Strike Debt Has Just Abolished Medical Debt for a Thousand People!

Over 1,000 People Are Receiving Notice That Their Debt is History

The Jubilee is Rolling - $1 MILLION in debt abolished for over a thousand people. Last year we launched the Rolling Jubilee, a campaign that buys debt for pennies on the dollar and abolishes it. We originally set out to raise $50,000 to buy $1,000,000 in debt. To date, we’ve raised over ten times that amount, enough to eventually purchase eleven million dollars of debt!

After a great deal of research and diligence, we are thrilled to announce that we have completed our second purchase of medical debt. This time, we bought just over $1 million in debt from emergency rooms in Kentucky and Indiana. We will be abolishing the debt of over 1,000 people, with an average of around $900 per person.

This will be the first in a series of purchases of medical debt - each of our debt purchases is thoroughly documented (and mapped!) on our new documentation website. Generous individuals have donated over $500,000 to the campaign and have sent us thousands of emails, sharing personal stories of illness and injury and expressing support for the cause. To build this movement, we need to keep up the momentum.

This is only the beginning. We envision Rolling Jubilee as “a spark - not the solution.” We can’t abolish all the debt that exists, but we can educate ourselves about the way debt works and spur action that will stop medical debt at its source. We hope that this week of attacks on the for-profit healthcare system will serve as an example, and an inspiration.

It's a Matter of Life or Debt!

SAVE THE DATE: March 16 - 23 is a Week of Action to Declare a Healthcare Emergency: It’s a Matter of #LifeOrDebt. Spread the word!

Thousands of people will celebrate this debt buy with a week of actions, in NYC and several other cities across the nation: protesting hospital closures and for-profit insurance corporations, and demonstrating a world where healthcare is not a line item on a corporate balance sheet. See our announcement for more information, and to find (or start!) an action near you. Join us in NYC:

-Thursday, March 21st at 4pm in Bryant Park we march to protest the private, for-profit insurance system!

-Saturday, March 23rd we demonstrate a humane system with a free health fair! Starting at 9:30am and running all day in Washington Square Park

Here are some tools you can use wherever you are:

-The Strike Debt Organizing Kit - Organize around debt in your own neighborhood!

-The Debt Resisters’ Operations Manual - Practical tools for resisting debt in your everyday life.

Can’t make it to an action? Show solidarity with #LifeOrDebt

-Wear a red square; or just wear red!

-Call or email an insurance company - demand justice, share your outrage, tell them your story

-Whatever you do, document yourself taking action, and put it on our tumblr.

-Spread the word! Post our announcement - http://strikedebt.org/lifeordebt

-On Twitter, use the hashtag #LifeOrDebt. For example: "The Jubilee is Rolling! @StrikeDebt just erased $1MILLION in emergency room debt. Now it's time for action http://ow.ly/iVzfW #LifeOrDebt"

Help us build a movement!

The Rolling Jubilee is not the only way to Strike Debt. We formed Strike Debt because we believe we need a debt resistance movement.