A People’s Economy: Resisting Debt, Sanctions and Resource Theft w/ Abby Martin

This session will explore the ways that the United States and its allies impose their interests on other sovereign nations through unilateral sanctions, coerced debt, and privatization, exploiting working people through wage suppression and predatory lending. Speakers will exchange perspectives on resisting economic inequality and building a new economic system in the interests of all people.

Mercedes Lopez Peña, El Salvador

Mercedes Lopez Peña ​is The Executive Director of Centro de Integracion para Migrantes Trabajadoras y Trabajadores - CIMITRA in El Salvador.

Manuel Bertoldi, Argentina

Manuel Bertoldi is a leader of the Frente Patria Grande of Argentina and the Coordination of the International Peoples’ Assembly.

Hannah Appel, United States

Hannah Appel is a co-founder of the Debt Collective, the United States’ first debtors' union. The Debt Collective has abolished over $5 Billion in student debt, medical debt, payday loans, probation debt and credit card debt. Their student debt campaign put full student debt cancellation and free public college on the political map. Appel teaches anthropology at UC Los Angeles where she serves as the Associate Director of the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. She is an economic anthropologist interested in transnational capitalism and finance, debt and debtors’ unions, Africa’s place in global capitalism, and anti-capitalist abolitionist social movements.

Abby Martin, United States

Abby Martin is an independent investigative journalist and activist. She is the founder of the citizen journalism project Media Roots and the creator of the documentary and interview series The Empire Files. She also hosts the podcasts DOSED and Media Roots Radio. She is the director of Gaza Fights for Freedom and is currently working on an anti-imperialist environmental documentary titled Earth’s Greatest Enemy.

Daniel Abner Rodríguez, Cuba

Daniel Abner Rodríguez is a young entrepreneur and member of the Cuban Association of Artisan Artists (ACAA).

Moderator

Manu Karuka, United States

Manu Karuka is the author of Empire's Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad (University of California Press). He teaches at Barnard College in New York City.