Marianne Williamson Talks About Continuing Her Political Work
Interview by Joaquin Romero
This interview was originally published by our partner Media For Us.
We spoke to author, activist, and former presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson, about her personal vision for building a more just America for future generations, the difficulties progressives face when advocating for transformative change, and the political work she’s been doing since her campaign ended. In the months following her bid for the White House, Williamson has endorsed and collaborated with a slate of progressive candidates throughout the country, and in August took part in the People’s Convention, an event organized by the Movement for a People’s Party, a grassroots organization working to build a third party in the United States. Williamson is the author of 13 books, including her most recent, A Politics of Love: A Handbook for a New American Revolution (2019).
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Media for Us: Tell me about your campaign for president. You were an unorthodox candidate running a campaign with much different priorities than people are used to. Can you describe the experience of your campaign as well as your personal politics?
Marianne Williamson: My campaign was certainly outside the box, but we’re living in a time when the air inside the box is toxic. I think the only place to be right now is outside the box. There is a biblical saying that you can’t put new wine in old bottles; our political establishment is an inadequate conduit for the energies trying to emerge on the planet right now. Both parties have been corrupted in ways that make it increasingly difficult for them to stand for new, regenerative, and sustainable plans for the future.
I grew up at a time when the Democratic party was a platform for our highest philosophical aspirations within the political sphere. It was a conduit for the most progressive ideas. But today there’s a struggle between a corporatist elite within the party, and progressives who would traditionally have found a home there as well. The corporatists have the money, of course, and the struggle between the two is playing out as we speak.
When money has more power than democratic principles, that’s corruption. As soon as corporate money began to wield such undue influence on our political system, it was inevitable that money would take precedence over the most humanitarian policies. That’s why we need a fundamental shift from an economic to a humanitarian bottom line, from making an increase in short term corporate profits our guiding principle, to making an increase in the ability of human beings to survive and thrive our guiding principle. That shouldn’t be considered radical, by the way; it should be considered sane.
The 21st century mindset is different from the 20th century mindset, just as the 20th century mindset was different from the 19th. Our political establishment addresses 21st century problems with a 20th century mindset. It addresses symptoms but not root cause, particularly because looking at root cause too often involves looking at the sources that fund that system. At best — and this is often true of the Democratic party — they address people’s suffering on the periphery, yet still refuse to challenge the underlying forces that make all the suffering inevitable. The Republicans don’t even try.
Many think my campaign was unorthodox, but it was only unorthodox compared to an orthodoxy that’s failing us. I was having a conversation that's the conversation people are having today. Name one area of our civilization where people aren’t reaching for a more holistic, whole-person view of things in order to increase creativity and efficacy. Why should politics be any different? My conversation — reparations, proactively waging peace, front ending resources toward children, etc — that shouldn’t be seen as weird; I think theirs should be seen as weird! It speaks to a reality that isn’t even the reality of the times in which we live. And that makes it increasingly dangerous, given that the imperatives for survival today are radically different than they were forty years ago.
There was a clear desire to get me off the debate stage, as my conversation wasn't in alignment with the prescribed language and messaging of the democratic establishment. They succeeded, of course, because the political-media-industrial complex works in sync. But I sense that a lot of fairy dust has now fallen from people’s eyes; I wasn’t some Wacko-Essential-Oils-Crystal-Orb-Lady. I’m not now and I never was. Their smear was to make me appear silly — and it worked, of course — but they didn’t do it because they thought I wasn’t serious. They actually did it because they sensed how serious I am.
MFU: And you have embraced a new movement now. You participated in the People’s Convention this past week alongside Cornel West, Nina Turner and lots of activists of their political leaning. What attracted you to that movement?
MW: People talk about the corporate two-party duopoly, but the most important thing is that together the Democrats and Republicans form a monopoly on ideas. They take up all the oxygen, they control the space so much that other ideas can hardly be heard, much less gain any serious political power.
There needs to be a platform — an adequate, respected and respectable platform — for genuinely progressive politics. The Democratic party has been seeking to purge itself of seriously progressive voices, and when it cannot purge those voices, to marginalize or minimize them. So the party is going to have to make a decision: is it going to allow itself to be home to what I believe are millions and millions and millions of people, particularly young people, who are moving in a more progressive direction? Or is it going to continue to keep obstructing those forces? I want to help amplify those voices, whether within the party or in another one.
As someone who grew up with a lot of emotional attachment to the Democratic party, I would personally prefer to dwell within its ranks. But I’ve seen too much and experienced too much to kid myself about any of that now. It’s starting to feel like a relationship with an abusive boyfriend, and at some point you simply face the fact that it’s not going to change.
We’ll see what happens after this election. The larger choice is not one that I will make, it's a choice that the Democratic party will make. It’s not about me, it’s about millions and millions and millions of people who if they do not find themselves at home within the Democratic party will be looking elsewhere.
Third parties have played an important role in American history. Abolition emerged from the abolitionist party, women’s suffrage emerged from the women’s party, social security emerged from the socialist party. But political parties were not mentioned in the constitution, and George Washington warned us against them. Parties shouldn’t matter; principles are what should matter. I’m not tied to party politics, I’m tied to a message, and to the emergence of a politics that will enable this country to navigate a very difficult time and emerge on the other side of it renewed.
MFU: Right there you used the same phrasing from your speech at the MPP convention, and you’re speaking a bit about the United States’ history, about its ability to enact large-scale structural change in a way that doesn’t involve that monopoly on ideas. Do you think we have a responsibility as a country, because of our history, to be pushing for that rather than an incrementalist view of progress?
MW: The age of incrementalism needs to end now. It’s too late for that; we need fundamental change. We have strayed too far from our ethical and democratic center. Our deviation from the principles on which we purport to stand is now so vast, so radical, that nothing short of fundamental course correction is an adequate response to the challenges of our time. In speaking of incrementalism, Martin Luther King said that the status quo will always co-opt incremental change for its purposes. At other times in our history generations have stood for huge, fundamental change, and it’s time for us to do the same.
The American people over the last few decades have been trained to ask for too little. We've been propagandized to believe that the corporatist reality which now dominates our system, that's so entrenched within the status quo, is somehow an unshakable and permanent fixture that we have no right to question. But it’s not! That’s the value of being older. I remember a time when people knew to at least try to push back, and had reason to believe that electoral politics was a channel for doing that.
Many people don’t even remember a time when it was any different, when the profits of health insurance companies and Big Pharma and Big Oil and gun manufactures and Big Ag and the military industrial complex didn’t automatically take precedence over the ability of people and planet to survive and thrive. But I remember a time when it was different, when what was considered radical was the corporate dominance that now controls our government and poisons our society. Too many generations have now grown up not having seen anything else, but they know injustice when they see it. In truth, pushing back against capitalist overreach is the most traditionally American thing in the world. It’s why we have labor unions, child labor laws, anti-trust laws and so forth. We shouldn’t be less fierce than other generations in standing up for the promises of democracy. Lincoln said the Civil War was fought so that “government of the people, by the people and for the people will not perish from the earth.” Well, it’s perishing now. We’ve become a “government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations.” What could be more patriotic than to try to fix that?
MFU: Over the past few months you released a slate of candidate endorsements; they included Jamaal Bowman and Paula Jean Swearengin, and a number from my state of California — Shahid Buttar, David Kim and Liam O’mara. What attracted you to these candidates across the country, and what was your reason for putting your name behind a slate of candidates?
MW: When I quit my campaign, I wasn’t quitting my commitment to political change. The candidates you just mentioned and the others that I endorsed, stand for the policies and the worldview that I believe in - whether it has to do with Medicare for All, cancellation of college debt, free college — in other words, a progressive vision for the country. A vision that helps people soar instead of condemning them to a life of chronic economic anxiety and near economic serfdom. I am aware, very aware, of how many millions of dollars the corporatist wing of the Democratic party uses to support candidates who do not stand for those things.
So if in any small way I can help support progressive candidates — people who usually don’t have anywhere near the financial resources of corporatist candidates — I want to do whatever I can to do that. And I will continue to.
MFU: A theme of your campaign when you were running for president was trying to ensure that there were opportunities for the next generation to have a prosperous future. Do you see your work with the MPP or your work endorsing these candidates as an extension of that goal?
MW: Imagine if all public policy was geared towards a bottom line of ameliorating human suffering. We would be a radically different society — radically more peaceful and radically more prosperous. Money doesn't come from a bunch of corporate aristocrats dropping crumbs from their table in the form of job creation. That’s a trickle-down economic delusion, and after forty years is clear for all to see that it hasn't lifted all boats — it has left millions of people without even a life vest. It has caused a massive transfer of power into the hands of a tiny few, and created the greatest wealth inequality in almost a hundred years. It has increased the good of a few at the expense of the suffering of way too many.
When we talk about youth who are struggling, that’s why they are struggling. Resources that should be front-ended towards the young are now only front-ended towards the very rich, and most young people aren’t rich yet.
What frustrates me is how many of these kids just want to get into the game, and we make it hard for them! How insane is that? How can you be a capitalist if you don’t have any capital? How can you blame young people for saying; “What the hell has global capitalism ever done for me?” How can you blame them for saying; “What should I be afraid of in socialism, the free college or the free healthcare?”
And I don’t say this as someone who’s anti-capitalist, because I’m not. I believe that the healthiest society has elements of capitalism and socialism as well. But it’s a virulent strain of capitalism that came into ascendance in the 1980s, with the idea that any regulation whatsoever should be removed in favor of short-term corporate profitability. All the corporation theoretically owed was fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders, at the expense of any other stakeholders. Workers were no longer considered stakeholders, the environment was no longer considered a stakeholder, the community was no longer considered a stakeholder, the future was no longer considered a stakeholder. And it goes without saying - our democracy was no longer considered a stakeholder. As the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”
Interestingly enough, from a historical perspective, I think it’s interesting to note that Milton Friedman, who was the main articulator of the trickle-down economic theory, himself said that trickle-down economics would not work without a universal basic income. But of course the people who wanted to promulgate the theory left that part out. And this sociopathic economic theory, so devoid of any ethical or moral responsibility to people or planet, has left tens of millions of people without any realistic hope of ever getting in the Club. The problem in America isn’t that some people can create wealth; the problem is that not enough people ever get a chance to. Make no mistake; if you’re in the Club in the United States, there’s really no better place to be. But not enough people can get into the Club today. And that goes against everything this country is supposed to stand for. We’ve taken the idea that God has given everyone the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and turned it into a cruel joke for millions and millions of people.
This is what I used to say to young people on my campaign trail: “I don’t want you to even have to worry about healthcare, I don’t want you to even have to worry about how you’re going to get a higher education, I don’t want you to even have to worry about paying off college loans.
But there’s a quid pro quo here. I’m not suggesting this society should totally invest in you, and that’s the end of the story. Nope — for that, you will owe your society something. I want you to be the best man or woman that you can be. I want you to be the most creative, the most productive, the most amazing version of yourself. I want you to self-actualize. I want you to be a good lover, good friend, good husband or wife, a good father or mother, and good citizen.” That should be the societal exchange. That should be the social agreement; that our society invests in our people so they can spread their wings and soar.
That’s where money comes from: from the creativity and productivity of the American people. People want to be creative and productive, but too often we squelch their dreams rather than supporting them in making them manifest! I believe in an unlimited God-given potential within every person, and actualizing that is the key to peace, prosperity, and a survivable, thriving world.
I’ve thought a lot about how I’ve achieved whatever success I’ve had in my life, and I’ve identified three main factors: 1) someone helped me, 2) someone helped me, and 3) someone helped me. Where did we get this mean-spirited idea that it’s wrong to help people? The corporatist class has the audacity to argue that to help people disincentivizes them; but meanwhile, they’re certainly helping themselves to the resources of this country. I think not helping people is what debilitates them. Martin Luther King used to say “If they give it to poor people they call it a handout, if they give it to rich people they call it a subsidy”. Helping people thrive is what ultimately aids your economy. It liberates people to become everything they want to be. When people aren’t so stressed, when people aren’t so tense, when people aren’t so anxious, they’re more likely to be happy at work, to be happy employers, happy employees, and to feel they’re involved in something creative. That is what people most deeply want, and that’s what would heal our society.
When you constantly squeeze people…when you relegate the majority of people, and in this case the vast majority of young people, to living at survival or just above, how can people realistically be expected to become their creative best? When I was young, none of us had any money, but it wasn’t so hard to live without it at that time. And it wasn’t so expensive to get an education! We could still see all sorts of ways that we could get into the game. But I see people in their twenties today who are already living such lives of tension and anxiety simply trying to survive, seeing door after door after door closed in their face that might give them the opportunity to get into a game that they would love nothing more than to be able to play. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to be in my twenties with tens of thousands of dollars in college loan debt. It’s immoral. It’s economically unjust for that to be the case in the richest country in the world. And none of that happened accidentally, by the way. It was the result of bad public policy, and those policies have to change.
MFU: I want to discuss the moment we are all living through. It seems like what we’re all going through, with the pandemic, and with the racism and racist police violence that has sparked a massive uprising in the wake of George Floyd’s death, it seems like we are living in the antithesis of that ideal that you just expressed, a place where we can all thrive. What would you say is our way of getting through this extraordinary moment?
MW: To me, the highest priority right now is to deny Donald Trump a second term. I completely reject the notion of a moral equivalency between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. I’ll take a corporatist tied to the past before a fascist any day. Then immediately upon the achievement of that goal, immediately, we must take a strong stand for the enlightened values and policies that will turn this country around.
When I ran for president, reparations for slavery was a pillar of my campaign. Why? Because whether you’re an individual or a collection of individuals, you’re not moving forward until you clean up the past. Racial injustice today is the legacy of an ancient wrong we’ve not yet completely expunged. After 2 ½ centuries of slavery followed by another hundred years of institutional violence toward Black people, we were on our way to real healing with the successes of the Civil Rights movement: the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. America abolished slavery, then dismantled segregation, but we never made it to the part of making economic restitution for the wrongs of the past, specifically for the economic gap between blacks and whites that has never been closed. Between the assassination of MLK and Nixon’s policy of “benign neglect,” the struggle for racial justice became short-circuited. In many ways over the last few years we’ve even started slipping backwards, with mass incarceration, racial disparity in criminal sentencing and so forth. We need to atone, and we need to make amends. Nothing less than that will free us from the horrible trajectory on which we find ourselves.
That is an example by the way of a more holistic politics: the understanding that wounds must be addressed at their deepest, causal level. The difference between “race-based policies” and “reparations,” for instance, is that only reparations carry moral authority. They acknowledge a wrong that has been done, a debt that has accrued, and the willingness on the part of a people to pay it. That addresses more than simply a political and economic level of pain; it addresses a psychological, emotional and spiritual wounding that has been embedded in people’s cells for centuries.
But none of these things will happen until first we defeat the fascist in the white house. That has to be our top priority. None of us should forget: the chaos we have now is Donald Trump to some extent held back. If he wins again, there will be nothing holding him back. And that should scare us all.
