Marianne update. ❁
June 3, 2019
‘Her presence will give Democrats and all others a different view of America’s problems.
As you read through her positions on issues you will be taken how she digs deep to find the roots of the problem.
Marianne Williamson may be a game changer.’
-Dave Bradley, Blog for Idaho
From Marianne:
“We rise, rise, rise.
We’re bursting with press coverage.
There’s a reason for the media we’re getting, and for our rise: you.”
“We were hitting grassroots fundraising benchmarks before some pollsters would even say my name. And for that, I thank you. More people every day get to know this campaign. Our task is to generate a massive wave of energy, fueled and navigated by we the people, so powerful as to override all threats to our democracy.”
Recently, Marianne Williamson joined Pod Save America host Jon Favreau (former Barack Obama speech writer) to discuss her bid for president. The conversation brilliantly synthesizes Marianne’s platform into 47:03 of intelligent, riveting dialogue diving deep into some of her most sacred issues. She and Jon discuss moral outrage v. anger, spirit, getting money out of politics, and why she wants to establish a Dept of Peace.”
Here are some highlights:
[00:01:21] I’ve worked up close and personal with people for over 35 years who are dealing with crises in their lives, seeking to navigate those crises to transform them into opportunity and I have recognized particularly over the last 20 years, how many of those crises are at least indirectly and often directly a result of bad public policy. So not only do I have a real visceral sense of how bad public policy affects people’s lives and which bad public policy affects people’s lives, but also a deep passion for what needs to change. I think that that’s what it’s all about. It’s about human suffering. How to address it and how to ameliorate it, that’s what politics should be. Politics should be a conduit for making people’s lives better. Securing our rights, not thwarting them.
[00:12:36] Well, there are two kinds of Democrats, aren’t there? And that’s being played out in this campaign. There are two categories here. The two categories is the incrementalist who say we can have it both ways. We can take [corporate] money. We can take tens of thousands from some security investment firms. We can take tens of thousand from Big Pharma. We can take tens or even more thousands from oil companies, but we’re going to go and be an instrument of change. Yeah, right. There’s that, and they’re saying well, we’ll make these incremental changes and then there are those of us who say this has got to stop. We need a fundamental pattern disruption of the American political and economic status quo.
Full interview:
Naïve, indeed.
Diversity Protected
‘White dominant culture has been alive and well for centuries, and its grasp for power is only growing more desperate. Today we see unabashed racism, classism, and sexism at the highest levels of the United States government. How naïve many of us were to think we lived in a post-racial society after the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s and after we saw an African American president and his family in the White House. Now our collective shadow has again come out in the open for all to see.
It seems every generation must be newly converted. While we seek to transform individual hearts and minds we must also work to create change throughout systems. Until a full vision of equity is realized, we must continue naming and resisting the ways in which so many people are excluded and oppressed. Author and activist adrienne maree brown writes:
Separation weakens. It is the main way we are kept (and keep each other) in conditions of oppression. . . . Where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. Where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy and liberation. . . .Adrienne Maree Brown, “Report: Recommendations for Us Right Now from a Future,” Sublevel, issue 2 (2018)
If we remain exclusive monotheists, like Judaism, Islam, and much of Christianity up to now, we normally try to impose a false uniformity on others but rarely know how to love, honor, and respect diversity. We remain in competing tribes and colonies.’
-Richard Rohr, Center of Action & Contemplation
Let’s remake the world with words.
Not frivolously, nor
To hide from what we fear,
But with a purpose.
Let’s, as Wordsworth said, remove
“The dust of custom” so things
Shine again, each object arrayed
In its robe of original light.
And then we’ll see the world
As if for the first time,
As once we gazed at the beloved
Who was gazing at us.
-Gregory Orr
❧
“The beauty of being human is that we are incredibly, intimately near each other, we know about each other, but yet we do not know or never can know what it’s like inside another person.”
-John O’Donohue, Irish poet, author & priest
On Being
Trevor Noah:
The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other. Apart hate, is what it was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all.
[…]
Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. The architects of apartheid understood this. Part of the effort to divide black people was to make sure we were separated not just physically but by language as well. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin. But because racism is stupid, it’s easily tricked. If you’re racist and you meet someone who doesn’t look like you, the fact that he/she can’t speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions: He/She’s different, less intelligent. However, if the person who doesn’t look like you speaks like you, the brain brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code.
-Born a Crime, Stories from a South African Childhood