It’s not every day that we have a candidate for President whose career is built on messages of healing, authenticity, inclusion and transparency. More than ever, we need these leading life principles to change the face of politics especially considering today’s social and political climate. Often it’s asked, “who have we become as a nation?” but one candidate envisions and speaks authoritatively on “who we can become as a nation.”
Marianne Williamson comes wrapped as a soft-spoken, yet passionate speaker and leader, entrepreneur, political activist and bestselling author. She has touched the lives of millions in her thirty-plus years as a spiritual leader on the world’s stage. She’s made several television appearances with her own personal stories of growth, healing and redemption. She’s a longtime participant in the political sphere and has experience as a candidate—she finished fourth in a 2014 California congressional primary.
I still remember watching Marianne Williamson on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and I have been inspired by her work for years. Still, like many others, I had no idea that she’d announced her candidacy for president in January. When I did learn of her candidacy in March, I felt compelled to speak with her, so I placed a few calls to friends and the rest is herstory. Our conversation helped me understand the significance of her candidacy, and what it means for the 2020 race.
In her 1997 book, Healing the Soul of America, she focuses heavily on racial atonement and reparations—a topic that she hasn’t shied away from since the beginning of the campaign. Instead, Marianne Williamson is unapologetically asserting that the basis of our nation’s healing comes by acknowledging our past—through reparations for descendants of Africans brought to the United States as slaves.
So here we are on a brisk day welcoming Spring—a time of love, rebirth and renewal. Marianne Williamson and I are in conversation as she’s in transit from one city to the next campaigning. She makes ample time to talk to me. We are two activists with two different backgrounds, but similar world views. We are both thoughtful Cancerians who believe we can change the world with our empathetic nature. We both have a deep concern for the state of American politics, an infinite love for our daughters, and a shared passion for issues dear to our hearts, such as economic justice, alleviating childhood poverty, and ensuring every child receives a quality education.
Marianne, as she prefers I call her, knows her message is unique and she is determined to ensure it is heard by the masses. However, she’s not just content to elevate the national conversation … Marianne wants to win!
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KIMM LETT: What inspired you to make reparations a part of the conversation? And what are your thoughts now that the topic has become a common discussion among other candidates in the 2020 primary?
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON: I’ve been interested in (reparations) for many years, and I don’t come at it from a perspective that is focused on race specifically, so much as a focus on spiritual and moral healing. A person cannot heal if we don’t admit our character defects and take a brutally honest look at ourselves … as they say in 12-step recovery programs, “taking a fearless moral inventory.” That is as true of a nation as it is an individual, because that’s all a nation is, a group of individuals. So the same psychological healing and moral principles that prevails with an individual journey, prevail within a nation’s journey.
It’s not just about the money, but a debt owed … it is necessary.
My campaign is based on the notion that America needs a moral and spiritual awakening. You can’t have that without taking an honest look at the places where you’re not who you say you are. Racism is one of America’s original character defects. I don’t believe the average American is a racist, but I do believe the average American is deeply undereducated about the history of race in America, particularly since the Civil War.
(Simply) race-based policies do not do the job, because it's a concept that lacks moral force. It leaves open the question of whose fault it is that there is a gap to begin with. Reparations carry moral and spiritual force because there is an inherent mea culpa there. There’s an inherent admission that there’s a debt to be paid. There’s an inherent atonement and effort to make amends. I have faith in the American people, and one of the problems I have with so much (of) modern politics is that it does not speak to the noble (or) to the good in people.
I believe in a politics that calls people beyond self-interest—because it is only when we are concerned with more than just ourselves that we rise to that level of understanding and behavior (where) all of us become ultimately served.
KIMM: We often talk about the wage gap as it relates to gender—but what about the wage gap when race and ethnicity is a factor—when Black and Hispanic women are often paid less than white women? How will you address those injustices?
MARIANNE: Obviously, I believe it is an injustice and unethical, and should be corrected in whatever way possible.
I don’t feel, with this campaign, that I’m speaking to the black or the white, or the gay or the straight, or the Jew or the Christian or the Muslim—I’m speaking to the American in people. It is the basic issues of justice. It is the basic issues of fairness, the basic issues of ethics, the basic issues of compassion, the basic issues of love—not as they apply to any one particular group. Nobody has a monopoly on suffering, and no group has a monopoly on values. When we concern ourselves with the notion of justice, that’s when I believe our fervor has power.
KIMM: What would you say to those who may be critical of that statement, and say that although there’s no “monopoly” on suffering, studies show that disparities exist in some communities much more than others, right here in our country?
MARIANNE: Well, I certainly agree with that, and I think the fact that I’m taking such a fundamental stance on reparations is an example—I clearly recognize this. I believe we need more than incremental changes and addressing the problem a little bit here and there. We need huge, strategized acts of doing the right thing. We need fundamental repair and that’s why for me it means paying reparations.
I want to go back a little bit if I may, because I don’t want to say anything that implies that I don’t recognize specific, systemic examples of injustice based on color or sex. I don’t want to imply that I wouldn’t address them to the best of my abilities, wielding the full power of the presidency to effectuate change. I’m simply saying that I will do that because, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
KIMM: You are also vocal on childhood poverty, and its relationship to childhood trauma. Where do you draw inspiration?
MARIANNE: Marian Wright Edelman and the Children’s Defense Fund has been a great shining light and force in this era, and of course, the conceptualization of the cradle to prison pipeline was an eye-opener. When we invest in education, we invest in the betterment of the entire society.
To me this is a matter of moral impetus. We have millions of American children in the United States who live in chronic trauma. We have millions of American children who go to school everyday in classrooms that don’t have adequate school supplies to teach a child to read. If a child cannot read by the age of eight, their chances of high school graduation drastically decrease (while) their chances of incarceration drastically increase.
Millions of these children live in what’s called our “domestic war zones,” where psychologists say that the PTSD that these children experience daily is no less severe than the PTSD of a returning veteran from Afghanistan or Iraq.
Yet we are simply normalizing the despair of these children. We should be rescuing them. I believe there should be a cabinet-level U.S. Department of Children and Youth. I would call for a massive realignment of investment in the direction of children. Every school, every library, every community, should be a place where learning, nature, the arts and all forms of sustainable living are celebrated and fostered.
We have so much lost gold with small children that goes unmanned within the brain of every child in America. If you want to see the potential energy, the potential genius, the potential economic vibrancy, the potential peace, and the potential entrepreneurial spirit of America—you can look into the kindergarten of every American elementary school in any neighborhood.
However, due to the way most schools are funded—based on property taxes, and we’re the only country that does that—children in poorer neighborhoods get less quality education. So, if we really want to take care of our economy ten years from now, we would take much better care of our children today.
KIMM: How will your background as an activist inform your presidency?
MARIANNE: Political activism, to me, has simply meant part of what it means to be a responsible citizen. I think a lot of people have awakened now—this (Donald Trump) presidency has awakened millions of people to their responsibility, and to their love for a democracy that perhaps they’d taken for granted.
The issue, though, is not only do we have to awaken for this next election, we have to awaken and remain awakened. Democracy does not just carry rights, it also carries responsibilities. And to me, political activism is a responsibility of a well-lived and conscious life. Activism is a muscle, and in me—it is well-honed. And, there’s no point in being president unless you plan to wield the power that it gives you to do good—particularly at a time like this:
Genuinely restore, genuinely repair and genuinely renew this country.
KIMM: Running as one of the [historic] six women candidates, as an “outsider,” and I’m thinking about your famous and powerful quote that inspires me and so many others “Our Deepest Fear...” I am curious: Do you experience impostor syndrome?
MARIANNE: The establishment of American democracy was radical 200 years ago, and it’s radical today. It is radical to declare the equality of all souls—and that is not only a political conviction, it is a spiritual conviction. When you are grounded in that as a political and spiritual conviction, you not only recognize the equality of others (but) that others have no more and no less right than you do to speak your truth.
And the elitism of what is basically an aristocratic perspective which some people claim to be entitled—whether it’s more entitled to the land, more entitled to wealth, more entitled to opportunity, more entitled to education, more entitled to healthcare, or more entitled to a voice that is considered “legitimate”—is something I challenge, because I find it undemocratic, (and) I find it un-American. It is contrary to my spiritual convictions.
KIMM: Thank you, Marianne.
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In the 2020 race and beyond, we must ask what it means to only include career politicians who are deemed viable for elected office by other career politicians. It is dangerous to our professed democracy, and makes inclusion all but impossible. Without challenges and challengers to what has always been, we’d never have seen the historic firsts 2018 brought in by Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim women to ever be elected to Congress, or Reps. Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids, the first Native American women to do the same. We wouldn’t have watched Ayanna Pressley become the first Black woman to represent Massachusetts in the House, and we certainly wouldn’t have seen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez win a primary against a ten-term congressman.
In a country that historically has disenfranchised just about everyone who wasn’t wealthy, white and male, how does a candidate thrive when their message, values and presence challenge the status quo?
Along the way to unseating longtime Rep. Michael Capuano. Massachusetts’ first Black woman congresswoman, Ayanna Pressley, quickly learned how it feels to run in the Democratic primaries as an “outsider.” She recently took to social media and criticized a new Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) rule that will make challenging the seats of incumbents more difficult than it already is, by penalizing pollsters, strategists and campaign vendors.
The entire thread is worth reading, but essentially, Pressley believes that the DCCC’s new rules slam the door on future campaigns like hers, making it harder for young candidates and activists to advance in the party—particularly women and people of color.
And I agree: There shouldn’t be gatekeepers in the democratic process. That never works well for progress, for women, and definitely not for Black or brown candidates. Institutionalized barriers exist in our society, often creating fear and a sense that we aren’t deserving to have a seat at the table allowing us to devalue our truth, experience and accomplishments.
But if Donald Trump, with his division-sowing platform of white supremacy, taught us that anyone can become president, what can Marianne Williamson teach us when she speaks to the need for a moral and spiritual awakening as she aims to bring healing to our country?
Marianne Williamson believes that she deserves to be a candidate just as much as anyone else … and I couldn’t agree more. Her message and presence are important, relatable and unique. Her voice or candidacy shouldn’t immediately be minimalized, dismissed or diminished; she, like the other candidates, deserves to be heard by the masses, allowing them to decide where to place their vote.
Marianne Williamson’s Presidential Town Hall will air Sunday, April 14th, at 6:00p.m. EST, on CNN.