Human beings are not trash, and the system that enables humans to imagine each other as such needs to end. Every day across the US, 66 million poor white people pay the price for failing whiteness. In this sweeping debut, activist and chaplain Cedar Monroe writes indelibly about and for poor white people: about unlearning the American dream, untangling from white supremacy, and working for liberation alongside other poor folks. Monroe introduces us to people who are poor and unhoused in a small town in Washington, who eke out a living on land that once provided timber for the nation. On the banks of the Chehalis River, we meet residents of the largest homeless encampment in the country, who face sweeps and evictions and are targeted by vigilantes before bringing their case to federal court. We watch a community grapple with desperation, government neglect, and its own racism. From visits to jails, flophouses, tent cities, and on trips to hospitals and funeral homes, we see leaders forging connections between their people and the global movement to end poverty. With trenchant insight born of liberation theology, radical politics, and an even more radical hope, Monroe introduces us to people hammering out survival strategies and hope in the abandoned zones of empire. Capitalism and colonialism have stolen land from Indigenous people, forced workers into dangerous jobs, and then left them to die when their labor was no longer needed. But what would happen if poor white folks rejected the empty promises of white supremacy and embraced solidarity with other poor people? What if they joined the resistance to the system that is, slowly or quickly, killing us all? Trash asks us to see anew the peril in which poor white people live and the choices we all must make.
Cedar Monroe has worked for over a decade as an activist and interfaith chaplain to people experiencing homelessness, incarceration, and addiction. Raised in a poor white rural community, Monroe has focused their work on understanding those communities, combating the effects of white nationalism, and cross-racial organizing for change. Monroe has an MDiv from Episcopal Divinity School and has been an Episcopal Church Foundation fellow. Monroe has been featured in several documentaries, including We Cried Power and America Will Be, and in articles in the Associated Press and the Seattle Times. They live with their wife in the Pacific Northwest. Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, alongside Bishop William J. Barber II, and she is the director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary. She has been named by Politico as one of 50 "thinkers, doers and visionaries whose ideas are driving politics," by Sojourners as one of 11 Women Shaping the Church, and by the Center for American Progress as one of 15 Faith Leaders to Watch. Her work has been published in Boston Review, The Christian Century, CNN, The Guardian, Religion News Service, Sojourners, Time magazine, and others. She is the author of Always with Us? and coauthor of Revive Us Again. Theoharis is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and teaches at Union Theological Seminary. She and her family live in New York City.
INTRODUCTION PART I: ORIGINS CHAPTER 1: CANARIES IN A COAL MINE CHAPTER 2: POOR WHITE TRASH CHAPTER 3: THE FAMILY CURSE CHAPTER 4: NAMING MY STORY CHAPTER 5: CLASS WAR IN GRADUATE SCHOOL CHAPTER 6: THE BEGINNING PART II: SURVIVAL CHAPTER 7: THE RIVER CHAPTER 8: "THE AMERICAN DREAM" AND ITS SIGNS CHAPTER 9: BAPTISM ON THE EDGE OF LOSS CHAPTER 10: CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARES CHAPTER 11: THE THEATRICS OF TERROR CHAPTER 12: ON THE RUN CHAPTER 13: THE VALUE OF PUNISHMENT PART III: DEATH CHAPTER 14: DEATH ON THE RIVER CHAPTER 15: SHAKER FUNERAL CHAPTER 16: HOSPITAL VISITS CHAPTER 17: KNEELING IN CHAINS CHAPTER 18: SEEKING REDEMPTION PART IV: RESISTANCE CHAPTER 19: A RAINBOW COALITION CHAPTER 20: A POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN, THEN AND NOW CHAPTER 21: FACING OFF WITH VIGILANTES CHAPTER 22: PROJECTS OF SURVIVAL, ABERDEEN STYLE CHAPTER 23: RAISING THE FLAG CHAPTER 24: HEALING IS REVOLUTIONARY CHAPTER 25: MUSTARD SEED MOVEMENT CHAPTER 26: AN ODE TO JOY PART V: BUILDING CHAPTER 27: ANNIVERSARY OF THE BLACK PANTHERS CHAPTER 28: WHITE TRASH IN D.C. CHAPTER 29: THE HALLS OF CONGRESS CHAPTER 30: TRESPASS FIRST DEGREE CHAPTER 31: #RIVERGANG4LIFE CHAPTER 32: THE UPRISING MEETS ABERDEEN CHAPTER 33: ORGANIZING THE FUTURE CHAPTER 34: WHEN WE BOUGHT THE FARM CONCLUSION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES
