Finding Light Through the Darkness

I recently had a thoughtful conversation with Minerva Delgado on Voices to End Hunger, a podcast hosted by the Alliance to End Hunger. We discussed the deep cuts to anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs, as well as the broader attacks on civil rights and immigrants driven by the Trump administration. But we also talked about my reasons for hope.

As I said in our conversation, “The MAGA movement is not going to go away for a long time. I hope we can restrain it, defeat it at the polls, and over time moderate the views of the millions of Americans who support it.”

It is indeed a dark time for both politics and poverty, which is precisely why advocacy and collective action continue to matter—and why we need a committed group of poverty abolitionists to take up this cause. Engagement, rather than discouragement, remains the path back to the dramatic progress against poverty we have seen in recent decades.

Many of the themes we touched on—the continuing importance of legislative advocacy, the importance of active and generous participation in elections, and needed reforms in American religion—are explored more fully in my forthcoming book, Poverty Abolitionists: Faith, Activism, and Hope in Difficult Times, which will hit bookstores in May of 2026. The book is now available for pre-order through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bloomsbury.

Listen my conversation with Minerva on YouTube, Voices to End Hunger, or your favorite podcast feed.