Activists Rally For Student Debt Cancellation

Source: Western Mass Area Labor Federation

As part of a national day of action for full student debt cancellation, the Western Mass Area Labor Federation and the Massachusetts branch of the Debt Collective held a protest and Debtors’ Assembly in Northampton Monday, April 4,  outside of Representative Jim McGovern’s regional office.  At the same time in Washington DC, the Debt Collective – a debtors’ union – and more than 70 other organizations rallied outside of the Department of Education to demand that President Biden cancel all student debt by executive order.

Liam Gude, of the Massachusetts branch of the Debt Collective, said, “The moratorium was extended not only because of Covid, and the economy being in shambles, but because a growing cohort of regular people like us got together and amplified the demands for extending the moratorium.” Gude pointed out that debt cancellation is now on the lips of mainstream politicians.  Student debt repayments have been on hold since March 2020, and are scheduled to begin again on May 1.

The twenty-five activists, ranging in age and generation from first year undergraduates and graduate students to teachers and professors, to retired teachers and grandparents, held a “Debtors’ Assembly” where they wrote down on pieces of paper the amount of money that they owed in student debt, then symbolically burned those numbers, harkening back to the protests against the Vietnam war, when antiwar protesters burned their draft cards.  The individual amounts on signs ranged from $15,000 to $300,000.  Participants commented on how student debt affects their lives. One woman in her seventies spoke of two friends whose Social Security checks were being garnished because of student debt.  

Marking April 4 as the 54th year since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Ian Rhodewalt, of the Western Mass Area Labor Federation, said, “As we call for full student debt cancellation, we are building on King’s legacy of fighting for racial and economic justice. Student debt is a punitive tool of social control, and a policy choice that targets and effectively punishes the working class, working poor, and poor students, particularly students of color.” 

At the end of the rally, the protestors left documentation of the amount of their student debt with McGovern’s office, calling for McGovern to join in the movement for total student debt cancellation.  In January, the Western Mass Area Labor Federation, a coalition of more than sixty public sector and private sector unions representing more than 30,000 workers, unanimously and enthusiastically passed a resolution calling for President Biden to cancel all student debt by executive order, which he has the power to do using the Compromise and Settlement authority granted to the president in the Higher Education Act of 1965.