Days 11-14 - New York City and Newark, Delaware

Times Square, NY on a sunny afternoon.

The complicated logistics and energy output around our "attendance" at the first NON-debate required a couple days of catch-up to get us back on track and we had time to ride a tourist bus around the Big Apple for a couple of days. We continued leafletting and had an occasional extended conversation, once in the Port Authority Starbucks with an executive of Wells Fargo. This 40-or-so male glanced at our leaflet then delivered a total justification of everything the bank had ever done. It was refreshing to meet an honest banker! We learned that it was the millions of folks who lost their homes since 2008 that had devastated the economy not the bankers who had pressured millions to assume mortgages beyond their ability to pay and who had gambled with OPM (other people's money). When asked if he agreed that the Wells Fargo Bank president should go to jail, as Senator Elizabeth Warren had suggested, he said, no, the thousands of employees who had carried out the orders to create false bank accounts should go to jail. When I said, the economy would benefit greatly from student debtors being forgiven their debts and being free to spend their money in the economy instead of having bankers put it in their vaults, he had no response. See how much you learn when you hand out leaflets! P.S. He left without picking up the leaflet.

Today, we talked with hundreds of students at the University of Delaware-Newark. And for the second time since we started this journey, we were asked to stop leafletting and leave the building. It's always disappointing on a university campus, "a place of learning," to find the administration so opposed, so threatened by ideas, that they would stop an old man from trying to help students cancel their debts. Of course, like the Wells Fargo banker, their hands are not clean; they have a very clear interest in this matter of student debt.

Just before we left Newark, Delaware, we stopped in a Starbucks to use the Wi-Fi and gird ourselves for a drive through the rain to Washington, DC. As we were leaving, I talked with our last students, two young women, and they got so excited about Jill Stein canceling their debt that they offered to hand out leaflets. I gave them what I had on me and told them I had just passed the baton to them. They were now responsible for contacting the other 24,000 UofD students with the good news. They eagerly agreed!