Call For Submissions: Debt and Dharma
At a debt strike action in September, Amin Husain (right) burned a statement from the IRS sent after he raided his 401k to help pay for treatment for his father's pancreatic cancer.
Husain is not alone in his struggles. Far from it.An individualist culture tends to frame debt as a primarily personal, not political issue, but in truth it's a systemic problem.Overwhelming debt has long been an issue at the forefront of discussion in the "developing world," and for low-income people in wealthy nations. But as waves of middle-class U.S. students are graduating college “shackled by debt,” and white European countries are rising up against forced austerity, even mainstream narratives are starting to shift. Jostled by international crisis, they come closer to naming this age-old social and economic pattern for what it has always been: a structural mechanism of oppression, affecting society at the level of individuals, groups, nation-states, and socio-economic classes.As Buddhists and spiritual activists (many of us in the same debt boat!), how are we relating to this key struggle of our times?
For the month of December at Turning Wheel Media, help us highlight issues of debt and dharma!
Submit your prose, poetry, photographs, interviews, video, audio, and multi-media work by November 20th to submissions@