Today I received a desperate message about student debt cancellation from a stranger. With permission, I shared her message anonymously on my website. I feel it is a very strong message and would resonate with many people here.
This person paid off her student loans, but she still has credit card and medical debt. She is struggling with her debt. She makes the compelling argument that we shouldn’t cancel student loans without also cancelling medical and credit card debt. She’s not arguing against debt cancellation, but she is so worried that she will be excluded and forgotten and left out. I felt obliged to share her message.
I think her testimony makes the case for debtor solidarity so clear. Our fight for student debt cancellation is only the beginning, and we will keep fighting to end all oppressive debts.
I have encouraged her to check out the Debt Collective, and hoping she will join in on some meetings. One of my main takeaways was that she really just needed support and someone to listen to her story. The creditors want to divide us up based on what debts we have, who can pay, who can’t pay, and we need to resist that!
“If you cancel student loan debt, then you have to cancel credit card debt & medical debt. There is no other moral option. You cannot select who gets relief when there are so many people financially suffering from this same problem and expect to leave them behind. The exclusion I am seeing for the sake of just benefiting people who currently owe money literally makes me sick to my stomach and makes me scared for what the future may hold for people in my position.
I am a woman. I am a POC. I am a millennial. I grew up with the fear of my family losing our house and any security we had at the drop of a hat because finances were never stable. I was told you had to go to college to have a future. I had student loans. I didn’t pursue the career options others did because I couldn’t take on debt I felt I would be paying off my whole life. All these arguments and stats talking about the groups of people suffering the most include me – I fall into all those categories. And yet the current plan for relief excludes me, even though I fit into every described category as the people hit most by student loan debt.
…"