Occupy Offshoot Forgives $1 Million In Random People’s Debt
Occupy Wall Street offshoot, Strike Debt, announced Friday that it has abolished $1.1 million in medical debt for more than 1,000 people.
The protest group did this by buying emergency room debts for pennies on the dollar and then simply forgiving them rather than trying to collect the money, Strike Debt said in a statement.
When a bank, lender or other company, like a hospital, is unable to collect on a debt, it typically sells it to debt buyers or collectors — often at a much lower price than the original amount owed since the odds of collecting the money are low. Whoever buys the debt then attempts to get the money from the debtor.
Citing the large number of bankruptcies that stem from medical bills, Strike Debt’s mission is to stop this collection cycle and abolish the debt altogether.
“Our privatized health care system buries ordinary people in debt all to enrich the 1%,” the group said.
The more than $1 million in debt the group eliminated belonged to 1,064 people, amounting to an average of about $900 in debt per person. These randomly-selected people will receive notices explaining that their debt has been forgiven.
The organization spent about $21,000 to purchase the debt, using money raised from supporters.
To rally the troops around its debt-busting initiative, Occupy’s Strike Debt is planning protests later this month against private insurance companies and other events to raise awareness about hospital closings due to excessive amounts of debt.
Strike Debt originally launched its campaign and fundraising efforts in November, abolishing more than $100,000 in consumer debt before the end of 2012.
Source: anarcho-queer





![Internal Documents Reveal The Government Was Monitoring Occupy Wall Street As A Terrorist Threat Before It Started And May Have Planned To Assassinate Leaders of The Movement
According to internal documents newly released by the FBI, the agency spearheaded a nationwide law enforcement effort to investigate and monitor the Occupy Wall Street movement. In certain documents, divisions of the FBI refer to the Occupy Wall Street protests as a “criminal activity” or even “domestic terrorism.”
The internal papers were obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice fund via a Freedom of Information Act Request. The fund, a legal nonprofit that focuses on civil rights, says it believes the 112 pages of documents, available for public viewing on its website, are only “the tip of the iceberg.”
The following was taken from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF):
The PCJF has obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country.
“This production, which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF). “These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”
“The documents are heavily redacted, and it is clear from the production that the FBI is withholding far more material. We are filing an appeal challenging this response and demanding full disclosure to the public of the records of this operation,” stated Heather Benno, staff attorney with the PCJF.
As early as August 19, 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that wouldn’t start for another month. By September, prior to the start of the OWS, the FBI was notifying businesses that they might be the focus of an OWS protest.
Documents released show coordination between the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and corporate America. They include a report by the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), described by the federal government as “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector,” discussing the OWS protests at the West Coast ports to “raise awareness concerning this type of criminal activity.” The DSAC report shows the nature of secret collaboration between American intelligence agencies and their corporate clients - the document contains a “handling notice” that the information is “meant for use primarily within the corporate security community. Such messages shall not be released in either written or oral form to the media, the general public or other personnel…” (The DSAC document was also obtained by the Northern California ACLU which has sought local FBI surveillance files.)
The Federal Reserve in Richmond appears to have had personnel surveilling OWS planning. They were in contact with the FBI in Richmond to “pass on information regarding the movement known as occupy Wall Street.” There were repeated communications “to pass on updates of the events and decisions made during the small rallies and the following information received from the Capital Police Intelligence Unit through JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force).”
The PCJF filed Freedom of Information Act demands with multiple federal law enforcement agencies in the fall of 2011 as the Occupy crackdown began. The FBI initially attempted to limit its search to only one limited record keeping index. Recognizing this as a common tactic used by the FBI to conduct an inadequate search, the PCJF pressed forward demanding searches be performed of the FBI headquarters as well as FBI field offices nationwide.
The PCJF will continue to push for public disclosure of the government’s spy files and will release documents as they are obtained.
From Page 61 of the documents:
Secret/NoForn
1. (U/LES) An identified <redacted> as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary. An identified [redacted] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. <redacted> planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.
From Page 68-69 of the documents:
On 13 October 2011, writer sent via email an excerpt from the daily <redacted> regarding the FBI Houston’s <redacted> to all IAs, SSRAs and SAA <redacted> This <redacted> identified the exploitation of the Occupy Movement by <redacted> interested in developing a long-term plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire.
Click here to see the FBI documents obtained by the PCJF.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/020639e6d3df5f860f7923dd89e17a9d/tumblr_mfk8zqz94Y1r4vpxio1_1280.jpg)





![Updated: Anonymous Leaks NYPD Footage Of Occupy’s Eviction From Zuccotti Park
Anonymous has leaked what they claim to be “hours” of footage of last year’s raid on Zuccotti Park shot by the NYPD from 14 different cameras. A short montage of the footage has been compiled together for a YouTube video, but the file available for download is 11 GB. “While it’s clear that a lot of this police footage is incomplete and has been edited, some may say even tampered with, to remove the most damning incidents (sometimes in very obvious edits),” the uploader writes, “there is still enough material to paint the picture of what really happened in Zuccotti park once the media cameras have left.”
The footage shows helmeted NYPD officers making arrests, some sort of device discharging a large amount of smoke in front of an officer, and officers wielding a saw to cut into metal that is securing a protester to a tree (some protesters used bike locks to prevent themselves from being removed from the park).
An email to the NYPD’s top press spokesman, Paul Browne, has not been returned. Previously, very little footage of the November 15th raid existed because the NYPD forced media away from Zuccotti Park. Footage of the mass arrests during the Brooklyn Bridge action taken by the department’s Tactical Assistance Response Unit was released as evidence in the subsequent trials against the demonstrators.
[UPDATE] As some keen reporters have noted, there’s a good chance this video wasn’t “leaked” by Anonymous, but rather turned over by the City during the discovery phases in the cases of individual protesters who were arrested during the raid. “I can confirm that TARU video and other video arising from the November 15th eviction was turned over to defense attorneys,” says Gideon Oliver, the president of the National Lawyers Guild—New York Chapter. “That happened some time ago.” The NLG is representing some protesters who were arrested in the raid. Oliver adds that none of the cases have gone to trial yet.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mavp65NPEg1r4vpxio1_1280.jpg)