That’s why I’ve introduced the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act to let students take advantage of the same low rates offered to banks for one year while Congress finds a fair, long-term solution on student loan interest rates.

Will you add your voice in support of giving students the same deal as big banks? Click here to sign the petition.

The interest rate on federal subsidized Stafford student loans is set to increase from 3.4% to 6.8% on July 1st. If Congress doesn’t act soon, millions of college students will see their student loan payments jump.

Some argue that it’s too expensive to keep government loans at low interest rates, but the federal government makes low interest loans all the time—just not to everyone. Big banks can borrow money through the Federal Reserve discount window at a rate of about 0.75%.

That’s why I started a petition on MoveOn’s petition site which says:

Wall Street banks—the ones that wrecked our economy—should not be getting a better interest rate on their government loans than young people trying to go to college.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

Unlike the big banks, students don’t have armies of lobbyists and lawyers. But they do have us.

Let’s do what’s right and bank on students.

Thanks!

–Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator

This petition was created on MoveOn’s online petition site, where anyone can start their own online petitions. Senator Elizabeth Warren didn’t pay us to send this email—we never rent or sell theMoveOn.org list.

At the beginning of April, TED posted the talk I gave at their annual conference. In the six weeks since, more than 800,000 people have viewed it across the TED platform and YouTube.

I’ve been doing this for a long time, but nothing I’ve ever done has spread like this.

So two weeks ago, I spoke at the TEDxYouth event in Chicago. I began that talk in a similar way, with the same argument about the corruption our government suffers. But then I ended that talk by giving the talk away — to them. Each of the 500 students in the audience got a thumb drive with the slides and the background information of the talk. Each thumb drive had a copy of the TED video, and the book I produced for that video. And I challenged those students to take that material, and remix it to tell this story in a way that would be compelling to them and their peers…

This is something I have wanted to do for a long time. This movement won’t have a single leader. There are no MLK Jr.’s, or Gandhi’s among us. So instead this needs to be a movement with hundreds of thousands taking the lead to spread this message, and push for change.  In their own words, in whatever way they think this message spreads best.

Because this is the fundamental fact that almost no one in DC gets: That reform will not come from the top down. We must feed it and support it from the bottom up.

I need your help to do this. We’re not asking for money (have you noticed how infrequently we do that?). We’re just asking that you do as many of the following four things as you can:

• First, help us get to a million views, so we’ll have something to celebrate, and something the pundits might notice. Watch the talk and spread it as broadly as you can, either tweeting it, or posting it to Facebook, or simply emailing the link to friends.
• Second, if you’ve watched the video, head over to Rap Genius and help annotate and explain it.
• Third, help us connect to other youth groups that might also be willing to spread this message. I’m happy to pay personally for as many thumb drives as it will take to get this message out there (way beyond the budget of Rootstrikers!), but we need your help to identify those groups, and get them engaged.
• Finally, help us if you can by doing a remix yourself. You can sign up here, and get the resources you need. Your video can be 30 seconds long, or a minute, or an hour. Do something that you think will grab others. Do something that you know will help make corruption issue number one.

Someday the idea of a grassroots movement of citizens — not politician wanna-be’s, but citizens — changing government will seem obvious. But only if you help us make it real. Spreading this message is one step. There will be many more to come. I am grateful for your help to make this bit a success.

- Lessig

Rootstrikers is a new generation of activists taking a stand against corruption, founded by Lawrence Lessig and housed in the 501(c)(3) organization Fund for the Republic.

-Shepard

SOLD OUT

2 color Letterpress on 100% cotton Lettre paper, 110lb, deckled edges.
Signed and numbered edition of 400.  OBEY publishing chop on left corner.
10 inches x 13 inches, frame ready.   Ships flat.  $65

Limit 1 per person/household.

Release date: May 21, 2013 at a random time between 10am and 12 noon here.

“Giant Star Obey”,  1996

-Shepard