Wisconsin upbringing inspired Rev. Liz Theoharis' walk with the poor

It was hardly the first time the Rev. Liz Theoharis was arrested for acting in accordance with her conscience.

On June 11, just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a controversial Ohio law allowing it to periodically purge its voter rolls, the Wisconsin native and eight other faith leaders were escorted in handcuffs from the courthouse plaza where they had gathered to pray.

It was the latest in a 40-day national campaign of civil disobedience aimed at addressing the concerns of poor people in America. Efforts by states to limit voters’ access to the polls, which disproportionately affect poor people and minorities, are just one of many.

“The same places that have voter suppression have the highest rates of poverty … the least protections for immigrants, the lowest wages and the highest number of people without health care,” said Theoharis, who, with the Rev. William Barber, co-chairs The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.

That campaign has staged nonviolent demonstrations in more than 30 state capitals, including Madison, in recent weeks, addressing issues such as affordable housing, health care, systemic racism, military spending and more. It will culminate in a rally Saturday in Washington, D.C., that is expected to draw more than 1,000 activists from across the country. Barber and Theoharis will deliver a call for action that will include a national voter registration drive.

“In the United States, there are 140 million people who are poor and low-income. There are 32,000 people without health care … 38 million children who are living at or below-poverty,” said Theoharis, who heads the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

“Fifty-three cents of every discretionary dollar is going to the military and only 15 cents goes to poverty,” she said. “And we have fewer voting rights today than we had 50 years ago, despite people fighting and dying to win those rights.”

The national movement is the resurrection of the Poor People’s Campaign launched by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the year before his murder in 1968. Then, like now, the goal was to bring together poor blacks and whites who would advocate for themselves, alongside allies who see their well-being as a moral imperative. In King's day, the priorities were not much different: jobs, a guaranteed annual wage and decent, affordable housing.

Much of the media focus has been on Barber, a civil rights activist and president of the North Carolina NAACP who has been called “the strongest contender for King’s mantle.” But Theoharis comes with her own religious and social-justice bona fides. Born into an activist family, she is a New Testament scholar and author of the 2017 book “Always With Us? What Jesus Really Said About the Poor.” And she has been organizing low-income and homeless people since her undergraduate days in Philadelphia in the 1990s.

“Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is the real deal. … I would not have anyone else as a partner in this work,” said Barber, who wrote the forward in her book and has crisscrossed the country with her as they immersed themselves in the lives of poor people and training activists as part of the campaign.

“She has incredible energy and drive and … a heart as big as an ocean,” he said. “And she moves in the community with a kind of grace and ease that lets you know there is nothing phony about it.”

Theoharis traces her activism to her family and upbringing on Milwaukee’s North Shore.

Her mother, Nancy Theoharis, was in those days a full-time activist — the work rooted in her Presbyterian faith — and deeply engaged in interfaith dialogue. Her father, retired Marquette history professor Athan Theoharis, is considered a foremost authority on the FBI, including its domestic surveillance programs.

“I was going to protests at the age of three. I was a deacon in the church by the age of 16,” said Theoharis, whose family attended North Shore Presbyterian Church in Shorewood. “I was raised to see that my faith must be linked to practicing social justice.”

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Her siblings, too, were “huge influences,” she said. Her sister, Jeanne, is a distinguished professor of history at Brooklyn College and author of the award-winning biography, “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.” Her brother, George, is an education professor at Syracuse University who focuses on equity and justice in school leadership.

"It's in her blood," said Marcus White, vice president of civic engagement for the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, who met Theoharis through her mother when he staffed and later led the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee.

He was moved particularly by her work as a young organizer with the Kensington Welfare Rights Union in Philadelphia.

"Here is this young person who grew up with a lot of opportunity, choosing in her young adult life to immerse herself in a very low-income neighborhood of Philadelphia, working closely alongside families that were struggling in poverty," he said.

For Theoharis, that work, much like the mission in the Poor People’s Campaign, is rooted in the lessons of her childhood.

“I learned very early from my mom that what our society needs is change, not charity. While she was always very supportive of food drives and soup kitchens … she always made us see that we should question why people are hungry in the first place,” she said.

“And I learned from my father that if we are going to be successful in building a social movement, then we need knowledge and power — the power of people coming together, and the knowledge of our history, of our Constitution, our sacred traditions and of the movement when people have taken on the wrongs of society and righted them.”

Central to the movement, she said, is opening people's eyes to the depth of poverty in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Theoharis references places like Lowndes County, Alabama, where human waste is pumped into yards because of inadequate sewer systems, and Grays Harbor, Washington, where many hundreds of people in a town of 16,000 are homeless, most of them white millennials unable to find work since the timber industry collapsed there.

Also crucial, she said, is helping them understand the causes and racial dynamics of poverty and how to connect the dots between systemic racism and systemic poverty.

Historically, these issues have pitted African-Americans against whites. U.S. poverty has become so "racialized," according to Barber, that many don't realize that the majority of Americans who are poor are white.

"If we are not able to organize ... we will continue to be pitted against each other, and everybody will have a worse standard of living," Theoharis said.

The day she was arrested outside the Supreme Court, Theoharis and Barber had come with about 90 others to protest and pray about the Ohio decision and others rulings handed down by the court. Theoharis, armed with an American flag and a megaphone, led a small group onto the plaza to pray, in violation of federal laws against assembling there. 

After their arrest, they were stripped of their clerical garb, according to Theoharis, and spent much of the next 27 hours in handcuffs and leg shackles. They slept on metal cots in roach-infested jail cells, a poignant reminder, she said, of why they have taken on this work.

"Those are the conditions in the Philadelphia jail, in the New York City jail, that so many people face every day."

The defendants also were required to surrender their passports. Theoharis will pick hers up Friday. She is leaving next week for Geneva, where the United Nations' special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights is scheduled to deliver a scathing report on poverty in the United States. 

It could not be more timely, she said, as the Poor People's Campaign prepares to embark on the the next phase of political action.

"This is a powerful movement. And it's starting to grow at the same time the world community, the court of world opinion, is paying attention to poverty in this country.