Good afternoon. Im carol hunter, editor of the Des Moines Register and welcome to the Des Moines Register political soap box. [applause] a little bit about the soap box. Each candidate gets 20 minutes to speak. They can choose to speak for five minutes or 20. How they use their time is up to them, but we do have a timekeeper that cuts them off at 20 minutes. We at the Des Moines Register are believers in the power of civil discourse. We ask you to uphold the best of iowa traditions and let our speaker have her say without interruption. And our next speaker is Mary Anne Williamson. Shes the author of 15 books. Shes a speaker and shes a spiritual thought leader. She ran for the democratic nomination for president in 2020 and she is again seeking the democratic nomination in 2024. Please welcome Mary Anne Williamson to the soap box. [cheers] thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, iowa. Its great being here because the iowa state fair, the iowa Des Moines Register soapbox is an incubator of ideas, thoughts, policies and that goes way way back and it continues to be that no matter what happens with the democratic primary this year. So i know that im speaking into an important listening. And what i want to say to you today is that i think its time for america to turn the page. I think its time for america to begin again. I think its time for you and me and all of us every generation in America Today to steward this country through what is indisputably an important, a significant and a critical era of our history. One era is passing away, one world is dying, it is crumbling in front of our eyes and at the same time, another world is struggling to be born. The possibilities are enormous. We have everything we need in this country. We have the people and the best practices and the projects. People who know how to do organic and regenerative farming, who know how to reclaim the earth, who know how to reclaim our, our food, who know how to reclaim our land, who know how to reclaim the energy for that, which is healthy, who know how to reclaim our bodies, who know how to repair us after the ravages of 50 years of corporate dominance, a corporate dominance in which the very thought that short term corporate profits should take precedence over our safety, our health and our well being that those economic ideas, soulless as they are should take precedence over the will of the people to the point that in the last 50 years, there has been a transfer of wealth to the tune of 50 trillion. And it has ravaged american middle class. In the 1970s, the average American Worker could afford a home and could afford a house and could afford a yearly vacation and could afford a car and could afford one parent to stay home and could afford to send their kids to college. But as soon as they started with this trickle down economic paradigm and as soon as Citizens United Supreme Court decision gave those corporate interests the power to basically buy and sell and turn washington into a system of legalized bribery. All that money was transferred into the hands of 1 of americans. At this point, that level of economic injustice has ravaged us. It has ravaged our middle class, it has ravaged our environment, it has put carcinogens in our food, toxins in our air. We dont have universal Health Care Like every other advanced democracy does because of the insurance companies, over a Million People in the United States ration their insulin. You dont have that any other advanced democracy because they have universal health care. But all that because of the greed of the pharmaceutical companies, look what has happened to iowa because of the greed of big agriculture and Big Food Companies and big banks. I dont need to tell you there is no state in this country. That is not experiencing the ravages of an old way of doing things and the possibilities of something new. But if we are going to have something new, its not gonna happen because we keep electing those from the old. The idea that the only people qualified to drive us out of this ditch are people who know how to maintain and perpetuate the system that drove us into this ditch is increasingly absurd. My qualifications are not that ive spent years learning how to maintain and perpetuate that system. My qualification is that i know a few things about how to disrupt an unjust system and that is what we need. We need the American People, particularly the democrats among us to become independent enough thinking that we are not just living with this codependent acquiescence to whatever the dnc says. We must remember what George Washington said about political parties, that they could tempt us to become more loyal to our faction than to our country. It is time for us to begin again. The alleviation of stress is not enough. We need fundamental economic reform. We need the things that are actually considered moderate positions in every other advanced democracy. We need universal health care. Theyll tell you we dont have it because its complicated. Im telling you, we dont have it because its corrupt. We, we need, we need Tuition Free College and tech schools, which they have in every other advanced democracy and which we had until the 1970s. We need to cancel those college loan debts. Why . Because they should never have existed to begin with. [applause] we need, we need child care. Like in every other advanced democracy, we need paid family leave. Like in every other advanced democracy. We need guaranteed housing, like in every other advanced democracy. We need a guaranteed living wage in every, like in every other advanced democracy. One third of Americans Workers live on less than for the dollars in our and have half of them cannot afford a place to live. A living wage in most major cities in the United States is over 20 an hour. Half of our seniors live on less than 25 25,000 dollars a year. But you and i have been trained to accept too little. We have been trained to limit our political imagination. We have been trained to just go along with the system as it is and to not even consider that there might be another way of doing things. And for those of us who are democrats, we are told you must, must not consider another way of doing things. Dont you understand . It has to be biden . Dont you understand . The fascists are at the door . And i want to say to any democrat who is listening to that, i am here today because the fascists are at the door. [applause] i agree with Franklin Roosevelt who said that we would not have to worry about a fascist takeover in this country. He said as long as democracy delivers on its promises. Democracy is not to that today, delivering on its promises. Bidenomics is a message that is viscerally contradictory to the experience of the majority of americans. If you are living within 20 of earners in the United States. Yes, the economy is doing well, but that 20 are living on an island surrounded by a vast sea of economic despair. 70 of americans now say that they live with chronic economic stress. And when the system tells you that its a Mental Health crisis, lets be very clear how much of that Mental Health crisis is rooted in the crisis of economic injustice. And so it is a time of great awakening among the American People. It is a time for a president who is not part of that system. It is time for a president who for whom they cannot do anything. It is time for a president who, although i would receive vehement opposition to everything ive told you today just as Franklin Roosevelt did from the same people that he received them from which he called the economic loyalists, i would say to those people, what Franklin Roosevelt did. I welcome their hatred. And let me tell you Something Else that i would do. I would go in there knowing it was just for one term because i would govern in a way you wouldnt possibly do. If you were even thinking about running again. We are a country that is like a ship on the way to the iceberg. That iceberg that the titanic is going towards could take many forms. It could take the form of a weather catastrophe. It could take the form of a eye catastrophe. It could take the form of a nuclear catastrophe. We have to turn this ship around. In my opinion, the republicans are not turning it around. The corporatist democrats are not turning it around enough. What those positions will do will mean that we will hit the iceberg a little bit later. And at a different angle. We need to turn the ship around. We need to declare a climate emergency. We need to make a Just Transition from a dirty economy to a clean economy. Everywhere i go, i ask and i am going to ask right now and it answer is yes, i want you to raise your hands and keep your hands up so everyone can see them. If you are a young person or you have ever heard a young person say the following words, please raise your hand. Under normal circumstances, i would be thinking of having a child but given the state of the environment, i dont think it would be a responsible thing to do. Please raise your hand if you or someone you know has said those words, and i would like you to please look around and see all the hands that are raised. This is not normal, and so young people, particularly for whom this is their future we are talking about, why are people who are only going to be here at max another 20 years making environmental and every other policy for people who will only be beginning to hit their stride in 20 years . At this point, even though there are some healthy Green Investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, those investments are completely nullified by the fact that the president has approved the Willow Project and has given more, has given more oil drilling permits than even trump did . As a democrat, im not worried that of donald trump. Donald trump is doing his thing. God bless you. Im not worried about people voting for donald trump in 2024. What the danger is to the democrats in 2024 is how many people might stay home. And the people who might stay home are the people who realize that yes, we understand the other guys arent even offering us crumbs, but we cant live on cookies either. And so as i said to you, we are living at a time of two phenomena. One is a world that is dying in front of our eyes and another is a world that is struggling to be born. We have everything we need in this country to begin again. We have the Problem Solvers. The problem is that those with power dont really want to listen to the Problem Solvers. Theyre very performative. Theyll have them to a reception, theyll have them sitting next to the first lady at a state of the union address. But they dont really want to invite the Problem Solvers into the room of power because too often the Problem Solver solution does not serve the short term profit maximization of huge corporate entities that have basically bought and told sold the government. So weve got the Problem Solvers who dont have the power and weve got those with power who too often are not really listening to the Problem Solvers. When i think in my mind of what a Williamson Administration would look like this is the image i get, i open the doors of the oval office. And i say to the Problem Solvers come on in, we got it for four years. Because this is time. Its the problem. I have traveled around this country running for office before. And this is what i believe with all my heart. The American People are not the problem. That is not the problem the majority of americans, both republican and democrats want universal health care. The majority of americans, both republican and democrat want Tuition Free College and tech school. The majority of americans, both republican and democrat. As a matter of fact, even gun owners want more common sense, gun safety laws. The problem is not the American People. Were fine, thank you. The problem system in washington that does more because of the undue influence of corporate and billionaire money in washington. That system does more to thwart than to facilitate the actual expression of american democracy. Now, i want to talk to you for a minute about what our ancestors did. We have had tough times before and in a very real way, everything were going through now is just the latest iteration of the same old thing. In 1776, 56 men very bravely signed the declaration of independence. And i say there were brave because if the british have won the war, they would have been tried and executed as traitors against the king of england. With the signing of the declaration of independence, they ensconced, they imbued the founding of a nation for the first time in history with the most radically enlightened principles of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness of the equality of all people. The very notion that all people should have a chance to thrive. All people should have a chance to spread their wings. All people should have a chance to self actualize. And the government is only instituted to secure those rights. And if the government is not doing its job, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. [applause] but that is also where it got very gnarly, because 41 of those 56 men were slave owners. In other words, that is the american story. We have always been both and we have always been just as we are in this generation. People whose hearts are ablaze with the possibilities of a country in which anyone if they work hard, should be able to spread their wings and soar versus those who for their own economic and or ideological purposes, had no intention whatsoever of allowing that to happen. But if you look at the trajectory of american, when it is in terms of our his three, responded to slavery with abolition. And we responded to the institutional suppression of women with the, with the 19th amendment and the womens suffrage movement. We responded to the overreach of capital in the gilded age, the gilded age with the establishment of organized labor. And we responded to segregation in the American South with the civil rights movement, ladies and gentlemen and everyone else. Its our turn now. This is the same old lori. It is the this is the same old story. It is a reiteration of the same old story. And as a written as it is that we recognize the problem in our path and as important as it is that we recognize the problems in our past. It is important that we identify them. But lets identify with the Problem Solvers. Lets wrecking eyes that surely, of yours, the abolition has had desperate days and of course, the womens suffrage had desperate days, of course the civilrights workers had desperate days. And of course, the early labor organizers had desperate days. To be honest, we need to toughen up. We need to rise up. We need to stand not just against the institutional resistance to the full flowering of american democracy and justice in our time. I think we also have to take a stand against our own cynicism, against our own complacency, against our own laziness, against our own oh, im so traumatized. Give me a break. You think the people who walked across the bridge that selma were traumatized . We all have to rise up to no longer be numb to know that we do have power, but we have a short window and we need to rush in there. Now. Now do i think that im the greatest visionary running in america . No, i dont think im the greatest visionary running in a, in america. But i think i am the only asian mary visionary running for the democratic nomination for president. [applause] and the reason that matters as Franklin Roosevelt said, the most important job of the presidency is not administrative. The most important job of the presidency is moral leadership. We dont just need political technocrats, we need visionaries, political visionaries. We do not just need a little gold car mechanics, we do not just need political car mechanics we need to recognize , the problem is not that we lack political car mechanics. The problem is that america is on the wrong road. People in washington live within a energetically walled city too often. They are emotionally buffered somehow from the despair, the despair, the pain, the chronic anxiety of the American People. I am not. They think in terms of data, i think in terms of despair, they think in terms of what is happening, i think of terms of how that can be they think in terms of how to make an unjust system easier for people to survive. I think in terms of ending the injustice, and i believe that its time for our generation to do that. It is time or our generation to begin again. It is time rest are no longer allow ourselves to fall in line its time for us to no longer allow ourselves to simply fall in line, stand in line and acquiesce to a system for no other reason than that. It is backed by so much gargantuan power and money. We need to claim within ourselves the same fears hours that the abolitionists had and the women suffragists had and the early labor organizers had and the civil rights workers had. We need to say to a six them that has hurt americans be or, you did it to my grandparents, you are not going to do it to my kids. Abraham lincoln said at gettysburg that the men who died there, he said that the men who had died there, at the union of at gettysburg had given their last full measure of devotion so that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people would not perish from the earth. Our problem is that it is perishing now. We are not now functioning as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We are functioning as a government of the corporation by , the corporations and for the corporations. Everybody knows this. I am saying anything here today that we do not already know. The issue is, what are we going to do about it . Some people say, but mary anne, its all locked up. I understand. Nobody knows more than i do how that system gets locked up. Nobody knows whether somebody living the experience how they lock you out if they dont want you part of the conversation. I can also tell you, there is one thing that can override that, that is people at the ballot box. I know people are numb. I know that people are kind of beaten down. That is how the system operates to make sure. We need to reclaim the rambunctiousness of the american spirit. We need to stand up in our time. Too many men in our age have been acting like little boys and too many women have been acting like little girls. I think it is a time rising up and to remember the words of winston churchill. When he said that you can always count on americans to do the right thing as, as long once they have exhausted every other option. This is how i see it. We are sometimes slow to get there, but when we get there, we slam it like nobodys business. Im marianne williamson. Im running for president. Its time for us to slam it like nobodys business. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] here is live coverage on cspan today. Georgia and Colorado State representative talk about climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act which was signed into law a year ago. 11 00 a. M. Eastern. Chair of the positive Insurance Corporation of regulating large regional angst, mitigating risks and Lessons Learned from bank failures. Janet yellen gives an update on how the nation reduction act is affecting the economy. Watch her remarks alive in las vegas. Also on cspan malcolm our free d. L. App our cspan app. This weeks eastman brings you 2020 for this weeks spend brings you campaign 2024 coverage. Tonight, here from north dakota governor and miami mayor. Tuesday night, former Vice President mike. Thursday night, former South Carolina governor and u. S. Ambassador to the human, nikki haley. Republican president ial candidate, from the iowa state fair this week at 9 p. M. And on cspan
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