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We are living in a gilded age of poverty amid plenty. In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, 40 million people live below the official poverty line and another 100 million people are one emergency away from economic ruin. But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

In You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take, Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and her co-author, Noam Sandweiss-Back, argue it is possible to abolish poverty. But this won’t happen through the goodwill of the powerful or the charitable actions of well-meaning people alone. It will happen through a mass movement, open to all, and led by the poor themselves.

Weaving together threads of history, theology, political analysis, and more, Theoharis traces her own journey through some of the most significant anti-poverty struggles of the past 30 years. Along the way, she and Sandweiss-Back introduce readers to the unsung heroes leading the movement to end poverty:

• Unhoused people seizing empty homes;
• Mothers on welfare going toe-to-toe with cutthroat politicians;
• Farmworkers taking down slavery rings;
• Backcountry clergy beating back the flames of Christian nationalism;
• Water protectors resisting the poisoning of their communities;
• and other modern-day prophets forging unlikely alliances to pray, sing, and organize their way toward freedom.

As the forces of extremism clamor with increasing fury, this book is an urgent reminder that poor people are not condemned to be subjects of history. Indeed, to reorient our society around the needs of all and reinvigorate the promise of democracy, the poor can and must become the architects of a new America.