Michigan 13th Congressional District College For All Act

[Dawn_L]

Michigan 13th Congressional District

This action is for everyone who lives in Michigan’s 13th congressional district. (Not sure which district you live in? Look it up here.) We want to organize people to put pressure on members of Congress (or people who are running to become members of Congress) to cancel all student debt and make public universities completely free. This can take many forms. Reach out to each other, start talking and making plans. Here is some information that.

Great news! Rashida Tlaib (D) is one of the co-sponsors of H.R. 3448 Student Debt Cancellation Act of 2019 (this bill would cancel all $1.6 trillion of student debt). It isn’t just important to put pressure on members of congress to support real solutions, it is also important to thank them when they do the right thing. Please thank Rep. Tlaib for supporting a student debt jubilee!

Rep. Tlaib has also publicly pledged her willingness to support H.R. 3472 College for All Act of 2019 (this bill would make all public colleges and universities free). We expect her to add her name to the list of cosponsors soon. Please thank Rep. Tlaib for supporting fully funded public higher education.

Rep. Tlaib eagerly agreed to support this legislation after Debt Collective members brought it to her attention. Organizing works! So far the two Senators from Michigan have not yet supported College For All but if you ask them to, and pressure them to, we might be able to get them on boards. So there is still work to be done!

So far no other candidates have filed to run for election in this district in 2020, but that could change. If other candidates do run we need to make sure to pressure them to support these bills too.

Use the comments below to plan and coordinate with each other on a state-wide level.

Resources

The Indivisible Guide provides good advice about how to set up a meeting with your members of congress (or the people currently campaigning for office), how to show up at town halls, how to write letters to the editor, etc. We can do all of that and more. Feel free to get creative and come up with your own plans in addition to these tried and true methods.

Use this data sheet Michigan’s Thirteenth District student debt score is 60.

Use this study by economists at the Levy Institute which outlines several positive effects of canceling all student debt.

The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) have a great resources about organizing for College for All. If there is a YDSA chapter near you please reach out and coordinate with them.

RETURN TO THE HOME THREAD

[Thomas_Gokey]

Photo credit: Detroit DSA

Debt Collective members @Robbie_Tribble and @Thomas_Gokey participated in a town hall with Rep. Rashida Tlaib at Wayne State University.

Rep. Tlaib said she would support the College For All legislation and gave a wonderful talk in which she stressed the importance of canceling all student debt and making public colleges and universities free to attend.

The thing that will stand out to me the most from this event was meeting with a small group of high school students before the town hall. All of them attended a charter school in Detroit and talked about the stress and anxiety they feel knowing that if they want to pursue a college degree it will mean mortgaging their futures. They also talked about how at their charter school the only concern seems to be for standardized testing, SATs and ACT scores. Their classes get divided up between an “A Class,” a “B Class,” and a “C Class” which adds a lot of social pressure and stigma, making your worth tied so directly to standardized testing. The teachers and administrators care less about providing a real education or see their students as full human beings, and care only about standardized test scores.

These students deserve to reach their full potential. That means not only fighting for free college, but for liberating education K-PhD. These standardized tests remind me so much of credit scores. It is form of brainwashing that the only thing that matters is your score and you need to discipline yourself to care about an abstract number that is hanging over your head.

I want these students to be able to relax. Real education can only happen when students feel safe. When they feel like they have the freedom to be curious, to wonder down paths that might not lead anywhere, when they feel like it is a safe place to take risks and fail. It is clear that these charter schools are the exact opposite, where everything is high-stakes and one small slip up will ruin your life. It’s a grotesque thing.

All of us are hurt of these students can’t reach their full potential. All of us benefit if they do. Let’s fight together and win for them, and for all the other high school students out there!