Event Details:
Panel discussion this Sat Jan 30 about YOU ARE NOT A LOAN with me (Astra) and two of the subjects (Wendy Brown and Mark Vestal):
Panel Info:
You can stream the film here:
Film Description:
On February 7, 2020, weeks before Covid-19 disrupted our lives, a group of activists and academics gathered to discuss the growing movement to cancel student debt and transform higher education. You Are Not a Loan documents a unique gathering that brought together student debtors, organizers, and esteemed scholars to discuss the perils and possibilities of the moment. The dialogue that ensued is both deeply personal and profoundly philosophical, historically grounded and engagingly hypothetical. What would free college—meaning free as in cost and aimed at liberation—be like? How have racism and capitalism sabotaged public education as we know it? And what will be required to bring a radically different system into being? Featuring leaders of the country’s first student debt strike and some of the most revered thinkers of our day (including Wendy Brown, Barbra Ransby, Stephanie Kelton, and others) the film offers an intimate view of the ongoing and urgent grassroots struggle to democratize education—a topic that has only become more timely in the year since it was shot. As a result of the pandemic, colleges across the country are facing budget shortfalls and student debt cancelation has become a mainstream issue. You Are Not a Loan puts the current debates in a deeper context, and points toward the utopian horizon we have to reach toward if we want to truly solve the current crisis.