🌹

‏ @DavidIanRobin

When I graduated in 2011, I owed $137,000 in student loans.

Today I have $175,000 even as I continue making monthly payments. I will never own a home, start a family, or live debt-free.

@BernieSanders is the only person running who will cancel ALL student debt. #MyBernieStory

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EBxz9VBX4AY0KMj.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4322270&forum_id=2#38680211)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4322270&forum_id=2#38680231)

Most people with student loan debt aren't doing that.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4322270&forum_id=2#38679294)

David Olson interviews David Robin

for Radical Democracy

David Ian Robin was involved in Occupy Wall Street,

and is a cofounder of Facebook group Millennial for

Bernie Sanders, which mobilized support for Senator

Sanders’ presidential campaign during the 201 6

Democratic Primary.

That group has now become Millennial for Revolution,

a group committed to informing and organizing

millennials for “fundamental change, not just a change

of faces at the top of the political pyramid.”

o o o

Radical Democracy: Could you talk a little bit about how

you got involved in the social justice movement?

David Robin: I went to the New School, and got a

Master's degree in sociology. I learned a lot about past

movements, and the sociology of social movements.

When I graduated, I was over a hundred-

and-thirty thousand dollars in student

debt. That would radicalize someone, you

know?

I graduated in May 201 1 , had a few odd jobs, then

Occupy happened in September 201 1 . That was my first

experience as an activist, on the ground. On September

1 7, 201 1 , a friend and I decided to check it out.

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview con’t

That was day one of Occupy Wall Street. We

had no idea it would explode, all over the country and all

over the world. But I went that day, and it Changed

my life.

Since I was involved with Occupy, I've marched with

Fight for $15. I’ve marched with Black Lives Matter. But

with Millennial for Bernie Sanders, and now Millennial

for Revolution, this is definitely the most involved I've

been.

RD: Can you talk about that shift from supporting the

Sanders campaign to a more broadly based

movement?

DR: Once Bernie's campaign was over, the worry was

that the group would split up, because people’s energy

wasn’t focused on a single issue or cause, they were

scattered among all these different causes— student

debt, racism, climate change, et cetera. We were united

because Bernie supported all of these issues.

The fact that we have incorporated these causes into

demands, the fact that we have something to rally

behind, is very important. We can even use this

electorally, like a litmus test. We can use that to hold

power accountable, while also pushing until we become

the ones in power. That’s the ultimate goal, and it's going

to happen.

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

The big issue is that people vote every four years, and

they say, that's it, we elected a president. Now we can

go about our lives and not pay attention for a while.

And, clearly that way just doesn’t work anymore. We

have to get people involved with local elections, getting

progressive candidates into office on the ground level,

but more importantly we have to get people in the

streets for a cause, rather than for a candidate.

RD: The Women’s March in Washington was

organized shortly after the election, to protest Trump’s

election. But M4R started organizing for a March on

that same date before the election. How did Trump’s

election change the focus of the March, and the focus

of the movement in general?

DR: Our message was that no matter who wins, the

next day we're going to be out on the street. The

Trump presidency is a huge, very real threat. We

already have an increase in hate crimes, because of

his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-people of color,

anti-LGBT agenda. And then you have his cabinet,

whose goal is to privatize public services, including

education, plus the stripping away of Medicare,

Obamacare, Social Security, environmental

regulations, and financial regulations. The threat is

very, very large.

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

After the election, I was pretty shocked and unsure what

was going to happen next. I feel like Trump

represents everything that's wrong

with America right now— he’s all our

targets, all in one. My hope is that this will be

what finally wakes people up, and makes people realize

that they have to do more than just sign petitions. I don't

think it's real for people yet. I think once he's actually in

office, he’ll immediately announce executive orders that

are going to be very bad, and do damage, right away. My

hope is that different groups will come together in a huge

coalition to oppose Trump and his entire administration.

RD: If there is any sort of silver lining here, it’s that more

folks are ready to take action. Hopefully we’re at a tipping

point for people jumping into this “Movement of

movements,” and getting active, immediately.

DR: I have friends who have never been to a protest

before, who are now like, yeah, we're going to march.

That's encouraging to me. I'm hoping that people who

haven't been involved in Occupy, or Fight for $1 5, or

Black Lives Matter, the environmental movement—

maybe this will be their introduction. Before, the corruption

wasn't really hidden, but people weren't paying attention

to it. Now with Trump it's hard to ignore.

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

RD: With so much focus on resisting Trump, is there a

danger of movement energy getting sucked away from

the bigger fight of transformational change?

DR: The movement against Trump also has

to be against neoliberalism. For instance, the

Obama administration deported a record number of

undocumented immigrants, and no one talks about that.

Neoliberalism already is affecting the

environment, already is affecting black and

brown people, already not doing enough to

rein in Wall Street. Neoliberalism led to the

situation we're at now, headed for a Trump presidency. I

think a resistance movement has to be against both

coming fascism and neoliberalism. Really, Trump is a

neoliberal also. His cabinet wants to privatize all these

public services, for example.

RD: Earlier you mentioned that M4R has published an

agenda, or list of demands. Could you talk about that a

bit?

DR: We have a set of demands which includes ending

systemic racism, fighting for fifteen-dollars-an-hour

minimum wage, banning fracking, assisting switching to

renewable energy, a Robin Hood tax on Wall Street,

raising taxes on the one percent, rejecting the TPP, and

medicare for all. We want people all across the country to

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

march on January 21 for these demands, but even more

than that, we want them to continue to engage. Our

goal is to build a mass movement of young

people to push for change both at the polls

and in the streets. I think with that sustained

pressure, we can make a transition from campaign to

movement, and build something that could really affect

the power structure. That’s the goal.

e % .

RD: A list of goals or demands seems like a major shift-

similar to the Movement for Black Lives putting out their

platform, A Vision for Black Lives. How important is that

step for the movement?

• ♦

DR: I think it's extremely important. It’s important for both

the members of the movement, as well as the media,

who are watching us. Not having any demands was a big

criticism of Occupy from the media— even though there

was the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,

the media didn't really pick up on that. We want to avoid

the media being able to dismiss us.

After Occupy, there was a lull for a little bit. People were

worried that Occupy was dead, and then all these other

movements came, they just sprouted up from it. It’s the

same now with Bernie's campaign over. Everyone's like,

“what do we do now?” I think something even larger and

more powerful is going to come from it, and it's going to

challenge the system in a very direct way.

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

RD: Yes, so many groups and projects came out of the

Occupy movement. Radical Democracy came out of

Occupy, in fact, when I met Alan Haber, the founder of SDS,

at an Occupy Ann Arbor general assembly. We started

talking abou the Port Huron Statement, and how it

connected to Occupy...

DR: Really? Cool.

RD: Yeah, Occupy really set the stage for this wave of the

movement, I think, and then the amazing eruption of Black

Lives Matter. Bernie’s campaign seems to have created

some confidence on the Left, and got the media attention.

There’s so much energy on the Left at them moment,

despite Trump’s election.

DR: Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Fight for

$ 15, Bemie's movement, the climate

movement. From BO 11 to now, these

movements just kept getting larger and

larger. They’ve really exploded.

Millennial are the largest voting block right now, and as the

years pass, we're only going to become more powerful. But

we have to make sure that our movement is the one that

succeeds — because the right-wing has their own populist

movement, and Trump has a very passionate base. I feel

like it's a battle between the Trump movement and the

Bernie movement, a battle for the future. We want to make

sure that the future is a progressive one, and not a fascist

one, basically. #radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

RD: I think there’s a pragmatism on the Left now, about

needing to get better representation within the system

without rejecting the power of having people in the street.

DR: If we have a movement that every day is disrupting

the system, that is very effective. It will help bring change.

But if you're not voting, if you’re not involved in electoral

politics, then the candidates will still be the same

neoliberal candidates, and that makes it harder to change

the system. So you need both. A diversity of tactics—

although maybe not in the traditional sense.

RD: I think that’s healthy for a movement: not insisting on

limited ways of getting things done, of forcing or creating

change.

DR: We're not looking for people just to march, or just to

rally. If you want to block a highway, if you want to

organize a march that blocks infrastructure and really gets

the message out there, saying millennials are sick and

tired of this, and we're going to Shut shit

down, that’s a strong message. So yeah, they're

interconnected, and they’re both necessary.

RD: On the M4R Facebook, you say that you’re not

looking for personnel or policy changes, but fundamental,

systemic change— basically the definition for "radical"

change we use for the RD Project.

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

What gives you hope that this generation can bring

about fundamental or radical change?

DR: That’s a good question, because it's a huge uphill

climb. We're waging a fight with some of the

most powerful forces on the planet. They

produce everything we consume. They own the media.

They own all the major conglomerates, and they own

all the political power, too. So it is hard. It's very hard.

But so much energy came through Bernie's campaign.

It seemed from the beginning to be lot more than a

political campaign for president, especially with

millennials. We noticed that people were really

receptive to a lot more radical messaging.

RD: Why do you think that is?

DR: We're a generation in debt— many of us have

hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debts.

We see that climate change is getting more and more

serious, and it affects us the most. Our kids, our

grandkids, they're going to be the ones who’ll have to

deal with these problems the most, but we’ll still be

alive. In Black Lives Matter, you see a lot of millennials

on the front lines. All these movements, these issues,

are interconnected. I feel like these are all millennial-led

movements. I feel the change starts with our

generation.

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

In one of the Wikileaks emails, Hillary's campaign

realized millennial aren't going to buy all that BS

political talk. We're going to see right through it. They

realized that from an early stage, but they didn't really

do much to address it. I don't think her message

resonated with millennials, and it still doesn't.

Millennial see through a lot of the political talk and

chaos and see the way the system works. I think

that's why our generation has a unique ability to push

for that change, but it’s going to take a lot of time and

work. Like I said, these are the strongest forces on the

planet. But we just have to keep marching, keep

fighting. And we are making progress.

RD: Also, social media just makes it possible to

organize much more quickly, it's unbelievable. That’s a

major change, a major improvement from past

movements.

DR: It’s also why the movement is so horizontal. It’s

also very flexible, so it can attack power from a lot of

different points.

People still argue about whether social media is

actually fueling activism. I think it definitely is, one

hundred percent. You see the power of it in every

movement right now. And I think the potential of social

media to become even more powerful is there.

#radicaldemocracy

David Robin Interview cont

RD: Agreed. The Bernie campaign really showed that

social networks can translate into tangible things:

raising serious cash for a candidate, as well as thirteen

million votes in the primary. A guy saying he's a

democratic socialist got thirteen million votes— that

should scare the shit out of the establishment. They’re

trying to shrug it off, but on some level, they know.

They realize there's something going on that they don't

quite get. There's a source of power that they don't

really control. It’s us. It’s people organizing.

DR: Yes, and he won what? Twenty-two, twenty-three

states? That's huge. It’s funny looking back at articles

from late 201 5 and seeing 538.com say Bernie might

win New Hampshire and lose everywhere else. They

predicted he likely wouldn't win a single state.

Bernie was never supposed to get this far. They were

coordinating against him from day one— you can see it

in the Wikileaks emails. And they were in collusion

with the media. And despite all of that, he still almost

won. He still got all the way to the convention.

RD: It started out as a political campaign, but after

what the DNC did to them, to Bernie, I think a lot of

folks realize we need more than just an inside

game. . .

#radi cal democracy

David Robin Interview cont

DR: We really need to get people to

abandon the "every four years" thinking

—we need to do much more than vote.

This country isn't going to change just because you

elect Hillary, or if the House is Democratic or

Republican. That's not going to change the system.

People need to realize the strength that they have

collectively, and also by themselves. We have to,

because there’s so much urgency. If we don't, who

else is going to step up?

I say this is our moment.

o o o

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity, and is available via a

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

/^creative

^commons

#radicaldemocracy

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4322270&forum_id=2#38680243)

Nathaniel @NatealopeB

Replying to @DavidIanRobin @BernieSanders

Judging by your handwriting, I'm guessing you should have gotten into a trade. I'm a skilled welder and make great money.

I had the option to go to school but did my research and chose not to take on the debt. Eight years of labor and on the job training got me here today.

175

7:14 PM - Aug 12, 2019

Eric A. Sauter @EASauter

Replying to @DavidIanRobin @BernieSanders

You graduated from @stonybrooku and @TheNewSchool with a masters in sociology. Unless those schools defrauded you to expect a high six-figure salary upon graduation, your debt is yours. Own it. But I 100% agree you overspent on your education. https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidirobin

David Robin - Campaign Strategist - Middle Seat | LinkedIn

View David Robin’s profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. David has 8 jobs listed on their profile. See the complete profile on LinkedIn and discover David’s connections and...

linkedin.com

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4322270&forum_id=2#38680261)

Student debt nbd wit paye or ibr

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4322270&forum_id=2#38680273)

https://twitter.com/disruptionary

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4322270&forum_id=2#38680338)