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Speaker 0 00:00:00 On Thursday, February 10th, 2020 to Northwestern political union hosted 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson for a conversation at Lufkin hall. Williamson is a New York times best-selling author and political activist reporters, Nick song, and Helen Bradshaw spoke with her ahead of the political union event, covering topics such as bore ideology and higher education.
Speaker 1 00:00:23 Okay. So to begin, um, you, you said before that your father took you to Vietnam as a child to see the realities for, and really introduce you to that. What do you remember when you went there? Do what do you remember seeing and feeling and how did that impact you?
Speaker 2 00:00:38 Uh, when I was in the seventh grade, I came home from dinner one night and I said that my teacher had taught us the domino theory. And that was the idea that if we didn't fight in Vietnam, if we didn't fight the communists in Vietnam and stop it there, then all Southeast Asia would be overrun. And one day we would be fighting on the shores of Hawaii. And my father jumped up and said Soufiane or sweetheart, as they often called her, uh, get the visas, we're going to Saigon. And he started his rant about how the military industrial complex was not going to eat his children's brains. Um, my parents were international travelers and not only did we go to Vietnam, but I traveled many, many places starting when I was 10 years old, my father, uh, we just always say that people would say to him, why are you taking your kids all around the world?
Speaker 2 00:01:36 They'll never remember. And he used to say, these things will get under their skin. And it's really true. I'm a, I'm a different person, I think, than I would have been had I not only traveled to all those places, but particularly as a child, you know, Americans do tend to be very under traveled. And as a consequence, we are vulnerable to propaganda that I don't think people in other places are as vulnerable to because other countries are close. Other countries, aren't some distance far off land. I mean, obviously we have Canada and Mexico, but just having Canada, Canada, and Mexico on your Northern and Southern border does not of itself give you a large sense of the global community
Speaker 3 00:02:31 For sure. Um, and you know, I guess we're wondering, obviously going to Vietnam at any point in history is going to change how you view the U S what was it like going back to, um, you said you were in the seventh grade, so going back to middle school or high school, um, in the U S after seeing the realities of war as you put it
Speaker 2 00:02:54 Well, on one hand, you knew fewer people at that time, a kid growing up in school who was likely to have traveled on their summer vacations as we did, but on the other hand, in a weird way, it was a more open society. In those days. People didn't jump to conclusions about where you had been and what you had done, because people didn't jump to conclusions about every little thing the way they do today. So I think people at that time were like, oh, wow, tell us what it was like, you know, this was 1965. We were just at the beginning of what would become the, the gargantuan anti-war protest movement of that time. I was fifth, 13, was I 15? No, I was 13. By the time I was 16, 17, 18, 19 full on anti-war protests, et cetera, which I think I would have been part of, even if I had not made that journey.
Speaker 2 00:04:14 I think the larger point for me is that that trip was indicative of my father's sensibility in the home I grew up in, which was not only very international in perspective, but also in all ways, emphatic that the human experiences of people mattered and must always be considered behind the mask of official political propaganda, whether it was people in the other side of the world or on the other side of town, my father was an immigration lawyer. So I grew up in a home of profound humanitarian sensibility. And, you know, I was, I think I tweeted the other day. My father is the wake up in the morning. He'd walk around the house, beat the system, kids, beat the system, beat the system kids. And I think I was 50 years old before I realized how not kidding. My father was, he had grown up in poverty, you know, a lot of, and a lot of people, his generation, because they'd been through the depression, he grew up in rural poverty.
Speaker 2 00:05:41 And he, I remember sometimes he would, we would be somewhere and he would point out someone, a janitor, someone cleaning up an office, building someone we saw on a corner and he would make us stop. He'd say, see that, see that kid, see, see that woman or see that man. And he'd say she has a hard life, or he has a hard life. He wanted, he did not want us to not notice. There was a, uh, there is a play that was written by Arthur Miller, um, death of a salesman. And one of the famous, famous lines is when Linda Willie Loehmann's wife says to her sons about their father, attention must be paid. You must always pay attention to what human beings are going through. That's what I got from my father and my mother, because my mother executed the vision. You know, he was, he was railing in his armchair, you know, she was the one making it all happen.
Speaker 3 00:07:01 Definitely. Um, and speaking of theater, when you were 17, 18, um, you decided to go to Pomona college, uh, and study theater. I was wondering what brought you there And philosophy. I was wondering what brought you there to Pomona, um, to begin with as well as the decisions?
Speaker 2 00:07:21 Uh, I, I look back on that because my choices at the time were that or Brandeis university. And I wonder, uh, I wonder, um, how my life might have unfolded differently with certain educational choices. I left college when I was in my junior year and then went to classes at university of Texas and university of New Mexico, but I never, I never, um, graduated, but I think that in a weird way, you know, I'm at an age where you, you know, I read a book once where there was, it was a German writer. I can't remember her name. She said in youth, you learn in age, you understand? And I think that I have learned as much from my successes as my, as from my failures. And I've learned as much from things I've learned from everything. I think the only failure in life is what you fail to learn from. And I grew up, um, how can I put this? My not graduating from college? And I'm certainly not bragging about it. And I'm certainly not suggesting it. So kids say in school, um, I experienced a level of outcast, a level of feeling of failure that I don't think I would have otherwise experienced.
Speaker 1 00:08:56 This is because you didn't graduate from college
Speaker 2 00:08:58 Because I didn't graduate because they did. I mean, I think sometimes what would have happened if I had finished school, I probably would've gone to law school. My father was a lawyer and my brothers is a lawyer. I, and I think about what my life would have been, but I don't think I would have had the career that I have had. But once again, that's not in any way to say that's a reason to drop out of college guys. Um, I'm just saying, I, I realized some things happened in my life because I fell off the bridge because I fell out of something. I realize that, you know, there's a, there's a saying in, in spirit, in religion, there is no spot where God is not wherever we are. There are things to be learned and things to be gained.
Speaker 1 00:10:00 Did you notice going to college or even just in those years, not even being in college, you know, you say your father really shaped your ideology in many ways. Did you notice any points where you had experiences or you learned, and you began to deviate from that ideology at all? Like you found new ways of thinking that you hadn't been taught?
Speaker 2 00:10:22 Well, I remember I graduated from high school in 1970. So the tummy cult of the counter culture at that time, the sexual revolution, the musical revolution, the political revolution, the, the entirety of the counter-culture went against the grain of my parents' model. I was supposed to wage revolution, but wear white kid gloves while doing so make sure your hair is brushed. Um, so as much as I remained aligned with my parents' politics, I think they were pretty appalled by the counter-cultural wildness that I embraced. But that was, you know, because my parents that came from a very left wing perspective, but not sex drugs and rock and roll. So that's where that clash occurred in my family is it occurred for millions of people. My parents were not Woodstock Keon, you know? Um, but I think every, you know, every, every person has their own, their own sort of divine in life.
Speaker 2 00:11:55 Every generation has its own wisdom. You individually, from your parents, I did from mine just as you have an R from yours, you know, your parents. And as my daughter has from me, your parents set you up and then, then you fly. As you know, you fly out of that nest and you, you forge your own path in life. My, when I was in school, my major was, uh, theater and philosophy. So I was always very interested in religious and spiritual and philosophical topics, whether they were, um, esoteric or exoteric, whether it was cute Gordon, a Heidegger, or it was the itching and the tarot cards, but I never understood how I could build a career doing that. And that was very upsetting to my parents. And at that time, you, what were your choices? You could, uh, study comparative religion, which I did in school when I was there, uh, I could try to get a degree and maybe be a college professor in comparative religion or become clergy.
Speaker 2 00:13:16 You know what I could, you know, my mother used to say your father and I will send you to rabbinical school, but I was very interested in something that didn't didn't at that time. And I think the world is sort of different now, but my interest, for instance, when I started reading a course in miracles, um, there was no Korean college that was, would have been after because that would have been in my mid twenties. There wasn't a career niche for people who were teaching and writing about non-denominational spiritual topics. So I just kind of was a, a wanderer, no different than many people my age and time. But I now look at that time as having been more fertile than I could have realized at the time.
Speaker 1 00:14:15 So, you know, based on your education and your life perspective, you've been very outspoken about your desire to suspend student loan debt. Is there any specific experiences that have shaped that stance that you can think of?
Speaker 2 00:14:30 Yes. When I was young, you could afford to be poor. Yes. That's what drives me and saying, you know, I heard, and, and by that don't, don't misunderstand me cause I'm not glib about the word poor there, you're in your twenties, you're out, you're working as a barista or your soup, you know, scooping soup or being a waiter or waitress. You are, you know, just kind of being young and reading all the time and doing those kinds of jobs, but you could, you could live, you could live. I see people now, the kinds of jobs that I did in my twenties, I could live in an apartment. I could afford an apartment. I see people now, you know, I was looking at a video just yesterday, the president, he said, you know, I hear young people say, we have it so hard that did you see that video?
Speaker 2 00:15:44 He said, yeah, you won't be able to say that habits. It so hard. I say, give me a break. We had it hard. And you know what we did, we went out and changed the world and I thought, wow, the system was not as locked up. Then you could be in your twenties and kind of not know what you were going to do with your life. And it was cool. You figure it out. But today between crushing college loan debt and, you know, I had parents who would send me to school. I, I see so many people today who are in the exact same situation I was in, but they're crushed by circumstances. I wasn't crushed by.
Speaker 2 00:16:29 And so, no, it's not the time young people today are carrying, you know, we ha we had serious problems. We had serious problems with, uh, the civil war that the civil rights movement was in response to that was the anti-war movement was unresponsive. When we were, you know, against the war machine. We were definitely trying to change the world, but we had a sense that it was possible. And if things went wrong, the risk was not global annihilation. So I felt despite, I'm sorry, just one thing I felt, despite at all that not only my own family, but my country, despite it all wanted me to succeed, I felt like I had messed up. Okay. I dropped out of school. Well, I kept expecting, well, I'll go back. You know, because I would take classes in university of Mexico. And now I take classes at university of Texas. I just expected, I go back and finish my degree, and then it just sort of never happened, but I felt supported. I think we were supported in those days. You, you could have lost years. You'd yourself. I see young people today who they have concerns and worries that you shouldn't have to have in the richest country, in the world.
Speaker 1 00:18:02 Um, you've spent, we've spent a lot of time talking about, um, your platform of getting rid of student debt, things like this, things that you ran on in 2020, do you plan to run in 2024?
Speaker 2 00:18:18 I don't know. I don't know. I think that I'm holding in my heart. What everybody I know is holding a, what I assume you're holding, what any conscious person is holding. And that's the realization we're in trouble in this country today. And I think we're all being called as a generation. And when I say as a generation, I mean, all of us who are adults, you know, there's a, there's the generation, which is your generation as opposed to my generation. And then there's a generation in which we're all the adult generation in America at this time. And I am someone, as I'm sure you are as well asking, you know, in the deepest way possible. And to the best of my ability, what part can I best play? You want to be of greatest service and you don't want to be on the way. And then, you know, that's that the needle that you're threading. Right. Um, so I think this year is one of soul searching for me as it is for anybody with a brain right now,
Speaker 3 00:19:25 Speaking of service, um, you know, I I'm, I'm from Santa Monica, like in the Cal, uh, California is 33rd congressional. Uh, when you ran in 2014, um, I'm wondering like how your educational history and everything you said about going all the way back to your father to, uh, you know, this divergent college path. How did that compel you to run for office?
Speaker 2 00:19:49 Are you asking me if my own educational journey contributed to my running, wanting to run for office? Um, I'm a little confused.
Speaker 3 00:19:59 Yeah, that's pretty much, uh, it, I guess, you know, we're, we're, we're looking at,
Speaker 2 00:20:04 By the time, I know it's kind of hard for you to imagine this now, but in 20 years, your educational, um, foundation is not going to be front and center in your mind. What you learned in your education is going to be front and center in your mind, what you learned in life. That's going to be front and center of your mind, but your formal education like being at Northwestern is just going to be one factor in the larger picture. I mean, you're just starting out, you know, your relationships, your romantic relationships, your everything that's going on in your life. It's bigger, you know, your, your educational foundation is core, but it's not the totality.
Speaker 2 00:20:56 I do think that my running for office, it's not, it was not rooted at that point in, in any of that. It in so far as what I mentioned earlier than I feel it actually contributed to my sort of identification with those who feel lost. Um, the fact that I felt lost for a while, but by the time I ran for office, I already had a well-established career because remember I found my calling, I had found my calling. Um, and so I had found my calling. I found my work. I found what felt like my Dharma. Um, and I was, in fact, you talked about being from Santa Monica. I started lecturing at the time when the aids crisis exploded on the scene. And so I had a career and had a career for decades, um, up close and personal may put me very up close and personal with people whose lives were in crisis.
Speaker 2 00:22:13 And what I began to realize about 20 years ago is that too many people's lives were in crisis. Not through some act that came out of the blue, like aids or cancer, but rather because of bad public policy, my father used to say, you have to have a system. You have to, um, what did he say in justice? A sense of injustice that I think I got from my father sense of injustice that it's wrong. It's wrong for people to wake up in the morning and work hard, uh, 40 hours a week and not be able to make a living and be able to rent an apartment. And that that's the situation of half the people in America that 18 million Americans, one in four Americans cannot afford the prescription drugs that have been described a prescribed to them by their, by their doctors, that 500,000 people over half a million people are homeless in this country. The 2 million children a year are homeless. That has, well, I don't care if you've had an education or not. If you have a heart, you look at that and you go, something is really wrong. Something is really wrong. This is not about your educational resume. This is about your consciousness. And those things are not going to be made right until we, and unless we make them right, because there are gargantuan establishment and corporate forces that resist the unrigging of our system.
Speaker 1 00:23:56 I want to circle back to an idea we were talking about earlier, just to wrap up, but you were talking about how your own ideas deviated from your parents and how you grew into those ideas and learned through your own experience. I come from a very rural community, kind of in the middle of nowhere, Florida. And there's what it seems like are a lot of bubbles of kids who grow up believing that their parents' reality is the reality. And it's not until they go out in the world. And sometimes that's college. Sometimes that's not that they begin to have their own experiences that shape their ideology. And sometimes at a certain point that has stuck in them so long that they don't begin to branch out of that. What do you think can teach kids the true realities of the world when they're in these bubbles, when they're maybe not having those experiences, how can they form these ideologies and become enlightened? So to speak to the harsh reality that the United States finds itself in
Speaker 2 00:24:58 Well, everybody is on their own journey and people, it's not up to us. What we learn the issue is whether we learn through joy through pain, and this country is going through a reckoning and everybody's going to feel it and changes are coming. They're either going to come because we're wise. And because we tenderly make a transition to the best of our ability, adjust, transition to a, from a war economy, to a peace economy, from a dirty economy, to a clean economy, from an unjust economic system to adjust economic system, that change is going to happen. It's either going to happen because we get wise or it's going to happen because certain changes are thrust upon us. I don't think it's the job or the ability of you or I to know what's going to wake up someone else. I think it's the job and the ability and the responsibility of Uma to wake up in the morning and to ask how we can help. And I know that, you know, the very fact you go to Northwestern, you are by definition among the privileged. I mean, just looking at you and knowing where you are, you are the privileged. And I also know given the state of the world today, you know that. So I believe that the guidance as to what to do with that comes from our own hearts.
Speaker 2 00:26:52 And I believe in waking up every morning and asking, how can I help today? And the fact that you are, you know, given who you are, what you look like, the fact that you are Northwestern, and the fact that you're studying journalism means that you are needed and you will be guided through your own life experience and your own hearts to play the part, just like when you were asking me, if I'm going to run for president, that's where all of us are. And as long as we keep our, our minds focused on that question, how can I help? How can my skills, how can my tools, how can my experience, how can my talents, how can, whatever I am, whoever I am or whatever have, how can that be pooled? We're all pooling our resources. Now this is not a revolution that's going to be led by soloists.
Speaker 2 00:27:55 You know, my culture knows what they did when you have cultural revolutions that are led by soloists. They have a way of dealing with that. This is a song, this is a choir. This is you waking up in the morning and you doing what you can do. You waking up in the morning, you can do what you do, all of us in our ethnicity and our nationality and our skillset. Those of us who were younger doing what that generation knows to do. Those of us who were older, knowing what that generation is knows to do. And then as long as we spend all of our time monitoring our own progress and doing our best, you know, Gandhi said, self purification must precede, direct political action. If we seek to purify our own hearts and be the people that the God of our understanding, what have us be, and I think we'll know what to do. And I think we're going to do something extraordinary in our time.
Speaker 3 00:28:54 Marianne, Williamson. Thank you so much
Speaker 2 00:28:56 For talking with us. Thank you so much. I hope I get to meet you in person when I'm at Northwestern. I look forward to being there. I hope so, too. We're really excited to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi guys. Thank you. Bye.
