Occupy debt-relief campaign buys $100,000 worth of debt

Members of a debt relief project borne from the Occupy Wall Street campaign said Wednesday they have purchased more than $100,000 worth of medical debt in a second trial run for their efforts.

Thomas Gokey, a spokesperson for the Rolling Jubilee campaign, said the debt was purchased for $5,000. Earlier this year, the group bought $14,000 worth of debt for $500.

“We are buying debt that is being sold on the secondary market for pennies on the dollar,” Gokey said in a conference call. “We are doing it in exactly the same way that [debt collectors] do it, with one big difference: we are abolishing the debt as we buy it.”

Normally, he said, such businesses acquire debt on the cheap and then hound debtors for the full amount.

“This debt is immoral, but the immorality of it comes down on the side of the lenders, not on the side of the debtors,” Gokey said. “We’re being told that we have a moral obligation to pay these debts, and Strike Debt’s main message is that many of these debts are illegitimate, and that we should form a way of resistance and refusal to these debts.”