— Astra Taylor and Naomi Klein, End Times Fascism

Last week, OpenAI agents went rogue and tried to hack the Education Department’s website. Too bad they didn’t wipe out our student loans in the process.

Far from erasing our debts, AI development is fueling a debt crisis that could crash the whole economy. To generate the huge amount of computing power that large AI models require, companies like OpenAI, Oracle and Meta are debt-financing data centers to the tune of nearly $600 billion in 2026 alone. This frenzy, in turn, is driving up borrowing costs and making everything more expensive for the rest of us. AI execs who have recently called for the industry to slow down the pace of development are not concerned about the economy, or even humanity — they’re only worried about their bottom lines.

Indeed, some AI leaders have made it clear that their vision of the future doesn’t include humanity. In their new book End Times Fascism, Naomi Klein and Debt Collective co-founder Astra Taylor write about the alliance of messianic tech CEOs, religious theocrats, and ethnonationalist politicians who are preparing for, accelerating, and profiting from crisis and collapse.

These modern fascists may have consolidated an unprecedented amount of power over us, but we are far from powerless. The resistance movements we’ve seen against data centers, ICE kidnappings, and cop cities are grounded in solidarity and the love we share for our friends, our neighbors, and our homes. Each and every one of us has a role to play in the fight for a living world.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of our Debt Collective Substack! We’ve loved sharing interviews with experts, writing from Debt Collective members, and deep dives on municipal debt, affordable housing, student loan updates, and more.

If you’re not already a subscriber, sign up today to receive weekly updates straight to your inbox. Many thanks to the free and paid subscribers who support our work — we couldn’t do this without you!

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Read on for the latest on our campaigns, upcoming events, and ways to take action. You are not a loan!

Higher Education

For many student debtors on the SAVE Plan, this month marks the end of their three-month period to transition off of SAVE. If this is you, don’t panic — check out our SAVE Webinar and Substack post for information and resources to help you navigate this transition.

Things have gotten so bad that last week, a group of state ombuds offices sent a letter to the Department of Education documenting the many problems student debtors are experiencing with the student loan system. They wrote: “To address these issues, we urge the Department to take immediate corrective action, including delaying mandatory repayment plan transitions until these operational failures are fully resolved.” That’s right — they’re calling for a payment pause!

This is a huge bump for our campaign. Debt Collective members around the country are taking this opportunity to meet with their members of Congress and demand action, and a growing number of member organizations are joining us in the call, including DSA, Dream Defenders and AAUP. Join the fight at our next payment pause campaign call on Wednesday, 10/14.

In other victories: two years ago, Debt Collective’s 50 Over 50 debtors led the first-ever senior-led action in D.C. to call for student debt relief. While our call for cancellation still has a long way to go, just this week, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced legislation calling for a permanent halt to Social Security garnishment for defaulted student loans — something our senior members have been pushing for years. This bill isn’t perfect, but it wouldn’t exist without older debtors fighting for relief. If you are an older debtor, join our next 50 Over 50 call on Thursday, 10/22 to learn more and plug in.

Healthcare

While Trump agency heads, corporate healthcare execs, and AI firms convened in DC this week to wring further profits out of our healthcare, state Medicaid offices across the country are preparing to implement massive federal healthcare cuts expected to kick tens of millions of people across the country off of their healthcare plans.

These cuts will largely operate through new federal Medicaid “work requirements,” cruel paperwork hurdles deliberately designed for people to fail. To maintain health insurance, Medicaid recipients will be forced to demonstrate through painstaking documentation that they’re working 80 hours/month.

When Arkansas and Georgia previously tried to implement similar work requirements, Medicaid recipients were forced to fill out mountains of unclear paperwork. Many who clearly met the criteria lost their coverage anyway, thanks to errors and red tape. While both states spent millions of dollars on consulting contracts and monitoring software, neither saw any measurable increase in employment — but in Arkansas, 62% of those disenrolled from Medicaid struggled to pay off their medical debts after losing coverage.

The kicker? Republicans in Congress behind the new federal mandate worked just 56 hours this month — not even close to the metric they’re using to justify kicking people off healthcare. The cruelty is the point.

This botched federal mandate will take effect in states across the country in just three months. Wherever you live, we need you fighting back with us. Fill out our HealthWatch Interest Form, and we’ll loop you in on our work organizing against fascist attacks on lifesaving public infrastructure.

Upcoming Events

Boston Debtors Assembly with PSL

Friday, Oct 2nd 6:30pm ET

Student debtors are in a moment of crisis. The federal government is not reliable for accurate information, student loan services are broken, and our payments are too high for us to afford. We need a radical shift. Join the Boston Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) for an in-person Debtors’ Assembly, where those of us with student debt — and our supporters — can come together to release the shame and stigma of student debt and organize collectively against it.

Phonebank Power Hour

Tuesday, Oct 6th 4pm ET / 1pm PT

Tuesday, Oct 13th 4pm ET / 1pm PT

Tuesday, Oct 20th 4pm ET / 1pm PT

Tuesday, Oct 27th 4pm ET / 1pm PT

Join fellow Debt Collective members for a weekly Phonebank Power Hour. Never phone banked before? No problem! We’ll start the call with a brief training, provide a script, and an easy-to-use dialer so that you can make calls from anywhere. Debtor-to-debtor outreach is the most powerful way to reach one another — all you need is a phone or computer and a few minutes.

Office Hours: Debtors in Default

Tuesday, Oct 6th 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Join us as we discuss options for debtors with federal student loans in default or those who know they cannot afford to pay their loans who are thinking through their options. We will share resources and cover options that require repayment, like rehabilitation and consolidation, as well as options that do not, like loan cancellation.

New Member Call

Wednesday, Oct 7th 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Curious about the Debt Collective and how we’re organizing to abolish debt? Our New Member Call is a space to learn who we are, what we’re fighting for, and how you can plug in. Whether you’re brand new or have been following our work for a while, this call is a chance to get grounded, ask questions, and connect with others who are ready to challenge the debt system together.

Jubilee School: What Debt Demands

Monday, Oct 12th 8pm ET / 5pm PT

As a young person, writer, educator, and Debt Collective member Kristin Collier discovered that someone she loved had acquired over $200,000 of fraudulent private student loans in her name. In this book talk, Collier will share excerpts from her memoir What Debt Demands, explore America’s broken student loan system, and illuminate the ways that debt shapes every aspect of our lives.

Payment Pause Campaign Call

Wednesday, Oct 14th 8pm ET / 5pm PT

From soaring payment amounts to miscounted past payment history, servicer errors and Dept of Ed blunders, the student debt collections system simply doesn’t work. Until these problems are fixed, student debtors need a payment pause. But loans won’t be paused on their own — to win that, we’ll have to organize. Join this national call for the latest updates in our campaign for a payment pause and ways to take action!

Debt Storytelling Jam!

Wednesday, Oct 21st 4pm ET / 1pm PT

Storytelling is one of the most powerful weapons we have in our organizing arsenal. Join writer, performer, Webby Award-winning producer, and Debt Collective member Ian Goldstein for an introductory storytelling jam session. Come with questions, learn the fundamentals of how to write a powerful story, workshop your story ideas in breakout sessions, and walk away with a firmer grasp on how to tell a tale. All writing levels are welcome.

50 Over 50 Monthly Call

Thursday, Oct 22nd 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

Are you 50 years old or older? Do you have student loan debt? Join our 50/50 meeting for student debtors aged fifty and above to discuss action steps, organizing plans, and build solidarity. Newcomers are welcome!

Jubilee School: How We Fought for a Payment Pause — and Won

Tuesday, Oct 27th 8pm ET / 5pm PT

Our campaign to demand a pause on all federal student loans and interest didn’t come from nowhere. The precedent for this type of sweeping federal action was set by the first Trump administration in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when student loan payments were paused for more than three years. Join Debt Collective organizers Thomas Gokey and Dr. Richelle Brooks to trace the history of our fight for student loan debt cancellation, how it led to a national payment pause and cancellation for millions of student debtors, and how this history connects to our current fight to demand a payment pause.

Student Loan Debtors MA Chapter Organizing Call

Wednesday, Oct 28th 7:30pm ET

Massachusetts Congressmembers like Sen. Warren, Sen. Markey and Rep. Pressley are key players in the national conversation on student debt cancellation, and it’s crucial that we pressure them to stand up for student debtors. Join our MA chapter organizing call to meet other MA student debtors, share your story, and learn how we can harness our collective power to win an interest-free student loan payment pause, cancellation, and free college for all. This event is limited to residents of Massachusetts.

Teaching Anti-fascism: A Roundtable Discussion with CAHE

Friday, Oct 30th 7pm ET / 4pm PT

A growing number of college and K-12 courses are being taught on the theory, history and culture of antifascism, and there have been three conferences since 2022. Organized by Coalition for Action in Higher Education (CAHE) and moderated by Debt Collective organizer Dr. Shamell Bell, this panel will discuss ways that educators can share and defend research and teaching while supporting antifascist action.

In The News

Stories we’re reading, writing, and thinking about this month:

• Truthout – Trump’s Dismantling of Student Loan Aid Is Crashing Down on Debtors This Week

• Shadowbanned Magazine – Is California Where Artists’ Dreams Go — to Die?

• Democracy Now – “End Times Fascism”: Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor on Billionaires, Bunkers, AI, Gaza & the Far Right

• Forbes - 3 Key Student Loan Deadlines Get Suddenly Extended, Sparking Confusion

• Forbes - Education Department Must Pause Student Loans As Chaos Deepens, Advocates Say

• New York Times – This Is How the A.I. Debt Binge Sinks the Economy

• Mondoweiss – Palestinians are responding to Israel’s stranglehold on the West Bank economy by forgiving each other’s debts en masse

• Business Insider – ‘It’s going to hurt’: How a surging student-loan payment is reshaping a family’s future

• New York Times – A Doctor Sued 700 Patients for Debts; 81 Were Arrested. Now He’s a Senator.

• The Century Foundation – Half of Every Dollar: How Household Debt Eats Into Workers’ Income Gains

Well, just like our debts are rich people’s assets, our rents add to landlords’ wealth — along with the back rent we can’t seem to get out from under. Each month marks an astronomical transfer of wealth from a majority of renters to a smaller and smaller pool of landlords.

During our last discussion, I spoke with DC’s Housing Organizing lead, René Moya, about Vivmark Residential — a newly merged, corporate landlord behemoth.

Vivmark was once Equity Residential and Avalon Bay. Together, they’re hell bent on using rents to meddle in politics, enshittify the rental process, and ruin local rental markets. Vivmark could impact local Bay Area housing markets too, so there’s a lot to learn from organizers in Northern California.

Today, I’m happy to welcome a local Bay Area comrade — Dean Preston.

Dean is an attorney, a Democratic Socialist, and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He has an extensive background in tenant organizing, including authoring San Francisco’s Proposition F, which directed the city to establish a universal right to counsel for tenants facing eviction.

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At Debt Collective, we believe debtors deserve tools to get as close to zero monthly payments as possible, but as the terrain shifts, so must our strategies. When we debtors share information collectively — when we move in concert instead of isolation — we can better ride out bureaucratic storms. That’s why we’re providing the following tips to help you reassess your options as the SAVE deadline draws near.

Earlier this summer, we suggested not to rush. We told you to ignore the incendiary, cruel, and alarmist messaging from the Department of Education telling you to immediately leave the SAVE repayment program. There was (and still is) ongoing litigation around SAVE, which could have made a switch in repayment premature and unnecessary — and given the likely possibility of Federal Student Aid bungling the transition, extremely costly as well.

Given the updated information we now have about SAVE litigation, the impending deadline for many student debtors, and the possibility of locking in a slightly lower interest rate, we think it may be time for you to reevaluate your options. Below, we’ve provided our most detailed description of facts to consider, including a little-known possibility to force a delay in repayment.

Americans deserve better than what our federal government is offering us. We deserve debt abolition. We hope you’ll join us in this fight!

Factors to Consider

The 90 Day Message from Your Servicer

Many of you have already received an email from your servicer starting a 90-day clock to switch out of SAVE. If you haven’t yet, you likely will, we just don’t know when.

According to the Trump administration, if you don’t pick a new plan within 90 days, they will punish you by automatically enrolling you in the most expensive plan, the Standard Repayment Plan. This is cruel. If this happens to you, know that you can switch to a cheaper plan after the auto-enrollment if a cheaper plan is available. This punishment is not fully binding.

What If You Cannot Afford Any of the New Repayment Plans?

Use the EDCAP calculator to find out what your payments will be under other plans. Depending on family size and income, some people can still qualify for $0 monthly payments under Income Based Repayment (IBR with a B). But for many people, $0 monthly payments will not be an option and being forced into repayment will mean being forced into delinquency and default.

However, there is an option to buy yourself more time that we haven’t seen anyone else talk about.

Instead of authorizing the Department of Education to access your taxes from last year, you can verify your income through alternative methods. This means submitting the last several months of paystubs, or using bank statements. It is more paperwork for you, but it is also a more difficult and time-consuming process for loan servicers and the Department of Education.

If you switch to an income-driven repayment plan and verify your income through alternative methods, it can delay the processing time, sometimes significantly. During that time, your loans should be kept in an administrative forbearance. Interest will still accrue, but you won’t owe any payments. For people who are simply trying to avoid default for as long as you can, this is a way to delay. Here is a guide on how to verify your income using alternative methods.

If you are in default, please RSVP for our upcoming 10/6 default office hours.

What’s Going on with SAVE Litigation?

There is one ongoing lawsuit that could impact your ability to stay in SAVE, along with the best alternative plans if you do switch. It is called Havens v. U.S. Department of Education. The judge has not made a decision in this lawsuit yet, and we have no idea when they will.

We cannot predict what will happen, but there is a chance that the judge will pause the transfer of student debtors off of SAVE, which would put many debtors back into forbearance. It may be that by the time we hear the judge’s ruling, the best time to switch will have already passed for you.

Autopay Interest Rate Reduction

If you enroll in autopay by September 30th, the Department of Education claims you will get a 1% interest rate deduction.

Update: Ed has extended the autopay enrollment deadline to Dec 31st.

Now, for some context. In the past, federal student debtors have been given a 0.25% interest rate reduction if they enrolled in autopay. Dept. Ed is making a 1% rate reduction available for the next two years if you meet this deadline.

If you can afford to make a payment under a different plan, and you have already received the 90-day email from your servicer that will soon force you into repayment anyway, you may want to consider getting the 1% interest rate reduction.

Of course, how meaningful this reduction is depends on your current interest rate, the size of your student loans, and how close you are to triggering cancellation in one form or another. You’ll want to make that careful determination for yourself.

But for people who are still on the SAVE forbearance, there is a catch: your servicer will not let you enroll in autopay while in forbearance, and the amount of time it will take to process a switch to another plan will likely take long enough that it will cause you to miss the Sept 30th deadline.

However, there is still a way to do it. You can fill out a paper application to enroll in autopay and upload it to your servicer.

• If your servicer is EdFinancial, the form you need is here.

• For MOHELA, the form you need is here (NOTE: this link will trigger an automatic download of the PDF).

• For other servicers, call and ask them for a paper form to enroll in autopay.

Keep good documentation. If your servicer does not honor this 1% interest rate reduction — even if you file the paperwork by the deadline — there may be possible legal action that can be taken.

NOTE: There are risks to consider with enrolling in autopay. Because your servicer will be automatically debiting your bank account, there is a risk of overdraft and overdraft fees from your bank. You should have a clear sense of what your monthly payment will be and when the due date is and plan accordingly. You should also take care to recertify your income 11 months after enrolling in a new Income-Driven Repayment plan. If you forget to recertify your income, you will be switched into the standard plan and will likely have a higher payment. That higher payment would then be automatically deducted from your bank account.

In the event that you experience any loan servicer errors, please use this form to document them.

We know this is stressful and confusing. That’s why we held an emergency webinar on all things SAVE. Watch the webinar recording and share with your friends and family who are considering their repayment options.

This is also a moment to organize for a pause on all federal student loan payments and interest. Join our national call to demand a payment pause next Wednesday 9/23 at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT. We cannot navigate this alone — and we have a track record of improving people’s financial situations based on our organizing. We need you in this fight!

RSVP for 9/23 National Call to Demand a Payment Pause

As the nation’s first and only debtors’ union — with members from across the country numbering in the tens of thousands — we’re building collective power to fight for a debt-free future, universal healthcare, social housing, and free college. Our vision isn’t limited to our individual debt balances or the hope of relief. It’s about organizing for a jubilee and a total and complete shift in society — true debt abolition. And we need all hands on deck to get us there.

Can you share this post with someone else who might need it?

In the meantime, remember to be kind, compassionate, and patient with yourself. If the student debt system feels Kafkaesque, that’s because it was designed that way.

Trump, like any other president, has the power to pause and cancel all federal student debt, which would boost our economy over time. Instead, he’s giving tax breaks to billionaires and making illegal promises to pay $5000 if people vote for him — a bribe with a comparably far greater price tag compared to mass debt relief.

Hope is a discipline, and thankfully, we’re in it for the long haul. We invite you to make Debt Collective your organizing home amidst the mayhem. We sincerely hope to see you at one of our upcoming meetings!

Remember, alone our debts are a burden, but together, they make us powerful.

Concealed within is a parasitic, lifelong burden. She doesn’t come from wealth, so she took out loans to go to college. It made sense at the time. How else would she get a college degree, a necessary pathway to higher learning, healthcare, and a comfortable life? Perhaps she didn’t fully grasp how quickly the interest compounds and or how rapidly her balance would balloon. Who could blame her?

After she graduates, she’ll be forced to make life choices based on invisible baggage — perhaps forgoing starting a family or homeownership. Maybe she’ll stay in a job she hates to avoid defaulting on her loans. The girl will feel guilty, shameful and alone, believing her student debt burden is her own fault. The truth is that in Ohio, where she is from, 62% of students graduate from college with an average debt of $30,629. Most borrowers are either behind in their payments, in forbearance, or in default. Nationally, outstanding student debt is approximately $1.75 trillion. Women owe two thirds of that unfathomable sum.

It wasn’t always this way. Before 1965, the federal government had almost no direct role in lending money to students. The Morrill Act of 1862 provided each state with public land to be used to build colleges to benefit agriculture and the mechanical arts. These grants established 69 schools, including Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1944, the GI bill offered various benefits to WWII veterans to obtain higher education, including fully-covered tuition. The proposals behind these legislative measures were buttressed by a belief that a more educated workforce was essential to the country’s economic growth.

That all began to change in the 1970s as Ronald Reagan built his political career, in part, by vilifying college students who spoke out against the Vietnam War. Professor Roger A. Freeman, an advisor to then governor Ronald Reagan, declared, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be selective about who we allow to go through higher education.” Beyond disparaging the working class, this assertion presaged a shift in the nation’s higher education policy from one financially supported by the government to one funded by private investments, often made by individuals facing rising tuition costs and fees.

In 1987, Secretary of Education William J. Bennett suggested that increases in federal aid enabled colleges to raise tuition because students could borrow more to cover higher costs. Our current student loan crisis proves him correct. What we’ve created is a system that places the onus of covering these costs through loans directly on the students, affecting future decisions like where they will live and if they can afford to buy a house or have a family of their own.

The promise of higher education financed by loans is a trap that disproportionally burdens marginalized groups already experiencing stagnant wages and an ever-increasing cost of living. It’s a structural injustice that ensnares generations in the rigged system of an unjust financial regime. High school teens who prepare themselves for college today are easy targets for a predatory state powered by a powerful few. This is also true for past generations who are stuck paying off debt burdens from decades prior. Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?

I can’t help but picture a brilliant young woman carrying a backpack, even as I navigate the weight of my own student loan debt at 67 years old. I think of her sore back as my head throbs trying to figure out how many qualifying payments I’ve made toward cancellation. I can hear her breath quicken as I scramble to switch to a new student loan repayment plan after being forced off of a more affordable one. She is me — my younger self. Years ago, I applied for loans in order to attend graduate school for social work. I sought not only higher job satisfaction, but also to engage in hands-on projects with like-minded people. For ten years, I made payments while my loans were shuffled through different loan servicers. The pressures of work, studying and tracking payments were stressful and harmed my health.

Imagine you’re playing a game and the rules keep changing. No matter how hard you try, you’re destined to lose. That’s been student debtors’ experience from one administration to the next — Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump again. To make matters worse, the Department of Education is grossly understaffed because the Trump administration fired nearly half of the people tasked with ushering debtors through the disastrous system in the first place. Trump also spearheaded the push to destroy SAVE — the most affordable student loan repayment plan to date — but servicers are making grave errors, and alternative plans are often more costly. Even if debtors want to pay back their loans, some loan servicers are falsely telling them that they are delinquent on payments, losing track of payments or reporting debtors as delinquent to credit reporting agencies.

There was a period during the pandemic when loans were paused without political debate. The government managed to send out stimulus checks without going bankrupt as well. Amidst the present misinformation and a crumbling system, debtors can’t be expected to make the best financial decisions for themselves and their families. This is why we need a pause on all federal student loan payments today. The question is: why won’t our elected officials take heed?

We must demand that our government cancel, and in the meantime, pause student loan payments. Attending university is not only about satisfying intellectual curiosity, it is also about how we think, what we believe, and why. Our system of higher education is currently so broken that it isn’t about learning anymore. Instead, it is debt peonage for working class individuals, their families and entire communities. This burden harms 40 million people, many for life. This is precisely why debt relief is vital to the success of the student who carries a backpack across her campus — she also carries the future of our entire society.

About the author:

Lana Kuhns is a Debt Collective member and life-long student living in the Midwest. She owes $30,000 in student debt. Lana enjoys gardening, Tai-Chi and spending time with her family.

Who came up with this new name? Are they really expecting tenants not to be alarmed by this merger? Oh wait, shareholders are the priority here.

Two corporate landlords who’ve already been called out for abuses are joining forces? This can’t be good.

They can’t possibly expect tenants to be ok with this…

Whew! What a lot of corporate-landlord propaganda. Seems like we need to break through the noise. Want to know more about what this merger means for tenants?

Join us 9/8/2026 at 8PM ET/5PM PT for a town hall on the newest biggest landlord in town. Hear expert analysis on how this merger will impact tenants living in Equity Residential and Avalon Bay buildings in California and across the country! See you soon. RSVP HERE

What could possibly go wrong?

Back in May, we spoke with LA-based researcher and organizer, Alex Ferrer about the history of the corporate-landlord structure. Our housing team was concerned about the potential for an EQR/Avalon merger at the time…

Unfortunately, our fears have come to fruition. But Vivmark does not stop our ability to fight. Instead, this merger changes the organizing terrain.

To understand these changes, we spoke to Housing Team Lead at Debt Collective: René Moya. Not only is René a leader in the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), but he is also the former campaign director for the Proposition 21 campaign in 2020 — a ballot initiative in 2020 to strengthen rent control in California — and has worked extensively on tenant rights, local rent control campaigns, Pandemic-era emergency protections, and social housing. René also attended Dartmouth College and the University of London – School of Oriental & African Studies.

There’s obviously so much more to learn, discuss and build solidarity around.

Join Debt Collective’s housing team for our “Newest Biggest Landlord” Townhall.

Hear expert analysis about how the merger will affect tenants and the housing market overall. This is a great opportunity for tenants who live across EQR and AvalonBay buildings to talk strategy and learn how we can fight back.

See you there!

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While the student loan system continues to be a dumpster fire by design, our movement had a HUGE win this month. Seven years after debtors represented by the Project on Predatory Student Lending (PPSL) sued the Department of Education, more than 170,000 federal student loan debtors who were defrauded by for-profit schools had their debts erased to the tune of $11 billion dollars — the biggest class-action settlement in U.S. history!

This victory is rooted in a long history of debtor organizing. Following the collapse of for-profit giant Corinthian College in 2015, Debt Collective created the Borrower Defense to Repayment application. The application uses a Higher Education Act provision that gives defrauded students the legal right to seek debt cancellation. Armed with this application, a group of Debt Collective members known as the Corinthian 15 went on the first student debt strike in U.S. history. When the Department of Education refused to process borrower defense applications, student debtors took them to court in 2019. After years of delays, these debtors won more than $23 billion in debt cancellation for half a million student debtors.

While we’re taking a moment to celebrate this historic win, our eyes are still on the prize: broad-based debt cancellation and free college for all. This class-action lawsuit was led by and for debtors, and we will need more debtor power to achieve these long-term goals.

Help us build debtor power for the long haul by becoming a dues-paying member of the nation’s only union of debtors. Dues-paying union members provide the crucial funding we need to develop tools like borrower defense, organize debtors to call for a pause on federal student loan payments, and pressure electeds to support College for All. If you are not in a position to financially contribute, you can sign up as a member for $0 a month — we need you in this fight!

Read on for updates on our campaigns to cancel housing, healthcare, and student debt and upcoming events to plug into!

Housing

This month, our campaign to ban RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing Systems) in Los Angeles reached a crucial milestone.

Late last year, the LA Housing Department published a report recommending that RUBS be banned in all rent-stabilized apartments to protect tenants from unlawful rent increases hidden in opaque utility fees. To urge LA City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee to take action towards banning RUBS city-wide, we convened tenants and Debt Collective members for a rally and press conference at City Hall on August 10. Thanks to the brave tenants who made their voices heard, this event led to greater awareness of RUBS and press coverage in The Guardian, Capital & Main, and The Los Angeles Times.

RUBS utility fees are just one of many junk fees charged to tenants by corporate landlords. RUBS is a growing problem nationally, with tenants from New Jersey to Chicago and San Diego increasingly organizing against landlords’ latest strategy to squeeze more money out of their tenants. A recent merger announced by real estate giants Equity Residential and AvalonBay is poised to further exploit tenants by creating Vivmark Residential, the largest publicly traded apartment landlord in U.S. history. Vivmark now has an effective monopoly in at least seven local housing markets in the U.S., giving them even more power to increase rents while limiting tenants’ options of where to live.

But tenants are far from powerless in the face of this real estate behemoth. We need tenant power to organize for tenant protections — and while this merger grows corporate landlord power, it also increases our leverage as tenants who now share a common landlord. Join us on Tuesday, 9/8 for a townhall on the newest, biggest landlord in town. We’ll share expert analysis on how tenants will be impacted by this merger, and tenants in Equity Residential and AvalonBay will have the opportunity to meet and organize together. We hope to see you there!

Higher Education

Our campaign to demand a payment pause is ON. We kicked off the month with a week of action, driving scores of calls to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office calling for a payment pause and dialing up our storytelling chops at a media and op-ed training. Our efforts are starting to pay off.

Last week, Senator Sanders introduced legislation to halt Social Security garnishment for defaulted student loans. This is an important step towards abolishing mercenary loan collections, but debtors of all ages need much, much more. We need an end to collections altogether. Until that’s guaranteed, we need a payment pause, full stop.

In the coming weeks, we will continue to escalate pressure on political and community leaders to join our demand for a payment pause. Learn more about how student loan chaos is impacting debtors by joining our press conference next Tuesday, and take action by joining our National Campaign Call on 9/23 for the latest updates on our payment pause campaign and ways to plug in.

We are also thrilled to welcome our newest Higher Ed lead organizer, Isaiah Back-Gaal. Isaiah comes to us with grassroots organizing experience in Sunrise Movement, United Students Against Sweatshops, Waterkeeper Alliance, and more. He’s an energetic organizer, campaign manager, and creative storyteller, and we can’t wait for you to meet him!

Healthcare

Our work organizing in Nebraska against the state’s early rollout of the Trump administration’s massive Medicaid cuts continues. Earlier this year, on the eve of the state’s implementation of Medicaid work requirements designed to kick millions of people nationally off healthcare, we launched HealthWatch Nebraska in partnership with the Lincoln and Omaha chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Since May, HealthWatch members have canvassed job sites, county fairs, and community events across Nebraska, talking to hundreds of working class people concerned about what attacks on Medicaid and other social safety-net programs will mean for them with the growing cost of living crisis. We’ve spoken at public hearings and school board meetings, organized HealthWatch teach-ins, and met with decisionmakers.

And our organizing is working: earlier this month, the Nebraska Medicaid Director behind the state’s voluntary early rollout of these murderous healthcare cuts resigned from his post amid growing pressure and scrutiny. After the resignation, we launched a petition calling for an immediate pause on Nebraska’s early rollout of Medicaid work requirements: share it with your friends, family, and loved ones in Nebraska.

The botched federal mandate that’s been implemented in Nebraska is coming for the rest of us soon. These same cuts will take effect in states across the country at the start of the new year. Wherever you live, we need you fighting back with us. Fill out our HealthWatch Interest Form, and we’ll loop you in on our work organizing against fascist attacks on lifesaving public infrastructure for universal public healthcare and medical debt abolition.

Upcoming Events

50 Over 50 Monthly Call

Thursday, August 27 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

Thursday, Sept 24 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

Are you 50 years old or older? Do you have student loan debt? Join our 50/50 meeting for student debtors aged fifty and above to discuss action steps, organizing plans, and build solidarity. Newcomers are welcome!

Final Friday Flow

Friday, August 28 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT

Friday, Sept 25 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT

Held on the last Friday of each month, these gatherings are designed to remind us that the path to debt abolition and collective liberation begins within. Through guided somatic and movement-based practices, we’ll transform exhaustion into power, fear into vision, and pain into purpose.

How to TikTok: Guide to Making Short Form Videos

Monday, August 31 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Want to make a TikTok video about your debt, and explaining to the world why you need it cancelled? Learn how to make short-form videos for social media at this member-led training session!

Glitches, Errors and Clawbacks: Student Debtor Press Conference

Tuesday, Sept 1 2pm ET / 11am PT

Trump’s Department of Education is making student debt errors, glitches, and mistakes everyday. From false delinquency notices to incorrect payment amounts to illegal clawbacks of payments, the federal government is failing student debtors at every step of the way. Hear from student debtors themselves as they navigate the harms of the student debt system.

Payment Pause NOW: Informal Writing Session

Tuesday, Sept 1 4:30pm ET / 1:30pm PT

Hoping to complete an op-ed draft, but haven’t had the time? Planning to pitch your debt story to news outlets but unsure where to send your pitch? Need a space to write and co-work? Join Kristin Collier and Maddy Clifford for an informal writing session, where we’ll set individual goals and share our progress with each other. This session will be most useful if you’ve reviewed our Op-Ed Toolkit.

Office Hours: Debtors in Default

Tuesday, Sept 1 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Join us as we discuss options for debtors with federal student loans in default or those who know they cannot afford to pay their loans who are thinking through their options. We will share resources and cover options that require repayment, like rehabilitation and consolidation, as well as options that do not, like loan cancellation.

New Member Call

Wednesday, Sept 2 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Curious about the Debt Collective and how we’re organizing to abolish debt? Our New Member Call is a space to learn who we are, what we’re fighting for, and how you can plug in. Whether you’re brand new or have been following our work for a while, this call is a chance to get grounded, ask questions, and connect with others who are ready to challenge the debt system together.

Townhall: The Newest Biggest Landlord

Tuesday, Sept 8 5pm ET / 8pm PT

The merger of Equity Residential and AvalonBay will create the largest corporate landlord in the country overnight. Join us for expert analysis on how the merger will impact tenants, and connect with other tenants living in buildings owned by these corporate landlords.

Jubilee School: What Debt Demands Book Talk with Kristin Collier

Tuesday, Sept 22 8pm ET / 5pm PT

As a young person, Kristin Collier discovered that a family member had $200,000 of fraudulent private student loans in her name. Kristin used memoir, reporting, and history to unpack her own debt story and how debt has shaped our physical, interior, and social worlds. Join our medical debt team for a conversation with Kristin Collier about her new book, What Debt Demands.

We Need a Payment Pause! National Campaign Call

Wednesday, Sept 23 8pm ET / 5pm PT

The federal loan system is in disarray. From soaring payment amounts to miscounted past payment history, from servicer errors to Dept. Ed blunders, the student debt collections system simply doesn’t work. Until these problems are fixed, student debtors need a payment pause. But loans won’t be paused on their own — we will have to organize to win that. Join this national call for the latest updates in our campaign for a payment pause and ways to take action!

It’s been over a year since President Donald Trump and the GOP passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), and most Americans — especially mixed-status and undocumented families — have found that household budgeting can only do so much. Sadly, current projections through 2035 find that the worst of OBBBA is still to come.

Yet the world of personal finance regurgitates the same guidance as if OBBBA hasn’t already wreaked havoc on our ability to stock our fridges, see a doctor, or even come home to our families over the last year. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created for this very reason — in the wake of the Great Recession — to go after financial institutions found to be engaging in abusive practices. So of course, OBBBA cut its funding in half.

Despite Trump’s attempt to rebrand it to “Working Families Tax Cuts,” the OBBBA represents the largest transfer of wealth from the working-class to the rich in U.S. history. Financial literacy alone won’t be enough to weather the devastating impacts of this legislation. We also need economic disobedience: organized actions that break the taken-for-granted financial relations between the working and ruling class. We need to flip the script. We need to put power in the hands of everyday people and enact material change. Let’s start by examining the Big Beautiful Bill’s impact on families, what financial literacy outlets claim will help, and what could actually make a difference instead.

Personal finance alternatives for everyday budgeting

NerdWallet says you can “recession-proof” your trip to the grocery store by buying in bulk, going to cheaper grocery stores, and saving leftovers. Groundbreaking.

But OBBBA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cuts — the largest in the program’s history — have led to over 4.1 million people losing their benefits entirely. Budget for food with what, exactly? These cuts will only continue to escalate over the coming years as states are forced to take on administrative costs and SNAP benefit payments, which were previously covered by the federal government.

Economic disobedience can offer an alternative to solely budgeting. During the Food Riot of 1931 in England, Arkansas, a group of farmers and their wives demanded food from stores downtown to feed their starving families. There are also many peaceful — though just as radical — means of working together to feed the working class, such as non-violent direct action that reclaims abandoned lots for community food garden use. Mutual aid food distributions are another way communities come together to both meet nutritional needs and agitate around political forces that make mutual aid (not charity!) vital in the first place.

Student loans and medical debt under OBBBA

A common personal finance goal is to raise your credit score — but OBBBA’s Medicaid cuts will likely exacerbate existing credit score gaps. Already, people who live in states that refused to expand Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act have worse credit scores thanks to the additional medical debt they carry.

But medical bills “don’t have to be a burden,” according to personal finance media like the Points Guy featured below. Credit cards, when used to cover health expenses, “can provide you with financial relief.” Like many financial literacy hubs, the website may receive a kick back if you sign up for one of the reviewed cards.

Because over 1,000 rural hospitals and healthcare providers are closing or curtailing services due to OBBBA’s Medicaid cuts, patients will have to spend more on transportation, child care, and time off of work to get to appointments further away. And credit cards are supposed to fix this problem??

The OBBBA’s changes to student loans have also led to higher student debt payments. For example, more than seven million people enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan have until September 29 to enroll in a new — and likely more expensive — federal loan repayment plan.

While debt management strategies might lessen the strain of credit card bills and student debt balances for a handful of people, we should also fight for mass relief in concert. Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay, the Debt Collective’s economic disobedience manifesto, highlights a critical financial tool: debt strikes, or a mass refusal to pay student loans, medical debts, or other household debts. Debt strikes can help us go beyond paying down debt, another top financial goal — instead, it could abolish these debts all together. Furthermore, collective debt strikes contribute to mass movements that can secure reparative public goods. This addresses the root causes of unjust debts to begin with.

Retirement and taxes

On May 31, 2025, Iowa’s Republican senator, Joni Ernst, responded to a critique that OBBBA’s Medicaid funding reduction could kill people with, “We all are going to die.” Around three months later, she announced her retirement from the Senate.

But before we meet the Grim Reaper, maybe we’ll be like Ernst and get to retire. So could the tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill make it easier to save for our golden years, as one wealth manager told GOBankingRates?

For rich people, absolutely. The top 1% will get an estimated $73,850 tax break in 2027, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ projection. People who make at least a million dollars annually will cling to $104,580 more in after-tax income.

Meanwhile, a February 2026 report from the National Institute on Retirement Security found that the median worker has just $955 saved in their retirement account. IRS data also showed that during the 2026 tax season, the average federal refund only went up by $333. Given this data, it’s a fantasy to suggest a tax bill so skewed towards the capitalist class could make up for both parties colluding with corporations to deny seniors a guaranteed and dignified retirement.

Yet personal finance media continues to peddle the following bogusness:

If you want an even bigger tax “break” than you’d get under the OBBBA, you can try this economic disobedience tactic: war tax resistance. This strategy was developed during the Vietnam War to withhold money from the U.S. imperial machine and the goal is to pay little or no federal taxes, whether through legal avenues or via civil disobedience. But as the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee notes, the point isn’t to hoard wealth; many war tax resisters redirect their tax savings to domestic poverty relief efforts, aid groups in war-ravaged areas, or other politically aligned organizations.

Who financial pundits ignore

For many, the OBBBA’s biggest personal finance impact hasn’t come from tax breaks, entitlement cuts, or gutted consumer advocate agencies, but courtesy of supercharged funding to the country’s largest law enforcement agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It’s tough to budget when your household’s breadwinner is kidnapped. And despite the scope of Trump’s ethnic cleansing campaign, very few financial experts consider how the imminent threat of deportation affects immigrant families.

A personal finance mindset might instead consider how to benefit from OBBBA’s extravagant ICE funding. Sign up for the gestapo and get up to a $50,000 signing bonus and student loan cancellation. What a savvy financial move! smh…

Jokes aside, there’s evidence that this individualistic mentality has already brought members of the working class in to join the U.S. ethnic cleansing forces — even if that means terrorizing fellow community members. A 2020 study found that Latino ICE and Border Patrol officers cite not an ideological urge or disassociation with their ethnic background, but money, career stability, and benefits as the top reasons they joined the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). To be sure, everyone deserves access to a job if they want one; that’s why there are campaigns for a federal jobs guarantee. But in part because of an apolitical personal finance media ecosystem that encourages us to look at our budgets individually, when we inevitably struggle under capitalism, we don’t realize the ways we can join forces to demand more.

Fortunately, economic disobedience can provide leverage in the fight against the current DHS terror campaign. Organizers at General Strike U.S. cite that just 3.5% of the population participating in a strike could halt the economy — and in terms of immigrant rights, general strikes are gaining traction. In January 2026, 50,000 protestors in Minneapolis skipped work, school, and shopping. Resistance also comes from those being held captive, such as work and hunger strikes at GEO Group-run immigrant detention centers like Delaney Hall in New Jersey.

Bigger than a financial plan

Financial literacy, as Helaine Olen noted in her book Pound Foolish, is usually brought to us by corporations that claim to help consumers while simultaneously lobbying against consumer protections. Though financial literacy has its benefits, the media complex that produces it serves to gaslight the masses.

Recognizing this is especially important under the Big Barbaric Bill’s ten-year shadow. Without effective pushback, millions more will be uninsured, starved, and kidnapped — inevitably leading to social murder, a term Friedrich Engels used to describe when people’s lives are cut short because of a society’s inequitable structure.

Instead of stale personal finance advice that’s carbon-copied for every crisis (Budget, repay, and pray to become a capitalist yourself), we’d be better equipped for the next decade with a different message. Collective economic disobedience must be prioritized above individualistic financial literacy gospel. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. If we don’t get creative and break the rules, we will be robbed of everything.

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Myriam Robinson-Puche (she/her) is a personal finance freelance writer and a member of Debt Collective’s Creative Comrades team. She has written for Morning Brew, MarketWatch, Bankrate and more. Myriam also previously worked as a financial coach.

Nevertheless, one of the defining characteristics of that period was the world-wide shut down, a halting of much of what we thought of as normal — hanging out in large crowds, working from the office, or even shopping at our local grocery store. It was as if a gigantic machine ceased activity. All the gears stopped spinning, conveyor belts halted and, honestly, the earth began to heal — if even for a few weeks.

But student debtors also experienced a lesser-discussed phenomenon. So did our families and communities. This country faced widespread loss of life, food was hard to come by and many American families were struggling. President Donald Trump’s first administration was forced to act — to pause all federal student loan payments. There were no debates about relief “costing taxpayers” or claims that “you took out a loan, you should pay it back.” There was simply action. And although, since then, the process of “returning to normal” has been anything but normal — our country continues to slide into authoritarianism and the rich have gotten far richer — student debtors can’t shake the years we spent free from having to oil the student debt machine with our hard-earned money. What did we learn? The federal government doesn’t need our student debt payments at all.

So then, how should we grapple with the fact that Biden was subsequently responsible for reinstating student loan payments in debt-ceiling negotiations with Republicans? How do we contend with the reality that student debt is surprisingly missing from most Democrats’ agendas today? Compare this to the fact that Democrats once jumped at the opportunity to champion student debt relief, and millions of distressed debtors are left scratching our heads. The student debt crisis has worsened since the last payment pause, not improved.

Thankfully, at Debt Collective, we organize with and for debtors — regardless of which political party holds power. Politicians are, in truth, supposed to work for us. That’s why we’re saying the quiet part out loud: We need an immediate pause on all federal student loan payments and interest — and we need it NOW. There’s a laundry list of reasons why a pause is a logical move. Borrowers have been forced out of SAVE, servicers are making grave errors on people’s accounts, and the DOE has slashed nearly half its staff. In essence, the Trump administration has dismantled much of the infrastructure responsible for administering student loans while simultaneously demanding repayment. It’s like they’re opening the passenger side door of a car destined for the junk yard and instructing us to jump right in.

But we’re no strangers to upheavals. Debt Collective has its roots in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis — in Occupy Wall Street. We’re not afraid to seek solutions even if others scoff at our requests. That’s because we’re aware that movements often blossom out of dire circumstances. And we don’t have to reach for brand new solutions to the current student-debt-catastrophe we face. Debtors experienced a pause not long ago. We can experience it once again. What will get us there is demanding that our elected leaders have the political will to change our material conditions. The question is: will you join the fight?

Read on for updates about the student debt crisis and, most importantly, ways to get organized and take action!

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Trump Fired Everyone…Except MOHELA

MOHELA is screwing up again. They’ve falsely informed some debtors that they are delinquent on their payments, despite being in the SAVE Plan forbearance. Many debtors are even receiving erroneous messages from MOHELA claiming that they’re nearing default!

Here’s what’s happening. When these debtors log into MOHELA, they see several months of missed payments that MOHELA now wants them to pay. This can get super expensive super quick. It also raises the question of whether MOHELA is going to accidentally report all of these accounts to the credit rating agencies as delinquent, tanking people’s credit scores and causing all kinds of financial panic and pain.

This could stop someone from getting a mortgage, from renting an apartment, from qualifying for an auto loan, or spike the rate they pay. Have you received any false notices? Please fill out our survey.

Dysfunction at the DOE

There are widespread reports from people on track to get PSLF that a large number of qualifying payments towards PSLF have suddenly been removed from the PSLF tracker on studentaid.gov. Some people are reporting that all of their qualifying payments are gone, along with the employer certification forms and paperwork they have previously submitted.

Unfortunately, there’s even more mayhem to report. The Department of Education screwed up at least 6,000 people’s IDR payments, charging debtors more than they should have. Instead of fixing the issue, the DOE is telling the impacted debtors they have to do extra work to fix the problem themselves and reapply for IDR.

Once again, if you or anyone you know has experienced these headaches, please fill out our survey. This is yet another reason why we need a pause on all federal student loan payments.

Student Debt Delays Homeownership

The housing industry has a new study out showing how student debt makes it difficult to save for a downpayment by up to 16 years on average (depending on the local housing market).

Good News Travels Fast

The Sweet vs. McMahon lawsuit is officially the largest class action lawsuit against the government in history, winning over $23 billion in student debt cancellation for over 450,000 people. This lawsuit surpasses lawsuits against big tobacco, and it’s brought by consumers instead of by state AGs.

What makes this win so important is that it is a prime example of the power of organized debtors. This relief didn’t come from politicians or the DOE having a change of heart. In fact, one of the first major steps in this fight happened when 15 borrowers, defrauded by Corinthian Colleges, came together and went on a debt strike. Together, they helped create what later became Borrower Defense to Repayment — a form and process that the Department of Education eventually adopted on its website.

These brave organizers also happened to be some of the first members of Debt Collective. This should be a clear sign to politicians that student debt relief is hugely popular. Let’s hope they take heed.

As as we enter Black August — a commemoration of Black political prisoners in the United States and beyond — we decided to discuss the connections between the punitive, punishing components of student debt and mass incarceration itself.

Why is it important to discuss mass incarceration and abolition?

Debt Collective isn’t just interested in canceling all student debt, medical debt, carceral debt and back rent. We also want free college, medical care and housing for all. We want repair. You see, abolition isn’t just the absence of police and prisons — it’s also the presence of what actually keeps our communities safe, which is access to universal public and reparative goods.

In this live, we spoke with Dr. Saudi Garcia — an Afro-Caribbean, queer, first generation immigrant with a deep passion for justice and liberation for her home, the island of Ayiti (Dominican Republic and Haiti), its people and its diasporas. Grounded in equity, abolitionist and healing ethics, Saudi expresses that passion through her racial equity work in her community and through her work as Program Director at Scholars for Social Justice.

The student loan system is broken!

From August 10-15, student debtors around the nation will take collective action to pressure our elected officials to pause student debt payments and interest. We need to make our voices heard, and making this demand collectively will amplify our voices!

RSVP to our upcoming events. See you there!

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― Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Imagine that you’re a passenger on a sinking ship. The captain tells you to jump in a lifeboat, but once you do, you realize the lifeboat has holes — and it’s sinking even faster. This is how it feels to be a student debtor right now.

One month ago, loan servicers started sending notices to millions of student debtors on SAVE telling them to switch repayment plans. But when we surveyed SAVE debtors, they told us that switching plans left many of them worse off than before. Of the 1,670 student debtors on SAVE we surveyed, 50% reported that switching plans would cost them an average payment increase of more than $500 per month. In an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, nearly 2 in 5 Americans don’t have $400 in the bank for emergencies. How are student debtors supposed to pay $500 more every month?

More than 130,000 student debtors have called on the White House to pause payments and interest and provide immediate relief to millions of debtors. We don’t need another bill, we need relief — from impossible monthly bills, ballooning balances, and a repayment system in constant flux. We need a payment pause NOW.

This August 10-14, join Debt Collective and Student Debt Crisis Center (SDCC) for a Week of Action to demand a payment pause. We’ll start with a virtual day of action targeting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other NY Members of Congress. We’ll also train debtors to share their stories by writing op-eds and speaking with the press. Finally, we’ll host a National Call to update everyone on the status of our member-led litigation in the Havens case and break down what these latest developments could mean for SAVE debtors.

RSVP to 8/10 New York Day of Action

RSVP to 8/12 Media & Op-Ed Training

RSVP to 8/13 National Call to Demand a Payment Pause

We need debtors like you to pressure Congress and Trump to pause all federal student loan payments and interest. RSVP to our upcoming Payment Pause Week of Action events, and read on for updates on our campaigns to cancel debt across higher education, healthcare, and housing!

Higher Education

This month, our team met in NYC to dream, strategize, and organize debtors for a payment pause! NY Assemblymember Emily Gallagher and Congressional nominee Claire Valdez joined our NY Debtors Assembly to share their own experiences with debt and hear directly from debtors about the ways they’ve been impacted by the dysfunctional student loan system. We also held a NY Debtors Caucus meeting the following week to discuss campaign updates and plug members into our upcoming NY Day of Action.

We also worked with Debt Collective members being forced off of SAVE plan to submit legal declarations attesting to the ways their families are being impacted by the Department of Education’s failure to reinstate REPAYE once SAVE was struck down, despite no court ruling that REPAYE was illegal. These legal declarations were accepted by the judge and will support the ongoing Havens v. Department of Education case led by Debt Collective members to demand the cancellation they are legally owed and the reinstatement of REPAYE. If this case has a hearing, it will likely take place during our August Week of Action, and its outcome could change the game for student debtors demanding a payment pause.

Stay tuned for more updates on the Havens case, and join our National Call to Demand a Payment Pause on Thursday, August 13 to plug into the campaign. We need you in our fight!

Healthcare

Today marks 61 years of Medicaid, the public health insurance program that ensures more than 70 million Americans receive free or low-cost medical care. Medicaid allows people to get the care they need with dignity even if they don’t make much money, and this program saves countless lives every year.

One year ago this month, the Trump administration mounted the largest attack on the program in U.S. history, using the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to strip more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) while funneling hundreds of billions of dollars toward deportation and war.

For the last few months, we’ve been organizing in Nebraska, where the Trump-friendly state government started rolling out these healthcare cuts eight months before most other states. The Nebraska Department of Health & Human Services officially starts kicking people off the Medicaid rolls in waves next week — and these same cuts are coming for the rest of us at the end of 2026.

Wherever you live, we need you fighting back with us. Fill out our HealthWatch Interest Form and we’ll loop you in on our work organizing against fascist attacks on lifesaving public infrastructure for universal public healthcare and medical debt abolition.

Housing

Our team has been working behind the scenes to build our campaign to Ban RUBS (Ratio Utility Billing Systems) in Los Angeles. This past month, our organizers brought dozens of tenants associations across the city together to demand an end to these abusive junk fees.

Meanwhile, our Tenant Power Toolkit use continues to grow. Roughly one in five tenants facing eviction in Los Angeles County are now using the Toolkit to file responses to their eviction paperwork. Meanwhile, our presence in the Bay Area continues to expand. Our team now hosts three in-person clinics (in conjunction with tenant organizations and legal service providers) in the East Bay, while we have an exciting expansion plan in the works in the South Bay. Stay tuned for more updates on our campaigns to build tenant power and hold corporate landlords accountable and ways to take action!

Upcoming Events

50 Over 50 Monthly Call

Thursday, July 30 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

Thursday, August 27 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

Did you know that folks over sixty are the fastest growing demographic of student debtors? We are not aging OUT of our debts – we are aging into them. If you’re an older student debtor or a future older student debtor, join us to build community, discuss strategy and deepen our organizing work.

College for All Jubilee School: A History of Fighting for Free College

Thursday, July 30 5pm ET / 2pm PT

Join Higher Ed experts Mark Huelsman and Michelle Miller-Adams to discuss a (recent) history of the free college fight and “College Promise” programs in the U.S. We’ll also explore free college models, research, and ongoing policy efforts.

Final Friday Flow

Friday, July 31 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT

Friday, August 28 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT

Held on the last Friday of each month, these gatherings are designed to remind us that the path to debt abolition and collective liberation begins within. Through guided somatic and movement-based practices, we’ll transform exhaustion into power, fear into vision, and pain into purpose.

New Member Call

Wednesday, August 5 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Curious about the Debt Collective and how we’re organizing to abolish debt? Our New Member Call is a space to learn who we are, what we’re fighting for, and how you can plug in. Whether you’re brand new or have been following our work for a while, this call is a chance to get grounded, ask questions, and connect with others who are ready to challenge the debt system together.

Higher Ed Monthly Meeting

Wednesday, August 5 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

If you’re wondering what’s going on with your student loans or how to get involved with the Debt Collective’s higher education campaigns, come join us at our monthly office hours. We’ll cover updates in student loan policy, what to do if you’re in default or on the SAVE Plan, and how to get involved with our campaigns for debt cancellation.

Payment Pause New York Day of Action

Monday, August 10 10am ET / 7am PT, 12pm ET / 9am PT, and 2pm ET / 11am PT

Between conflicting deadlines, payment increases, and rampant loan servicer errors, it’s never been more clear: we need an immediate pause on all federal student loan payments. Join our New York Day of Action at 10am, 12pm, or 2pm ET to call Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other New York Members of Congress and demand a payment pause.

Payment Pause Media & Op-Ed Training

Wednesday, August 12 7pm ET / 4pm PT

To address ongoing harm and call for debt cancellation, we need a payment pause NOW. How can we share our individual debt experiences to break through the noise and bring media attention to the student debt crisis? Join Debt Collective’s creative media strategist Maddy Clifford and published author Kristin Collier for a media and op-ed training, where we’ll discuss

best practices writing and pitching op-eds for publication and speaking with the press.

National Call to Demand a Payment Pause
Thursday, August 13th 7pm ET / 4pm PT
Debt Collective members, supporters of Student Debt Crisis Center, and student debtors around the country are leading the litigation fight to halt the illegal transfer of debtors off of SAVE and onto other expensive repayment plans no one can afford. Join our joint National Call for a debrief on court developments, and learn how you can join the fight for a pause on all federal student debt payments and interest.

College for All Jubilee School: How to Win
Thursday, August 13th 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT
This final session of the College for All Jubilee School series will look forward to discuss how we can win tuition free public college, dignified labor conditions, academic freedom, and debt cancellation.

In this discussion, I was joined by expert, Vanesa Contreras Capó. She is a feminist, professor, unionist, and animal rights activist based in Puerto Rico. Vanesa spent many years organizing and writing about power, care, resistance and the worlds we’re trying to build. In this live, we explored how debt is used as a tool of discipline and what it takes to build a movement rooted in connectivity and care.

Student Debt Crisis Updates:

Over the past few months — mainstream media, influencers, and even the Department of Education’s messaging — has left borrowers with more questions than answers. Many were pushed to leave the SAVE plan on July 1st, often without fully understanding their options.

The frustration and anger people are feeling right now is justified!

You are not a loan. Time to get organized!

• Please fill out the below survey and share your experience with us:

Bit.ly/SAVE26

• The entire student debt crisis is a dumpster fire by design! We need a payment pause as soon as possible! Please sign our petition:

Bit.ly/PaymentPause26

• COME SEE US IN PERSON.

Debt Collective will be in New York — July 14, 2026!

RSVP Here

Join us for a debtors’ assembly to discuss changes occurring in the federal student loan system this summer, to transform shame into solidarity with other debtors, and to learn more about what we’re working on.

This meeting will be in person only. Details will be sent to registrants via email – dinner will be provided on a first come, first serve basis! See you there.

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Last week, a lawsuit brought by Debt Collective members and student debtors forced the Dept. Ed to admit that the true deadline for SAVE debtors to transition to a new plan is not July 1, but September 29 at the earliest. SAVE debtors who have been stressing out about today’s deadline can breathe easy for now — you still have three months, and maybe even more, to select a new repayment plan.

In other good news for debtors, Trump’s illegal PSLF rule change — which would have stripped debt-relief eligibility from anyone Trump disagrees with politically — was struck down in court yesterday, just hours before it would have gone into effect. Last week, a federal judge also blocked the Department of Education’s attempts to limit federal student loans for “nonprofessional” graduate degrees.

The student loan system is a dumpster fire by design, and the Education Department’s many administrative failures are only adding more fuel to the fire. That’s why we’re calling for an immediate pause on federal student loan payments. Can you add your name to our call?

Read on for updates on our campaigns to organize debtors across higher education, healthcare, and housing, and more opportunities to take action this coming month!

Higher Education

This was a huge month for student debtors! In early June, we brought several SAVE debtors and Debt Collective members to DC to tell Senator Bernie Sanders about the many ways student debt has impacted their lives. We also met with staffers from the offices of Senators Gillibrand, Markey, Warnock, Fetterman, Kaine, and Schumer about our campaign to demand a pause on federal student loan payments.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit brought by Debt Collective members like you continues to move through the courts. These plaintiffs are requesting that the court prevent the Department of Education from forcing debtors into more expensive plans without cancelling the debts of those who have already qualified or allowing debtors to enroll in more affordable plans like REPAYE.

It’s worth noting that no court ever ruled REPAYE illegal. The Department of Education simply did not follow the required rulemaking process, leaving debtors at risk of permanently losing interest subsidies, qualifying months toward cancellation which can’t be re-earned, delinquency, default, and long-term credit damage.

This administration’s decisions have inflicted immediate and irreparable harm to student debtors. Debtors have shared with us that they have had to miss car payments, forgo saving for retirement, change employers, skip meals, and lose stable housing in order to make their student loan payments.

This broken system cannot continue. Join us next Wednesday 7/8 at 7:30pm ET and the following Wednesday 7/15 at 7pm ET for rapid response updates on changes to the federal student loan system and our campaign for a payment pause. Together, we can fight collectively for the debt cancellation that we deserve!

Healthcare

As the higher ed crew gears up to fight for a federal student loan payment pause, our healthcare team has been focused on building the response to the massive federal healthcare cuts taking effect across the country with the rollout of Trump’s budget bill.

For the last few months, we’ve been organizing with members and partners on the ground in Nebraska, where Trump’s pals in the state government set up some of the cruelest elements of the federal healthcare cuts to kick in at the start of May — a full 8 months before most of the country. Montana and Arkansas are about to follow suit, with both states rolling out federal means-testing requirements designed to kick millions of people off their healthcare starting today, July 1.

Nebraska, Montana, and Arkansas are canaries in the coal mine. The cuts they’re rolling out early will take effect through the rest of the country on January 1, and the attacks on Medicaid and other lifesaving social infrastructure are going to send things off the rails fast. The loss of health insurance for millions of working class people, the collapse of safety-net clinics and rural hospitals, and the ongoing explosion of medical debt will affect everyone.

That’s why we’re building an organizing project to look out for our neighbors at risk of losing their healthcare, stand with healthcare workers whose jobs are under threat, and fight for a universal public healthcare system that works for everyday people. Fill out our HealthWatch Interest Form to get plugged in!

Housing

On June 1, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Virgil Square Tenant Association’s RUBS strike in Los Angeles, CA! One year ago, tenants supported by the Los Angeles Tenants Union and the Debt Collective began collectively withholding thousands of dollars in monthly utility payments to Equity Residential, the fifth-largest corporate landlord in the nation.

In their first year on strike, the Virgil Square Tenant Association has won back more than $25,000 in refunds to tenants, received local and national press coverage, and encouraged tenants in Seattle to take action against their landlord’s use of RUBS. Virgil Square Tenant Association plans to continue striking until they receive transparency from Equity Residential for how their utilities bills are calculated.

In the aftermath of the California primary election, we’re calling on Democrat Xavier Becerra to support statewide rent control in California. California’s Tenant Protection Act doesn’t cover all tenants in CA, allows high rent increases, and will expire by 2029. California’s next governor must take action to address the state’s housing crisis by committing to strengthen and make permanent the Tenant Protection Act and repeal the anti-tenant Costa-Hawkins Act, which severely limits rent control in California.

Stay tuned for more developments on our campaign for rent control in California and our work to hold corporate landlords accountable to tenants!

Upcoming Events

New Member Call

Wednesday, July 1 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Curious about the Debt Collective and how we’re organizing to abolish debt? Our New Member Call is a space to learn who we are, what we’re fighting for, and how you can plug in. Whether you’re brand new or have been following our work for a while, this call is a chance to get grounded, ask questions, and connect with others who are ready to challenge the debt system together.

Higher Ed Monthly Meeting

Wednesday, July 8 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

If you’re wondering what’s going on with your student loans or how to get involved with the Debt Collective’s higher education campaigns, come join us at our monthly office hours. We’ll cover updates in student loan policy, what to do if you’re in default or on the SAVE Plan, and how to get involved with our campaigns for debt cancellation.

College for All Jubilee School: University Boards – Autocrats or Puppets?

Thursday, July 9 8pm ET / 5pm PT

The boards that govern U.S. universities are unaccountable to faculty, staff, or students, but growing institutional debt is shifting this balance of power. In this session, professors Timothy Kaufman-Osborn and Constance Penley will break down the ways that debt shapes decision-making in higher education and how this vulnerability can be exploited to democratize university governance.

Rapid Response: Federal Student Loan Changes

Wednesday, July 15 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Join us to discuss the different changes that are occurring in the federal student loan system this summer and to learn more about our campaign for a total federal payment pause. We’ll discuss recent changes to repayment plans, campaign updates, and ways that members can get involved.

College for All Jubilee School: Democratizing Knowledge Creation Beyond the University

Thursday, July 16 5pm ET / 2pm PT

50 years of budget cuts, privatization, and political repression have limited what can be taught and researched at U.S. universities. In this session, professors and AAUP organizers Jennifer Ruth and Karim Mattar will use Palestine as a lens to highlight the ways faculty members, AAUP chapters, and unions are taking action to defend academic freedom.

College for All Jubilee School: The Fight for a Free CUNY

Thursday, July 23 5pm ET / 2pm PT

CUNY was once tuition-free. As the largest public urban university in the U.S. continues to be an epicenter for anti-capitalist struggles, CUNY scholars and organizers Noelle Mapes, Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed and Travis S.will offer a counter-institutional strategy that anchors radical intersectional study within universities where indebted people are amassed.

New York Debtor’s Caucus Meeting

Thursday, July 23 6pm ET / 3pm PT

This will be a space for New Yorkers to get together and discuss their debts and strategize to build the world that we want. At the meeting, we’ll discuss the recent changes to the student loan system, hear from members of our Payment Pause and College for All working groups, and discuss ways that members can get involved.

College for All Jubilee School: A History of the College for All Fight

Thursday, July 30 5pm ET / 2pm PT

Join Higher Ed experts Mark Huelsman and Michelle Miller-Adams to discuss a (recent) history of the free college fight and “College Promise” programs in the U.S. We’ll also explore free college models, research, and ongoing policy efforts.

50 Over 50 Monthly Call

Thursday, July 30 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

Are you 50 years old or older? Do you have student loan debt? Join our 50/50 meeting for student debtors aged fifty and above to discuss action steps, organizing plans, and build solidarity. Newcomers are welcome!

Final Friday Flow

Friday, July 31 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT

Held on the last Friday of each month, these gatherings are designed to remind us that the path to debt abolition and collective liberation begins within. Through guided somatic and movement-based practices, we’ll transform exhaustion into power, fear into vision, and pain into purpose.

Also known as Freedom Day or Jubilee Day, Juneteenth is one of the oldest continuously observed Black American holidays in the United States. In 2021, it was officially recognized as a federal holiday.

Juneteenth is a celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. The name combines the words “June” and “nineteenth,” marking June 19, 1865 — the day enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finally learned they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

I joined Christian Simone, Texan, Masters of Social Work and member of our Healthcare Workers Solidarity cohort, to talk about the roots of Juneteenth, the parallels between the past and the present and what Black women can teach us about freedom dreaming.

Further reading:

• What Are Other Names for Juneteenth? The U.S. Is Betraying the Spirit of ‘Jubilee Day’ By Braxton Brewington

• The State of the Student Debt Crisis for Black Women data from Protect Borrowers

• “My Debt Was Canceled — and The World Just Opened Up” Gail Frances Gardner’s Story of Freedom After Student Debt. By Maddy Clifford

• Juneteenth’s DEI Ain’t Freedom: “Diversifying” an economy already obsessed with Blackness is futile. Ownership, not inclusion, is the key to our liberation. By Aaron Ross Coleman

Documentary:

Freedom Dreams: Black Women and the Student Debt Crisis

This important documentary profiles Black women educators and activists struggling under the weight of tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, in student loan debt. The title is inspired by scholar and activist Robin D. G. Kelley’s eponymous book, and the film is narrated by former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, a longtime ally of the growing debt abolition movement.

As directors Erick Stoll and Astra Taylor and the film’s cast demonstrate, a lack of intergenerational wealth and persistent wage discrimination force women, and Black women in particular, to borrow at disproportionate rates and struggle with repayment. Reactionary policy decisions have transformed education, long trumpeted as a ladder of upward mobility, into a debt trap.

Call to Action:

Join Debt Collective — the nation's first union of debtors — and fight back against Trump's attacks on student millions of debtors by calling for a pause on federal student loan payments!!

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We spoke with Joseph Strafaci, professor and PhD, about his experiences navigating the student loan system — a dumpster fire by design — and a recent post he made on Reddit, which drew wide attention. Be sure to follow Joseph’s Substack, The Civic Blueprint.

Please help us advocate for debtors by filling out a brief survey and tell us about YOUR experience with the SAVE Plan

By sharing how SAVE ending will impact you and your family, you can help us pressure lawmakers to call for a payment pause!

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Her work spans debt abolition, housing justice, racial capitalism, climate justice, and anthropology. We spoke about a range of topics — from the root of the housing crisis to organizing for college that isn’t just free, but freeing.

Hannah recently helped publish a report From Climate Debt to Climate Justice: Debtor Organizing in the Fight for Climate Repair. The report isn’t just an in-depth study, it is also a powerful teaching tool. Be sure to read the introductory excerpt.

Lastly, Hannah will be speaking tomorrow as part of our Jubilee School Series on divesting the university from state violence. University investments (like endowments and pension funds) profit from state violence–weapons manufacturers, private prisons, surveillance technology, and more. This discussion will focus on University of California Move Your Money campaign, and what it might take to begin the process of divesting higher education from state violence.

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From rising utility fees to wars over oil or mass migration driven by natural disasters, the need for global solidarity to confront climate catastrophe has never been more urgent. Countries in the Global North must acknowledge the disproportionate burden countries in the Global South are forced to bear, even as these same countries are the lowest carbon emitters. But what power do we, as ordinary people, have to demand a transformative response to climate change?

Debt Collective founders and our allies are answering this question in a recently released report, which amplifies vital strategies used by social movements around the world to resist unjust debt and climate change in the same frame. Please enjoy the below excerpt from the report, From Climate Debt to Climate Justice: Debtor Organizing and the Fight for Climate Repair, and be sure to share far and wide!

The Unequal Burden of Climate Change in an Era of Record Fossil Fuel Profits

The impacts of climate change are arriving much faster than predicted, and the costs are much higher too. Every time a catastrophic hurricane, flood, wildfire, drought, or heatwave leaves a trail of devastation, we are told how much damage, in dollar amounts, it caused, and what portion of GDP that represents. But these sums typically only reflect loss of property and infrastructure, not the costs of recovery and displacement. Nor do they account for the collateral, or indirect, damage that economists call “externalities”; pollution, species extinction, crop failure, soil and water degradation, loss of flora that act as carbon sinks, etc. Above all, they do not give us an honest picture of the uneven impacts of the damage. Frontline communities with the lowest incomes and the least protection suffer much more than well-heeled households with the resources to insulate and insure themselves. The damage to the former is often immeasurable, which is why the media may report that floods in Bangladesh left tens of millions of people homeless, but that floods in Southeastern Europe caused tens of billions of dollars in damage.

More tellingly, these statistics are hardly ever put side by side with the numbers showing the profits posted by the fossil fuel corporations that are most directly responsible for climate change. Until 2024 and 2025, 2023 was the hottest year in our planet’s recorded history. That same year, U.S.-based oil and gas companies earned $172.8 billion, took back previous pledges to decrease their fossil fuel output that warms our planet, and used tax dollars (in other words, public money and not their own profits) to increase oil and gas production. The year before — 2022 — the six largest Western oil companies made over $200 billion dollars in profit, more money than in any other year in the industry’s history. ExxonMobil alone — the energy company in strongest opposition to decarbonization — made nearly $56 billion and saw its share price rise more than 50%. BP — the energy company that has led industry decarbonization efforts — reversed course on its “beyond Petroleum” initiative, announcing that it would slow its transition plans toward renewable energy generation.

In response, investors poured money into BP, whose stock price rose 10% in the 48 hours after the firm’s announcement. The world’s largest banks continue to fund this dramatic expansion in fossil fuel production, much of it destined for exports to global south countries that cannot afford to fund their own transition to a low-carbon economy. Despite agreements ranging from the 2015 Paris Accords to 2021’s Net Zero Banking Alliance, the top 60 banks globally have committed $3.3 trillion to companies expanding fossil fuels since 2016.

As the world’s largest banks and energy companies scramble to increase their investments in fossil fuels, frontline communities all over the world are disproportionately paying the price. Poor people who are geographically vulnerable are living with, and dying from, the most violent effects of climate change. These communities are the least responsible for climate change and yet they are most impacted. Why? As this paper will go on to detail, the answer has a lot to do with the financial system that enriches fossil fuel companies and their investors while it burdens so much of the rest of the world not only with the violent and destructive effects of climate change, but also with crushing levels of debt.

Just as the temperatures hit record highs, so, too has total global debt, reaching $315 trillion in the first quarter of 2024. Most of that debt is held by corporations and investors, who use the capital to create even more wealth for themselves. But most of the burden falls on those who cannot afford to repay, and whose poverty only deepens as a result, even within the world’s wealthiest countries, where class, race and gender inequalities push people underwater. Just under one-fifth of that $315 trillion represents household debt owed by ordinary people, not cities, countries, or corporations. How much of that sum is entangled with the ruinous impacts of climate change? The business practices of the fossil fuel industry, and the banks, private equity firms, and other major asset managers who fund them have imposed these financial costs on us. And not only our reliance on oil and gas, but also our day-to-day debts, from housing to healthcare, enrich these same companies and financial institutions.

Faced with the might of the world’s largest banks, energy companies and stock markets, what financial leverage do ordinary people have to push for decarbonization and a reparative energy transition? The challenge of combating climate change is so big that ordinary people can seem powerless to confront it. Indeed, when we talk about the challenges of climate justice organizing, we usually talk about how much material power fossil fuel companies or big banks or private equity companies have, and how their influence over our elected officials is arguably the biggest roadblock to transformative climate practice and policy. Can ordinary people wield that level of systemic financial power too? This is one of the questions we set out to answer in this paper.

Who Owes Whom? The Power of Organized Debtors

At the Debt Collective we have one potential answer to that question: regular people around the world actually possess that latent power through our own household debts and relationships to big banks, and we can mobilize it through the collective strength of debtors’ unions, tenants unions, and labor unions working together. We’ll explore that idea later in the paper, but we introduce it here to make the point that while debt is most often understood as a burden and a form of disempowerment, it can also be a form of power!

Fossil fuel companies know the wealth-creating capacity of debt all too well, making full use of more than $6.9 trillion of debt financing since the 2015 signing of the Paris Agreement. In fact, these companies use debt financing to escape the scrutiny they face from activists and regulators on the stock market, and to avoid paying taxes. At the same time, fossil fuel companies have benefited from more than $4.7 trillion in government subsidies, which help guarantee lucrative prices and revenues for their industry. Avoiding taxes while benefiting from such lavish financial support, these companies should be understood as major contributors to government debt, so often evoked to justify cuts to public spending: austerity for we the people, government-backed riches for the fossil fuel industry.

The idea that debt obligations are central to the climate crisis is not new. There is increasing consensus that debt and the climate crisis are interconnected — and that the relationship between them lies at the heart of what is known as the climate justice movement. This paper begins from this consensus and then asks, What are the transformative ideas and organizing strategies that flow from this understanding? What are debt and climate justice movements around the world doing to build power at this intersection?

In these pages you’ll find dispatches from Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, South Africa’s Green Revolutionary Council, the Ni Una Menos and Don’t Pay UK movements, Asian People’s Movement on Debt and Development, and more!

Each and every one of these movements — whether explicitly or otherwise — uses what is called a climate reparations framework. Climate reparations looks at the centuries of exploitative relationships between the global north and global south (slavery, colonization, indigenous genocide, resource and labor extraction), and shows that wealthy, industrialized nations owe a debt to poorer countries, peoples, and lands. Climate reparations is the idea that “wealthy, industrialized nations should pay to mitigate the climate emergency, which they caused and which disproportionately affects poorer countries.”

To us and to so many other social movements, the situation is clear. We have to flip the script on who owes what to whom. Climate changers — the governments, corporations, and other institutions who have changed the climate — are the ones who should be on the hook. Their obligation to repair the damage they have caused is indisputable, and that is why we describe their responsibility in terms of an obligation to repay. But it is also clear that our current financial system is not set up to flip this script, so that system needs to be radically rethought and remade, and we do our best to tackle that in this paper as well.

Organizing for climate reparations means centering the analysis, strategies and tactics emerging from the global south — the frontlines of climate/debt struggle from South Africa to Brazil, the Philippines to Argentina to Barbados. By that same token, it also means recognizing that the rich nations of North America and Europe — while they also contain marginalized frontline communities — are the world’s largest carbon emitters (taking historical emissions into account — a list to which China was recently added), and the regions whose financial power, energy consumption, development policies and money (the US Dollar in particular) dictate global financial architectures, at least for now.

Unjust Debt, Disobedience and Climate Justice

While we do our best to summarize the great thinking already out there, especially on sovereign debt and climate change, this paper offers a few new insights as well. First, as the relationship between debt and climate change has become more widely understood, many global activist movements and global governance forums approach debt either as a constraint on poor countries (who cannot afford to invest in climate mitigation or adaptation, for instance) or a moral obligation of rich countries (who owe climate debt and reparations). While these understandings are very important, they are not the only formats for thinking about climate debts, nor are they the only pathways for resolving them. As we’ll explore with social movements in Section III, debt can also be a form of counterpower — providing consequential means for collective disobedience and leverage to force reparations, reparative public goods, and definancialization.

Second, debt affects people’s daily lives across multiple scales. While the relationship between sovereign debt and climate change is now a well-established feature of elite commentary, there has been much less attention to how municipal debt and household debt are determined by climate change impacts, and how each can be affected by the other. Municipalities are forced to take on more debt to offset the infrastructural damage from floods and storms, while the costs of repayment are passed on disproportionately in the form of taxes and reduced services to the most vulnerable communities. An ever larger share of household debt comes from unpayable energy bills, soaring insurance premiums and auto loan notes, and rapidly increasing prices for food items produced through high-carbon processes.

At the Debt Collective, we have a track record of organizing the collective power of debtors to refuse unjust or illegitimate debts. Climate debt, for most of us, falls into this category. Unlike most debts levied for access to social goods that should be freely available, it is a debt that should be paid, but only by the climate changers themselves. We hope that readers will be persuaded that our actions, as a debtors union of households, could add this new dimension of pressure to ensure a fair and just outcome.

Adapted from the report: From Climate Debt to Climate Justice: Debtor Organizing and the Fight for Climate Repair by Maizah Ali, Hannah Appel, Erik Hazard, Andrew Ross and Matt Schneider, published Winter 2026. Copyright © 2026 by UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Institute on Inequality and Democracy. All rights reserved.

― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Earlier this week, New York Mayor Mamdani announced that his administration is focused on “the worst landlords in NYC” and prepared to transfer ownership of buildings suffering chronic neglect to “responsible stewards…even the tenants themselves.”

This is exactly what should happen to bad landlords across the country. When landlords neglect routine maintenance to cut costs, use opaque utilities billing systems to raise rents, and abuse tenants by charging junk fees, they should have their properties taken away. As long as landlords are driven by profit, housing will be treated as an investment to extract wealth from tenants rather than a public good that everyone needs to survive.

A housing system built around maximizing returns for shareholders will always put profits ahead of affordable homes for tenants. The same is true of healthcare systems that profit off of patients while exploiting healthcare workers, as well as education systems that force students and school districts into debt for the benefit of Wall Street billionaires.

We must organize as tenants and debtors to combat homelessness and eviction, hold predatory landlords accountable, and build a world where housing is for people, not profit. That’s why we’re building a union of debtors to fight for the reparative public goods that working people need to live and thrive. Read on to learn more about how we’re organizing debtors across higher education, healthcare, and housing, and more opportunities to plug in this coming month!

Higher Education

The federal government continues to turn a blind eye to the student debt crisis, forcing debtors to play defense at a time when we are facing more financial challenges than ever. Recently, the Senate voted to leave President Trump’s new PSLF policy in place, allowing his administration to take PSLF away from people who work at organizations that they disagree with. This vote took place without even calling upon individual Senators to put their positions on the record. This loss shows us how much work is still left to do.

Meanwhile, the Department of Education continues to email student loan debtors pushing them (well ahead of the legal deadline) to switch out of the SAVE repayment plan forbearance into more expensive plans. We continue to organize with debtors to challenge these changes in the courts, develop policy answers to this terrible decision (which comes as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) and help debtors find the signal through the noise.

Despite these setbacks, we are working to put forth an ambitious policy vision that looks into the future to ensure our right to learn. We are working on two big, ambitious goals: free college and student debt cancellation. We are doing this by learning together at our free popular education program Jubilee School, organizing and getting to know each other at our monthly meetings, sharing our debt stories with each other and the press, and hiring for a new Campaign Director (apply today if interested!).

Healthcare

It’s no secret that the US healthcare system is a disaster. The basic facts have been clear for a long time: healthcare in the US costs too much, we spend much more than similar countries for far worse health outcomes, and a majority of Americans are either living with medical debt or postponing care we need to avoid getting stuck with bills we can’t pay. Most of us know our commodified, profit-driven system is broken, but that’s not enough to get us out of this bind on its own. For that, we need to keep growing the organized power of everyday people fighting for a different vision of healthcare.

As the Trump administration continues its attacks on Medicaid and other lifesaving public programs with funding cuts, we’re organizing local events and campaigns that both respond to the immediate consequences of these attacks — the loss of health insurance for millions of people, the collapse of safety-net health clinics and rural hospitals, and the continuing explosion of medical debt — and build our collective power and capacity in the fight for a public, reparative, and truly universal healthcare system in which medical debt doesn’t exist. Want to get involved? Fill out this HealthWatch Interest Form to stay in the loop!

Housing

The Virgil Square Tenants Association is about to reach a major milestone — June 1st will mark a full year on RUBS Strike! RUBS, or Ratio Utility Billing Systems, is a method of utility billing that allows landlords to skirt responsibility for major repairs while raising tenants’ rent. It also greatly disincentivizes landlords and tenants from making energy or water-usage efficiencies in their buildings.

Our work on RUBS isn’t stopping at the building level. We are talking to tenants across Los Angeles and working actively to demand that the City of LA take action to ban the use of RUBS altogether. We’re closing out the month by bringing tenant leaders from tenants associations city-wide together this weekend to take stock of our work on RUBS and discuss next steps in our campaign to ban it!

Practices like RUBS will continue to crop up as long as landlord power greatly outweighs that of tenants, and the concentration of landlord power in ever fewer hands worsens this for all of us. This month, corporate consolidation took a major step backward (for tenants) as two REIT landlords, Equity Residential and AvalonBay, announced a merger that could create the largest landlord in the country overnight.

We are taking action to bring scrutiny to this merger. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is actively considering removing the exemption of REITs from pre-merger review. We have submitted comments demanding the FTC close the REIT (or real estate investment trust) merger loophole and protect tenants by holding corporate landlords accountable. Stay tuned for more updates from our tenant power campaign, and fill out the Landlord Reporting Tool to help us hold corporate landlords accountable!

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Upcoming Events

Writing Your Debt Story Part II: A Short-form & Op-Ed Workshop

Part II Tuesday, June 9 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

Author, educator, and Debt Collective fellow Kristin Collier will lead a two-part writing workshop focused on telling your debt story in short forms such as op-eds. The workshop will be loosely organized around the framework of seeing red: the unique, important ways in which debtors see the world, and the stories we must tell in order to build the world we deserve.

In part I, we discussed focus, structure, language, and research. In part II, we’ll use our initial ideas to craft pitches for outlets, receive feedback, and support each other through the publication process.

Final Friday Flow

Friday, May 29 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT

Friday, June 26 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT

Held on the last Friday of each month, these gatherings are designed to remind us that the path to debt abolition and collective liberation begins within. Through guided somatic and movement-based practices, we’ll transform exhaustion into power, fear into vision, and pain into purpose.

Movement Monday

Monday, June 1 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT

Held on the first Monday of each month, these gatherings invite us to pause, breathe, and reconnect with our bodies as a vital part of organizing for debt abolition and collective care. We’ll check in with ourselves and each other through accessible, grounding somatic practices that support nervous system regulation, accountability, and mutual support.

Higher Ed Monthly Meeting

Wednesday, June 3 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT

If you’re wondering what’s going on with your student loans or how to get involved with the Debt Collective’s higher education campaigns, come join us at our monthly office hours. We’ll cover topics including the latest updates on student loan policy, what to do if you’re on the SAVE plan or in default, and how to get involved with Debt Collective’s campaigns for free college and debt cancellation.

New Member Call

Wednesday, June 3 7pm ET / 4pm PT

Curious about the Debt Collective and how we’re organizing to abolish debt? Our New Member Call is a space to learn who we are, what we’re fighting for, and how you can plug in. Whether you’re brand new or have been following our work for a while, this call is a chance to get grounded, ask questions, and connect with others who are ready to challenge the debt system together.

College for All Jubilee School: Divesting the University from State Violence

Thursday, June 4th 8pm ET / 5pm PT

College should not only be free, it should be free-ing – but university investments profit from weapons manufacturers, private prisons, surveillance technology, and more. Join Debt Collective co-founder and UCLA professor Hannah Appel to learn about the University of California Move Your Money campaign and what it might take to begin the process of divesting higher education from state violence.

College for All Monthly Organizing Meeting

Monday, June 8 7pm ET / 4pm PT

We’re asking Representatives and Senators to co-sponsor the College for All Act. Please join us as we prepare for meetings with Representatives and their staff, plan our strategy, and fight together for our Right to Learn!

College for All Jubilee School: Funding Free College by Taxing the Rich

Thursday, June 18th 8pm ET / 5pm PT

Led by Massachusetts Teachers Association President Max Page, this session will explore the history of college costs and resources for making debt-free public college a reality by taxing the very wealthy.

Borrower Defense: The Landscape, Updates & Workshop

Tuesday, June 30 8pm ET / 5pm PT

Our Monthly Borrower Defense Calls are designed for borrowers navigating fraud, misconduct, and student loan injustice. Each call provides timely updates on the Borrower Defense landscape, current litigation, and policy developments alongside practical guidance on asserting your rights and filing claims.

Well, at Debt Collective, we’re excited to announce a free, downloadable and accessible report that does just that: From Climate Debt to Climate Justice: Debtor Organizing and the Fight for Climate Repair.

This report was written by Hannah Appel, Andrew Ross, Matt Schneider, Erik Hazard and Maizah Ali. We’ll be sharing art and excerpts from the report in the coming days. In the meantime, we spoke with Maizah Ali about climate justice, art and “flipping the script”on our extractive global economic system. Who owes what to whom?

Maizah Ali is an illustrator, community artist, and aspiring scholar who graduated from UCLA with degrees in International Development Studies and Cognitive Science. Currently, she works as a teaching artist with Stay Arts, an arts education non-profit organization serving the Southeast LA community. She will continue her academic studies at LSE in the fall, where she plans to research the intersections of geopolitics, critical technology studies, and multimedia storytelling.

Report Abstract: How are climate change and debt – whether sovereign, municipal or household – related under racial capitalism? When faced with a warming planet caused by centuries of racial capitalism, how are people organizing the necessary ideas and social movements to fight back? What are the alternatives and solutions to racial capitalism-driven climate change proposed both by movements on the ground, and by those in (or near) halls of power around the world, from multilateral institutions to national governments to research universities?

This paper offers an accessible introduction to many of the large-scale transformative ideas out there, from green central banking to degrowth, from climate reparations to de-dollarization.

In addition, based on interviews with Argentina’s Debt for Climate, Britain’s Don’t Pay UK, Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, Chile’s Ni Una Menos, and the South Africa Green Revolutionary Council, this paper shares tactics and strategies used by social movements around the world to resist debt and climate change in the same frame.

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We spoke about the corporate landlord structure and the apex predator of the housing market: Real Estate Investment Trusts or REITs.

• Join us to demand that the FTC close the REIT merger loophole and protect tenants by holding corporate landlords accountable! Bit.ly/FTCProtectTenants26

We also referenced a book called Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis.

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