You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty

The “poor are harbingers of an existential crisis that implicates all of our struggles and all of our futures,” asserts this powerful cri de coeur from antipoverty activists Theoharis (We Cry Justice) and Sandweiss-Back. The authors argue that the suffering of poor people—whose ranks in the U.S. have swelled to an unprecedented 140 million—is “the most visible sign of a society in dire straits and a warning about the direction in which many more people are hurtling.” Drawing primarily from Theoharis’s more than 30 years of activism, the authors cite examples of successful grassroots antipoverty initiatives, among them a little-remembered episode in 1990 when “multiracial groups of unhoused people rose up from the streets and seized empty, federally owned homes” in eight major cities, including New York and Los Angeles. They also detail how, in 2013, North Carolina’s Forward Together Moral Movement successfully campaigned to force fast-food chains to pay a living wage. Theoharis, who is also a theologian, movingly reflects on how the New Testament passage “The poor you will always have with you” is not a justification of inaction but a paraphrase of a segment of Deuteronomy that calls for an end to the exploitation of the poor. The authors’ firm belief in the possibility of change, from the bottom up, is an inspiration. (Apr.)