Occupy Thanksgiving Dinner, Rolling Jubilee or Food Not Bombs build up new communities.

Interviewee: Neala Schleuning

They did this huge thing in New York with Occupy Sandy when they had that terrible storm and there was a wonderful picture in the Wall Street Journal of an Occupy Thanksgiving dinner of August. People sitting down only they didn’t identify that it was an Occupy dinner. They do a lot of educating and they created Strike, that is a non-profit corporation. They set up this non-profit corporation and they created what they call the Rolling Jubilee. They raised money through contributions to the website. They raised more than half a million in a short time and then they they bought debt. If the banks can’t collect debt they will sell it. They sell it for pennies on the dollar and you get 10 000 dollars worth of medical bills and you can buy them up for $20. So they went out and bought all this debt like in the biblical concept Jubilee. In Jewish society Jubilee, once every seven years debts were forgiven. Strike sent all these people letters saying your debts have been bought and it’s forgiven and we are not going to collect it from you. So they have done a couple rounds of that, and now apparently they are going to refocus on student debt because student debt is a huge problem in this country. But that’s what happens. Our society loves these big huge explosions but where the real work is done is on a day to day basis of getting in and helping people clean-up after that storm, get rid of the mould in their houses and throwing out the garbage, putting their furniture out on the street, they did a tremendous amount of work in New York and Rockaway that part in the heart of New York on the ocean that was hit so badly. They seem to be stepping up and then the on-going institutions have continued, like Food Not Bombs, Common Ground Collective (the first food aid group into New Orleans after Katrina), all those collectives that feed people during disasters. Usually the anarchists are the first people on the scene whilst others try to figure out how to do it. I think there is hope in that and that all of those actions build community gradually. There seems to be a lot of it, more than in the 1960s. In the 1960s, there were generational gaps and now they are involving whole communities of people of all ages and all backgrounds. So it’s wonderful. This is where my hope lies.