Student Loan Justice Exposed

It is worth reprinting since the previous post quotes from it. In the interest of fairness, I will reprint the entire letter to the members. It is filled with exactly the kind of self-righteous rhetoric that persists in everything they write. Enjoy and once again, bravo Naida to standing up to this kind of thinking. Thanks to “Jake” for forwarding this on to me.

I kind of grumbled something a while back about possibly re-instating
the posting feature of this list after the primaries. For those of
you who are new, the reason behind that was that there was a lot of
preaching to the choir and not a lot of actual activism going on.

This list is for ACTIVISTS. If you are not an activist, not
interested in sticking up for yourself, not actively trying to defend
your own self from the abuse of the student loan industry, and instead
just watching from the sidelines, then I’m sorry. This list is not
for you. Please leave. Still here? Why? Thinking about becoming an
activist? Good, now BECOME one. It’s very easy: look up your
Representative AND Senator, write down their phone/fax numbers AND
email addresses AND physical addresses, and then USE THEM to tell
those guys your problems (call AND email AND send a real letter –
they are all logged separately so the count goes up). Don’t even
bother finishing reading this email, just get off your computer and
call those suckers and THEN come back and tell us that you have done this.

I’m NOT kidding. I’m not going to do your work. Alan Collinge, the
guy who started this movement, got so sick of all the bellyaching and
the huge weight on his back to shoulder your burdens that he QUIT. I’m
even less interested in helping you, so go get busy helping yourself.
All I want here on this list is reports about what everyone is doing.
Honestly, I don’t care if YOUR issue is resolved, so long as MINE is.
If everyone took this frank approach and acted upon it, we might
actually achieve something. Do your work with the attitude that you
are only interested in your own outcome and anything else that happens
is incidental; I think this is a realistic and more powerful way to
achieve the change we need.

So. The primaries are FINALLY over, we have Obama vs. McCain and a
whole lot of more local people vying for state and federal
congressional seats.

Your personal choice does not matter for the purposes of this list.
Of course it matters very deeply to you in your real life, but keep
politicking OFF this list, OK? Yes, the Democrats overall are more
likely to help us, but the Republican angle of responsible spending
can be played with, too, so ALL candidates MUST be approached.

What matters on this list, and it matters A LOT, is that you contact
ALL the campaigns of those people running in your area, from your
local dogcatcher to BOTH presidential candidates. TELL THEM that you
NEED them to crack down on student loan problems.

I am aware that there are mo’ betta ways to have said all these
things, and that I probably sound rude, especially to those who are
new here. I have no apology for this. Go through the archives and
see with the perspective you now have, after our four-month-long
hiatus, what ever really got accomplished. NOTHING except that all
the moaning drove Alan away. There are no policy changes that have
happened or even been proposed. There is nothing new in Obama’s
campaign speeches to suggest that he’s warmed up to us.

There are less than 200 people on this list, so our power to do
anything as a collective is pretty small. However, if each person can
spread the word in their own area, just tell a couple people a week
that they should complain to the legislators. Also, visit the
various places online where you can tell your story, and do so. Get
over any shame you are feeling about being in debt and instead get mad
about it. Get mad and get EVEN, that’s the only way out of this crap.

We’ve lost Hillary (dropped out) and Ted Kennedy (illness) as
advocates, so we need to dig a little deeper and find out who can be
leaned on.

Holli