Articles & Interviews
Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
November 5, 2023
On September 19, 2001, eight days after 9/11, as the leaders of both parties were already pounding a frenzied drumbeat of war, a diverse group of concerned Americans released a warning about the long-term consequences of a military response. Among them were veteran civil rights activists, faith leaders, and public intellectuals, including Rosa Parks, Harry Belafonte, and Palestinian-American Edward Said.
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The question is, what Scripture is the new House speaker reading?
Religion News Service
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
November 2, 2023
(RNS) — Mike Johnson’s ascendancy to speaker of the House came as a shock to many in Washington and the country last week. The Louisiana congressman has not been a household name, it’s true, and even in the halls of Congress he’s had positions of marginal influence. The collective surprise was understandable on that score.
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Lives cut short from poverty and low-wealth is a moral indictment of a society that is abandoning millions amid abundance.
Common Dreams
By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
October 19, 2023
In the richest country in human history, poverty has become a death sentence. Yes, despite the fact that the United States throws out more food than is needed to feed every hungry person, that the nation spends more and has more cutting edge developments in health care than any other nation, and despite the GDP growing exponentially over the past years, poverty is the fourth largest killer.
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Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
October 8, 2023
On the island of Manhattan, where I live, skyscrapers multiply like metal weeds, a vertical invasion of seemingly unstoppable force. For more than a century, they have risen as symbols of wealth and the promise of progress for a city and a nation. In movies and TV shows, those buildings churn with activity, offices full of important people doing work of global significance. The effect is a feeling of economic vitality made real by the sheer scale of the buildings themselves.
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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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