Category: Articles

A New Pax Romana

Tom Dispatch
By Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes
July 28, 2024

Roman poet Juvenal coined the phrase “bread and circuses” nearly 2,000 years ago for the extravagant entertainment the Roman Empire used to distract attention from imperial policies that caused widespread discontent. Imagine the lavish banquets, gladiatorial bouts, use and abuse of young men and women for the pleasure of the rich, and so much more that characterized the later years of that empire. And none of it seems that far off from the situation we, in these increasingly dis-United States, find ourselves in today.

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The Moral Response to Homelessness

Tom Dispatch

By Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes
May 21, 2024

On April 22nd, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that focuses on whether unhoused — the term that has generally replaced “homeless” — people with no indoor shelter options can even pull a blanket around themselves outdoors without being subject to criminal punishment.

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The Failing Battle for Health and Healthcare in These All Too Disunited States

Tom Dispatch

By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis

March 10, 2024

The slang definition of “unwinding” means “to chill.” Other definitions include: to relax, disentangle, undo — all words that, on the surface, appear both passive and peaceful. And yet in Google searches involving such seemingly harmless definitions of decompressing and resting, news articles abound about the end of pandemic-era Medicaid expansion programs — a topic that, for the millions of people now without healthcare insurance, is anything but relaxing.

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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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