Among the 24-strong 2020 Democratic primary brawl, self-help author and activist Marianne Williamson has branded herself a lover of peace.
“We have to fall in love again with what this country can mean,” Williamson said in her campaign announcement video. “We need to embrace it, we need to devote ourselves to it, and then bequeath to our children as other generations have done to us.”
The Houston native is the co-founder of the Peace Alliance, an organization dedicated to restoring peace to national discourse and foreign policy. The alliance’s most recent campaign, the creation of a U.S. Department of Peacebuilding, would promote and teach nonviolent alternatives to war.
Williamson, 66, has made this the cornerstone of her campaign, advocating for the creation of a Department of Peace “as the first step in dismantling our systemically entrenched perpetuation of violence.”
Williamson, a practicing Jew, experienced a spiritual awakening after reading A Course in Miracles, a three-volume work that teaches acceptance of God’s plan as the key to achieve miracles and happiness. She cites this spiritual awakening as a moment of clarity that allowed her 20-something self to turn her life around.
After this pivotal moment, she sought to provide others with the same experience. Williamson began writing. In 1992, she published her first book, A Return to Love, and shot to stardom. Oprah Winfrey featured the New York Times best-seller on her show and heavily endorsed the book. Williamson has been called Winfrey’s “spiritual adviser.”
At the onset of the AIDS crisis, Williamson served as a counselor for HIV patients. In 1989, she founded Project Angel Food, a meals-on-wheels type program that serves AIDS patients in the Los Angeles area.
In 2014, the Los Angeles resident ran as an independent for California’s 33rd congressional seat. Though her bid was unsuccessful, she was endorsed by Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, former representative Dennis Kucinich, and celebrities, including Kim Kardashian.
The self-help guru, who raised 29-year-old daughter India on her own, recently came under fire after she called vaccine mandates “draconian” and “Orwellian.” She likened mandatory vaccinations to the abortion debate, saying “the U.S. government doesn’t tell any citizen, in my book, what they have to do with their body or child.”
She later apologized for her comments, noting how important vaccines are to public health and reiterating her skepticism of Big Pharma propaganda.
Williamson also took flak for joining the growing chorus of Democrats likening U.S. immigration facilities to concentration camps during the Holocaust. She told Vice that Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids deport immigrants “to places so dangerous that it actually is no different” than the Holocaust.
