If you thought the Rolling Jubilee for other debt was phenomenal…wait til you see where they’ve taken this concept now! Incredible what the Power of One can accomplish.
A few online commenters have suggested that it validates the debt collection system by using its channels. But Strike Debt views the Rolling Jubilee as just one tactic in a long-term strategy to empower debtors. Others include the creation of a Debt Resistors Organizing Kit, and debt-resisting acts of civil disobedience.
November 10, 2012
Occupy Wall Street is raising money so they can buy up debt at random and pay it off, in a brilliant campaign of radical agorism.
Members of Occupy Wall Street have recently started an effort called “Rolling Jubilee” and the stated mission on their website is to: “buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals’ debt – instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.”
According to an article in the UK Telegraph:
“The Rolling Jubilee project is seeking donations to help it buy-up distressed debts, including student loans and outstanding medical bills, and then wipe the slate clean by writing them off. Individuals or companies can buy distressed debt from lenders at knock-down prices if it the borrower is in default or behind with payments and are then free to do with it as they see fit, including cancelling it free of charge.
As a test run the group spent $500 on distressed debt, buying $14,000 worth of outstanding loans and pardoning the debtors. They are now looking to expand their experiment nationwide and are asking people to donate money to the cause.”
As a friend, supporter and also a critic of the Occupy Wall Street movement over the past year and a half, it has been exciting and interesting to see the loose knit, decentralized movement transform and grow into many different branches that are taking a more local and decentralized approach than we saw from the protests last year.
Recently, I have been noticing that various pockets of OWS are beginning to practice agorism, and starting initiatives and projects to replace inefficient state programs with their own voluntary mutual aid approaches.
This Rolling Jubilee project is one example, and the recent efforts to go where FEMA wouldn’t after Hurricane Sandy is another example.
For those of you that are not familiar with the term “agorism”, it is a strategy of noncompliance that uses counter economics and underground markets as a way of keeping power in the hands of the average people, thus slowly diminishing the power and relevance of the control structure.
Growing food, starting mutual aid or charity groups, using bitcoin, homeschooling, running a small business without licenses, bartering and starting community currencies are all examples of agorist activities.
Some agorists are even so bold as to create businesses that will challenge existing state monopolies, like we saw earlier this year when Detroit residents created their own community protection agencies because the police were no longer responding to 911 calls.
It is as simple as finding a need in your community for a particular good or service, and attempting to provide that value without any sort of interaction with the government or any other unchosen 3rd parties.
In other words, the basic idea is to try solving the problem yourself, with your community instead of waiting around for a politician to make the problem worse.
Occupy Wall Street outshining FEMA in the wake of a natural disaster is reminiscent of actions taken by an agorist in early American history, Lysander Spooner.
Lysander Spooner was an outspoken philosopher, abolitionist, and anarchist during the 19th century who was not only a brilliant author and speaker, but he also started a letter delivering service to compete with the government post office.
The following video was released to announce the Rolling Jubilee project:
I called the St. Jacobi Church group re: Occupy Sandy to confirm that I can send warm clothing and this is what they said.
What they really need is OUTER wear;
- coats
- hats
- scarves
- gloves/mitts
- boots or winter-weight shoes and probably heavy socks, too
I’ve given a lot to Goodwill because I can’t stand having stuff around that isn’t used, but I’ve been hanging on to more than I need in cold weather wear for 8 years since we relocated from Canada to Arizona, and now I’m glad I did, because it will have the perfect home!
My box will be going to:
St. Jacobi Church
Attn: Occupy Sandy
5406 – 4th Avenue
Sunset Park, Brooklyn 11220
Thank you to everyone who has given anything toward this effort—even if it’s only a few minutes of your positive intentions to beam some love.
November 6, 2012
While the mainstream media is celebrating the fact that military troops are on the streets in areas of New York and New Jersey, there are many people who are very unsettled by their presence, and understandably so.
In addition to the military involvement there is also a heavy police presence everywhere creating a very authoritarian atmosphere bordering on martial law.
In fact, martial law has actually been declared in different areas that were effected by hurricane sandy.
In New York a man traveled out of town to where the gas lines where shorter and gas was more plentiful so he could fill up as much as he could for his family and his neighbors.
On his trip back he he was stopped and searched by police, who then arrested him for buying too much gas. Even worse, the owner of the gas station was arrested also!
“Police arrested a 47-year-old New York man accused of filling up 30 five-gallon Home Depot buckets with gasoline on Saturday night.
According to investigators, Yunus Latif, of Richmond Hill, collected money from his neighbors, bought gas at a Valero station almost 80 miles away in Orange and planned to bring it back to his neighborhood, where they had no power and gas.
Just before 9 p.m. on Saturday in Orange, police found buckets filled with 4 gallons each stacked inside Latif’s van and it looked like the lids were beginning to expand, officials said. That owner of the Valero gas station, located at 347 Boston Post Road, was arrested as well.”
Many residents all across the east coast are still without power, gas and even food.
To make matters worse the government has restricted peaceful human interaction every step of the way, preventing non union crews from helping out with the cleanup and arresting anyone who tries to do something independently for their community.
Disaster situations like this are propaganda goldmines for governments because it gives them an opportunity to pretend that they are relevant and necessary for a society to work.
The last thing that they would want is to be out shined by an independent group of people who don’t require a whole bunch of violence to get the job done.
Well, despite all their effort, that is exactly what has happened. Occupy wall street has actually been more effective than the Red Cross in actually helping people that needed help, even rowing canoes through the streets of New York to bring food to people who needed it.
How long they will be able to get away with helping their community before the police crack down on them is hard to tell, but it does seem that since news got out about the non union crews being turned away. mutual aid groups and volunteer crews are finally being let through.
As for the two men who were arrested in this perfectly voluntary gas transaction, they are scheduled to appear in court on November 19th.
Lightworker 29501 sent me the photo below last night and he now has it up on his site.
We want to get this information out so everyone has what they need to get emergency supplies to the freezing, wet and hungry people in New York and New Jersey.
You can see from the way the fellow in the photo is dressed that it’s darn chilly there, and when you’re wet, too, you get chilled to the bone and just can’t get warm. It’s below freezing at night there, so these folks need our help desperately.
I don’t have to tell you that many lost absolutely everything they own because their homes were washed away or have been condemned. In some areas martial law is preventing them from going home to get anything because it isn’t safe.
They have the clothes on their backs, which are dirty, wet and generally in very bad shape now after a week of travails.
Coats, hats, scarves, gloves, boots, jeans, sweaters, underclothes… Do what you need to do. The entire world is feeling the Love. If we all share, this is a piece of cake because most of us in North America have FAR more than we need, and we can always get more.
A friend of mine went to Africa recently and felt so guilty about the villagers’ lack of clothing compared to her abundance of it that she left nearly all her clothes with them.
If nothing else, a catastrophe like this puts life into perspective and underscores what REALLY matters in life. Love. Unity. We are all one. When one suffers, we all suffer. When one lifts up another, it lifts up the collective consciousness of the planet.
The “organized” and “official” emergency services have let these people down big time so it’s up to the informal groups to assist immediately.
To the hurricane victims: we’ve got your back. Love and Light.
They’re right, you know. We tried voting and they took the power of the vote away with rigged electronic voting machines and crooked politicians.
We tried petitions. We tried peaceful demonstrations and activism. They continued to undermine the American Constitution without our consent, to steal our rights to free speech.
Today, July 27th, they are going to vote on the treaty that will demand The People turn in their weapons so they cannot defend themselves. We’re going in the wrong direction fast, and it’s time we met them with an opposition they cannot ignore, and cannot fight.
It’s time for the 99 per cent to banish their apathy, find out what’s going on, and stand their ground to take back what should never have been given away in the first place—and make no mistake, it WAS given—because to do nothing is to acquiesce.
Now is the time for The People to do damage control; to reclaim their sovereignty, to tear down and start anew.
I have to thank Drake for filling me in on Bohemian Grove. I never heard of it until a day ago. Looks like they’re getting some significant coverage.
Occupy Activists Join Social Justice Organizations to Protest at Bohemian Grove
Occupy movements from a number of locations will join social justice groups to protest the annual gathering at the Bohemian Grove.
Occupy groups from Healdsburg, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Petaluma and beyond are joining some twenty other social justice activist organizations to protest at the Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio on July 14-29.
The Bohemian Club is a private male-only organization that gathers yearly at the Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio. It includes some of the wealthiest men in the United States.
Members and their guests hold a ‘cremation of care’ ceremony on July 14. Members symbolically burn the cares of the world in this annual ritual.
This year’s protest is called “Occupy Bohemian Grove, Expose the 1%.” Occupy groups are working to expose the small percentage who, they assert, control global resources.
The Fukushima Mothers and Cindy Sheehan are joining twenty-four co-sponsors for a ‘Creation of Care’ ceremony.
In addition, on Saturday, July 14, there will be speakers and music at the Monte Rio Amphitheater, just outside the gates of the Bohemian Grove.
Kris Welsh will MC the day, and Dennis Bernstein, host of Flashpoints on KPFA/Pacifica radio will broadcast live from the event. Russia Today-TV with Abby Martin will film and John Rees with No-Lies Radio will video-cast the day on the Internet.
The protest will feature Occupy groups as well as other organizations including Code Pink, Peace and Justice Center, ANSWER Coalition, Project Censored, Bohemian Grove Action Network, Veterans for Peace, National Lawyers Guild, Round Valley Indians for Justice, and various others groups focused on key issues, such as climate change, human rights, Palestine, Cuban Five, and a living wage.
In addition to the speakers, the program at the amphitheater will include musical performances by Dave Lippman, Teresa Tudury, Jim Ocean, Scott Gerber, Attila Nagy, Keith Blackstone and the Hubbub Club.
Admission to the Creation of Care is free. It will run from noon to 4 p.m. at the Monte Rio amphitheater, which is located at 9925 Main Street in downtown Monte Rio.
Source
Check out “Bohemian Grove Exposed”
Washington Has Made A Mockery Of The US Constitution By Violating The Fundamental Rights Of The American People
Press TV:
Washington has chipped away at the US constitution by violating the fundamental rights of the American public to freedom, effectively rendering the constitution null, a political activist tells Press TV.
“We find the US constitution being eroded, being smashed, being chipped away and being hydraulically busted into virtually nothing,” said Bill Perry, a member of the Veterans for Peace, in a Wednesday interview.
He pointed to the US police’s brutal crackdown on the Occupy protests across America, saying, “The First Amendment specifically says that Congress shall make no law to abridge or deny our right to assemble as well as free speech and the other elements.”
The exacerbating economic conditions, corruption, poverty, as well as social and economic inequality in the US have sparked the anti-capitalism Occupy movement in major cities in the US since September 2011.
The protesters use the slogan, “We are the 99 percent” to distinguish themselves from the one percent of the Americans who are in possession of the greatest portion of the nation’s wealth.
The American activist lashed out at the United States’ media blackout against the 99-percenters’ movement, noting, “They don’t even want to begin to give us any kind of coverage in the media outlets that they control which are nearly every outlet.”
“The few independent media outlets don’t have the money to reach too many people and we find that to be a major problem and they get the entire one way benefit of their propaganda … and it’s really hard for us to reciprocate,” he added.
Touching upon the US support for opposition factions in different countries across the world, Perry argued that such a move takes place despite the fact that Washington continues to suppress popular protests across America.
“It’s the United States of Hypocrisy. They’ve done it so many times before and they’re doing it again and they’re going to continue to do it. They’re going to spread hatred; they’re going to spread evil and they’re going to spread greed,” he said.
Perry slammed the monopoly of the minority capitalist cartels over the American wealth, saying, “The one percent sees what they want and will kill millions to get what they want and that’s the real problem, we have to work on it every day.”
