The Powerful and Visionary Leadership of Young Activists Is Crucial in These Times

Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
January 18, 2024

“All Americans owe them a debt for — if nothing else — releasing the idealism locked so long inside a nation that has not recently tasted the drama of a social upheaval. And for making us look on the young people of the country with a new respect.” That’s how Howard Zinn opened his book The New Abolitionists about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the 1960s.

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White Christian nationalists have pushed an agenda eroding democratic norms — and have gained momentum by meeting people’s spiritual and material needs. Pro-democracy forces need to take note.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy
By Rev. Liz Theoharis and Rahna Epting
December 1, 2023

There is no shortage of commentary and analysis about the dismal state of American democracy. At the core of our crisis is a powerful strain in the nation’s political culture that needs more attention from philanthropy: white Christian nationalism and its revolt against democracy. 

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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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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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