Candidate marianne williamson. She talks about her proposal to create a u. S. Department of peace if elected in 2020. From the National Press club, this is an hour. Good afternoon. Welcome to the National Press club. My name is alison and im the washington investigative editor and im the 112th president of the National Press club. Our guest is a candidate for the Democratic National nomination. She has spent half a lifetime as author, activist and faith leader. She has been speaking, writing and writing about spirituality and politics. Author of 14 books, four that reached number one on the New York Times best seller list, including the last one. She has founded several nonprofit organizations, including the Peace Alliance and project angel food, a nonprofit, that has delivered millions of meals to americans since 1989. She joins us here to detail her signature policy proposals. The creation of a department of peace. Please join me in welcome ms. Marianne williamson. [applause] ms. Williamson this is quite a historic building. Its wonderful to have this opportunity to speak to you. As i walking through the hallway, there are great photographs and buttons from the past president ial campaigns and one is a button from the campaign of the comedian named pat paulsen, from back in the 1970s. He was saying during his news campaign, the American People who want a president who is smart, strategic and on their side, to which i say, picky, picky, picky. I thought that was just great. As much as political humor is a long part of the historical landscape all the way back to the beginning, that same landscape has had very serious times and i would say this is one of them. Barack obama is basically the last american president who had the luxury of seeing the world through the lens of 20th century mindset. The 21st century is a different world. And the 20th century was a different mindset since the 19th. The American People are just fine. They are forward thinking. The American People are regenerative. This is part of our national character. The American People get that the world is different in health, education, health and wellness and in every area. The americans are on the move. They know that if something is not working on wednesday, we have to change it before saturday. The problem as i see it is not with the American People. At the same time, when it comes to our political establishment, thats not regenerative or on the move, not forward thinking and very little to do with a 21 century mindset. It is stuck and corrupted quite frankly. It is under the sway of a 20th century mindset. And at this moment and this has been true for decades is infiltrated by the underinfluence of money, corporate money on our Public Policy. Closing that gap between the consciousness of the will of the American People and the way our government operates is the moral and Political Task of our time. Thats whats is supposed to happen in a representative democracy. The whole point is the government is here to represent the will of the people and it is certainly here in advocate for the American People. Nobody here is under the illusion that that is what is happening now. The last 40 years we have been sliding away from a genuine vital democracy that might be called a corporate aristocracy. Big pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas companies, gun manufacturers, et cetera, they wield more power on the functioning of our government than does the concern of the American People. Im here to talk to you about one of the ways and there are many ways in which that that corporate dominance has created tremendous amounts of unnecessary human suffering. And human suffering is what the government should be concerned with, the suffering of the American People, the unnecessary suffering of us and our children and of other people in the world who are impacted by American Foreign policy and that which is ultimately the suffering of people that will occur if we continue to desecrate the planet itself. There is people talk about famous peoples last words. The last words of the famous french scientist louis pasteur, his last words were this. I was wrong. Its not the germ, its the terrain. Now the 20th century is being dominated by a mindset that is a product of physics saw the world as a huge machine. All you did was tweak things on the outside. That 20th century mindset dominates our Politics Today and that is why there is no real transformation that emerges from washington. All that emerges is a treatment of the symptom. Thats what our policy is about and discussions. Our politicians talk to us about changing this or that policy, but the change in policy is disconnected from a recognition of what caused the problem to begin with. The 21st century is integrated. In the 21st century we recognize its not just the germ but the terrain, not just the violence in terms of peoples behavior but its the thoughts and feelings within people that led to the dysfunctional or malfunctional behavior. You can talk about a domestic level and talk about the fact that 100 people are killed by guns every single day. We can talk about the mass shootings. We can talk about all of these horrible statistics regarding gun violence in the United States and we can talk about a change in our gun safety policy, which i support, like most americans, i want universal background checks. I want to outlaw bump stocks and the gun show loopholes and want to bring back the ban on military assault weapons and want to see a change in American Foreign policy wisdom natured by isch which too often owned by this obsession with the perpetration of the military and Industrial Complex and its power. However, those things of themselves are symptoms. We must ask ourselves why are we such a Violent Society . Thats why i want the United States department of peace. And the United States department of peace is very connected also with the United States department of children and youth and i believe my plan nor search for reparations of plans for the reparations of slavery will help address the turbulence that leads to violent behavior in our society, including white nationalism. When you look at what we know now, we know things about the brain of a child they didnt know 50 years ago. We know how much happens before the age of eight. How can you talk about gun violence and talk about violence in our society and not even have a conversation about the violence that is perpetrated by so much of our Public Policy . Our criminal Justice System is in many ways as violent as the Violent Crimes it seeks to prosecute. Our food policy is how many visit is violent in how many toxins are in our air and our how much violence is allowed to be done on the earth. Our educational policies are violent in the sense that if you are withholding a high Quality Public School education from any child, particularly given the fact that when that is withheld, it is due to the fact that the child wasnt lucky enough to live in a rich neighborhood and we have the audacity to base it that is a form of oppression and that is violent. Poverty is violent. For that matter, hunger is violent. This idea that we are going to deal with violence by building more prisons and having tougher gun safety laws, ladies and gentlemen, we have to look in the mirror as an American Society and realize we will be violent until we decide to be nonviolent. All the darkness is absence of light and all that violence is is the absence of peace. Are we willing to declare peace . If we are willing to declare peace, we have to look at the fact that there were 45 million impressions of violence against children last year alone on the internet. If we are interested in dealing with the terrain out of which societal dysfunction and malfunction arises, we need to deal with the fact that 13 million children in america are hungry. 100,000 children in america are homeless. Almost a third of the American People live in conditions that are near poverty. That is violent. That is where the seeds are, ladies and gentlemen. We should see in we should factor in our domestic and International Policies the fact that large groups of desperate people are a National Security risk. When you have large groups of desperate people, dont go acting like you have no idea where all that violence came from, because if people experience violence in accumulated layers of Human Experience over and over again, all that anybody has to do is look in the violent perpetrators that are in american prisons and you will see a high number of them were the victims of violent abuse when they were children. Thats why i want all of the issues we know to actually dismantle violence to brought to the fore, conflict resolution, restorative justice. We need traumainformed education. We need Community Wraparound services, Mental Health services, not only for our children but for their families and mindful in schools, antibullying and violence prevention. Washington doesnt look underneath the water line. It talks about policy, but not people. The next time that congressmen or senators are taking a jaunt to the middle east, which i support, i would like them to take a jaunt to the inner city of los angeles, chicago or indiana. 40 of the girls in the schools of chicago have a form of ptsd, that is considered no less severe than the ptsd of returning veterans from afghanistan or iraq. We have millions of children living in chronic trauma. When an american child, we have millions of American Children who go to school and ask the teacher, do you have some food for me. We have millions of children that go to school that dont have adequate School Supplies to teach a child to read. If the child cannot read by the age of 8, the chanes of incarceration are increased. The chances of incarceration are drastically increased. We will then perhaps be incarcerating that person for what they did, but isnt the original question what we did. Thats why America Needs to look in america. In the mirror. The same is true internationally as domestically. Our government has been corrupted by an obsession to get shortterm profits that the unnecessary human suffering that results from this, the squeeze of people, the economic anxiety, the constant economic tension that millions of people live through, this is the source of the societal dysfunction and yet the same level of malfunction on the part of how we behave as a society in terms of policy is mirrored in international affairs. Our National Security is dominated basically by the constant perpetration of war. Lets look at the map. We spend 760 billion in one year of our military budget. Our state department, which is mediation and diplomacy and development, they get 40 billion. Now within that 40 billion, there is 17 billion [loss of audio] also within that 40 billion, there is less than 1 billion given to the peace building agencies and the u. S. Institute of peace gets Something Like 38 million. There are four factors that constitute what we call peace building. And people dont understand what peace building is. The truth of the matter is that peace building exemplifies skill sets and expertise just as sophisticated, just as important and in many ways given some of the places where these peace builders are assigned, takes just as much coverage. Just as much courage. There are four factors to peace building that when present, there will be a Greater Peace and lower conflict. One, expanding Economic Opportunities for women. Number two, expanded Educational Opportunities for children. Number three, a reduction of violence against women. And number four, the amelioration of human suffering. All of that should be expressed in the way how our government operates. Love that is common. We should see large groups of desperate people whether a corner of an american city, large groups of desperate people are a risk. Why . Because desperate people do desperate things. Toperate people on or likely succumb to psychological forces, whether it has to gangs in america or terrorist organizations somewhere else. And that is why when im elected president of the United States i want a department to deal with the horrendous need that we have for massive realignment in our children and that is the only way to have a peaceful future. In order to coordinate, these departments are basically coordinative. We have the experts in peace building. We have the experts in social work. We have the experts in Early Childhood. We already have the experts in international affairs, people who know the humanitarian assistance needed, the expansion of opportunities that are needed. It is simply this is not what we fund. How can you compare 760 billion to the military and less than 1 billion that is given to our peace building agencies. We dont have to bring in new people. We need to coordinate among the agencies that already exist, and the United States department of peace will do just that. The u. S. State department, the usaid, all of this should be given equal weight to military. And when im president , they will. The head of the usaid should have a seat at the table. No less powerful than our secretary of defense. We need the equivalent in Global Society of what already exists in health and healing. The health and wellness space. We have long past evolved beyond the idea that you didnt have to take care of your body, your diet or nutrition or your illness and then when sickness arrives, which it will, you can go to a doctor and hope that the doctor can suppress or eradicate the symptoms. We dont look at healing the body that way anymore, and we shouldnt look at healing the society or the planet that way anymore either. We need to cultivate peace, not just be prepared for war. I see the u. S. Military like i see a surgeon. I have Great Respect for the military. My critique here is not of the military. The decisions are not military decisions but political decisions. Every dollar that the military says they need they should get. What im talking about here, what every american should be concerned about is the hundreds of billions over and above what the military says they need which has to deal with maximum shortterm need for military contractors. If you want to be healthy, you cannot just fight disease. Sickness is the absence of health. Health is not the absence of sickness. If you want a peaceful world, you need to cultivate peace. You just cant fight war. We need to have the best surgeon onhand. Thats what the military should be, but a sane person tries to avoid surgery. Thats the kind of paradigm shift that we need. This is not just a shift of policy here or there that can be shifted back with the next president. We need a shift in the thinking of the American People and need the American People to realize that the reason we have so much violence on the streets and in our world is because our government is so corrupted by the undue influences by corporations that are mainly concerned about their shortterm maximazation and do not consider it their job to have to worry about the suffering that emerges because of it. That suffering is what leads to violence in the heart, and violence in the heart is what leads to violent behavior. The American People understand this kind of thing. The American People are not stupid. It is time for the American Government to catch up. Thank you very much. [applause] if you have a question, raise your hand, and wait for the microphone, and identify yourself. I want to start off with, you sell an awful lot of books and you are very wellknown and popular, but your candidacy has not taken off in the same way. Where do you think that disconnect is . Ms. Williamson the disconnect itself is an illusion. If you say i havent broken through, in the second debate and its because of my popularity after the second debate and because of the fact that i was googled more than any other candidate in 49 states that the political hits began and everybody in this room knows what that is. You know what a smear is. The illusion, she is antimedicine, antiscience, neither which is true. Crazy dangerous lady, none of which is true. You heard my ideas that are disruptive to the status quo and those who are so attached to the status quo saw me and within three days the smears began. People have continued to come to my talks and donate to my campaign. Its interesting, in the last election, the Democratic Party was gobsmacked by the success of Bernie Sanders and success of donald trump because neither one could see beneath the waterline. I would think that the Democratic