A new protest organization has sprung up in Seattle. They are The Student Debt Noise Brigade. SDNB have organized to rally and march to protest the rising cost of tuition and the staggering debt students must now endure if they want a college education.
The #SDNB (Student Debt Noise Brigade) was formed by by Seattle organizing group #MicCheckWallst. They have been meeting for about the last four weeks up at Seattle Central Community College which sits on the busy corner of Broadway and Pine.
Wearing and carrying signs with slogans such as Student Debt Kills Dreams and Education Is A Universal Right, or Too Poor To Afford Bootstraps (a reference to Ronald Reagan’s claim that we all needed to “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps”) many took turns explaining their student loan dilemmas. One recent graduate stated he had yet to find a job and was worried how he’d pay back his staggering student loans. Another young woman got up explaining her debt was over $100 thousand and she had medical needs costing her $300 every two weeks. Someone else described how she’d been paying off her student loans for fifteen years and her loans were only half paid. A gentleman from Europe, who now resides here, stated how he was worried he wouldn’t be able to send his now 17-year-old son to college and how in Europe college is paid for and student debt almost unheard of. There were stories of how parents were being harassed to pay on delinquent student loans. One student explained how Sallie Mae called her mother to force her to pay even though she worked for a non-union company for low wages and no medical leave. There was another who stated that college didn’t used to cost so much — that most your tuition was paid for through taxes and you returned that by working in a higher paying job and paying more taxes.
As we set out to march through the densely populated Capitol Hill west slope, I noticed one woman wearing a cap and gown with a price tag stating her college debt which was over $100 thousand. A young man wore a ball and chain strapped to his ankle as he marched down Broadway. Of course the was the obligatory Guy Fawke’s mask as well. All in all there were about sixty people marching and making noise by banging pots and pans. Many passing motorists yelled or honked their support. Even more were people who stuck their heads out of their apartment windows two to three stories up to show their support. Some even came out on their balconies with their own pots and pans in solidarity. One man dressed in a chef’s outfit came out of his apartment and stood on his front stoop banging a pot.
The crowd was mostly college age, but there were many who had to be in their forties and fifties present as well.
Today, students are forced to take on huge debts just for a four-year degree. Then when they do graduate there aren’t any jobs or the jobs that are out there are paying only $13 to $15 an hour, which isn’t enough to live off of — not in Seattle anyway. Those $13 to $15 an hour jobs are non-union, don’t have any benefits such as retirement or even sick leave. Meanwhile our US congress just wasted $50 million of our tax dollars voting down the Affordable Health Care Act for the thirty-third time. A gesture they knew was futile because it will never get voted on in the senate and even if it did, Obama is sure to veto it. So this is our tax dollars being spent by a pack of rich white men with nothing but sour grapes to chew on. These are the same rich, white men who would only agree to not raising interest rates on college loans if the money came from health care.
The Student Noise Debt Brigade marches every Wednesday at 7 p.m. on Capitol Hill. I urge anyone in the Seattle area saddled with student debt or those who wish to join out of solidarity, to join the group. This is not being reported about in any of the local papers or on any of the local TV stations. The Capitol Hill Times, the neighborhood paper is the only publication I’ve seen covering the event.
[More info about the #SDNB may be found on the group website miccheckwallst.org, or on their Facebook pages, which now includes one just for The Student Debt Noise Brigade.]
Photos property of Holly Homan, all rights reserved.
