Strike Debt - The Debt Resisters Operations Manual

PRAISE FOR THE DEBT RESISTERS OPERATIONS MANUAL

That debt is neither inevitable nor ethical is one of the powerful assertions of Strike Debt, whose brilliant manual is both a practical handbook and a manifesto for a true debt jubilee: an economic rebirth in which the indebted are freed and financial institutions are reinvented. Its a stunning intersection of ferocity (against the debt industry) and compassion (for the people whose lives are broken by debt). In years to come, we may look back on it as a landmark in social transformation; right now it is both useful and exhilarating.

Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster and Wanderlust: A History of Walking

The impact of the neoliberal assault on the U.S. population in the past generation has rightly been designated a failure by design. This failure is sharply class-basedfor the designers it has been a grand success, and a failure for most of the rest. The same is true of debt. That sets two tasks for those who care about the health of the society: change the design, and find ways to cope as effectively with the failures it imposes. This valuable monograph by Strike Debt provides a good guide to undertake both.

Noam Chomsky, author of Hopes and Prospects and Making the Future: The Unipolar Imperial Moment

This manual is a practical guide that will aid anyone who is struggling with debt. But even more important, it is a political guide that illuminates the myriad kinds of debt relationships that define our society and helps us imagine how we can begin to organize collectively against debt.

Michael Hardt, coauthor of Empire, Multidude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, and Commonwealth

The Debt Resisters Operations Manual is a powerful tool for resistance and creation. It shows how we can say No! to debtresist and refusewhile at the same time opens the possibility of alternative ways of relating and creating real value togetherbased on solidarity and care.

Marina Sitrin, author of Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina

The Debt Resisters Operations Manual is a sober, practical book that will save its readers much money and many sleepless nights. At the same time it is a visionary text that goes into the bowels of the debt machine to chart a collective way out of the state of debt-induced indentured servitude that millions of Americans face. It is the new debt resisters movements opening challenge to Wall Street that is making the bankers anxious. Get a copy and join the movement.

Silvia Federici, author of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle and Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation

The Debt Resisters Operations Manual is a guide for every debtor living in the United States. Given that more than 75% of American households are in debt right now, its relevance cannot be overstated. The manual is ambitious in subject matter but grounded in tone: plain and clear English is the best weapon if we want to understand the deliberately over-complicated debt economy. Readers learn that personal debtcredit card, medical, student, and housingis rarely just personal and an important section on municipal debt reclaims the conversation about debt from the Right, where it is used so often to justify austerity. It questions the received wisdom that an indebted city logically must pursue cuts by showing that the money that is now considered owed did not magically disappear; it was transferred to the 1 percent and should be taken back. The authors undo the assumptions that prop up the debt economy and challenge the notion that repaying debts is a moral duty; in fact, they argue, debt resistance is the moral choice.

Natasha Lewis, freelance journalist and Occupy reporter

The Debt Remters Operations Manual

Strike Debt

This edition 2014 PM Press

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCom mercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creative-commons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

ISBN: 978-1-60486-679-7

LCCN: 2013911518

Cover and interior design: Antumbra Design/antumbradesign.org

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C OMMON NOTIONS is a publishing project that circulates both enduring and timely formulations of autonomy at the heart of movements beyond capitalism. The series traces a constellation of historical, critical, and visionary meditations on the organization of both domination and its refusal. Inspired by various traditions of autonomism in the United States and around the world, Common Notions aims to provide tools of militant research in our collective reading of struggles past, present, and to come.

Series Editor: Malav Kanuga

OTHER BOOKS FROM COMMON NOTIONS/PM PRESS

Selma James, Sex, Race, and ClassThe Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 19522011

Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle

George Caffentzis, In Letters of Blood and Fire: Work, Machines, and the Crisis of Capitalism

CHAPTER ONE
Credit Scores and Consumer Reporting Agencies

CHAPTER TWO
Credit Card and Automobile Debt

CHAPTER THREE
Medical Debt

CHAPTER FOUR
Student Debt

CHAPTER FIVE
Housing Debt

CHAPTER SIX
Tax Debt

CHAPTER SEVEN
Fringe Finance Transaction Products and Services

CHAPTER EIGHT
Fringe Finance Credit Products and Services

CHAPTER NINE
Debt Collection

CHAPTER TEN
Bankruptcy

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Strategies for Survival

CHAPTER TWELVE
Municipal and State Debt

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
National Debt

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Climate Debt

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Prospects for Change

APPENDIX A
Sample Letters to Credit Reporting Agencies

APPENDIX B
Sample Letters to Consumer Reporting Agencies for Checking Accounts

APPENDIX C
Sample Letter to Collection Agencies Regarding (Alleged) Medical Debt

APPENDIX D
Sample Letters to Collection Agencies

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE MANAGEMENTA term used by insiders to describe the debt collection industry.

ACTIVE TRANSPORTATIONTransportation policy or choices that prioritize walking, biking, mopeds, scooters, trolleys, buses, shuttles, light rail, local, regional, and continental train systems over automobiles.