Category: Articles

Pro-austerity and anti-poor economic policies, along with over-militarization, have kept America in a death spiral for the past half-century.

Tom Dispatch
By Liz Theoharis
April 5, 2021

Fifty-four years ago, standing at the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his now-famous “Beyond Vietnam” sermon. For the first time in public, he expressed in vehement terms his opposition to the American war in Vietnam. He saw clearly that a foreign policy defined by aggression hurt the poor and dispossessed across the planet.

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The Byrd rule is not in the Constitution. It’s not what you swore to uphold.

The Nation
By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
March 2, 2021

In the biblical story of Queen Esther, a daughter of the exiled Hebrew people rose to power in the society of her day. When the survival of her people became a political issue before the King, Queen Esther’s Uncle Mordecai wrote on behalf of their marginalized community to suggest that God may have placed her in the position she was in for such a time as this. Queen Esther rose to the challenge and risked her position to save her people.

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A biblical look at the crisis of poverty today.

Sojourners
by Liz Theoharis
March 2021 Cover Story

Since I began to help organize a movement to end poverty, people have said to me that our goals are too ambitious—that demands for human rights and human dignity are both politically inconceivable and impossibly expensive. They quote the Bible, arguing that since Jesus said, “the poor will be with you always,” it can’t be God’s will for everyone to share in the abundance of our world.

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Not Those of Poor Americans, That’s For Sure

Tom Dispatch
by Liz Theoharis
February 16, 2021

In June 1990, future South African President Nelson Mandela addressed a joint session of Congress only months after being released from 27 years in a South African apartheid prison. He reminded the political leadership of the United States that “to deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of hunger and deprivation is to dehumanise them.”

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MoveOn
February 14, 2021

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Tom Dispatch
by Liz Theoharis
January 17, 2021

2020 will go down as the deadliest year in American history, significantly due to the devastation delivered by the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, count in nearly two trillion dollars in damage from climate events (many caused by, or heightened by, intensifying global warming), a surge of incidents of police violence inflicted on Black and Native peoples, and millions more Americans joining the ranks of the poor even as small numbers of billionaires soared ever further into the financial heavens. And it’s already obvious that 2021 is likely to prove another harrowing year.

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They must reject the politics of austerity and fulfill their commitment to policies that address human needs.

By William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis
The New York Times
Dec. 25, 2020

Before he was elected in November, Joe Biden promised that his “theory of change” for reforming the economy would be “ending poverty.” He pledged to champion a $15 minimum wage, affordable health care for all and federal action to address systemic racism. In the midst of an economic crisis, a pandemic and an uprising for racial justice, low-income Americans — Black, white, brown, Asian and Native — voted to overwhelm a reactionary base that President Trump had stoked with lies and fear.

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Tom Dispatch
by Liz Theoharis
December 13, 2020

Martin Luther King, Jr., offered this all-too-relevant comment on his moment in his 1967 speech “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?”:

“The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent.”

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Tom Dispatch
by Liz Theoharis
November 17, 2020

In the two weeks since Election 2020, the country has oscillated between joy and anger, hope and dread in an era of polarization sharpened by the forces of racism, nativism, and hate. Still, truth be told, though the divisive tone of this moment may only be sharpening, division in the United States of America is not a new phenomenon.

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CNN
by William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis
October 21, 2020

On Thursday evening, Americans have one last chance to hear President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden on the same stage for 90 minutes. While neither candidate is likely to change course or depart from their stump speech, Americans deserve to hear both candidates address the pressing issue of poverty. 

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