Join the CO Debt Collective (CDC) to demand that our country invest in education and divest from genocide! Sign up below to stay connected with us.

Pres. Biden has used his executive authority to send billions of dollars for weapons to the Israeli state, aiding their ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians. While schools in Gaza have been systematically destroyed by the Israeli military with U.S. bombs, students here are standing up against our country's complicity in genocide by demanding their schools divest from Israeli occupation. These courageous student demonstrators are being met with police violence–thousands have been arrested on their own campuses at the behest of school administration. We must resist the U.S. police state and military industrial complex taking over our colleges. We must struggle for a higher education system that invests in the future of our communities. 

Here in Colorado, the average student loan borrower holds $35,932 in debt. Annually, an average of $76,531,959 in Colorado tax dollars are spent funding the Israeli military and their weapons of genocide. That's over $76 million which could be spent on higher education, debt relief, and improving lives here in our state. Budgets reflect priorities and Colorado's shows that our elected officials prefer to side with war profiteers and weapons manufacturers over the needs and safety of their own constituents. They'd rather profit from violence – from genocide abroad to mass shootings at home – than eliminate debt and fund public services. We must reprioritize our economy and change our political policies to better serve our community and the world. The struggle for a better future must include transforming our higher education institutions. 

The call to divest from occupation and genocide is also a call to invest in students, educators, and our broader communities. We envision a higher education system that teaches decolonization not merely as a metaphor but as a material struggle against all colonial-capitalist systems that harm us. We fight to build democratic educational institutions where: education is free and accessible to all students, all staff and faculty are properly compensated for their work, dissent is permitted, reparations are made to Indigenous and Black communities that colleges have profited from, and governance is shared collectively across the community. 

The Colorado chapter of the Debt Collective (CDC) stands in solidarity with student encampments – at Auraria Campus, DU, and beyond – for a Free Palestine. We echo their demands for financial and academic divestment from Israel, weapons manufacturers, and an end to policing on campus. We condemn any college leadership that disregards the right to protest and jeopardizes the safety of their own students (by calling the police) just to protect corporate investments and endowments. 

Learn more about The Debt Collective – our national debtor's union – and the fight to cancel student loan debt here. Still waiting on federal student debt relief? Check out the Debt Collective's Student Debt Release Tool! Use the tool to create and submit a legal memo requesting that the Department of Education cancel your federal student loans, invoking its authority to “compromise, settle, waive or release” all federal student debts.

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