We look at the Federal Reserve and address the common misconception that it's controlled by the US Government.  We also reveal the ways - there are several - that the big commercial banks benefit when the Federal deficit increases.


STRIKE DEBT BAY AREA: SHOW 6, WHAT IS THE FEDERAL RESERVE?

Does anyone understand credit scores? Not really! Credit ratings are defined by a top secret algorithm that not even the government can see or regulate. And yet these numbers decide whether or not people can have access to housing, healthcare, jobs, and loans. In this show we introduce you to the fraudulent industry of credit reporting and invite you to reconsider how much work you put into your credit report.


STRIKE DEBT SHOW #8: Credit Rating Industry

This experimental track is a collaboration between John Broback and Cassie Thornton. The looped sounds of Cassie's breath produce a series of DIY white noise sounds that morph from calming white lady mouth sounds, to the fierce white noise of a waterfall, and finally into the sound of a violent storm where a dam breaks into beats. These sounds soothe and agitate, describe and placate, warn and hallucinate about the not-knowingness about what to do and who to be in the apocalypse when the apocalypse has not yet cut off your water, burned your forest or murdered your family but when you still can't really breathe.

White Noise Choir of One

INTERVIEW WITH MELVIN WILLIS
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT ON BEHALF OF THE EINSTEIN FOR OFFICE CAMPAIGN
We explore the radical tactics of a small city called Richmond, California, as it attempts to dig out its residents from the foreclosure crisis. The city approached banks and other holders of 624 underwater properties, offering to buy the mortgages at fair market value in order to refinance them and give residents substantial principal reductions. Not a single mortgage holder responded, so Richmond decided to explore the option of seizing the mortgages through eminent domain.


Show #7 Reclaiming Underwater Mortgages in Richmond, CA

We discuss payday lending trap and the alternative to it, a non-profit payday lender/check casher in Fruitvale. We interview Dan Leibson and Luis Diaz, the people behind the first and only non-predatory payday lender ANYWHERE!

Show #9, Payday lending and the Alternative: Community Check Cashing in Fruitvale

Please share this piece widely! 
"To the Department of Education and to the lenders, servicers, and guaranty agencies who have stolen our futures, we say: enough! Erase these loans. To current and former college students across the country, we say: we stand with you to demand the end of a higher education system that profits from all our dreams. Join our fight."
debtcollective.org

CORINTHIAN 15 STRIKE AGAINST UNJUST DEBTS

1) Bad Support, Scene 1: You are sick and you don't have medical insurance.

And absurd story written as a letter to Dan Gilbert, a kind of “hometown hero” or "unelected mayor" of Detroit. It was available for visitors of an exhibition at Red Bull Arts Detroit in 2019, called “Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time; Against Capitalism’s Temporal Bullying”, curated by Taraneh Fazeli. The letter was a very absurd delivery system for a crowdfunding campaign I made just for Dan, where I propose that we collaborate to make "A sculpture of Detroit without medical debt". Both the pieces (the campaign and the letter) can be enjoyed as long site specific poems even if you aren't Dan.

Letter to Dan Gilbert

Introduction to the project, The Hologram, described by organizer Cassie Thornton of the Feminist Economics Department (the FED).