Category: Interviews

News Beat
March 21, 2018

The United States is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, and by certain fiscal parameters, the wealthiest. It’s richest citizens own roughly 40 percent of the world’s wealth. Yet, about 40 million Americans are living in poverty, and about 20 million are mired in extreme poverty, scraping by on less than $2 a day. At the same time that the top 1 percent are increasing their vast fortunes, the income inequality gap is ever-widening, and the middle class is dissolving. For tens of millions of Americans, the rose-colored portrait of a booming U.S. economy is pure fiction. Instead, they’re spending every waking moment simply trying to survive.

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AlterNet
March 4, 2018

The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the recently launched Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of three kids in a family she describes as deeply committed to improving life for the excluded and marginalized.

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other peace and anti-apartheid activists were frequent guests in her home, and even as a child, Theoharis understood that religious faith—in her case, Presbyterian—had to be linked to social justice.

This coupling—faith and justice—led Theoharis to work with the National Union of the Homeless as a University of Pennsylvania undergraduate. “Their organizing was inspired by the Poor People’s Campaign led by Dr. King in 1967 and ’68, and I quickly learned the extent of the unfinished business that still needed to be done,” she begins.

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Ben & Jerry’s
January 30, 2018

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is the co-director of the Kairos Center and the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, a National Call for Moral Revival. Building on the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last, great unfinished project, the Poor People’s Campaign is taking on systemic poverty, systemic racism, environmental degradation, and militarism in an effort to end the war on the poor and transform our country.

We feel lucky to have had the chance to speak with Rev. Theoharis recently about her life, the Poor People’s Campaign, and how all of us, if we come together, can help save the soul of our democracy.

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Truthout
By Sarah Jaffe
July 20, 2017

Today we bring you a conversation with Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, the co-director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, and co-chair, with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, of the Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival.

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