Hello Everyone in the @California area, specifically San Francisco! Tonight, the organization San Francisco Rising will be hosting a public hearing for comments on the resolution of support urging the federal government to use their powers to cancel Student Debt!
Please call in with your support and comments!
See more information below:
Please join us for General Public Comment at the next Board of Supervisors Meeting, Tuesday July 20th where the board will hear a resolution urging the Federal government to cancel Student Debt!
Find more information here about how to call in and give public comment!
Why is this important?
COVID relief / economic stimulus
Cancelling all student debt would create millions of new jobs and add $86-$108 billion to the economy every year for the next decade (source).
Mitch McConnell and the Republican’s won’t let any meaningful stimulus pass congress. According to Elizabeth Warren, cancelling student debt is “the single most effective executive action available for a massive economic stimulus” (source).
Racial justice
Student debt is one driver of the racial wealth gap and cancelling student debt can help close this gap. As the economist Marshall Steinbaum shows, “the more debt cancellation there is, the more racial wealth inequality is reduced” (source).
Black women hold the highest levels of student debt, and because Black women are paid $0.61 for every $1 a white man is paid, it is harder to pay this debt off (source). Black borrowers also have less intergenerational wealth to draw on (source).
Black students graduate with on average $7,400 more debt than white students (source). This gap grows over time. A 2019 study reported that 20 years after starting college, the typical white student owes 6 percent of their cumulative debt, or around $1,000, while the typical Black borrower still owes 95 percent, or around $18,500. As fees and interest accrue over years and decades, Black borrowers, and Black women in particular, end up paying significantly more for the same degrees than white borrowers do (source).
Four years after graduation, the average Black graduate has over $50,000, and this is $25,000 more than white graduates (source). This is one reason why $50,000 in cancelation is not enough. The $50,000 number that the Warren/Schumer proposal calls for is based on outdated data from 2016 (source).
President Biden can cancel $50,000 of Student Debt with the flick of a pen - we must show broad base community support for this effort - and that’s rooted in the SF Board of Supervisors demonstrating the passage of this resolution!