Occupy Wall Street is raising money so they can buy up debt at random and pay it off, in a brilliant campaign of radical agorism.

Members of Occupy Wall Street have recently started an effort called “Rolling Jubilee” and the stated mission on their website is to: “buy debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, we abolish it. We cannot buy specific individuals’ debt – instead, we help liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal.”

According to an article in the UK Telegraph:

“The Rolling Jubilee project is seeking donations to help it buy-up distressed debts, including student loans and outstanding medical bills, and then wipe the slate clean by writing them off. Individuals or companies can buy distressed debt from lenders at knock-down prices if it the borrower is in default or behind with payments and are then free to do with it as they see fit, including cancelling it free of charge.

As a test run the group spent $500 on distressed debt, buying $14,000 worth of outstanding loans and pardoning the debtors. They are now looking to expand their experiment nationwide and are asking people to donate money to the cause.”

As a friend, supporter and also a critic of the Occupy Wall Xtreet movement over the past year and a half, it has been exciting and interesting to see the loose knit, decentralized movement transform and grow into many different branches that are taking a more local and decentralized approach than we saw from the protests last year.

Recently, I have been noticing that various pockets of OWS are beginning to practice agorism, and starting initiatives and projects to replace inefficient state programs with their own voluntary mutual aid approaches.

This Rolling Jubilee project is one example, and the recent efforts to go where FEMA wouldn’t after Hurricane Sandy is another example.

For those of you that are not familiar with the term “agorism”, it is a strategy of noncompliance that uses counter economics and underground markets as a way of keeping power in the hands of the average people, thus slowly diminishing the power and relevance of the control structure.

Growing food, starting mutual aid or charity groups, using bitcoin, homeschooling, running a small business without licenses, bartering and starting community currencies are all examples of agorist activities.

Some agorists are even so bold as to create businesses that will challenge existing state monopolies, like we saw earlier this year when Detroit residents created their own community protection agencies because the police were no longer responding to 911 calls.

It is as simple as finding a need in your community for a particular good or service, and attempting to provide that value without any sort of interaction with the government or any other unchosen 3rd parties.

For those of you that are not famil­iar with the term “agorism”, it is a strat­egy of non­com­pli­ance that uses counter eco­nom­ics and under­ground mar­kets as a way of keep­ing power in the hands of the aver­age peo­ple, thus slowly dimin­ish­ing the power and rel­e­vance of the con­trol struc­ture.

Grow­ing food, start­ing mutual aid or char­ity groups, using bit­coin, home­school­ing, run­ning a small busi­ness with­out licenses, bar­ter­ing and start­ing com­mu­nity cur­ren­cies are all exam­ples of agorist activ­i­ties.