Monday September 26, 2022 @ 7pm via Zoom
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85047914844?pwd=ZFV6Yk9EM2lIUDJEUkhuZG55VVZhdz09
Meeting ID: 850 4791 4844
Passcode: 076800
Recently President Biden unveiled a plan to provide a small amount of student debt relief for people in the U.S. Much ink has been spent by those in the corporate media alternatively praising these measures and decrying them as “student debt Socialism.” However, given a global context where many other countries provide free higher education, it is worth asking why the working class in the United States is subjected to student debt in the first place.
Join the Socialist Party of Michigan as we trace the history of student debt in the United States and the very intentional aims of the capitalist class to stratify and restrict access to education across class lines. We will discuss how college education in the U.S. went from relatively affordable to prohibitively expensive, and the political reasons behind tying generations of students to consistent debt peonage.
We will also look more broadly at how this ties into the consistent decades long assault to dismantle public education and to impose more ideological hegemony on campus- and how all this comes together in an attempt to temper student activism and organizing.
This teach-in will be held online via Zoom with a presentation following discussion.