Category: Articles

By E. West McNeill and Liz Theoharis
Albany Times Union
Dec. 31, 2022

Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency last week as a winter storm of historic proportions bore down on western New York, warning families: “We want all New Yorkers to get where they need to go safely to celebrate the holidays with loved ones.” As we continue to deal with the aftermath of that deadly  storm, we would do well to remember the millions of families in New York that were already experiencing the storms of poverty, inequality and policy violence, not to mention those who have nowhere safe to celebrate the holidays.

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Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
December 20, 2022

Last week, I was in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station. The weather had turned cold and I couldn’t help noticing what an inhospitable place it had become for the city’s homeless and dispossessed. Once upon a time, anyone was allowed to be in the train station at any hour. Now, there were signs everywhere announcing that you needed a ticket to be there. Other warning signs indicated that you could only sit for 30 minutes at a time at the food-court tables, while barriers had been placed where benches used to be to make it that much harder to congregate, no less sit down.

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Sojourners
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
November 4, 2022

“Come on, come on, come on! Don’t you want to vote? … Yes, I’m gonna vote … for justice!” was the song that closed out a Zoom rally with hundreds of poor and low-income people, moral leaders, clergy, activists, and advocates who are part of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Yara Allen, co-director of theomusicology and movement arts for the Poor People’s Campaign, led the song as participants registered to text bank five million poor and low-propensity voters before the midterms in order to enliven and enlarge the electorate of low-income voters.

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Assessing the True Extent of Poverty in the Richest Nation on Earth

Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
October 27, 2022

Ours is an ever more unequal world, even if that subject is ever less attended to in this country. In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here?, Reverend Martin Luther King wrote tellingly, “The prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease. A people who began a national life inspired by a vision of a society of brotherhood can redeem itself. But redemption can come only through a humble acknowledgment of guilt and an honest knowledge of self.”

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Truthout
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
October 9, 2022

When the Biden administration announced its debt relief plan in late August, the timing was fitting. According to the Hebrew calendar, this last year, which ended on September 25, was the Shemitah year, a year where debts are forgiven. In the Bible, canceling debt is just one among a set of jubilee laws, which includes freeing the enslaved, feeding the poor, paying fair wages, and conserving and protecting overworked land.

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Mercy Makes Good Policy

Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
September 15, 2022

In the American ethos, sacrifice is often hailed as the chief ingredient for overcoming hardship and seizing opportunity. To be successful, we’re assured, college students must make personal sacrifices by going deep into debt for a future degree and the earnings that may come with it. Small business owners must sacrifice their paychecks so that their companies will continue to grow, while politicians must similarly sacrifice key policy promises to get something (almost anything!) done.

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Truthout
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
August 13, 2022

In 1922, the newspaper editor William Allen White wrote, “When anything is going to happen in this country, it happens first in Kansas.” On August 2, voters in Kansas proved him right, going to the polls for the first referendum on abortion since the fall of Roe v. Wade. The result was an emphatic rejection of a state constitutional amendment that would have allowed state legislators to severely restrict access to abortion or ban the procedure outright. Pollsters were left scrambling as people across the country expressed surprise: How could this have happened in a state like Kansas?

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The moment is ripe for a different kind of popular movement that confronts divisive lies and builds broad coalitions for the common good.

Religion News Service
By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II & Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
August 8, 2022

(RNS) — This summer’s made-for-TV Congressional hearings have outlined a seven-step plot to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Days of testimony have revealed astonishing details about the determination of former President Trump to subvert democracy.

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By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis & Diane Swords, Ph.D.
The Syracuse Post-Standard
August 5, 2022

This week marks the 77th anniversary of the atomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For many, nuclear war may feel like a relic of that terrible history and of a time of great power struggle and the Cold War arms race. But that is a delusion we can no longer afford to maintain. Today, the war in Ukraine, growing tension in the South China Sea (evidenced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit), and more are reminding us just how close we are to global catastrophe.

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How Dobbs Is an Attack on Us All

Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
July 19, 2022

When I was the age that my daughter is now, my favorite sweatshirt had the words “Choice, Choice, Choice, Choice” in rainbow letters across its front. My mom got me that sweatshirt at a 1989 rally in response to Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. In that case, the Supreme Court upheld a Missouri law restricting the use of state funds and facilities for abortion, an early attempt to eat away at Roe v. Wade.

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