The recent student struggles in California to transform their universities have been inspiring examples of what people can do when they come together, and begin to collectively believe in the future rather than fearing the threats issued in the present. Social wars need money, as Alfredo Bonanno (a 74-year old anarchist recently arrested in Greece for bank robbery) can attest to, and the university has put the gun in your hands. All you need to do is pull the trigger. Max out your credit cards, max out your student loans. Bankrupt the system that is bankrupting us!
All my life, I’ve been washing dishes, delivering pizza, bagging groceries, and hustling to make enough to pay rent. I’ve always been a working class, Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher kinda guy. You betcha!
In the past, I’ve dumpster dived, telling myself it was because I wanted to. But really, I would’ve preferred to eat the fresh food in the store. I did it because I didn’t want to waste away my entire life in that hot, wet, greasy dishwashing room. I did it to be able to save up money so I could quit my job and travel before I became a shriveled up old prune with arthritis, whose only way to see the world was using an RV, something that I would probably never be able to afford.
Anyway, I got into some shit with the law, you know the deal. The cops love to make their quotas. It was military, prison, or college and some time on probation for me. I applied to college solely to save my own ass, not for some stupid degree that I can present to a potential boss for the “opportunity” to spend the next decade kissing his ass.
College is a social structure full of the privileges the state gives to the middle class. No one ever explained this dope ass scam to me before! My parents didn’t go to college, they didn’t know what the deal was. No wonder you middle class students are so content, I’d think to myself. No wonder you didn’t want a revolution.
Well, now that some of you do, or at least you know there needs to be some serious changes because the system is breaking down, it’s up to you to pull those triggers.
This is a call for all students to take full advantage of the benefits the middle class is offered through the university. To bet on the future and not on the present: to take out as much money in student loans and credit cards as you can, with no intention to pay it back.
Take advantage of the fact that social movements long before you forced debtor’s prisons out of existence. Commit yourselves to change, financially! It’s not that scary. In fact, it’s quite nice seeing those $$dolla dolla bills$$ roll in every semester and fatten that bank account!
Rake it in and use it to fund the struggle! Use it so that you can quit your job and organize. Use it so you can bail out your friends when they get arrested. Use it so you can buy beer or snacks or a bounce-castle for your occupied buildings. Use it to fly to other universities and show them how to do occupations, too.
The government has stolen generations of wealth from our parents, grandparents, and colonized people from around the world. Shouldn’t we take back as much as they will “loan” us, and use it to destroy this system before it can steal even more?
Yo, stop that worrying! I can see it from here. Middle class people worry more than anyone I’ve ever met: are my kids going to the right school, are they watching the right TV shows, am I feeding them the right foods, am I choosing the right college, am I choosing the right major, am I choosing the right classes, am I choosing the right career? It’s hilarious, really.
You’re on the side of the revolution, right? You’re on the side of what’s possible, and not this insanity that currently exists, right?
Then don’t worry about credit scores or debt collectors. The liberation you can find in one another can destroy those things. We only need the time and space to make that liberation real. This money can help us get there together. And if it doesn’t, who cares if you have a good credit score? Your life is going to suck.
Step II:
To get more ambitious, organize with lots of other people on your campus to all take out the max amount of loans, and then pool them and share them with everyone who participates, that way some people won’t have the advantage of the government deciding to give them more money than the amount that others may qualify for. As long as you are taking out your max allowed amount, you can have access to the pool. Everything for everyone! Communize the government’s money! Destroy it’s social sorting processes! Collapse privileges and create solidarities.
So many people are already defaulting on loans during this crisis. My aunt just lost her house, and she was the only one in my family to actually go to college. Due the fact that our earnings are supposed to fall short of the last generations, even more people will be in the same position as us in the future. At least we will be consciously doing it. At least we will understand our ticket out of it is not a third job and 4 Red Bulls to get through the day, but rather collective resistance, refusal, and struggle.
And this debt crisis will generate yet another opportunity in the future: to fight for student loan amnesty, together, as former students who took out loans knowing that someday we will fight for amnesty, and will never even attempt to pay them back. To use the power of our collective resistance keep the hoarded wealth the system has loaned us, and refuse to give it back. We will fight to create a world without credit scores and debt collectors, one where no one is hoarding wealth and checking our bona fides before giving us access to it.
For me personally, it’s nice to not have to eat out of dumpsters anymore, and it’s nice to be able to fight for change because I don’t have to work. And it’s nice to be able to help my family pay their rent and give my homeless friends a warm place to crash at. It’s nice to be able to send money to political prisoners, and to pay for the copies to print fliers about the college budget cuts and tuition increases where I live.
Bet on the future. Max out your student loans before it’s too late and the communization of the universities happens! After that, the government won’t be so quick to hand out loans. They’ll realize students are no longer content to become drones working in corporate offices or building weapons for the military in university labs, that students have abdicated their tiny privileges in this society for the collective liberation in a future one. That a student has become just the name for one who learns for the sake of learning, and not collateral for bond issuances and hostages of capitalism clawing for diplomas and grades to play the lottery of getting a bigger slice of the pie.
Place your bets on the future now! FAFSA is open! Take ruthlessly from power, and share selflessly with all.
Organize, discuss, and disseminate.
Create a ballin’ revolution! Get paid! Get paid!