

And it’s really the conversation — I think it shows me how out of touch some pundits are with regular people. So, for example, in the Debt Collective, which is this debtors union I run, we had spent the previous two years fighting the Obama administration, fighting the Obama administration which refused, the Department of Education, which refused to grant debt relief for defrauded students, students who had attended predatory for-profit colleges who were legally entitled to debt relief, and the Obama administration dragging their heels and basically drowned these already broke, disproportionately black, single mother, working people, like drove them into financial ruin. How do you look at our constituency and say, “This is great, get behind the mainstream Democrats?”

JS: Yeah. Just one point of clarification, I am by no means saying that Hillary Clinton wasn’t subjected to misogynistic attacks and massive systematic sexism in that campaign. I definitely think she was. I’m talking about the micro-issue of Wisconsin and why there was an overlap between Trump and Bernie voters and trying to identify why that was beyond the sort of typical weekend on MSNBC. Just a point of clarification. I want to talk about the Debt Collective in a second, but two more questions on forcing you to talk —

[Crosstalk.]

AT: I do want to say one thing, though. If you could convince some people with lingering misogyny to vote for Bernie Sanders instead of Trump, though, I think that would be a transformative process. I mean, to me, part of being an organizer, though, is saying, people aren’t just who they are forever. If you are an organizer, then you believe people can change, that people can see their situations differently, that people can begin to have a sense of commonality with others. So to me, that was also a missed opportunity. It’s like, yeah, bring them on board, bring the misogynists on board to the Sanders campaign, and let’s transform them into more open minded leftists.

JS: I don’t want to take the thunder away from you so this will be a sparse question and you can do your thing with it. In the book, you compare Donald Trump and make analogies, Donald Trump and historical figures. One of the most fascinating I thought was George Washington. Explain why you draw an analogy between Trump and George Washington.

AT: George Washington, well, I mean, think back to November. What day is the election, anyway? Seventh? I don’t know.

JS: It was November 8.

AT: So, November 8, think back to November 8, 2016 and everyone’s saying Donald Trump is not us. This is not who we are. And what was so fascinating for me, I was filming my documentary at that moment, and I spent the morning with North Carolina representative Mickey Michaux, who’s this 86-year-old guy in the state legislature who was recruited by Martin Luther King. I was spending the afternoon with a young Black Lives Matter organizer named Delaney Vandergrift, who’s 19. They were like, this is who we are.

And the best example of that to me is George Washington, the first president, who was this vicious real estate speculator who basically, why did he want the American Revolution? So, he could speculate on stolen indigenous land. So, let’s just not deceive ourselves. This is, we have to look at how this is, in fact, who we are, look at our history, not tell ourselves this false story that the problems begin three years ago, and that we can just kind of have this liberal make America great again and go back to 2015. And we have to take an honest look at our history and who has led this country before.

JS: So getting into the heart of some of the work you’ve done on economic issues, in 2012, coming off the heels of the rise up of the Occupy movement, you were working on a project called Rolling Jubilee. And that project raised enough money to eradicate, and correct me if I’m wrong about the statistic here, it raised enough money to eradicate close to $15 million in medical debt.

AT: Yeah, in the end, we raised over $33 million in different kinds of debt.

JS: So explain to people what that project is, was.

AT: Yeah, so Rolling Jubilee is a project that came out of Occupy sort of an Occupy Wall Street off-shoot. And what we wanted to do was to, I mean, challenge the phony morality around debt that had actually been part of the financial crisis. Right, because what was the Occupy chant? Banks got bailed out. We got sold out. And so we’re like, Look, what if scrappy occupiers come together and we bail out the people. So we also call it a people’s bailout. So essentially, what we did was, we acted like debt collectors. This is something nobody had done before. We acted like debt collectors, but instead of buying debts to try to extract money from people to profit from other people’s pain, we abolish them.

And we use the word abolish very specifically because we do not believe that debtors need to be forgiven. We believe the majority of our debts are illegitimate. Nobody should go into debt because they get cancer or get sick. Nobody should go into debt because they want to get an education. I don’t think people should go into debt because they want to have a roof over their heads. And the majority of what people put on credit cards in this country, contrary to stereotypes is food, shelter, basic necessities because people aren’t getting paid enough. So we were trying to challenge this and also to kind of do a concrete good, a kind of coded Occupy. And so we ended up sending out thousands, tens of thousands of letters to debtors and saying no strings attached. You don’t have to pay your bill anymore.

Out of that effort we bought we ended up buying a portfolio of debt from a predatory for profit college tuition debt, and we were able to make contact with debtors. And that’s when we started to build something called the Debt Collective which had always been our dream, but we just thought that it was too out there. The Debt Collective is a union for debtors. Just like we have a labor movement where workers come together to negotiate for better wages, etc, in the workplace. Why don’t we have something like that for debtors? What would have happened before 2008 if mortgage holders had been organized? Right, because what we know, looking back, the Obama administration sat on debt relief for millions and millions of regular people, right, whose homes went into foreclosure, who were financially devastated. Black families lost half of their wealth in the wake of the financial crisis.

What if debtors had been organized, mortgage holders had been organized? So we try to organize people around what type of debt by their specific creditors and say we need to engage in collective bargaining. We need to not be afraid to have strikes, and this in an age of financialization and an age of financial capitalism. Why aren’t we organizing around indebtedness? Your debt might overwhelm you personally. But when you work together, it’s leverage, right? So, all of our debts are someone else’s profit. Somebody’s trading them. Somebody’s like, bundling them and, and selling them off and it’s like, okay, someone’s making money from that. So the 1 percent has wealth, we have debt. $1.6 trillion of student debt is $1.6 trillion of leverage. Let’s start using it.