Category: Articles

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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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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CNN
by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
March 22, 2023

CNN — “What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?” (Isaiah 3:15, New International Version Bible)

Congressional Republicans have proposed the first of what promises to be a series of bills to limit access to food assistance for needy families.

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By Samantha Drake
The Pennsylvania Gazette
February 22, 2023

For Liz Theoharis C’98, activism has been a way of life—from assisting her parents with their justice work, to community service as a Penn undergrad, to cochairing the recent revival of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. The Presbyterian minister, social justice leader, and biblical scholar is committed to reframing the narrative around poverty and the poor while pushing for lasting policy changes.

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Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
February 7, 2023

A few weeks ago, the world’s power brokers — politicians, CEOs, millionaires, billionaires — met in Davos, the mountainous Swiss resort town, for the 2023 World Economic Forum. In an annual ritual that reads ever more like Orwellian farce, the global elite gathered — their private jets lined up like gleaming sardines at a nearby private airport — to discuss the most pressing issues of our time, many of which they are chiefly responsible for creating.

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We must resist Christian nationalists’ heretical form of religion, which parallels the “morality” of the Roman Empire that Jesus challenged.

Fellowship Magazine
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
January 17, 2023

Social media was abuzz on the topic of white Christian nationalism for much of the summer, with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene selling T-shirts that proudly proclaim her identity as a Christian nationalist, encouraging followers to join in. As each part of the Jan. 6 hearing unfolded, the influence of white Christian nationalism showed through — whether it’s the Jericho march directly preceding the Jan. 6 attack, or the “crusade” to challenge election results that followed.

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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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