Progressive Lawmakers to Biden: 'Cancel Student Loan Debt.' All of It. Now.

 

"Student loan payments resume in 61 days. Borrowers are NOT ready or able to restart them," said Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

ANDREA GERMANOS

December 3, 2021

A group of progressive lawmakers is urging the Biden administration to cancel student debt—a call they say is especially urgent in light of the fast-approaching end to a pandemic-related moratorium on payments.

"This is a crisis created through policy decisions."

"Student loan payments resume in 61 days. Borrowers are NOT ready or able to restart them," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted late Thursday.

"It's time for @POTUS to cancel student debt," she said.

Jayapal was among a number of progressive House Democrats who took to the floor Thursday to highlight the need for sweeping relief, some of whom spoke of their own lingering student debt burden.

Thirty-two-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who said the crisis—which now stands at over $1.8 trillion and affects roughly 45 million Americans—had reached a "ridiculous" level, noted that she still has over $17,000 in student loan debt and that the prospect of going deeper into debt prompted her decision not to pursue graduate school.

Part of the problem, she said, is that it can be "teenagers signing up for what is often hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt... and we think that's responsible policy."

"This is unacceptable," she said, adding federal policies in the U.S. are "actively disincentivizing" people from growing to college—a situation she called "backwards."

As Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) pointed out in her remarks, the educational debt isn't merely a problem for those recently out of school.

"I have 76-year-old constituents in the Massachusetts 7th still paying student loans," she said, "all while on Social Security and a fixed income."

President Joe Biden using his executive authority to wipe out $50,000 per borrower in student debt, said Pressley, would be "one of the most effective ways that he can provide sweeping relief to millions of families while helping to reduce the racial wealth gap to lay the groundwork for an equitable and just long term recovery."

"This is a crisis created through policy decisions," she added. "We have a responsibility to address it head-on."

Progressive groups and lawmakers have urged Biden to exercise the legal authority they say he has under Section 432(a) of the Higher Education Act to cancel student debt.

As of Thursday, the White House has not indicated a further extension of the loan payment pause relief, and while Education Department officials this week lamented the student debt crisis and touted the administration's efforts to provide relief to a small subsection of borrowers, a plan for broad debt cancellation was not put on the table.

In addition, a draft memo Biden requested on his authority over the cancelation was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Debt Collective—but it is nearly entirely redacted and has still not been made visible to the public.

The lawmakers' remarks came as new polling showed a dire economic situation by some borrowers as the payment moratorium ends at the end of January.

According to the survey by advocacy group Student Debt Crisis Center (SDCC) and technology company Savi from Nov. 1-Nov.14, 89% of fully-employed student loan borrowers said they are not financially secure enough to resume payments when they start back up in less than two months.

Nearly as many respondents (87%) said the temporary loan relief made it possible for them to afford other bills during the Covid-19 crisis.

The survey findings, said SDCC president and founder Natalia Abrams, show "that student loan borrowers face economic obstacles that are larger and longer-lasting than we imagined. As the economy recovers, even fully-employed student loan borrowers are not financially secure enough to make payments again."

"Simply put," she said, "Americans with student debt aren't facing an employment crisis, they are facing a student debt crisis."

This article originally appeared at CommonDreams.org. Originally published on December 3rd, 2021.It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. 

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Vaccine apartheid is prolonging COVID – not vaccine hesitancy

There’s a colonial tendency to portray people in Africa as anti-science and averse to progress, when the real problem is Big Pharma’s monopoly

By Alena Ivanova

Next week will mark the first anniversary of the NHS administering the first COVID-19 vaccine outside of clinical trials in a hospital in Coventry. Almost a year on from 8 December 2020, the Omicron variant threatens to ruin yet another holiday season and raises questions about the UK government’s approach.

But we already knew of the dangers of vaccine inequality. While the UK this morning announced it had ordered an additional 114 million COVID vaccine doses – despite around 85% of its adult population being fully vaccinated – just 6% of Africa’s 1.2 billion people have received two doses. And hastily reimposed travel bans on people from the African continent reveal more than the refusal of governments in the Global North to deal with the crisis at hand. The racist scapegoating of Black people has a history as old as public health itself.

There is no conclusive evidence that the new travel ban imposed by the UK on six countries in southern Africa will be effective. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to show that the new variant was circulating in Europe much before Omicron was identified in South Africa, thanks to the scientific rigour and openness of South African researchers. Arbitrary travel bans can affect scientific cooperation and knowledge-sharing, as Tulio de Oliveira, director of South Africa’s Centre for Epidemic Response & Innovation, has warned. He tweeted that travel restrictions mean laboratories don’t get essential supplies.

But politicians and CEOs in the Global North have been busy excusing their dreadful track record on cooperation with low- and middle-income countries, blaming the low vaccination levels in southern Africa on hesitancy. Soundbites such as Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla’s claim that vaccine hesitancy in low-income countries is “way, way higher than the percentage of hesitancy in Europe or in the US or Japan”, have angered many, who have accused them of being tropes grounded in racism – akin to those used during the HIV crisis. In reality, research has suggested a higher willingness to take COVID vaccines in lower- and middle-income countries. But portraying people in Africa as anti-science and averse to progress has long been the coloniser’s excuse to dominate and subjugate and we should not be surprised that it keeps rearing its ugly head. What’s worrying is the speed with which such excuses are adopted by the UK government, while being left unchallenged by the media.

Britain’s Africa minister, Vicky Ford, has repeatedly evaded the issue of vaccine supplies to low- and middle-income countries, focussing instead on their vaccine hesitancy when questioned in Parliament. But research shows no basis for such claims. Africa’s problem is not hesitancy but the fact that many of its healthcare systems are ravaged by privatisation, often imposed by countries such as the UK. Is it any wonder that most African countries are unable to respond quickly and efficiently to the uncertain supply of donated vaccines that arrive with little warning?

Even the so-called ‘level-playing field’ of the market doesn’t seem to deliver for African countries. Earlier this year, Botswana ordered 500,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine at a higher price than was paid by some richer countries. Delivery was expected in August, but as Zain Rizvi, a drug policy expert at US think tank Public Citizen, has noted, none had appeared by October.

What’s more, vaccine hesitancy exists everywhere. The early stages of the vaccination programme in Europe were marred by controversy around the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab, with several countries suspending the inoculation drive or switching vaccines by age group. Even now, enclaves of vaccine hesitancy and mistrust remain across the continent, yet nobody seems to deny European countries the right to an adequate supply of doses.

So where do we really stand on vaccine inequality? COVAX, the global mechanism that was supposed to facilitate equal sharing of doses through a centralised donation and purchasing scheme, has failed. Its original goal of distributing two billion doses across the world during 2021 won’t be met. Instead, COVAX now has a revised goal of distributing 1.45 billion doses by the end of the year. But at the time of writing, only 589 million doses had been shipped; shockingly half a million of those were delivered to the UK.

Pharmaceutical companies tell us that supply is not the problem. Yet, with rich countries guzzling the existing doses and refusing to share equally, the only just solution is to expand supply. But a waiver on intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests – a proposal to increase production that is supported by much of the world –is being blocked by the same countries that have hoarded doses and protected the financial interests of big pharma.

This article originally appeared at opendemocracy.net on and originally published on December 2, 2021.  This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. 

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Twenty Years After 9/11, 'The Only Way to Effectively Counter Terror Is to End War'

Anti-war voices reflect on two decades of the misguided hubris, failed policies, war profiteering, suffering, and death that resulted from the 2001 attacks.

BRETT WILKINS

September 11, 2021

As the United States on Saturday commemorates the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks with plenty of patriotic zeal but perhaps too little introspection, peace advocates have marked the occasion by reflecting on the costs and bloody consequences of the so-called "Global War on Terror" as they reaffirmed that the best safeguard against further terrorism—as many warned at the time—is ending war and respecting human rights.

"The U.S. response to 9/11 was corrupted by a toxic soup of revenge, imperialist ambitions, war profiteering, systematic brainwashing, and sheer stupidity."
—Medea Benjamin, CodePink

A sobering assessment 20 years after the 9/11 attacks lays bare a never-ending war abroad, an erosion of civil liberties and deadly neglect of dire social needs at home, and the further enrichment of corporations and wealthy investors—perhaps the only winners of perpetual conflict that progressive critics have long deemed unwinnable by design.

Just as it was on 9/11, Afghanistan is again ruled by the Taliban. The U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, opened in 2002, still holds dozens of men, many of them imprisoned without charge or trial for over a decade. Much of Iraq, whose 2003 invasion was sold on a pack of lies, has been destroyed not once, but twice, by U.S.-led wars whose toxic detritus is still killing and poisoning people years later. More than 900,000—and possibly many more—civilians have been killed in at least seven nations in the name of countering "terrorism"—a tactic, not an enemy.

In the two decades since 9/11, thousands of U.S. and allied troops have died. During that time, trillions of dollars that could have been spent on social uplift both home and abroad were instead expended on waging war without end.

"The U.S. government and military exploited the grief and shock following the 9/11 attacks to raise fears, promote Islamophobia, and launch forever wars which continue to this day," wrote Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, on Friday.

Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said, "Following the 9/11 attacks, the United States turned a horrific criminal act—which killed thousands of innocent people—into a platform to launch a shocking human rights crisis."

The U.S. government, Azmy continued, "used the same formula it had for centuries before 9/11: Launch foreign wars and establish domestic policies to oppress its own people in service of some broader ideological conflict."

In the aftermath of the attacks, he said, the Bush administration "constructed a dominant, destructive, and enduring 9/11 ideology building upon narratives of xenophobia, maximal security measures, and military power and profit that still largely permeates every facet of public life 20 years later."

Medea Benjamin, the CodePink co-founder who rose to prominence by confronting war criminals like Bush-era Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, says that "the U.S. response to 9/11 was corrupted by a toxic soup of revenge, imperialist ambitions, war profiteering, systematic brainwashing, and sheer stupidity."

Prescient warnings went unheard and unheeded—but were ultimately vindicated. Before casting the lone dissenting vote against the 2001 congressional authorization underpinning the so-called War on Terror, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) urged her colleagues to "think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control."

"We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target," warned Lee—who quoting Rev. Nathan Baxter's post-9/11 sermon, added, "As we act, let us not become the evil we deplore."

As Vice President Dick Cheney ominously declared that the United States would wage the impending war on "the dark side" and "in the shadows," the George W. Bush administration was building the legal and physical framework of an edifice of war crimes. What followed was a series of cascading and intertwined human rights disasters: the offshore prison at Guantánamo; extraordinary rendition; CIA "black sites"; Abu Ghraib; and other prisons where men and boys caught up in the War on Terror, a great many of them innocent civilians, were tortured—sometimes to death—by U.S. military and intelligence personnel.

Instead of ending the war and closing Guantánamo as promised, President Barack Obama escalated the conflict. He sent tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, vastly expanded drone strikes, intervened in the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, and, after withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, launched a new war there after the so-called Islamic State's (ISIS) rise to power. And instead of investigating Bush war criminals as promised, the Obama administration actively protected them, while waging an unprecedented war against whistleblowers and expanding a global mass surveillance dragnet targeting Americans and foreigners alike. 

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to "bomb the shit out of" ISIS militants and "take out their families." He was true to his words. As his administration relaxed rules of engagement meant to protect civilians, U.S. and allied forces laid waste to entire cities and towns, killing thousands of civilians and exacerbating the world's worst refugee crisis since World War II. Trump also did something that neither Bush nor Obama dared to do by negotiating the end of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the longest conflict in American history.

While imperialists and war profiteers excoriated President Joe Biden for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan last month, Repairers of the Breach president Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Tope Folarin of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) note that "a significant majority of people in the U.S. supported the move," a "far cry from the 88% who supported the war when it was launched."

Barber and Folarin write for Common Dreams:

In part, this is a movement victory. Movements against the War on Terror emerged within days of the 9/11 attacks, even before the first U.S. bombers assaulted Kabul. This rising anti-war drumbeat played a major part in pulling public opinion away from support for Washington's "forever wars."

It wasn't a given that Biden would pull out of Afghanistan—other presidents have promised to do so and then failed. This time, there is no question that public opposition to the war was critical to Biden's decision.

"That shift also shows that people across the U.S. have learned some harsh realities that anti-war activists mobilized around for years," Barber and Folarin added. Among those "harsh realities" is the tremendous cost of war and deepening militarization—$21 trillion, according to a recent IPS report. Critics say that money could have been better spent on healthcare, education, infrastructure, climate action, and a host of other pressing social needs. 

Instead, the military-industrial complex has strengthened and other profiteers of the permanent war economy have grown stupendously rich from the death and destruction of forever war. Ten thousand dollars invested in the top five U.S. military contractors in 2001, according to a recent analysis, is worth nearly $100,000 today—nearly 40% more than an identical investment in an S&P index fund over the same period.

As Biden seeks to increase the Pentagon budget to $715 billion while stoking tensions with China and Russia and acknowledging the possibility of "over-the-horizon" strikes in Afghanistan, CodePink's Benjamin warns that "we can't continue down the path of deadly, destructive, and costly U.S. militarism" any longer.

This week, in a post explaining how the U.S. should extricate itself from the cycle of violence, Lee said, "It’s time we end these forever wars. With a coalition of partners, allies, and advocates both inside the halls of Congress and out, we are finally on the cusp of turning the page on this state of perpetual war-making."

And as Kathy Kelly concurred in her assessment: "The only way to effectively counter terror is to end war."

                                                                             ***

This article originally appeared at CommonDreams.org. Originally published on September 11th, 2021.It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. 

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BLACK AUGUST BUILDS ON OUR BLACK RADICAL TRADITION

words by Charles Brooks

The 31 days of August hold a particular and special meaning you will not find in the celebrations that come with Juneteenth, Black History Month or Kwanzaa. For 42 years now since 1979, Black August commemorates and highlights political prisoners and their crucial role in the Black liberation/freedom struggle.  Black August is directly tied to the Black prison movement that started in the San Quentin prison and through relentless organizing spread to other prisons as well as to the streets.  

The story of Black August  begins immediately behind the prison walls after Jonathan and George Jackson were killed in August 1970, and 1971 respectively, as well as W.L. Nolan (killed January 1970), James McClain, William Christmas (killed with George) and Khatari Gaulden (killed August 1st, 1978). Back in August 1979, the prison newspaper, Arm the Spirit, dedicated the first issue establishing Black August, “To commemorate the lives of George and Jonathan Jackson, Black prisoners at San Quentin have set aside the month of August as a month of Black cultural and revolutionary development. Through educational and other activities efforts will be directed toward transforming the Black "criminal mentality" into revolutionary mentality to making the popular prison masses conscious of their social, political, economic, and racial oppression, and to elevating the already existing revolutionary consciousness” 

From the beginning, Black August was intended to be cathartic, reflective and rooted in disciplined behavior. Early followers of Black August began to coalesce around guiding principles such as unity, self-sacrifice, political education, physical training and resistance. From here, participants wore black armbands on their left arm, establish political education/study groups, refrain from using drugs, and alcohol while engaging in daily exercise, “It's a time to dedicate and rededicate ourselves to our freedom struggle and build and prepare ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually for the struggle ahead. August is most definitely a month of great historical and spiritual significance to our people and fasting during this month should keep this foremost in our minds,”  wrote the Arm the Spirit Editorial Collective.

During the early years as August 21st coalitions and committees were in formation and organizing Black folk in and outside of the prisons around Black August, these Black activists, radicals and revolutionaries were subjected to and targeted with relentless and harsh attacks via police harassment, brutality, surveillance, and arrest. Once arrested, and incarcerated, they were again targeted with vicious torture, hostility and mistreatment; deprived of sleep, medical care, and imprisoned in segregated housing units for 23 hours a day. But they maintained and advanced their political struggle behind the walls making demands for their human rights.  Supporters on the outside formed committees and filed lawsuits while the prisoners on the inside organized, went on strikes and rebelled. We saw this in Attica in 1972.

Photo credit: Nemo Rodriguez

This the foundation and legacy Black August set and 42 years later, the radical and revolutionary spirit of Black August continues to resonate more widely today. That is a result of the work of organizations such as the Black August Organizing Committee, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, New Afrikan Independence Movement, and the Jericho Movement, who are amongst those organizations and formations around the country committed to securing the freedom for all political prisoners. Along with month-long activities holding up political prisoners, Black August has evolved through the years to include historical markers in radical Black history also occurring in August that includes the arrival of the first African slaves in 1619, the Haitian Revolution in 1791, Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion, birth of Marcus Garvey and establishing the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and Watts uprising are just a few examples. 

Today, the issue of political prisoners brings into focus not only the devastating impact of COINTELPRO but the relationship between the prison industrial complex to Black people via racism, capitalism and imperialism on one hand and targeted surveillance, harassment, arrest and imprisonment, on the other. Today’s political prisoners serve the longest sentences and have to endure the harshest of prison conditions eventually leading to serious debilitating health issues that include tuberculosis, deteriorating skin disease, cancers, cirrhosis and now COVID,  

Ruchell Magee is 82 years old and is currently the longest held political prisoner serving 58 years in prison – and was recently denied parole, again.  Mumia Abu-Jamal is 67 years old, incarcerated since 1981, Russell Shoatz is 78 years old and incarcerated since 1972, Sundiati Acoli is 84 years old and incarcerated since 1973, Mutulu Shakur is 71 years old and incarcerated since 1986, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly H. Rap Brown is 77 years old and incarcerated since 2000.  But the list doesn’t stop here, there’s more. 

The recent health concerns aggravated with contracting COVID, have prompted campaigns demanding their immediate release. The outright denial of the release for these aging prisoners in declining health during this horrific COVID period, not only deepens our clarity of the state’s sustained attack on political prisoners, and draws a picture of the fight ahead, but also deepens the resolve to secure their release from prison.  We’re reminded of what, former political prisoner Dhoruba Bin Wahad wrote his seminal essay, In Speaking Truth to Power: Political Prisoners in the United States, where he wrote in part: “The existence of political prisoners in the United States goes to the very heart of the racist nature of this society. To not deal with the issue of political prisoners in the U.S. is to not deal with the true 'nature of America”

Additional Reading:

In Speaking Truth to Power: Political Prisoners in the United States, Doruba Bin-Wahad

Arm the Spirit, August 1979 issue

Arm the Spirit, first issue, no date

Imprisoned Intellectuals; America's Political Prisoners write on Life, Liberation and Rebellion, Introduction by Joy James

The Case of the San Quentin Six and a Chronology of the Frameup

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Progressive Critics Say Investors in US Weapon-Makers Only Clear Winners of Afghan War

By Jessica Corbett

As the hawks who have been lying about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan for two decades continue to peddle fantasies in the midst of a Taliban takeover and American evacuation of Kabul, progressive critics on Tuesday reminded the world who has benefited from the "endless war."

"Never has it been more important to end war profiteering."
—Public Citizen

"Entrenching U.S. forces in Afghanistan was the military-industrial complex's business plan for 20+ years," declared the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Public Citizen.

"Hawks and defense contractors co-opted the needs of the Afghan people in order to line their own pockets," the group added. "Never has it been more important to end war profiteering."

In a Tuesday morning tweet, Public Citizen highlighted returns on defense stocks over the past 20 years—as calculated in a "jaw-dropping" analysis by The Intercept—and asserted that "the military-industrial complex got exactly what it wanted out of this war."

The Intercept's Jon Schwarz examined returns on stocks of the five biggest defense contractors: Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics.

Schwarz found that a $10,000 investment in stock evenly split across those five companies on the day in 2001 that then-President Georg W. Bush signed the authorization preceding the U.S. invasion would be worth $97,295 this week, not adjusted for inflation, taxes, or fees.

According to The Intercept:

This is a far greater return than was available in the overall stock market over the same period. $10,000 invested in an S&P 500 index fund on September 18, 2001, would now be worth $61,613.

That is, defense stocks outperformed the stock market overall by 58% during the Afghanistan War.

"These numbers suggest that it is incorrect to conclude that the Taliban's immediate takeover of Afghanistan upon the U.S.'s departure means that the Afghanistan War was a failure," Schwarz added. "On the contrary, from the perspective of some of the most powerful people in the U.S., it may have been an extraordinary success. Notably, the boards of directors of all five defense contractors include retired top-level military officers."

"War profiteering isn't new," journalist Dina Sayedahmed said in response to the reporting, "but seeing the numbers on it is staggering."

Progressive political commentator and podcast host Krystal Ball used Schwarz's findings to counter a key argument that's been widely used to justify nearly 20 years of war.

"This is what it was really all about people," she tweeted of the defense contractors' returns. "Anyone who believes we were in Afghanistan to help women and girls is a liar or a fool."

Jack Mirkinson wrote Monday for Discourse Blog that "it is unquestionably heartbreaking to think about what the Taliban might inflict on women and girls, but let us dispense with this fantasy that the U.S. has been in Afghanistan to support women, or to build democracy, or to strengthen Afghan institutions, or any of the other lines that are deployed whenever someone has the temerity to suggest that endless war and occupation is a harmful thing."

"We did not go into Afghanistan to support its people, and we did not stay in Afghanistan to support its people," he added. "It is astonishing, given what we know about the monsters that the U.S. has propped up time and time again around the world, that the myth persists that we do anything out of our love for human rights. We went in and we stayed in for the same reason: the American empire is a force that must remain in perpetual motion."

As Common Dreams reported Monday, while the Taliban has retaken control, anti-war advocates have argued diplomacy is the only path to long-term peace, with Project South's Azadeh Shahshahani emphasizing that "the only ones who benefited from the U.S. war on Afghanistan were war-profiteering politicians and corporations while countless lives were destroyed."

Responding to Shahshahani's tweet about who has benefited from two decades of bloodshed, Zack Kopplin of the Government Accountability Project wrote, "Adding war-profiteering generals to the mix too."