Boston Review
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
September 19, 2023
I was eighteen when I first started organizing in Kensington, on the boundary between lower north and northeast Philadelphia. At the time very racially diverse, the neighborhood was an emblem of the country’s changing economy; once an epicenter of the textile industry, it was pummeled by deindustrialization in the 1970s and 1980s, and before the 1996 federal welfare reform law, the two main sources of income for residents were welfare and drugs. A peasant organizer from Haiti told me that the housing and health conditions in mid-1990s Kensington looked as bad as those in her hometown.
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Voices of Faith: Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
New York Historical Society Interview
August 30, 2023
The eighth annual Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women’s History in March explored how women and LGBTQ+ people have transformed not only their own faith but also the religious lives of their communities. Today, we are highlighting one of those voices, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary to discuss how her own personal journey impacted her core philosophies.
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Politicians who fail to act are complicit in the deaths of thousands.
Religion News Service
By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
June 20, 2023
(RNS) — Bertha Montes had “bulging red, glossy eyes” that, according to her co-workers at an East Los Angeles McDonald’s, looked like they were popping out of her head. She felt so sick she asked her manager if she could go home, but the manager denied her request. Bertha depended on the job to provide for herself and her family, so she worked three more hours to finish her eight-hour shift.
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The Nation
By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
May 14, 2023
On Mother’s Day five years ago, we at Repairers of the Breach and the Kairos Center launched the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival with 40 days of moral fusion direct action. Some historians called those six weeks of actions at dozens of state capitals across the country simultaneously the largest and most expansive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience in history.
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Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
May 2, 2023
“In order to fully recover, we must first recover the society that has made us sick.”
I can still hear those prophetic words, now a quarter-century old, echoing through the Church Center of the United Nations. At the podium was David, a leader with New Jerusalem Laura, a residential drug recovery program in North Philadelphia that was free and accessible to people, no matter their insurance and income status.
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Dr. Liz Theoharis of the Poor People’s Campaign discusses the role of media in suppressing the working class movement—and how stories of people fighting back can be used to inspire others.
The Real News Network
Interview by Maximillian Alvarez
March 28, 2023
In the midst of the largest strike wave in the US in a century, corporate media is more focused on amplifying the bigotry and fearmongering of right-wing politicians and their base than on covering working class movements.
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