“It’s a system that’s rigged. It’s messed up, and we’re the ones that have to bear that burden."
At a jubilee in Leimert Park, Debt Collective spoke with residents from across Los Angeles about their debts. What we found was solidarity and resistance.
Maddy Clifford
Leimert Park has long been one of the main hubs of Black life in Los Angeles and an innovative foil to the glitz, glam and paparazzi that many associate with the City of Angels.
But anyone who knows better knows that LA’s working class, vibrant neighborhoods and excep-tionally creative locals actually make the city run. LA’s Juneteenth celebration emerged from Leimert Park in 1949; Tavis Smiley has production studios there; one of the city’s best haunts for book lovers, Eso Won Books, was there for more than 30 years; genius musicians like John Lee Hooker and Kamasi Washington could be found playing cheap shows at Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn or the World Stage; and Issa Rae used the television show Insecure to draw attention to how special the area is.
Leimert Park has also seen new gentrification, but it remains largely working-and middle-class, with a median household income of $52,000. The Debt Collective was honored to touch down in Leimert Park on Oct. 8, 2023, to host a Jubilee Pop-Up. This loving celebration of the community platformed people from all walks of life, folks from Leimert Park but also those who traveled from different corners of the city to demand mass debt cancellation and universal public and reparative goods, like free college, affordable housing and healthcare for all.
Those who attended were the stars of the event, encouraged to pose for photographers with The Lounge Booth amid a beautifully decorated backdrop.
As each person stepped up for a photo, we talked about debt — the debt they were wrestling with themselves, but also ideas about how to better organize around debt cancellation. In the following pages, you’ll find excerpts. of those interviews, edited for length and clarity. One of the things I like most about them is the courageousness with which each borrower shared personal experiences. Something miraculous sparks with each testimony — a kind of permission, a call to speak truth to power. Because who owes whom?
People are conditioned to feel ashamed for drowning in household debt. As one borrower, 31-year-old Gabrielle Artis, bravely shared: “I kind of disassociated from the amount of money that I owe because if I had to focus on it, I would be overwhelmed. I would be consumed by it, incapacitated by it.”
This sentiment resonates with many in the United States, who collectively owe more than $17 trillion in past-due medical bills, back rent, student debt and more.
While Hollywood celebrities claim to be rebellious, everyday freedom dreamers like 35-year-old Deidra Cooper take an actual stance: “It’s a system that’s rigged. It’s all rigged. It’s messed up, and we’re the ones that have to bear that burden.”
She’s right. It’s time for a jubilee — a mass abolition of debts, an economic and moral reset. But we also know that liberation isn’t a one-time event. It’s a series of tiny revelations, small pixels of resistance that, when we zoom out, reveal massive shifts in collective consciousness.
At Debt Collective, we like to say, “You are not a loan.” With each personal story of defiance, our movement, our collective strength, spreads like wildfire.
I HAVE $53,000 IN DEBT. It makes me feel sad that I went to college and have to pay back so much money and there’s no help that I can get. I first started thinking about it as a political issue when, after I graduated college, they were like, “Where’s my money?” My dream for a debt-free existence is that people get to go to school and college and don’t have to pay such a high amount of debt. That there would be programs to help.
—Arista Pemberton, 39, Leimert Park
I’M A FILIPINO IMMIGRANT AND I was undocumented for 10 years, and education was so inaccessible. I have $67,000 in debt. I just graduated from nursing school and I’m still looking for a job. I’ve never owed that much before. I know it’s a privilege to even borrow. I didn’t get this money when I was undocumented. Why is it that students in America need to take out loans for education? My mom is a nurse. A lot of Filipinos are nurses. They come to America to serve the American population while traumatizing the people they leave behind. That’s the kind of trauma that’s affecting generations of Filipinos. Now I’m here, my family is here, we’re forced into this whole new system of taking out student loans to fulfill our dreams and to fulfill the American dream — which was ultimately a lie for us.
—Marijo Pempeña, 34, Van Nuys
FINANCIAL FREEDOM HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY GOALS, and attaining that has been nearly impossible because of student loans. It makes me feel like I always owe somebody, you know? That feeling of owing somebody, it’s not a good feeling when they already have it. Just the greed, and knowing that these people in these positions of power, they do so many other things that we pay for off of our backs, and we don’t get a break. They keep getting richer and we keep on staying down in the hole. I come from an era in time where it’s like, “Go to college, get a degree, get a good job.” They never talked about the loan part of it. It’s a system that’s rigged. It’s all rigged. It’s messed up, and we’re the ones that have to bear that burden.
—Deidra “Krucial” Cooper, 35, Inglewood
WHEN I LEARNED THAT STUDENT DEBT WAS $1.7 TRILLION — when I learned that number — it became so much bigger than me. It’s a national emergency. The fact that we don’t treat it as a national emergency is incomprehensible. No one I know, none of my friends, are talking about buying houses or achieving these middle-class milestones that our parents did. And it’s so sad, it’s so depressing. For the “richest” country in the world, it’s just unfathomable that the kind of debt slavery that we’ve created is acceptable. Fuck that.
— Janae Williams, 40, Inglewood
I HAVE STUDENT LOANS AND CREDIT CARD DEBT — $155,000 IN LOANS that have ballooned up to $212,000 over the last 13 years. Most of that time I have had to work to keep my income low enough so that I don’t have to pay $1,500 a month.
I do mutual aid organizing with unhoused people on the east side of Los Angeles in Silver Lake, Echo Park, Atwater, and Filipinotown. It’s radicalizing — and infuriating in some ways. Unhoused people experience violence constantly. Sometimes it’s related to debt, or medical debt will knock them on the street. It becomes impos-sible to get them back into a home. It’s an endless cycle. They get demonized.
People lose their homes because they lose a job and can’t pay their mortgage anymore and suddenly they find themselves in a situation where they’re living on the street. I’ve heard horrifying stories. Enough to make you realize that there’s no way of reforming the American political system.
We need a radical rupture. We have to build something. The destruction of the environment, educational debt, predatory lending, medical debt, all of these things are connected to a system of greed and exploitation and domination. If we don’t stop it, we’re all going to be fucked, I think. But I also think we can work together, and organizing around debt is a good way to do it.
—Neil Blakemore, 42, Silverlake
I OWE $50,000 OF STUDENT DEBT FROM college. I owe about $7,000 in credit card debt. So, a little under $60,000 total debt. It affects my daily life. It’s like weekly, monthly, when I’m budgeting, I’m budgeting to pay off debt. I have to think about that in my weekly and monthly budget.
I’m not paying my student debt because I’m part of the debt strike. I think about my credit card debt on a weekly and monthly basis. It’s kind of stressful, it impedes on some of my future financial goals. I feel angry because of how the system is set up. It’s frustrating. I feel a little powerless.
Honestly, what made me think about debt as a political issue was Bernie Sanders running and raising the issue. In 2016, he ran on a policy of alleviating student debt. That’s one of the things that excited me about his campaign. It’s part of the reason I canvassed for him.
My freedom dream is to make sure my friends and community don’t have to take on debt to pursue an education. All debt is bad. People’s longterm financial goals wouldn’t have to be hampered because of this oppressive debt. I know that it would improve people’s mental health, improve material conditions. It’s a part of why people are not well. It goes back to this idea of community care. I won’t be well until my community is well. It’s a reminder that it’s a communal effort to alleviate student debt. People will be well when their student debt is alleviated.
It’s important that we continue to center the most marginalized people in this conversation — Black folks, trans folks, queer folks, differently abled folks, that we have an intersectional approach when we talk about debt. Being poor is expensive. Having a space and an organization like Debt Collective alleviates the stigmatization of debt. You’re reminded that you’re not the only one and there’s a community of people that want to fight for you and your community. There’s a lot of shame around debt and finances and your social-economic status and we need more spaces that destigmatize that.
—Michael Hopson, 32, West Los Angeles
AT THIS POINT I OWE AROUND $500,000 IN DEBT. This is because I went to a private university for my bachelor’s and my first master’s. I went to Howard University and I got my second master’s from USC. I’m now a school psychologist and a social worker, so to work within a community and try and champion for disenfranchised Black and brown people to have access to tools of survival, and even hopefully have a chance to access higher education, and then have to turn around and worry about my own living situation because I can’t pay my bills because I’m impacted by debt — it’s frustrating.
I’ve tried to do a lot of work around helping some of those in our communities secure housing, particularly some of the students and families I was working with while I was facing eviction myself this past summer. And so, excuse my French, but it was a bit of a mindfuck to look for housing resources while getting court notifications in the mail. I was able to win in court (the Eviction Defense Network helped), but it was bittersweet because I thought about all of my families and my clients that weren’t able to do that. Here I am, with four degrees, hoping that I can win. What does that look like for a person who doesn’t have access to that? For a person whose debt made it impossible to even finish college?
To be able to have a debt-free existence would mean that I would be able to pour more into my community. It would help my relationship with my parents, because it became a point of contention between me and my father because he cosigned one of my loans for my bachelor’s degree. It would mean I could do what I want to do and not worry about phone calls from predatory lenders or collection agencies. I kind of disassociated from the amount of money that I owe because, if I had to focus on it, I would be overwhelmed. I would be consumed by it, incapacitated by it
— Gabrielle Artis, 31, Mid City
I CURRENTLY HAVE A LITTLE OVER $10,000 IN STUDENT DEBT. I didn’t start thinking about student debt and how it preys on specific communities or identities until I came back after college. Compared to everyone in my neighborhood, my experience with my education was very different.
We are sold this story that you have to go into higher education in order to step up that economic ladder. That pressure is applied to a lot of us who are still trying to learn and navigate this world that our parents didn’t.
I think in general, as a whole, LA has become so expensive and uninhabitable for people who are currently living here. It’s pushed me to think about how to be responsible with my money and I realized that no matter how much budgeting I do, there’s no way to budget yourself out of poverty.
Day to day, I would say it makes me think about how living paycheck to paycheck can be extremely stressful and traumatic on your body.
I like how the Debt Collective makes the idea of debt not an individual burden, like they say, but something that you can lean on community and find it as a strength when you find it within community.
— Emmely Tot, 27, Los Angeles
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Maddy Clifford is an Oakland, Calif.-based writer, artist and organizer. She works as creative media strategist at Debt Collective.
