Liz Theoharis

Liz Theoharis, a TomDispatch regular, is a theologian, ordained minister, and anti-poverty activist. Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, she is the co-author of the new book You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty and author of Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor. Follow her on BlueSky at @liztheoharis.kairoscenter.org.

ICE protest

The Young Organizers Survival Corps

The stakes are only getting higher for those of us coming of age at a moment when this country is changing from something like a democracy to Donald Trump’s chilling autocratic version of America. Yet if we know anything from decades of antipoverty organizing, it’s that the unfettered imaginations, moral clarity, and capacity for decisive action of young Americans can always triumph over the misguided political liaisons of their elders.

February 9, 2026

Poor Peoplel's Campaign

Toward a Better World

Now, let’s be real: 2025 is going to be a truly hard year for the poor and vulnerable in our society. But the promise and possibility of ending poverty, reclaiming democracy, and advancing peace and justice remain closer than any of us may think.

January 27, 2025

Hurrican Helene damage

Billionaires Are Not Going to Save Us

Our politicians, news agencies, and larger population must stop paying homage to billionaires who will profit off our predicaments or politicians who will try to capitalize on any crisis. It’s time to see that projects of survival and solidarity among those struggling the most are our only true hope for a future that will otherwise be ever more perilous.

October 22, 2024

homeslessness

Where Can We Live?

In the West, we would do well to consider places like Brazil in developing a strategy to start down the path to ending homelessness here and we would do well to consider the power of the 8 to 11 million unhoused people who know what they need and are finally beginning to organize for their future.

September 9, 2024

Poor People's March

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

This thrusting of tens of millions of Americans out of the national healthcare system at a moment when healthcare outfits, pharmaceutical companies, and health insurance corporations are making record profits has been termed “the great unwinding.” And it couldn’t be more cruelly ironic.

March 11, 2024

Youth climate strike

Change Is Coming Soon

There’s so much at stake, so much to lose, but if Howard Zinn were with us today, I suspect he would look at the rise of bold and visionary organizing, led by generations of young leaders, and tell us that change, on a planet in deep distress, is coming soon.

January 19, 2024

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