“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming” -- Pablo Neruda.

Spring is here and the diverse tribes of occupy are on the march. We're excited about some trends that have been accelerating over the winter: the move towards strategic planning and high impact campaigns. The OWS Strategic Action Labs is in the middle of a planned series of trainings that follow a coherent sequence, starting with goals, researching opponents, choosing targets, and making it clear up front what victory looks like.

Meanwhile, core occupy infrastructure such as InterOccupy.net, NYCGA.net, as well as various websites, blogs and social media accounts retain their power to mobilize. The next eruption of people power on Wall Street might not even carry our branding, but it will build on our experience.

This Spring we are witnessing some high profile victories: small donor empowerment in New York, important gun control legislation in Connecticut, immigration reform passed in Congress, and the historic rise of fast food worker organizing in our city. None of these are perfect, but all of them represent opportunities for building power for the 99%.

Spring is here. We can't afford to waste it.

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

Report from Strike Debt

“Medical debt is a symptom. The disease is our for-profit health care system.”

Watch a short animation illustrating the problems with for-profit medical care and follow up by reading Strike Debt’s brand new, in-depth report on for-profit health care and medical debt (or read here) and the ways the system hurts us financially and physically.

Continue reading »

By Marian Wang, ProPublica

At the University of California Santa Cruz, where tuition runs to nearly $35,000 for non-residents, students every year pay more than 30 additional fees — including a small charge for what's billed as "free" HIV testing. Students at Oklahoma State University pay a handsome sum to attend one of the state's flagship schools, but they are also responsible for covering 18 different fees, including a "life safety and security fee."

The $100 "globalization fee" at Howard University is listed — without explanation — in the school's tuition and fees brochure. A school spokeswoman said the fee "supports internationalization initiatives" such as study abroad. Students pay the fee even if they have no intention of studying abroad themselves.

Worcester State University in Massachusetts, however, might have one of the most arresting fees. Students fortunate enough to be admitted face the challenge of paying the required tuition. But before they step foot on campus, they also will be hit with a fee to, well, step foot on campus. A portion of the school's "parking/pedestrian fee" goes to the upkeep of the sidewalks on campus.

Student fees have been something of a known irritant for years, often criticized as a kind of stealth, second tuition imposed on unsuspecting families. But such fees are still on the rise on many campuses. And though their names can border on the comical — i.e., the "student success fee" — there's nothing funny about how they can add up.

"It's a way for colleges to increase the cost that may not be as apparent to as many students," said Mark Kantrowitz, a financial aid expert and the founder of finaid.org and fastweb.org. "You focus in on tuition and when you get the bursar's bill, there are lots of little lines for all these fees, but because each is a relatively small amount, you may not notice it as much. You focus in on the big figure but not on these little figures that collectively add up to a lot."

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Via OccupyWallSt.:

After a public pressure campaign through the Eviction Free Zone of Occupy Homes MN, Gayle Lindsey, a nursing assistant and grandmother in South Minneapolis, who was facing imminent eviction, has won a modification of her mortgage from M&T Bank. Her victory marks the seventh for Occupy Homes MN and the first in the Eviction Free Zone, a project that brings neighbors in the Central and Powderhorn neighborhoods together to refuse to leave their homes without a fair negotiation.

Lindsey, whose renegotiation came a month after her redemption period ended, is the first victory in “the Zone.” With the help of Occupy Homes MN, she organized a series of actions, community potlucks, and press appearances. Lindsey received a call, while sitting at her kitchen table, from an executive at M&T Bank. The bank offered to write her a new and affordable mortgage.

“It shows that Occupy Homes MN works,” she says. “I want to move on to more victories for the community.”

Broadly, it is time to embrace what has been set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The right to housing is the right to an adequate standard of living.

Stand up, occupy, and find a local group with which to organize through the Occupy Directory.

MayDay is coming. Are you ready?

Via OccupyWallSt.org:

76% of Americans are in debt. 15% are being pursued by one or more debt collectors. 22% of Americans are too impoverished to qualify for credit. That forces them into informal debt like payday loans or worse, which generate interest rates of up to 500%. So add that together and we have the 99%.

Strike Debt and the Rolling Jubilee believe that no one should have to go into debt to cover basic human rights like health care, education, and housing. One in seven Americans is being pursued by a debt collector. Credit card debt is often the “plastic safety net” that covers for gaps in household budgets caused by financing such essentials.

Medical debt is an area of personal debt that no one from outside the United States can even understand. Spanish activists are campaigning against the privatization of their national single-payer health system. They see any payment for medical treatment as the breakdown of a decent society. The idea that people might be driven to bankruptcy by medical debt is literally incomprehensible.

But in the United States, we find that no less than 62% of all bankruptcies involve medical debt. Of these people, three-quarters actually had medical insurance. So many drugs and procedures are not covered, and so high are the deductibles, that an insured person can easily find themselves unable to cover their medical bills. Two-thirds of working households do not have the resources to cover a $1000 emergency. One hour of a specialist doctor’s time can cost that alone.

Even these stark figures conceal the discrimination built into health care for people of color, low-income workers and LGBTQ populations. More than half of African-Americans struggle to pay medical bills, compared with 34% of Hispanics and 28% of whites. Black and Latino New Yorkers are more than twice as likely as whites to be uninsured. Despite some progress in recent years, LGBT individuals are less likely to have health insurance, more likely to delay seeking medical care and medication, and more likely to have a number of physical and mental health problems.

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New data from the US Census shows that it's becoming ever more likely that your parents may need to move into your place: "The median level of debt among households led by someone 65 and older..rose nearly 120% between 2000 and 2011 from roughly $12,000 to $26,000, due largely to rising mortgage debt."

The median debt of retirement-aged people is $26,000, and the majority of workers have less than $25,000 in total household savings.

Better get moving on clearing out that spare room.

Oh, and don't forget their dog...and mom is going to need space for her ladies group on Tuesday nights.

Join Economics Professor Richard Wolff, University of Massachusetts, for a screening of his film, "Capitalism Hits the Fan," and a Q&A session. Professor Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis and traces its source to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a spiral of borrowing and debt. By placing the crisis in this framework, Wolff argues that proposals for government "bailouts," offers of stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not address the real causes of the crisis. He suggests that far more fundamental change is necessary to avoid future catastrophes. Richly illustrated with motion graphics, Capitalism Hits the Fan is a superb introduction to the unraveling economic crisis for ordinary citizens.

For more online lectures and classes by Prof. Richard Wolff, visit http://www.rdwolff.com/classes .

This is your moment of clarity #188: Everybody wants to know where Occupy is heading. Why aren't they getting pepper sprayed on the news anymore?? Here's your answer.

Keep fighting,

Lee

[LeeCamp.net]

An update on the Rolling Jubilee: Occupy Wall Street reports that the show's over – with enough raised to abolish over $5,000,000 of debt! Keep the Jubilee rolling: click here to donate!

People shouldn’t have to go into debt for an education, because they need medical care, or to put food on the table during hard times. We shouldn’t have to pay endless interest to the 1% for basic necessities. Big banks and corporations walk away from their debts and leave taxpayers to pick up the tab. It’s time for a bailout of the people, by the people.

For every $1 donated, we are able to buy and abolish $20 worth of debt.

Moments before Ameia Egana, aged 53, was to be evicted from her fourth floor apartment, she clambered over the balcony railing and jumped to her death. Police at the scene said she died on impact. It is the second suicide in Spain in a matter of weeks; a man facing eviction in Grenada was found hanging in his home. A local judge called to the scene said the law on evictions must be changed. Al Jazeera's Peter Sharp reports.

On Monday, Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos promised that no needy family will go homeless over mortgage arrears, responding to public fury over Egana's suicide as she was being evicted.

Via Reuters:

Facing accusations that politicians and banks are complicit in de facto "murder", Spain's banking association said its members would suspend eviction orders for two years for those borrowers worst hit by economic crisis and record unemployment.

Banks have repossessed close to 400,000 homes in Spain since a property bubble burst in 2008 and the nation subsequently sank into recession, throwing millions out of work and unable to keep up mortgage payments to the banks.

Nearly one million homes now sit vacant in Spain. A citizens' movement called "Stop Evictions" asked the banks earlier this year to forgive mortgage debt for properties worth less than 200,000 euros, and where all family members are unemployed. Currently under Spanish law, even when borrowers turn their home over to the banks, they must still pay the entire amount of the mortgage.

Police unions have agreed to support officers who refuse to participate in eviction proceedings. But until government finalizes reforms to eviction laws, there are those who will still face eviction and homelessness. Meanwhile, the banks are set to receive part of an up to 100 billion euro European bailout to offset their financial hardships as so many are unable to pay their mortgage debts.

We need a jubilee, a clean slate, a cancellation of debt for the 99%.

The Rolling Jubilee raises money to buy debt. But instead of collecting on the debt we buy, we're going to abolish it. It's time for a bailout of the people, by the people.

www.rollingjubilee.org
www.strikedebt.org