Dartmouth Events

Lecture Description:
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival builds on the legacy of Dr. King and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign to organize the poor and dispossessed to confront the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, militarism, environmental devastation and the nation’s distorted moral narrative. Over the summer of 2018, the Campaign launched an unprecedented wave of non-violent civil disobedience across the country. Now organizers in over forty states are at the beginning of a massive organizing drive of the poor to build power and transformative change.

In this event, Rev. Liz Theoharis, the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign alongside Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, will talk about the work of the Campaign and its vision going forward. 

Speaker Bio:
The 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 and most expansive wave of nonviolent civil disobedience in US history. She is the Director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary.

She has spent over 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 National Union of the Homeless and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union.

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 Time Magazine, The Guardian, Sojourners, The Nation, The Christian Century, and others. In 2018, she gave “Building a Moral Movement” TEDtalk at TEDWomen. She was named one of the Politico 50 of “thinkers, doers and visionaries whose ideas are driving politics”, one of 11 Women Shaping the Church by Sojourners, the Women of Spirit recipient from the Presbyterian Church (USA), Selma “Bridge” Award recipient in 2018.

Liz is the author of Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor (Eerdmans, 2017). She is co-author of Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing (Beacon, 2018). Liz is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and teaches at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Moderator Bio:
Vaughn A. Booker received his A.B. in Religion from Dartmouth (’07), his M.Div. from Harvard, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Religion from Princeton, with a Certificate in African American Studies.