North Bergen SOS, known as Strength out of Shadows, is calling for revolutionaries in our fight against FINANCIAL SLAVERY. The “American Dream” is being sold out from under us due to rising interest rates for college and graduate schools. Who is paying for the right to live the better life promised by your parents and your teachers and your counselors? Are you living the “American Dream” i.e. follow your dreams … or are you living the “American Way” i.e. buy now, pay later?

Join the revolution, start the debate, make the universities and the politicians realize we aren’t going to stay slaves to the debt cycle anymore. We don’t want financial slavery. We don’t want money chained with terms that entitles banks to own us for the rest of our lives. It is time for a change! It is time for education to be for all of us, not just for those who can afford it.

“Everyone talks about your dreams. No one talks about the deep, dark under seeded belly of debt.” Anna McDrowning, $50,000 in student loan debt.

Public performances begin in July 2015 and then move onto university campuses starting in the North East in the fall of 2015. Then we move onto Washington, D.C. with our message. We will reach out to the politicians to let them know that our voices will be heard; that our dreams will flourish; that our education will not be shut down through economic oppression.

There is darkness in the world, but you can be part of the light. You can join the voices rising out of the silence demanding change. Come join the revolution! Donate by March 11th to help break the chains of financial slavery.

Who paid for your college dreams? Who profited from the interest on your desires? Who owns you?

To support the breaking of financial slavery everywhere, donate now: www.hatchfund.org

the author

Jennifer Little spent over fifteen years as a professional actress, performing on Broadway with such luminaries as Harold Prince and in film (with Ron Howard and Penny Marshall) and television. More recently, she turned to working with at-risk students, doing Literacy through the Arts, Guest Artist programs and creating arts programs for inner city schools. In 2005, she began teaching fulltime, working on bringing applied theatre to standard curriculum programs within public schools in the U.S. and integrating Social Studies and English into the Arts. She has spent a decade teaching in Somerset, New Jersey and created a critically acclaimed program that focuses on theatre's role in society and actors' responsibility to the world. She has spoken at New York University's conference on Applied Theatre and Citizenship, the 2012 Educational Theatre Association's (EdTA) Conference, Human Rights in Global Perspective Conference, AATE National Conference, and National Drama Conference in Wales. Her article, “Applying Ourselves to the Human Drama – How Documentary Theatre Helped One School Find Its Heart” was published in the Fall 2010 issue of Teaching Theatre and in Spring 2011 in National Drama’s Quarterly Journal. She recently published “Changing the Way We Think,” a book outlining her district’s program for using drama and the arts to tackle the issue of school bullying and how to make students’ community safer. Her theatre company has performed across the tri-state area, including introducing a new Theatre of the Oppressed piece, titled “Choices,” which has been performing for the last two years. Her group has partnered with the Tyler Clemente Foundation, The National School Climate Center, the New Jersey Mental Health Association, the Lifeline Association, the New Jersey Traumatic Loss Center and others. She has led workshops with academic and theatre students and professionals across the country on using arts to explore social issues and just returned from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where her applied theatre troupe presented their original, award-winning piece, “Shadows” to sold out audiences. She spent the last year and a half with the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) writing the new national standards for theatre and was a 2014 New Jersey State Jefferson Youth Project 360 Honoree for Peace and Justice. She is traveling to Bangladesh courtesy of a Association of Performers and Presenters (APAP) grant in order to study Bangladeshi theatre and present workshops on American theatre at the University of Dhaka and Bangladesh Institute of Theatre Arts.