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You Only Get What You're Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty
One of the nation’s leading anti-poverty organizers and moral voices shares the largely untold story of the movement to end poverty, open to all, and led by the poor themselves
As one of the nation’s leading anti-poverty organizers and moral voices, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis explores the largely untold history of poor people’s movements in the United States and traces her own journey through some of the most significant anti-poverty struggles of the past thirty years.
In this book, Theoharis introduces us to the people leading the movement to end poverty:
multiracial groups of homeless people rising up from the streets and seizing empty, federally-owned homes;
mothers on welfare shutting down entire city blocks and going toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful people in the country;
farmworkers busting modern-day slave rings and winning living wages from multinational fast-food companies;
andcoal miners, veterans, unemployed workers, students, artists, and more joining together in unusual and creative alliances to fight, sing, and pray their way toward freedom.
Drawing from personal experience, history, religion, political strategy, and more, Theoharis argues that American poverty will not end because of the goodwill of the powerful or through the charitable actions of well-meaning people alone. It will happen through a mass movement to end poverty, open to all, and led by the poor.
Theoharis passionately reminds us that poor people are not condemned to be subjects of history, but have always been agents of transformative change, and can be once again. Indeed, to reorient our society around the needs of everyone and reinvigorate the promise of democracy, the poor can and must become the architects of a new America.
As one of the nation’s leading anti-poverty organizers and moral voices, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis explores the largely untold history of poor people’s movements in the United States and traces her own journey through some of the most significant anti-poverty struggles of the past thirty years.
In this book, Theoharis introduces us to the people leading the movement to end poverty:
multiracial groups of homeless people rising up from the streets and seizing empty, federally-owned homes;
mothers on welfare shutting down entire city blocks and going toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful people in the country;
farmworkers busting modern-day slave rings and winning living wages from multinational fast-food companies;
andcoal miners, veterans, unemployed workers, students, artists, and more joining together in unusual and creative alliances to fight, sing, and pray their way toward freedom.
Drawing from personal experience, history, religion, political strategy, and more, Theoharis argues that American poverty will not end because of the goodwill of the powerful or through the charitable actions of well-meaning people alone. It will happen through a mass movement to end poverty, open to all, and led by the poor.
Theoharis passionately reminds us that poor people are not condemned to be subjects of history, but have always been agents of transformative change, and can be once again. Indeed, to reorient our society around the needs of everyone and reinvigorate the promise of democracy, the poor can and must become the architects of a new America.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published April 8, 2025
About the author
Liz Theoharis
10 books17 followersThe Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis is Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival with the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II that organized the largest coordinated wave of nonviolent civil disobedience in 21st Century America and has since emerged as one of the nation’s leading social movement forces. She is the Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary.
Liz received her BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania; her M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in 2004 where she was the first William Sloane Coffin Scholar; and her PhD from Union in New Testament and Christian Origins. She has been published in The New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, The Guardian, Sojourners, The Nation, and others. In 2018, she gave the “Building a Moral Movement” TEDtalk at TEDWomen, was named one of the Politico 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries whose ideas are driving politics”, and was also named a Women of Faith recipient by the Presbyterian Church (USA). In 2019, she was a Selma “Bridge” Award recipient and named one of 11 Women Shaping the Church by Sojourners. In 2020 she was named one of 15 Faith Leaders to Watch by the Center for American Progress.
Liz received her BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania; her M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary in 2004 where she was the first William Sloane Coffin Scholar; and her PhD from Union in New Testament and Christian Origins. She has been published in The New York Times, Time Magazine, CNN, The Guardian, Sojourners, The Nation, and others. In 2018, she gave the “Building a Moral Movement” TEDtalk at TEDWomen, was named one of the Politico 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries whose ideas are driving politics”, and was also named a Women of Faith recipient by the Presbyterian Church (USA). In 2019, she was a Selma “Bridge” Award recipient and named one of 11 Women Shaping the Church by Sojourners. In 2020 she was named one of 15 Faith Leaders to Watch by the Center for American Progress.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 6, 2025
I struggled with this book in two different ways, neither of which I think would apply to readers who are new to the movement.
The whole of this book promoted a style of mass organization and recruiting leadership from amongst those who are most personally affected by the issues and it promoted it through a ton of different real life examples including victories, defeats, and complicated actions that might not have achieved their goal, but still pushed the movement forward.
I think for an average reader this book could be really engaging and important and motivating and inspiring.
I sometimes found it to be a bit of a slog especially the parts where the authors were just saying how they think things should be done. Either I already know that and agree with them or I disagree with them, but have heard it before. The book for me really lit up in the last two chapters, the one about the struggle for the meaning and impact of their Christian faith, and the one defining a kairos moment. I am God‘s most powerful Agnostic, I most likely will never be a Christian, but I sure love when Christians get deep into it. As a communist organizer, some of my greatest allies are Christian organizers (including my wife and greatest ally).
I also had a very complicated relationship with a big part of this book that I can’t tell if it comes from the book and authors and their movement experience or if it’s coming from my own personal baggage. But to me, they almost fetishized the involvement of non-white people. As somebody who grew up in total poverty and watched individual Black leaders from my own neighborhood get uplifted to positions of prominence and affluence that never trickled down to my neighborhood, I don’t automatically see Black leadership as liberatory. The Black police chief of our city helped cover up the police murder of a young Latino man in our city.
But! In such a racist society where the voices of women and brown people are so regularly sidelined and ignored, this might just be a natural pendulum swing to help a general audience see the leadership potential in people that I already know the leadership potential of because I already organize on an explicitly multiracial multi gender working class led platform myself. I might just be really sensitive to this issue because of the way the authenticity of lived experience from racial identity has been used to co-opt and water down our radical abolitionist demands we have organized around before.
Ultimately, I’d be very happy to recommend this book and share it around and I think it could help people understand the leadership potential of a lot of people around us suffering from stupid oppressive policies. In honesty, this book may be less urgent for people who are already just in that work. But if you’re new to the work or feeling lonely in the work, I think it would feel beautiful to connect with other people, strangers, fighting with the same intensity you are on some other battlegrounds in the same war
The whole of this book promoted a style of mass organization and recruiting leadership from amongst those who are most personally affected by the issues and it promoted it through a ton of different real life examples including victories, defeats, and complicated actions that might not have achieved their goal, but still pushed the movement forward.
I think for an average reader this book could be really engaging and important and motivating and inspiring.
I sometimes found it to be a bit of a slog especially the parts where the authors were just saying how they think things should be done. Either I already know that and agree with them or I disagree with them, but have heard it before. The book for me really lit up in the last two chapters, the one about the struggle for the meaning and impact of their Christian faith, and the one defining a kairos moment. I am God‘s most powerful Agnostic, I most likely will never be a Christian, but I sure love when Christians get deep into it. As a communist organizer, some of my greatest allies are Christian organizers (including my wife and greatest ally).
I also had a very complicated relationship with a big part of this book that I can’t tell if it comes from the book and authors and their movement experience or if it’s coming from my own personal baggage. But to me, they almost fetishized the involvement of non-white people. As somebody who grew up in total poverty and watched individual Black leaders from my own neighborhood get uplifted to positions of prominence and affluence that never trickled down to my neighborhood, I don’t automatically see Black leadership as liberatory. The Black police chief of our city helped cover up the police murder of a young Latino man in our city.
But! In such a racist society where the voices of women and brown people are so regularly sidelined and ignored, this might just be a natural pendulum swing to help a general audience see the leadership potential in people that I already know the leadership potential of because I already organize on an explicitly multiracial multi gender working class led platform myself. I might just be really sensitive to this issue because of the way the authenticity of lived experience from racial identity has been used to co-opt and water down our radical abolitionist demands we have organized around before.
Ultimately, I’d be very happy to recommend this book and share it around and I think it could help people understand the leadership potential of a lot of people around us suffering from stupid oppressive policies. In honesty, this book may be less urgent for people who are already just in that work. But if you’re new to the work or feeling lonely in the work, I think it would feel beautiful to connect with other people, strangers, fighting with the same intensity you are on some other battlegrounds in the same war
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 25, 2026
Before reading this book I was brutally unaware of the various Poor People's movements in the modern history of the United States. Reverend Liz Theoharis, from whom most of the book's stories and experiences come, has dedicated most of her life to organizing, building, and supporting grassroots movements for Poor People across the country.
In a world where most discussions are taking place online, and where it feels like everyone's opinions are increasingly converging and generalizing in a hivemind of regurgitations, it was super refreshing to read so many extremely specific and unexpected details and learnings from years of boots-on-the-ground work. Theoharis weaves her expertise of actual practice in working for the poor; her knowledge of history, economics, politics and philosophy; as well as her religious and spiritual background to pull together an amazing book which, while at first glance may appear niche, I would argue in fact is one of the most important and socially relevant books I've read in recent memory.
The first chapter makes the high-level case that ending poverty is possible, dispelling the myth of scarcity and giving us a vision of a Jubilee Economics, inspired on one hand by religious scripture and on the other hand by the glimpse of the possible world that COVID-19 gave us. In other words, it is a world in which profit is no longer prioritized at all costs. She introduces a number of important organizations, such as the National Union of the Homeless, and some of the great work they've done, such as organizing "illegal" takeovers of federally-owned but vacant homes by the homeless.
The second chapter addresses some of the main myths of poverty. What's perhaps most interesting, at least to me, is the history of how we came up with our modern definition of "poverty" in the United States. Despite how important this development was, it is fair to say that it does not properly encapsulate all the ways in which Americans are suffering financially. For example, it does not take into account the crushing levels of debt that most Americans have, the rising cost of rent or healthcare costs as an increasing percentage of household income, the massive number of Americans who are one emergency away from crossing over the poverty threshold, or the impending 4th industrial revolution—powered by ai and robotics—that will displace and dispossess hundreds of millions of workers reminiscent of previous industrial revolutions and the later, massive offshoring of U.S.-based manufacturing to Second and Third World countries.
Side Note: I loved the footnote on pg. 34 about the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, where a mule train carrying dozens of poor people had written on its canopy the words "Don't Laugh Folks, Jesus Was a Poor Man."
The third chapter is primarily a history of the Poor People's Movement, focusing on the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and one of their founders Johnnie Tillmon. What was surprising to me was the suffering and harassment that those on welfare had to endure, one example being "midnight raids" where caseworkers would show up unannounced at the homes of welfare recipients to check if they were committing welfare fraud, like living with a man which would have disqualified women and mothers from receiving welfare. The irony of course (or perhaps this was intentional given the racist history of many state policies) is that having a partner is one way in which a strong family unit can support each other out of destitution and break the cycle of poverty for their children. But by committing these invasive raids, the government was creating an incentive for mothers to stay single and intentionally tearing apart disproportionately black families.
One of my main takeaways of this chapter is that Poor People's Movements can and should be led by the poor, since they have the most to gain from a radical transformation of society. The success of movements like these involves recognizing all the ways in which all people are united—across racial, geographic, or religious lines—in their suffering, and in all the ways that fighting together for a better world would benefit all of us.
The fourth chapter was surprisingly my favourite given that its focus was on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). At first, and like many "educated" people, I sort of scoff at any mention of the UN or Human Rights, as "common knowledge" dictates that the UN is a toothless organization and that Human Rights are empty words that don't effect change. But of course Liz, with her actual lived experience, has an unexpected take.
For context, she starts by providing some historical context for the UDHR. It was originally drafted in the years just following WWII, so at the forefront of the drafting committee's minds was avoiding the conditions that led to two world wars killing nearly a hundred million people. To quote historian Paul Gordon Lauren writing on the history of Human Rights, they believed that the Great Depression contributed "greatly to the rise of fascist regimes, the emergence of severe global competition, and ultimately to the outbreak of war itself... They believed that poverty, misery, unemployment, and depressed standards of living anywhere in an age of a global economy and a technological shrinking of the world bred instability elsewhere and thereby threatened peace."
That economic and material conditions give rise to war cannot be overstated. It is why the UDHR enshrined not just civil, political, social, religious and cultural rights—like having fair elections, giving women the right to work, freedom from persecution based on race or religion or sexuality, freedom of the press—ideas most people in the West are familiar with and accept as being crucial to a just nation, but more importantly, the UDHR also included economic rights—the right to food, housing, clothing, healthcare, education, a healthy environment, and social security in the case of unemployment, sickness, disability, or old age; the right to rest and not be overworked; and the right to form and join unions.
This to me is really surprising, that a drafting committee composed of representatives from the world's leading powers and which ultimately had to be approved by the United States, agreed to include provisions that would nowadays be considered socialism, if not outright communism, by a meaningful subset of the American public. Even more interesting, at least to me, is that the drafting committee explicitly stated that these rights are inalienable, universal, and indivisible, with this last principle being the most relevant. The idea of indivisible is that some rights cannot be prioritized over others. In other words, a failure to realize one of these rights will lead to a failure to realize all of them. Given the current decline of the rights of women, the LGBTQ+ community, indigenous peoples, and immigrants; the erosion of the political process through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the unconstrained ability of the ruling moneyed elite to fund campaigns and handpick their candidates; and the increasing buildup of military violence in Latin America, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific with growing tensions in an increasingly multipolar world; one can't help but admire the prescience these original drafters had in foreseeing a world enveloped in darkness if we choose not to guarantee people their economic rights. To add a relevant quote by Claire McClinton on the Flint water crisis, "They had to take away our democracy before they could take away our water."
Liz elaborates on why America had an easier time pursuing non-economic rights over economic ones. She categorizes them broadly as either negative rights, which can be thought of primarily as the right to be left alone, vs. positive rights, which include economic rights and require a massive redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom. Negative rights are in some ways easier to give to people and often don't affect, at least not directly, the material conditions of moneyed interests. An interesting side note is that one can think of the USSR as having had the opposite priority as the U.S., focusing on economic rights over political or civil rights.
So what? Well, after reading this chapter I gained an immense amount of respect for the UDHR. But Liz elaborates even further: while the UN might not have the power to guarantee economic rights to those suffering most from destitution, educating poor people on human rights serves as a powerful, unifying force and gives them "moral clarity" on what they deserve and what they are fighting for. Moreover, human rights language can actually be used in legal proceedings even in the United States. Liz references the Vermont Workers' Center (VWC) fight for Universal Healthcare, where the Senate had modified the bill to exclude undocumented people, but the VWC pushed back using human rights language, "everybody means everybody, universal means universal", forcing the removal of the exclusionary amendment. Even though the VWC ultimately lost their fight for Universal Healthcare in the long-run, the small win here does lend credence to the fact that human rights language can be a useful tool.
The fifth chapter, titled "The Struggle is the School", is aptly named. She talks about a number of different movements, but the core ideas of this chapter are 1) the best leaders are those who train and inspire other leaders, and 2) theory is not enough, we have to organize, agitate, and struggle in the real-world, not just to fight for our demands but also to further learn and develop our theories.
The sixth chapter is specifically about how progressive Christians ought to re-appropriate the Bible and Jesus' teachings from the Christian Right. Liz introduces us to Cedar Monroe and Aaron Scott, two Christians doing great work for the poor in Grays Harbor County in Washington State. There is an interesting discussion on how the Christian Right have had a dual-pronged approach of gutting welfare across the U.S. while also funding right-wing churches doing boots-on-the-ground work for the poor. As a result, when many poor people get help from these churches, the aid is often coupled with conservative ideology which inevitably biases and shapes their political leanings.
Because this chapter focuses a lot on the Bible and Christianity, it may be less interesting to those who didn't grow up in a religious household. For me though, having been raised in a church that always preached about the poor and humble character of Jesus or how "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God", and then seeing the hypocrisy of the Christian Right in promoting policies that did the exact opposite, it was extremely refreshing to read a case to fight for Jesus' original teachings.
The seventh and final chapter is a call-to-action. Liz argues we are approaching a juncture that can catalyze a great change, but only if we are prepared and ready to act.
I gave this book 5 stars. I learned a ton, found it extremely relevant, and loved the mixture of politics, philosophy, economics, and religion. I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about how we can change the world for the better.
In a world where most discussions are taking place online, and where it feels like everyone's opinions are increasingly converging and generalizing in a hivemind of regurgitations, it was super refreshing to read so many extremely specific and unexpected details and learnings from years of boots-on-the-ground work. Theoharis weaves her expertise of actual practice in working for the poor; her knowledge of history, economics, politics and philosophy; as well as her religious and spiritual background to pull together an amazing book which, while at first glance may appear niche, I would argue in fact is one of the most important and socially relevant books I've read in recent memory.
The first chapter makes the high-level case that ending poverty is possible, dispelling the myth of scarcity and giving us a vision of a Jubilee Economics, inspired on one hand by religious scripture and on the other hand by the glimpse of the possible world that COVID-19 gave us. In other words, it is a world in which profit is no longer prioritized at all costs. She introduces a number of important organizations, such as the National Union of the Homeless, and some of the great work they've done, such as organizing "illegal" takeovers of federally-owned but vacant homes by the homeless.
The second chapter addresses some of the main myths of poverty. What's perhaps most interesting, at least to me, is the history of how we came up with our modern definition of "poverty" in the United States. Despite how important this development was, it is fair to say that it does not properly encapsulate all the ways in which Americans are suffering financially. For example, it does not take into account the crushing levels of debt that most Americans have, the rising cost of rent or healthcare costs as an increasing percentage of household income, the massive number of Americans who are one emergency away from crossing over the poverty threshold, or the impending 4th industrial revolution—powered by ai and robotics—that will displace and dispossess hundreds of millions of workers reminiscent of previous industrial revolutions and the later, massive offshoring of U.S.-based manufacturing to Second and Third World countries.
Side Note: I loved the footnote on pg. 34 about the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, where a mule train carrying dozens of poor people had written on its canopy the words "Don't Laugh Folks, Jesus Was a Poor Man."
The third chapter is primarily a history of the Poor People's Movement, focusing on the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and one of their founders Johnnie Tillmon. What was surprising to me was the suffering and harassment that those on welfare had to endure, one example being "midnight raids" where caseworkers would show up unannounced at the homes of welfare recipients to check if they were committing welfare fraud, like living with a man which would have disqualified women and mothers from receiving welfare. The irony of course (or perhaps this was intentional given the racist history of many state policies) is that having a partner is one way in which a strong family unit can support each other out of destitution and break the cycle of poverty for their children. But by committing these invasive raids, the government was creating an incentive for mothers to stay single and intentionally tearing apart disproportionately black families.
One of my main takeaways of this chapter is that Poor People's Movements can and should be led by the poor, since they have the most to gain from a radical transformation of society. The success of movements like these involves recognizing all the ways in which all people are united—across racial, geographic, or religious lines—in their suffering, and in all the ways that fighting together for a better world would benefit all of us.
The fourth chapter was surprisingly my favourite given that its focus was on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). At first, and like many "educated" people, I sort of scoff at any mention of the UN or Human Rights, as "common knowledge" dictates that the UN is a toothless organization and that Human Rights are empty words that don't effect change. But of course Liz, with her actual lived experience, has an unexpected take.
For context, she starts by providing some historical context for the UDHR. It was originally drafted in the years just following WWII, so at the forefront of the drafting committee's minds was avoiding the conditions that led to two world wars killing nearly a hundred million people. To quote historian Paul Gordon Lauren writing on the history of Human Rights, they believed that the Great Depression contributed "greatly to the rise of fascist regimes, the emergence of severe global competition, and ultimately to the outbreak of war itself... They believed that poverty, misery, unemployment, and depressed standards of living anywhere in an age of a global economy and a technological shrinking of the world bred instability elsewhere and thereby threatened peace."
That economic and material conditions give rise to war cannot be overstated. It is why the UDHR enshrined not just civil, political, social, religious and cultural rights—like having fair elections, giving women the right to work, freedom from persecution based on race or religion or sexuality, freedom of the press—ideas most people in the West are familiar with and accept as being crucial to a just nation, but more importantly, the UDHR also included economic rights—the right to food, housing, clothing, healthcare, education, a healthy environment, and social security in the case of unemployment, sickness, disability, or old age; the right to rest and not be overworked; and the right to form and join unions.
This to me is really surprising, that a drafting committee composed of representatives from the world's leading powers and which ultimately had to be approved by the United States, agreed to include provisions that would nowadays be considered socialism, if not outright communism, by a meaningful subset of the American public. Even more interesting, at least to me, is that the drafting committee explicitly stated that these rights are inalienable, universal, and indivisible, with this last principle being the most relevant. The idea of indivisible is that some rights cannot be prioritized over others. In other words, a failure to realize one of these rights will lead to a failure to realize all of them. Given the current decline of the rights of women, the LGBTQ+ community, indigenous peoples, and immigrants; the erosion of the political process through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the unconstrained ability of the ruling moneyed elite to fund campaigns and handpick their candidates; and the increasing buildup of military violence in Latin America, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific with growing tensions in an increasingly multipolar world; one can't help but admire the prescience these original drafters had in foreseeing a world enveloped in darkness if we choose not to guarantee people their economic rights. To add a relevant quote by Claire McClinton on the Flint water crisis, "They had to take away our democracy before they could take away our water."
Liz elaborates on why America had an easier time pursuing non-economic rights over economic ones. She categorizes them broadly as either negative rights, which can be thought of primarily as the right to be left alone, vs. positive rights, which include economic rights and require a massive redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom. Negative rights are in some ways easier to give to people and often don't affect, at least not directly, the material conditions of moneyed interests. An interesting side note is that one can think of the USSR as having had the opposite priority as the U.S., focusing on economic rights over political or civil rights.
So what? Well, after reading this chapter I gained an immense amount of respect for the UDHR. But Liz elaborates even further: while the UN might not have the power to guarantee economic rights to those suffering most from destitution, educating poor people on human rights serves as a powerful, unifying force and gives them "moral clarity" on what they deserve and what they are fighting for. Moreover, human rights language can actually be used in legal proceedings even in the United States. Liz references the Vermont Workers' Center (VWC) fight for Universal Healthcare, where the Senate had modified the bill to exclude undocumented people, but the VWC pushed back using human rights language, "everybody means everybody, universal means universal", forcing the removal of the exclusionary amendment. Even though the VWC ultimately lost their fight for Universal Healthcare in the long-run, the small win here does lend credence to the fact that human rights language can be a useful tool.
The fifth chapter, titled "The Struggle is the School", is aptly named. She talks about a number of different movements, but the core ideas of this chapter are 1) the best leaders are those who train and inspire other leaders, and 2) theory is not enough, we have to organize, agitate, and struggle in the real-world, not just to fight for our demands but also to further learn and develop our theories.
The sixth chapter is specifically about how progressive Christians ought to re-appropriate the Bible and Jesus' teachings from the Christian Right. Liz introduces us to Cedar Monroe and Aaron Scott, two Christians doing great work for the poor in Grays Harbor County in Washington State. There is an interesting discussion on how the Christian Right have had a dual-pronged approach of gutting welfare across the U.S. while also funding right-wing churches doing boots-on-the-ground work for the poor. As a result, when many poor people get help from these churches, the aid is often coupled with conservative ideology which inevitably biases and shapes their political leanings.
Because this chapter focuses a lot on the Bible and Christianity, it may be less interesting to those who didn't grow up in a religious household. For me though, having been raised in a church that always preached about the poor and humble character of Jesus or how "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God", and then seeing the hypocrisy of the Christian Right in promoting policies that did the exact opposite, it was extremely refreshing to read a case to fight for Jesus' original teachings.
The seventh and final chapter is a call-to-action. Liz argues we are approaching a juncture that can catalyze a great change, but only if we are prepared and ready to act.
I gave this book 5 stars. I learned a ton, found it extremely relevant, and loved the mixture of politics, philosophy, economics, and religion. I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about how we can change the world for the better.
Want to Read
June 1, 2025cited here https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...
August 13, 2025
If you are at all involved/interested in community organizing, read this book!
“We need bottom-up moral movements, led by people who are not waiting to be ‘saved’ but who are taking lifesaving action where violence and death proliferate” (pg 190).
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. You only get what you're organized to take” (pg 214).
“We need bottom-up moral movements, led by people who are not waiting to be ‘saved’ but who are taking lifesaving action where violence and death proliferate” (pg 190).
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. You only get what you're organized to take” (pg 214).
June 10, 2026
3.5. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to an organizer explain their journey throughout their life. I think these types of stories are invaluable. This organizer has risked and done more in their life than I can say I have so I hesitate to criticize however if I had known how the book was I probably wouldn’t have spent my precious monthly book budget on this one and would’ve purchased another book instead. The conclusion of this book was we need to fight for universal human rights, while admirable, is incomplete. How do you achieve rights in a society that will never acknowledge you as human? Big reform energy but inspiring by the tales of direct action.
March 6, 2025
So, a revolution of the proletariat?
June 23, 2025
Excellent book.
June 30, 2025
A great call to a prophetic imagination of a world without poverty. Theoharis lays out the facts clearly and intersperses it with her own story helpfully.
May 20, 2026
Must read if you want to know about organizing. Excellent chapter on Christian Nationalism.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews