YOU ARE NOT A LOAN

Text topic: cultures of resistance

Text author: Александра Перишић

“Debt binds the 99%” is one the many slogans created by

Strike Debt, a grassroots movement of debt resisters that began in 2012

in New York City. In this article, I analyze Strike Debt’s attempt to

organize debtors and build conditions for a debt strike. I use the specific

example of Strike Debt to reflect of the possibilities and challenges of

resistance in the age of neoliberalism. I argue that debt activists were

successful in shifting the public conversation from debt as a personal

failure to debt as a structural condition, thus laying the groundwork

for the emergence of a collective indebted subject. I also underline

the importance of utopian demands in the debt movement, and in any

attempt to resist neoliberalism.