You Only Get What You're Organized to Take

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 You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty (Beacon Press, 2025), Theoharis and co-author Noam Sandweiss-Back give credit to the people leading the movement to end poverty, including:

• 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; and
• coal 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 and Sandweiss-Back argue 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.

The book is a passionate reminder 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.

About the Speakers

is the Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival with the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II. She is the Director of the Kairos Center and a Founder and the Coordinator of the Poverty Initiative. She has spent the past two decades organizing amongst the poor in the United States, working with and advising grassroots organizations with significant victories including the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the Vermont Workers Center, Domestic Workers United, the United Workers Association, the National Union of the Homeless and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union. She has led hundreds of trainings, Bible studies, and leadership development workshops; spoken at dozens of conferences and keynote presentations across the US and globally; and published several articles and book chapters sharing her vision that poverty can be ended and that the poor can be agents of social change. 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 is the author of (Eerdmans, 2017) and co-author, with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Rick Lowery of (Beacon Press, 2018). Liz is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Noam Sandweiss-Back is the Director of Partnerships for the Kairos Center. His political work has taken him from Jerusalem to Louisiana and he now works with leaders across the country to support movements for social, racial, and economic justice. His forthcoming book, (Beacon Press), is co-written with Rev. Liz Theoharis and set for release on April 8, 2025. Noam sits on the board of ESCR-Net (International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights).

Accessibility

This event is free and open to the public. Live ASL interpretation will be provided.

Masks will be provided and required for attendees and speakers except while they are speaking.

Registration is preferred.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

James Room, 4th Floor Barnard Hall, Barnard College, New York, United States