Williamson to campaign in Charleston, across S.C.

Democratic presidential candidate and author Marianne Williamson knows she’s not likely to win the S.C. presidential primary in February, particularly since President Joe Biden locked in his eventual nomination here in 2020. But that’s not stopping her from spreading the message that the country needs big change to heal economic injustice.

Over the last 50 years, more than $50 trillion in wealth transferred from 90% of Americans to the wealthy which “certainly represents a concentration of wealth in the hands of a very few — and inherent economic injustice is the root cause of pretty much every other problem we have,” she said in an exclusive interview this week.

Williamson, who has written several popular books often described as self-help guides, will be in Charleston 6 p.m. Friday for a talk at Buxton Books. She’ll also meet, greet and campaign in Beaufort on Saturday, Myrtle Beach on Sunday, Columbia and Rock Hill on Monday, and Clemson on Tuesday.

A November 2023 story in The Nation outlined how Williamson is polling about 12% nationally among Democrats — about the same as former S.C. Nikki Haley is in the GOP primary. But it says Williamson isn’t getting the kind of love in the media that Haley is getting in her bid to wrest the Republican nomination from former President Donald Trump.

“When I’ve watched the Republican debates, I have certainly felt that she was the only grown-up on stage,” said Williamson. “I appreciate her moral rectitude [and] her maturity. However, politically, she and I see America and how America should be governed in very different ways.

An economic bill of rights

Williamson’s campaign pushes an economic bill of rights, which she says offers a vision for a moral economy. In an interview, she listed an array of problems that the nation faces brought on by economic injustice:

Health care. “We don’t have universal health care like they have in every other advanced democracy because of the institutionalized greed of the insurance companies.”
Lower drug costs. “We have over a million people rationing their insulin because of the institutionalized greed of pharmaceutical companies.”
Food issues. “We have carcinogens in our food which you don’t have in any other advanced democracy, certainly to the extent to which we do because of the institutionalized greed of big food.”
Energy. “We’re ramping up fossil fuel extraction [big oil] when we should be ramping it down.”

For most people, the current economic system is economic tyranny that focuses on short-term profits before the safety and health of Americans, Williamson said.

“We the people need to intervene. The only way to do that is with a revolution at the ballot box, and that’s why I’m running.”

Williamson, who ran for president in 2020 before dropping out and backing U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, emphasized she did not approve of the 2021 violence associated with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“Obviously, we have the right to change government, but there’s no right to violence that is given in the Constitution — quite the opposite,” said Williamson. “The Constitution is an articulation of peaceful and lawful ways to change our government.

“And that has to do with the ballot box, not violence on the streets.”

When told of how Charlestonians this weekend will remember a tea party in 1773 that was a protest of taxation of the colonies by the British parliament without representation, Williamson noted a link to modern times.

“The corporatocracy today is simply a reiteration of the old aristocracy of England,” she said. “There is no difference, actually, in the expression of power based on a false sense of entitlement — that a certain group of people, for whatever reason, should be entitled to the major resources of the country and opportunities for wealth and wealth creation.

“We need to repudiate that kind of economic tyranny today, just as we repudiated it in 1776.”