Our campaign to demand a pause on all federal student loans and interest didn’t come from nowhere. The precedent for this type of sweeping federal action was set by the first Trump administration in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when student loan payments were paused for more than three years. Join Debt Collective organizers Thomas Gokey, Dr. Richelle Brooks and Dr. Shamell Bell to trace the history of our fight for student loan debt cancellation, how it led to a national payment pause and cancellation for millions of student debtors, and how this history connects to our current fight to demand a payment pause.

Thomas Gokey is a co-founder of Debt Collective, an organizer of Rolling Jubilee, and a member of Debt Collective’s higher education team, where he leads research around legal and policy strategies for winning debt cancellation and free college.

Dr. Richelle Brooks is an educator, activist, mother, and Managing Director at Debt Collective. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Dr. Brooks has long been committed to racial restorative justice in her local communities as well as nationally.

Dr. Shamell Bell is Debt Collective’s Visionary Escalator, a strategist of imaginative protest rooted in healing and somatic justice. She is also the founder of Street Dance Activism, a global movement that uses dance as a tool for collective healing and liberation. She formerly served as a full-time Lecturer of Somatic Practices and Global Performance at Harvard University and has also taught at Dartmouth College and Berea College. Her work bridges embodied practice, political education, and visionary organizing, using joyful interventions to nurture both collective and self-care.