Marianne Williamson, a best-selling author and Oprah confidante, announces she’s running for president in 2020 – By David Choi (Business Insider) / Jan 29 2019
At an event held at The Saban Theatre in Los Angeles on Monday night, Williamson urged economic reforms in light of the “spiritual and moral rot” that she claims has festered for decades.
Marianne Williamson seen on day three of Summit LA17 in Downtown Los Angeles’s Historic Broadway Theater District on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017, in Los Angeles. Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Internationally acclaimed author Marianne Williamson announced her candidacy in the 2020 US presidential election during a political rally at the Saban Theater in Los Angeles on Monday.
Williams focused her announcement around economic reforms in light of the “spiritual and moral rot” that she claims festered for decades, due to “huge corporate conglomerates.”
Williamson, a native of Houston, Texas, has authored numerous bestselling faith-based and spiritual self-help books. She regularly appears on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and is described as Winfrey’s spiritual friend and counselor.
She founded Project Angel Food, a program that has served 11.5 million meals to HIV/AIDS-affected people in Los Angeles.
“What I have seen in my career is what happens when people fall down,” Williamson joked. “People don’t usually come to me because things are going well.”
Marianne Williamson announces her candidacy for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination in Los Angeles, January 28, 2019.Marianne Williamson
Williamson is the fifth woman with eye toward 2020. Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii declared their candidacies in January. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts launched an exploratory committee in late December.
As Williamson made her 2020 debut in Los Angeles, Sen. Harris, a Democratic frontrunner in the election, headlined a CNN-sponsored town-hall event in Iowa.
All in all, the Democratic playing field for the 2020 election is already composed of ten potential candidates, which includes former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro and Indiana South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg.
In her announcement speech, Williamson homed in on Donald Trump’s rollercoaster presidency and suggested the emergence of nationalism was the result of economic despair.
“I’ll tell you something. A lot of people were so surprised by the election of Donald Trump,” Williamson said. “I was shocked, but I was not surprised.”
“And any political establishment on [the] left or right that was gobsmacked by Donald Trump — it was only because they weren’t looking at what’s most important,” she added. “Because they should have seen … all that economic despair. They should have realized that was there.”
“So much of that economic despair was there that there was going to be a cry of populist despair,” Williamson continued. “It was going to be an authoritarian populism or it was going to be a progressive populism, but it was going to come up from the bottom of things.”
“It is time for us to rise up, the way other generations have risen up,” Williamson said. “They have risen up in their times — sometimes, people are so cynical these days, as though other generations owed us something. Cynicism is just an excuse for not helping. And whining is not an option.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/marianne-williamson-running-in-2020-presidential-election-2019-1
