The Common Good was proud to present a special discussion with presidential candidate Marianne Williamson as part of the Presidential Candidate series. Ms. Williamson spoke on numerous topics including her agenda which would include a Department of Peace, a focus on childhood education, healthcare, reparations, and the environment.
Ms. Williamson is an author, activist and international spiritual lecturer. Ms. Williamson has authored 14 books including 4 #1 New York Times best sellers. She is the founder of Project Angel Food, a volunteer food delivery program that serves home-bound people with HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses. Ms. Williamson also co-founded the Peace Alliance, a non-profit education and advocacy organization supporting peace-building projects.
Marianne Williamson campaign provides the American people with the option of choosing another way — not just a better version of same old, same old politics, but a genuine pattern disruption that allows for breakthroughs and possibilities that will not otherwise occur. It is for those who want the person sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office to be someone with an expanded sense of what is necessary, as well as what’s possible, in the 21st Century.
Ms. Williamson spoke about working with congress to create a cabinet level – Department of Peace. Ending the scourge of violence in the United States and across the planet requires more than suppressing violence. Lasting peace requires its active and systematized cultivation at every level of government and society. The U.S. Department of Peace will coordinate and spur the efforts we need to make our country and the world a safer place. Nothing short of broad-scale investment and government reorientation can truly turn things around. Both domestically and internationally, she wants to dramatically ramp up the use of proven powers of peace-building, including dialogue, mediation, conflict resolution, economic and social development, restorative justice, public health approaches to violence prevention, trauma-informed systems of care, social and emotional learning in schools, and many others.
Sidney Blumenthal is an acclaimed journalist and author of many books including A Self-Made Man, Wrestling with His Angel and All the Powers of Earth, the first three volumes in his five-volume biography series The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln that the New York Times book review has called “Magisterial…A vividly written, wide-ranging and often surprising account of the president-to-be.” He is the former assistant and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and senior adviser to Hillary Clinton. He has been a national staff reporter for The Washington Post and Washington editor and writer for The New Yorker. His books include the bestselling The Clinton Wars, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, and The Permanent Campaign. He was the executive producer of the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary of 2007.
