( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was a moment somewhat like this, 30 years ago, that turned me into a biblical scholar. In the lead-up to the passage of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, political and religious leaders quoted scripture to justify shutting down food programs and kicking mothers and their babies off public assistance. Those […]
Whose Country is this, Anyway: The Struggle to Survive Trump
The Struggle to Thrive and Not Just Barely Survive in Trump’s America By Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Most days, in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt, the old sanctuary at Christ Lutheran Church sits empty. Decades ago, it was home to a congregation of 3,000 people. By the late 1990s, […]
Real Christianity vs. White “Christian” Nationalist Trump on the Treatment of the Poor
( Tomdispatch.com ) – “There has almost always been an outright hostility that is shown towards people of the Christian faith,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on a podcast recently. He was talking with Tony Perkins, a former Louisiana lawmaker and president of the Family Research Council, about freedom of religion and the actions of […]
Climate Change and the Missing War on Poverty
( Tomdispatch.com) – It was William Shakespeare who, in Troilus and Cressida, wrote, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” And yet, in the polarized news cycle since Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States and the hurricanes have kept coming, we’ve heard a tale not of shared humanity, but of ruin, discord, […]
The Failing Battle for Healthcare in the Dis-United States
( Tomdispatch.com ) – The slang definition of “unwinding” means “to chill.” Other definitions include: to relax, disentangle, undo — all words that, on the surface, appear both passive and peaceful. And yet in Google searches involving such seemingly harmless definitions of decompressing and resting, news articles abound about the end of pandemic-era Medicaid expansion […]
Our World-Historical Turning Point – Kairos – is Now, and Everything Depends on the Youths
( Tomdispatch.com) – “All Americans owe them a debt for — if nothing else — releasing the idealism locked so long inside a nation that has not recently tasted the drama of a social upheaval. And for making us look on the young people of the country with a new respect.” That’s how Howard Zinn […]
How Turning Gaza into a Hellhole is Costing Americans Billions as Child Poverty Spikes at Home
( Tomdispatch.com ) – On September 19, 2001, eight days after 9/11, as the leaders of both parties were already pounding a frenzied drumbeat of war, a diverse group of concerned Americans released a warning about the long-term consequences of a military response. Among them were veteran civil rights activists, faith leaders, and public intellectuals, […]
How America Abandoned our Poor: Confronting the Needless Scourge of Poverty
( Tomdispatch.com ) – On the island of Manhattan, where I live, skyscrapers multiply like metal weeds, a vertical invasion of seemingly unstoppable force. For more than a century, they have risen as symbols of wealth and the promise of progress for a city and a nation. In movies and TV shows, those buildings churn […]
COVID Response opened a New Era of Social Generosity; Why Didn’t we Make it Permanent?
( Tomdispatch.com) – I doubt I ever feel older or more passé than when I’m out in my city — New York — and I still put on a mask before stepping onto a bus, going into the subway, or entering a store. Increasingly, I find myself alone in a world of the unmasked with […]
© 2025 All Rights Reserved