Student Debt Crisis Campaign Performing Theater As Protest, Fundraising To Lobby Congress. Aaron Calafato was a trained actor living in New York, planning a wedding, when the economy collapsed in 2008. His soon-to-be wife lost her job as a social worker in New Jersey shortly after that, and they were forced to move to Cleveland, Ohio, where they had family in the area and a better shot at finding work. And their combined $120,000 in student loan debt went with them. Calafato took a job at a for-profit college (which he declined to name) for the health insurance and so he could make the monthly $1,500 payments on his loans. Then, Calafato said, he "realized the sort of predatory rhetoric" he was using to get students to enroll with his employer was "putting them into obscene amounts of debt" in order for him to pay off his own. "I was morally challenged by some of the things I was asked to do there," he told HuffPost.
The show began to gain traction. Now 29-year-old Calafato is working with the Student Debt Crisis campaign as its artistic coordinator. Also on HuffPost: Rolling Jubilee. Global Nonviolent Action Database. 8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance. Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination. Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it.
A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them. How exactly has American society subdued young Americans? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Give up Activism (Do or Die) An article from Do or Die Issue 9. In the paper edition, this article appears on page(s) 160-166. In 1999, in the aftermath of the June 18th global day of action, a pamphlet called Reflections on June 18th was produced by some people in London, as an open-access collection of "contributions on the politics behind the events that occurred in the City of London on June 18, 1999".
Contained in this collection was an article called 'Give up Activism' which has generated quite a lot of discussion and debate both in the UK and internationally, being translated into several languages and reproduced in several different publications.[1] Here we republish the article together with a new postscript by the author addressing some comments and criticisms received since the original publication. [See also the Postscript to this article] One problem apparent in the June 18th day of action was the adoption of an activist mentality. Experts The activist is a specialist or an expert in social change. Roles. Diversity of tactics or unity in action? Protesters march outside a meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, D.C. (Matthew Bradley) ONE CONCEPT that people active in the Occupy movement will have encountered is "diversity of tactics. " What does the phrase mean?
Without knowing its history, one might think it expressed something pretty obvious--that our movement has an arsenal of tactics that can be flexibly applied, as conditions change, to achieve our objectives. The "diversity of tactics" idea emerged in the global justice movement after the 1999 Battle of Seattle against the meeting of the World Trade Organization.
The idea was that everyone would "respect" each other's tactics and keep their actions separate from those of the other "wings" of the movement. As a communiqué of the Anti-Capitalist Bloc, a grouping of anarchists and libertarian socialists organizing for the April 16, 2000, protest against the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington, D.C., wrote: By any standard, this is pretty poor propaganda. Get on the bus to stop student debt | Student Labor Action Project. By Chris Hicks, National Student Labor Action Project Coordinator A month ago I was standing outside of Sallie Mae’s DC office with over three hundred students from all over the country asking for a meeting with Sallie Mae CEO Albert Lord, and Sallie Mae responded by calling the police and having 36 of my friends arrested. But we are the 99%, and we can’t back down – too much is on the line. That is why we are going to Newark, Delaware on May 24th for the Sallie Mae Shareholder meeting and we need you there!
When we went to their DC offices, we wanted to ask them to forgive student debt, to stop lobbying against our interests, and to pay their fair share of taxes. They locked us out of the building and wouldn’t leave their offices. That is why students and graduates alike have said it’s time to take it to their shareholder meeting and confront corporate power!
Join us in telling Albert Lord… we won’t let an entire generation of students be sacrificed to build his bank account. The Morality of a For-Profit College, in One Act - Administration. By Goldie Blumenstyk Months into his job as an admissions counselor at a for-profit college somewhere in the Midwest, Aaron Calafato began to grow increasingly conflicted. Responding to the college's pressure, he says, he was signing up poorly prepared students for expensive degree programs that would leave them heavily in debt, all so he could make sure he himself had money he needed to keep paying off his own student loans. "I couldn't sleep at night," he says. He worried for the guy to whom he was "peddling a degree for $28,000 in criminal justice and he doesn't need it. " He questioned the morality of a company that would entrench itself into a struggling neighborhood and take advantage of its residents, and he wrestled with his own culpability in the process.
Now in a new one-man play called For Profit that Mr. Calafato wrote and performs, the character of "Aaron," an admissions counselor at For Profit University, wrestles with some of those same moral questions. 'A Piece of Theater' CSU Hunger Strike: Northridge Students Won't Eat Until Admin Freezes Tuition, Cuts Own Pay. Click to enlarge YouTube They're getting hungry. They've been warning administrators since last Friday that they'd do it, and the moment of truth has arrived: Four brave students from Cal State Northridge began their hunger strike against rising tuition yesterday, along with eight more CSU students scattered across five other campuses within the system. They will ingest only vegetable juice until the university agrees to meet the following demands: 1. Knowing CSU administrators, who have raised tuition over 318 percent in the last decade (to higher highs than Harvard, all things considered), meanwhile raising their own salaries on the go-to that they must stay "competitive," the strikers could end up looking like a pack of first-world Ghandis before anything starts to change.
CSUN has always been at the forefront of higher-education activism among the CSUs. Kind of like the CSUN library freakout, only with a cause worth shouting about. So how far will these kids go until they cave? For Jobless Young People, New Advocacy Groups. For Profit: A solo-play about the exploitation of the... Invalid quantity. Please enter a quantity of 1 or more. The quantity you chose exceeds the quantity available. Please enter your name. Please enter an email address. Please enter a valid email address. Please enter your message or comments. Please enter the code as shown on the image.
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All fields marked with * are required. US Zipcodes need to be 5 digits. Doo-Occupy! Bail Out America Trainings & Actions March 31 thru April 3 in DC. Education Petition: Tell Sallie Mae: Stop the Unemployment Penalty. ***UPDATE*** April 2011: Sallie Mae continues to charge this fee, and because I have not paid it, my loans are currently in "deliquent" status, which has thoroughly wrecked my credit. They refuse to compromise, so I am still left with no choice but to pay the fee or default on my loans.
***UPDATE*** The pressure is getting to Sallie Mae! On Thursday February 2, I delivered 76,000 petition signatures to their Washington, DC office. Less than three hours later they changed their policy so that they no longer simply pocket the unemployment penalty -- but they're still charging it I'm amazed that we've made this kind of progress against a financial behemoth like Sallie Mae, but it's also clear that their action wasn't enough. If we can keep up the pressure, we can get exactly what we asked for - an end to their greedy unemployment penalty. Read on to learn more about my struggle. Please join me in asking Sallie Mae to stop double-dipping.
Return Standard Bankruptcy Protections to ALL Student Loans.