Debt activists strike a nerve. Good!

Long before the curtain goes up on the Rolling Jubilee's kick-off telethon tonight, it was clear that the event's organizers have struck a nerve.

The Rolling Jubilee, a project of the debt-activist group Strike Debt, an outgrowth of Occupy Wall Street and the people behind the Debt Resistors Operation Manual, is based on a diagnosis that Americans are struggling under an ever more complex and stifling architecture of student debt, medical debt, credit card debt, and mortgages.

The solution proposed by Strike Debt is based on the biblical institution of a the jubilee, a year in which debts were wiped clean and indentured servants released from their bondage. The Rolling Jubilee will buy debt on the debt market, where it can be had for pennies and the dollar, and then, rather than hounding the debtors for repayment, it will simply forgive the debt.

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Strike Debt set an initial goal of raising $50,000, which they calculated would allow them to buy and forgive $1 million in debt. Before the telethon even started, they were already already approaching four times that figure.

Read the rest of the story here.

Update:

After a long, rollicking and vintage Occupy-style concert and telethon last night called the People's Bailout, which included music, talks about debt, and performances  the Rolling Jubilee has raised enough money to forgive over 5 million dollars of debt. 

Read the rest here.  Huzzah!