Courtney Blackett

On Monday, Nov. 20, democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson visited Oakland University to discuss capitalism, the state of American politics and detail why she jumped into the presidential race. 

Regarded as an anti-establishment political figure, Williamson spent much of the evening at OU reproaching America’s economic system and warning attendees of the pitfalls of capitalism. 

Williamson’s stances on each major issue are as follows:

Capitalism

“The demonization and squashing of unions, exploiting workers and subsidizing more and more of these huge corporate entities. It created a system — it created a strain of capitalism, often called vulture capitalism. It is an unfettered capitalism in which, quite simply, there is no soul. There is no sense of ethical responsibility to anyone for anything. There is no sense of no responsibility. There’s only a recognition of fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders.

This is about how systems work. It’s the idea that if we concentrate all this wealth into our hands, a few would be job creators. But that system’s business model was never job creation. It’s job elimination. Its worker exploitation, and it is sampled a value at the expense of the other stakeholders, at the expense of workers, at the expense of the communities, at the expense of our health, at the expense of our safety, at the expense of our children, at the expense of the earth and at the expense of the future of humanity. I’m running for president because this stuff’s got to stop.

Capitalism when I was growing up –– there was at least a sense that we were supposed to be a good society. We were supposed to try. And corporations were supposed to try to treat people well. We have created such despair among so many.”

Corporations 

“The majority of Republicans, as well as Democrats, not as big a majority, but the majority of Republicans, as well as Democrats, want universal health care. The majority of Republicans, as well as Democrats, want free college and tech school. The majority of Republicans, as well as Democrats, including gun owners, want common sense gun safety laws. The problem is we are ruled by corporate overlords. We are ruled by this principle of their profits coming first, and it is a system at this point of corporate tyranny. It is economic tyranny, and it has its tentacles into every sector of American civilization.”

Economic Reform 

“I want to be president because I think we need to turn the ship around. We need fundamental economic reform. It’s not enough if the Republicans only give you crumbs, but the Democrats are corporations [who say] ‘I’m gonna give you cookies.’ You can’t live on cookies either. This is America. Everybody’s supposed to feast here, too.”

State of American Society

“You have 70% of Americans who live who reported living with constant chronic economic anxiety. We have over a third of the American people who routinely report skipping meals. We have an order entitlement. We have one in four Americans who live with medical debt. We have 18 million Americans who could not afford to pay for the prescriptions that their doctors give them. We have 68,000 Americans who die every year from lack of health care. We have over a million people. 1.3 million people ration their insulin. We have carcinogens in our food. By the way, everything I just said doesn’t happen in any other advanced democracy. Because in every other advanced democracy, they have universal health care. Every other advanced democracy has tuition-free college and tech school, which we used to have in the 1970s.”

War 

“JFK said if we do not get rid of war if mankind does not get rid of war, war will get rid of mankind. Now there are people who say, and they say this about me. Not on this issue, but about many. They say that when we talk about reverse engineering –– imagining a world without war within 100 years, and America taking the lead. Seeking a new trajectory of possibility for the human for the human race. There’s some people say that it’s very naive to say that we could be rid of war in 100 years. You know, what I say is naive? What’s naive is to assume that we have a guaranteed survival of the human race for another 100 years if we don’t at least try.” 

Foreign Policy

“We need to remove the sanctions on Venezuela. These are two things which are part of a larger picture of how American foreign policy in the past and in the present actually has contributed to the destabilization of economies in Latin America. And I’ll tell you, those people who have been so traumatized by economic despair and violence in their countries, so traumatized that they were willing to walk across the Darien Gap, one of the most inhospitable pieces of land on the planet with their children in the possibility of getting anything that would be a survivable life in the United States.”

The Media

“There is a political media industrial complex –– And they don’t just chop wood and carry water for huge corporate interests. They are huge corporate interests. And to be honest, much of what I spoken about here, they don’t want in the conversation.”

Student Loan Debt 

“The college loan debts –– I can’t even imagine being in my 20s with tens of thousands of dollars worth of college debt, which I only took out to better my life because I was told that was a way to close a college debt but the wage gap. It’s wrong. There’s just too much wrong. And at this point, no one president can fix it. I couldn’t get this ship turned around completely. But I believe with all my heart that because of yes, my experience, I could get us around the curve.”