Sign now: Cancel student debt!
Candidate Joe Biden promised that he would cancel a portion of student debt for every American. He has the power to do that with a stroke of a pen. He needs to act!
During the pandemic, the Department of Education has paused student loan payments. For two years, no one had to pay their student loans. But that policy will end on August 31, 2022.
After an election built on the energy of Black voters, Biden needs to do as he said he would and protect them. The President can use the same authority he has used to stop payments to cancel them permanently. At a time when so much of his agenda is mired in Senate gridlock, he should jump at the chance to deliver for the people who elected him!
Tell Joe Biden to keep his promise, stop hiding behind Congress, and increase the wealth of Black Americans by 40% immediately, by removing this racist barrier to a thriving Black middle class.
A more educated country is a stronger country, and yet America has gone from a nation with the most educated workforce in the world to a country where people who pursue their education are punished with debt for decades afterwards.
The vast majority of 46 million Americans with student loan debt are not from families of privilege. These Americans struggle every year with unconscionable debt, often carrying it into retirement. As our world grows more and more unequal, tell Joe Biden to make what higher education always should have been: the pathway to a more stable middle class, and a safer future for all of us.
Over a third of young people are carrying student loans. 1 million of those people default on those loans every year―threatening their ability to save for a future, live a dignified life, and own a home [1]. Since higher education became a prerequisite for a pathway to the middle class, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt have become the price of admission for even entry-level jobs. Good jobs that a generation ago would have been filled by high school graduates now require college and even master’s degrees.
We are formally calling upon President Joe Biden to cancel the $1.6 trillion in student debt held by 46 million people in this country. Black communities especially carry the burden of this madness, with white college graduates possessing seven times the debt of Black graduates [2], proving once again that individual meritocracy can not alone solve racial violence. Canceling student loans is not just an investment in our communities: it is basic economic sense, with a non partisan array of economists pointing out the massive spike this would give our local communities and businesses [3].
No one should be punished for getting their education. President Biden has the power to solve this problem with the swipe of a pen―join us in urging him to do so.
