Like a glass of water to a traveler stuck in the desert, Barack Obama’s recent student debt relief plan is seen by many college graduates as a saving grace after so much heartache caused by crippling student loans. However, although a few drops of water is refreshing and alleviates the most dire, short-term effects of dehydration, it doesn’t solve the fundamental issue of being stuck in the desert. Like the glass of water, the recent plan can only take the edge off the pain of large student debt bills for those who cannot pay them, but it does not change the fact that student debt stands at over $1.2 trillion and is set to increase ever higher.
Youth
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The Youth and the Socialist Future
Editorial for Socialist Appeal 83 – Today’s youth, the so-called millennials, face a bleak future under capitalism. They carry the highest student debt in history and have entered “adulthood” at a time when housing prices have skyrocketed and the labor market has imploded. More than half of recent graduates are unemployed or underemployed, often in low-wage jobs having nothing to do with their degrees. Nonetheless, they must make monthly payments on an average of $20,000 in student loans.
Textbook Capitalism
Students have been raised to believe in the promise of the so-called “American Dream,” of a “land of freedom” where supposedly simply by hard and honest work, a college education, and home-cooked American morality, any humble soul can succeed. However, this myth of capitalist American culture, designed to lure the masses into submission, has been thoroughly exposed as a trick in today’s conditions of economic crisis.
A Program of Struggle for Youth and Students
The Workers International League has put forth a program of struggle for students and youth.
NYU Students Occupy Building
Late on Thursday, February 19, we received this report on the NYU occupation from Tom Trottier, a WIL member and trade union member in New York City.
New Lessons from the New School
The occupation of the New School in New York City will go down as one of the most important developments of 2008.
Students Occupy the New School!
On Wednesday, December 17, a communique reached the Campus Antiwar Network national discussion e-mail list announcing the occupation of the New School University’s cafeteria by students both from the New School, as well as from other universities in the surrounding area from New York and New Jersey.
The Communist: The Voice of America’s Communist Generation
The Communist is the official newspaper of the party of the Revolutionary Communists of America. It is different from any other publication you’ll find in the US today. Behind this newspaper, there’s a vast network of communist activity from coast to coast. It is a tool for organizing in the streets, at protests and strikes, for building communist cells in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and campuses.
The RCA is on a mission to carry Bolshevism into the political arena of a country that’s ripe for it. Yes, we’re Bolsheviks living in the digital age, and we also use social media and our podcast to spread the communist program. But we’re not the kind of internet leftists who stay inside and “do politics” online. That’s why we need something we can carry with us into the streets and put into people’s hands. The physical paper is an instrument for building a real-life organization—a genuine Communist Party of fighters.