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Eye of the storm: Debt organizers prepare for end of moratoriums

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How do you organize against trillions of dollars of debt and the lenders that control it?It’s a stupefying question without a definitive answer or action plan because the numbers are so daunting and every debtor's situation varies so wildly. In March, about Bay Area residents in debt, whether that be from medical bills or credit cards or college loans or business loans. Their traditional repayment alternatives haven’t actually been useful: maybe forbearance, maybe ignoring debt collectors as interest compounds.The host of moratoriums during the pandemic have served as an unexpected reprieve and have opened the door for new possibilities. Suddenly, some of the people who've suffered under the strain of student loans and overpriced rent have gotten a wake-up call about the broad powers the federal government has in forgiving and relieving Americans of their financial burdens. But what comes after the pandemic is anyone’s guess. The old guard and new guard of Bay Area organizers against debt have varying theories and potential plans — many of which are dependent on what, exactly, the Biden administration chooses to do in the coming months. Either debt is relieved or organizers are expecting a significant surge in interest for their groups.J.P. Massar and Debbie Notkin, who spearhead the Bay Area’s Strike Debt chapter, first met through poker games in the early 2000s. If you Google Massar’s name, you can learn a whole bunch more about his illustrious gambling history and the time a now-disgraced A-list actor kind of&nbsp;portrayed him in a not-very-good movie. More pertinently, Notkin (a paralegal) and Massar (a now-retired software engineer) say their politics radically evolved in the early 2010s, during the Occupy movement. They were heavily involved in Occupy Oakland and took the Bay Area Strike Debt mantle from Hannah Appel, who was previously a professor at UC Berkeley and now teaches at UCLA.Neither Notkin nor Massar is in debt themselves. This is a personal passion for both of them. “I think working on economic justice is a really comparatively clean way for white people to work on racial justice because all economic justice issues have major racial justice components,” Notkin says of her interest in the subject.Strike Debt’s efforts have historically targeted erasing medical debt. Rolling jubilee fundraisers “buy up” medical debt for pennies on the dollar, then forgive it for locals drowning in bills. “I just thought that was the cat's pajamas,” Massar says of the rolling jubilees. “No one should have medical debt. It doesn't make any sense in a modern society. And the same is essentially true for educational debt. The whole thing is crazy and I decided that it was a worthwhile fight.”Of late, the dominant discourse about debt has shifted to student loans. It’s not a new issue, but it’s taken on a life of its own. Notkin attributes this to a steady increase in tuition and compounding interest rates, and notes that student loans have attracted more attention thanks to national politicians and the “inflexible, arrogant” Department of Education under President Donald Trump, which was “opposed to any reduction of any kind or any forgiveness in student debt.”Which is not to say they nor the members of the Bay Area’s Debt Collective — born out of Strike Debt a handful of years ago — are anywhere near satisfied with the Biden administration’s tack thus far. Biden has long maintained he’s only for $10,000 in student loan forgiveness, though he recently indicated he’d consider upping that number to $50,000. Something is better than nothing, Notkin says, because “student debt is exempt from bankruptcy, which makes it its own kind of horrible situation.” She still wants the Biden administration to go much further, and so does Tiffany Konyen, a soon-to-be debtor herself. Konyen is a student at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the anthropology and social change department, where she's researching debt and indebtedness. She separately helps oversee the Bay Area Debt Collective chapter. She believes half-measures aren’t going to fly for large swaths of the population that have grown accustomed to finally saving money during the pandemic due to the moratoriums.“People have started using that money in other ways,” she says, “so what’s going to happen to them? Is there going to be a whole other wave of foreclosures?”For years and years, the pervasive sentiment among debtors, no matter their situation, has been shame, Notkin says. “There's a very enduring American belief that if you're in debt, it's your fault, rather than having a conversation about the systemic nature of debt.” Groups like the Debt Collective want to change that notion and go on the offensive via protests.“The moratorium has been a relief for some, but I think the anxiety is still there for most people most of the time,” Konyen&nbsp;says. Last week was the , in which 100 current and future debtors from around the country told their stories and called for canceling all debt. Konyen also organized a protest at San Francisco's Department of Education building, the first event they were able to hold in-person during the pandemic.“We want to try and create some generative conversation around student debt cancellation: what that would really look like, what it would mean and encourage that to happen as soon as possible,” she said. “It can be done with an executive order or through the Department of Education or Congress.”It’s not just Strike Debt and the Debt Collective who are active in the intersectional dilemmas debt presents for Bay Area residents. Notkin and Massar cite the work of groups like , which helps Oakland mothers who are homeless or on the brink of homelessness reclaim vacant, investor-owned properties. They’re also encouraged by the work and rhetoric of Oakland City Councilmember Carroll Fife, a former Moms 4 Housing organizer with a keen eye for identifying and addressing economic inequities. It’ll take the constant coordination of like-minded legislators and organizers on a local and national level to enact temporary relief efforts and push for permanent solutions.Strangely enough, the past year or so has been relatively quiet for debtors, Notkin says, notwithstanding lower-income renters who’ve been illegally harassed by landlords. But the days of standing down and seeing how things unfold might be ending soon — and Bay Area debt organizers are emboldened about what might come next if the unsustainable excesses of debt aren't permanently wiped away.“I think if the moratoriums lift before the Biden administration decides to cancel debt there will be a lot of people who decide to go on debt strike or decide to get involved with activism here,” Konyen says. “There’s potential for a lot of people to wake up to the power that they hold and use that accordingly.”

How do you organize against trillions of dollars of debt and the lenders that control it?It’s a stupefying question without a definitive answer or action plan because the numbers are so daunting and every debtor's situation varies so wildly. In March, about Bay Area residents in debt, whether that be from medical bills or credit cards or college loans or business loans. Their traditional repayment alternatives haven’t actually been useful: maybe forbearance, maybe ignoring debt collectors as interest compounds.The host of moratoriums during the pandemic have served as an unexpected reprieve...

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Sports editor @SFGate. Formerly: @GQMagazine. Contributed to @latimes, @verge, @deadspin, @la_mag, @Grantland33. Email me: alex.shultz@sfgate.com

Alex Shultz

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Eye of the storm: Debt organizers prepare for end of moratoriums

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