Rev Dr Liz Theoharis

Liz Theoharis

Rev Dr Liz Theoharis is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.

Articles by this author

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Sunday, October 04, 2020
A New Nonviolent Medicaid Army Is on the March
At the start of Tuesday’s unhinged presidential debate — as the pandemic continued to rage outside the walls of Case Western University — the American people were offered an anemic vision for promoting and expanding public health. In the shadow of more than 200,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus...
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The idea that poverty is the result of bad behavior, laziness, or sin rather than decisions made by those with power is distinctly ascendant in Donald Trump’s and Mitch McConnell’s Washington. (Photo: Screengrab/State Department Website) Views
Monday, September 28, 2020
How Christian Nationalism in the US Legislates Evil and Punishes the Poor
On August 26th, during the Republican National Convention, Vice President Mike Pence closed out his acceptance speech with a biblical sleight of hand. Speaking before a crowd at the Fort McHenry National Monument in Baltimore, he exclaimed, “Let’s fix our eyes on Old Glory and all she represents...
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A recipient carries a box of food as others wait in line at a Food Bank distribution for those in need as the coronavirus pandemic continues on April 9, 2020 in Van Nuys, California. Views
Sunday, August 02, 2020
Woe to You Who Legislate Evil and Rob the Poor of Their Rights
On Monday, August 3, faith leaders with the Poor People's Campaign will flood Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Senate with calls saying that it is treacherous and heretical to hold up the Constitution and the Bible while trampling on the right of every person to life, liberty and the pursuit...
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May we choose another way. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue/cc/flickr) Views
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Time to Stop Bankrolling War and the Wealthy
The word jubilee comes from the Hebrew " yovel ," meaning a "trumpet blast of liberty." It was said that, on the day of liberation, the sound of a ram’s horn would ring through the land. These days, I hear the sound of that horn while walking with my kids through the streets of New York City, while...
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Demonstrators carry signs during an anti-war protest after President Donald Trump launched airstrikes in Syria, April 15, 2018 in New York City. Views
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Dismantle the War Economy
2020 began with a near-war with Iran – the deadly upshot of a bomb-first-ask-questions-later approach to world affairs. Then came a pandemic – a public health disaster made all the more lethal by our leadership’s utter indifference to the lives of the people, especially the poor and people of color...
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Those of us in the welfare rights movement always saw our work as the kindling for a wildfire of organizing by the poor and dispossessed. (Photo: Poor People's Campaign/Twitter) Views
Thursday, June 04, 2020
America for the Rich or the Poor?
In the summer of 1995, when I was 18, I started visiting Tent City , a temporary encampment in an abandoned lot in northeast Philadelphia. About 40 families had taken up residence in tents, shacks, and other makeshift structures. Among them were people of various races, ages, and sexual...
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We must go deeper in organizing and uniting people around a visionary and far-reaching agenda that calls for us to reorganize society around the needs and demands of the poor. (Photo: Poor People's Campaign/Twitter) Views
Friday, May 08, 2020
Poor People’s Campaign: We Refuse to Allow Politicians and Big Corporations to Balance State Budgets by Denying Rights
From the beginning of this pandemic, the response of our elected officials has prioritized private profits over saving lives. Kentucky Senator and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell came out in opposition to federal support for state budgets, specifically mentioning state pensions as unworthy of being...
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The dual crises of pandemic and inequality are revealing ever more clearly how the descent into poverty is helping to destroy American society from the inside out. (Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images) Views
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Inequality and the Coronavirus
My mom contracted polio when she was 14. She survived and learned to walk again, but my life was deeply affected by that virus. Today, as our larger society attempts to self-distance and self-isolate, my family has texted about the polio quarantine my mom was put under: how my grandma fearfully...
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In 2018, the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, led by Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, released a Moral Agenda and set of demands to address systemic systemic, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy. This year, the Poor People's Campaign and the Institute for Policy Studies has released a Moral Budget outlining how those demands can be paid for and achieved. Views
Monday, June 17, 2019
'Everybody Has the Right to Live': The Visionary Budget at the Heart of Our Moral Uprising
CD editor's note: The following excerpt was written as the foreward to the new report— Poor People’s Moral Budget: Everybody Has the Right to Live —released jointly by the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and the Institute for Policy Studies on Monday, June 17, 2019. “We...
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‘The United States has been addicted to excessive military spending at the expense of true security at home for decades.’ Photograph: Andrew Gombert/EPA Views
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Trump Wants to Give 62 Cents of Every Dollar to the Military. That's Immoral
Donald Trump recently unleashed his dark vision for our nation and our world, in the form of his budget request to Congress . A budget shows our values more clearly than any tweet, campaign speech or political slogan. It’s what marries detailed, dollar-and-cents policy decisions to deeper political...
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