It looks as if the Rolling Jubilee idea has gone viral. The signs are all there: lots of donations, groups all over the country, and even internationally, looking to follow suit.
Here’s a group in Long Island planning to occupy a local Dickens Festival with a debtor’s prison to raise awareness and funds for the RJ. And the infallible sign is the emergence of the trolls all over the Internet lining up to say why it won’t work.
It can seem in the mediascape that ideas simply go viral because people agree with them. Being involved in a viral event shows me how untrue that notably free-market idea in fact turns out to be. Here’s what you need: a network, a theory of what you’re doing, a grounded history and a great deal of specific action.
Obviously Occupy has a network. But it took months of meetings, assemblies, discussions and one-on-one conversations for the movement as a whole to get behind Strike Debt as an accepted group. There was considerable “pushback,” even after the successful days of action on S17 and O13. At this point, the strength of the Jubilee idea did make the difference. But launched cold, as it were, Occupy would not have backed it and there would not have been the first wave of “invisible” acceptance and dissemination. Because so many people in the movement are what advertising types call opinion shapers, this first wave was crucial.
Next, the directors had access to a media and entertainment network that brought in sufficient star-power that the event was desirable just as a night out, regardless of the cause. And then David Rees chose to launch the event on his blog. From that point, his many followers tweeted and FBed the concept, allowing it to take off in the way we’ve seen, Today the fundraising passed $350,000 or $7 million in abolished debt. That’s over 7 times the most optimistic target set by the RJ group.
Rolling Jubilee won over these opinion formers and influence generators because it had a strong sense of what it was doing and why. The concept is clean and clear. It’s backed with a history that goes back to the Bible and brought in a whole range of faith communities into the project. The research of George Caffentzis and David Graeber over many years set up the possibility for Strike Debt to generate its a historically grounded and theoretically powerful analysis of debt refusal. The publication of the book length Debt Resistors Operations Manual successfully conveyed that the group really does know what it’s talking about.
And then there’s the work. Websites don’t create themselves and organizing and publicizing a three-hour event in New York is a full-time job in itself. Press and media. Flyers, posters, social media. And then the very detailed preparation of the debt buy itself, the unpublicized trial run to be sure it would really work. Consultations with lawyers, debt buyers and accountants. Creating the 501 (c) 4 to be the legal entity. Writing copy for the website, the FB pages, the speed talks. Liaising with other groups to create the crucial first room of the Bailout with a diverse range of Occupy groups. It was the most prodigious amount of purely voluntary work I’ve ever seen from a relatively small group.
And then, when it gets launched, as if by magic, it goes viral. Enter the trolls, who assume that, because they have not been carefully coached on all the above, that none of it happened. Ironically, in this irony-obsessed culture, the appearance of the trolls confirms the importance of the meme. Trolls choose popular things to attack and their carping indicates what is trending by negative differentiation. I especially love all the posts that begin INAL (I am Not a Lawyer) and then go on to make legal rulings about the RJ. Newsflash: we consulted lawyers.
We’ve created a successful counter to the debt system. Now we have no time to congratulate ourselves, we have to try and use this momentum to create a movement.
This is a great and timely post, I am happy I happened to come across your blog through Google. I watched a some TV/radio spots interviewing Rolling Jubilee representatives and it definitely gave me the feeling that the model was solid and everything was well-thought-out, but I have run into frustrating trolls on the Strike Debt & Rolling Jubilee Facebook pages, one who put forth all the effort to make and promote a website criticizing the projects and speculating that the whole thing “is a scam,” meanwhile you read these questions he is asking about the programs and half of them are answered right in the FAQ, and others can’t be answered because it would mean violating the privacy of individual debtors.
Then, of course, there are people who are accusing The Rolling Jubilee of attempting to “misinform” people about the campaign because they happened to read an SD/RJ article somewhere with a headline that mentions the forgiveness of student loans. They say, “But wait! This is obviously false, federal student loans don’t work like that,” and they never bother to go right to the horse’s mouth and find out that the group says very bluntly the kinds of debt that can forgive, and the kinds they can’t, and that charged-off, PRIVATE student loans are the only type of student loans this group ever claimed they had the ability to buy.
I think some of these people are debt collectors, and they don’t like the way the project shines a light on just how little they buy our debts for. The realization that they pay less than 5% and try to collect 100% or more on these debts definitely strikes at their legitimacy… Some might even be afraid that if this model really takes off, debt collection agencies might be wiped right out of existence… but by and large, I do think the majority of the trolls are just that, trolls. They are out there saying they are confused and have questions about the model, when in actuality they just want to sow seeds of doubt and dissuade others from donating or becoming involved in other ways. They are the people who have been programmed by the media they consume to see a growing socialist conspiracy all around them, and they are unable to take the good work this group is doing at face value.
As someone who is personally involved in the movement, I am sure that the misinformation these people seem to be intentionally spreading to undermine your efforts must be frustrating… but I wouldn’t worry too much, if anything I feel that the negative attention is just an indicator that predatory debt collectors are already scared of what the Rolling Jubilee could do to their industry, and they deserve to feel some of that fear and uncertainty that THEIR business model requires them to instill in as many debtors as they can, every day of their lives.