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FEATURED IN THE NEW YORKER: The Faces of Americans Living in Debt
Finalist for the Dorothea Lange/Paul Taylor Prize in Documentary.
Featured on Politico, in the Washington Post, the Daily Mail, and
the Huffington Post, USA Today, Business Insider, Refinery29, and
Fast Company. Based on the popular online photo series and now
published in print for the first time, The Debt Project collects 99
portraits of debt across the United States, featuring people of all
different backgrounds and stories, to recontextualize an often
stigmatized experience. In 2013, Brittany Powell made the difficult
decision to file for bankruptcy for her photography business. In
the years following the 2008 economic collapse, she found herself
in a significant amount of debt, a position many Americans across
the country still share, a common yet isolating and private
experience often steeped in shame. Her personal experience,
bolstered by the We Are the 99% slogan that came out of the Occupy
movement, brought her to start The Debt Project, an exploration of
the role debt and finance plays in our personal identity and social
structure. This book presents an intimate look into 99 different
lives: each shares an arrestingly honest portrait in the person’s
home, surrounded by all their belongings, accompanied by a
handwritten note of the amount of debt that person is in and the
story behind the numbers. The Debt Project, with a foreword by
writer and filmmaker Astra Taylor plus resources at the back of the
book to support people in debt, examines the social and personal
hold financial debt has on us and invites others into a private
world, while at the same empowering people to share their stories
and overcome the shame they may feel.
Democracy is in crisis. In every major company it has been stole by
elites or in the hands of strong men. In democracy's name we see a
raft of policies that spread inequality and xenophobia worldwide.
It is clear that democracy - the principle of government by and for
the people - is not living up to its promise. In fact, real
democracy- inclusive and egalitarian - has in fact never existed.
In this urgent and engaging book, Astra Taylor invites us to
re-examine the term. Is democracy a means or an end? A process or a
set of desired outcomes? What if the those outcomes, whatever they
may be - peace, prosperity, equality, liberty, an engaged citizenry
- can be achieved by non-democratic means? Or if an election leads
to a terrible outcome? If democracy means rule by the people, what
does it mean to rule and who counts as the people? The inherent
paradoxes are too often unnamed and unrecognized. But to ignore
them is no longer possible. Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss
It When It's Gone offers a better understanding of what is
possible, what we want, and why democracy is so hard to realize.
Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped
shift the national conversation on topics including technology,
inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here
reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling
the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the
politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural
and non-human world, the future of the university, the temporal
challenge of climate catastrophe, and more. Addressing some of the
most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to
imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of
the strategic question of how change actually happens. Curious and
searching, these historically informed and hopeful essays are as
engaging as they are challenging and as urgent as they are
timeless. Taylor 's unique philosophical style has a political edge
that speaks directly to the growing conviction that a radical
transformation of our economy and society is required.
Sixty years ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt, an exiled
Jew deprived of her German citizenship, observed that before people
can enjoy any of the "inalienable" Rights of Man-before there can
be any specific rights to education, work, voting, and so on-there
must first be such a thing as "the right to have rights". The
concept received little attention at the time, but in our age of
mass deportations, Muslim bans, refugee crises, and extra-state
war, the phrase has become the centre of a crucial and lively
debate. Here five leading thinkers from varied
disciplines-including history, law, politics, and literary
studies-discuss the critical basis of rights and the meaning of
radical democratic politics today.
In the fall of 2011, a small protest camp in downtown Manhattan
exploded into a global uprising, sparked in part by the violent
overreactions of the police. An unofficial record of this movement,
Occupy combines adrenalin-fueled first-hand accounts of the early
days and weeks of Occupy Wall Street with contentious debates and
thoughtful reflections, featuring the editors and writers of the
celebrated n+1, as well as some of the world s leading radical
thinkers, such as Slavoj i ek, Angela Davis, and Rebecca
Solnit.
The book conveys the intense excitement of those present at the
birth of a counterculture, while providing the movement with a
serious platform for debating goals, demands, and tactics. Articles
address the history of the horizontalist structure at OWS; how to
keep a live-in going when there is a giant mountain of laundry
building up; how very rich the very rich have become; the messages
and meaning of the We are the 99% tumblr website; occupations in
Oakland, Boston, Atlanta, and elsewhere; what happens next; and
much more.
Over the last decade, author and activist Astra Taylor has helped
shift the national conversation on topics including technology,
inequality, indebtedness, and democracy. The essays collected here
reveal the range and depth of her thinking, with Taylor tackling
the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the
politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural
and non-human world, the future of the university, the temporal
challenge of climate catastrophe, and more. Addressing some of the
most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to
imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of
the strategic question of how change actually happens. Curious and
searching, these historically informed and hopeful essays are as
engaging as they are challenging and as urgent as they are
timeless. Taylor 's unique philosophical style has a political edge
that speaks directly to the growing conviction that a radical
transformation of our economy and society is required.
Boldly takes philosophy from the academy to the streets to show how
great ideas are born through a profound engagement with the
everyday. This companion to Astra Taylor's documentary film
features interviews with eight iconoclastic and influential
philosophers, conducted whilst on the move through places that hold
special resonance for them and their ideas. Peter Singer's thoughts
on consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue;
Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution; and Judith Butler
ponders individualism.
Debtors have been mocked, scolded and lied to for decades. We have
been told that it is perfectly normal to go into debt to get
medical care, to go to school, or even to pay for our own
incarceration. We've been told there is no way to change an economy
that pushes the majority of people into debt while a small minority
hoard wealth and power. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that
mass indebtedness and extreme inequality are a political choice. In
the early days of the crisis, elected officials drew up plans to
spend trillions of dollars. The only question was: where would the
money go and who would benefit from the bailout? The truth is that
there has never been a lack of money for things like housing,
education and health care. Millions of people never needed to be
forced into debt for those things in the first place. Armed with
this knowledge, a militant debtors movement has the potential to
rewrite the contract and assure that no one has to mortgage their
future to survive. Debtors of the World Must Unite. As isolated
individuals, debtors have little influence. But as a bloc, we can
leverage our debts and devise new tactics to challenge the
corporate creditor class and help win reparative, universal public
goods. Individually, our debts overwhelm us. But together, our
debts can make us powerful.
Debtors have been mocked, scolded and lied to for decades. We have
been told that it is perfectly normal to go into debt to get
medical care, to go to school, or even to pay for our own
incarceration. We 've been told there is no way to change an
economy that pushes the majority of people into debt while a small
minority hoard wealth and power. The coronavirus pandemic has
revealed that mass indebtedness and extreme inequality are a
political choice. In the early days of the crisis, elected
officials drew up plans to spend trillions of dollars. The only
question was: where would the money go and who would benefit from
the bailout? The truth is that there has never been a lack of money
for things like housing, education and health care. Millions of
people never needed to be forced into debt for those things in the
first place. Armed with this knowledge, a militant debtors movement
has the potential to rewrite the contract and assure that no one
has to mortgage their future to survive. Debtors of the World Must
Unite. As isolated individuals, debtors have little influence. But
as a bloc, we can leverage our debts and devise new tactics to
challenge the corporate creditor class and help win reparative,
universal public goods. Individually, our debts overwhelm us. But
together, our debts can make us powerful.
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