Democrat presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson gave a debate performance for the ages with her loopy, New Agey ramblings. Apparently, it worked on Granite State Democrat primary voters because she is ahead of Sen. Cory Booker (NJ), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), and Robert “Beto” O’Rourke (TX) in New Hampshire polls.
Her campaign website contains a seemingly endless wishlist of progressive/socialist/communist agenda items. She’s pro-“gun safety,” pro-amnesty (including citizenship), pro-automatic voter registration (with 16 as the new voting age), pro-Green New Deal, and pro-Medicare for All.
Williamson is also a staunch supporter of and advocate for reparations, and she doesn’t care what it costs. Unlike some of her Democrat opponents, Williamson has long advocated for reparations as a part of her concept of “racial reconciliation and healing.”
In many ways, America has continued the process of racial reconciliation begun in the 1960’s. Yet in other ways, we have actually slipped backward. Yes, there are no more colored bathrooms and separate drinking fountains. But we now have mass incarceration; racial disparity in criminal sentencing; lost voting rights; outright voter suppression; and police brutality often focused on black populations.Tepid solutions are not enough for the times in which we live; we need huge, strategized acts of righteousness, now. Just as Germany has paid $89 Billion in reparations to Jewish organizations since WW2, the United States should pay reparations for slavery. A debt unpaid is still a debt unpaid, even if it’s 150 years later. The legacy of that injustice lives on, with racist policies infused into our systems even to this day. From employment and housing discrimination, to equal access to quality education in underserved communities, to police brutality/prejudice, to lack of fair lending practices, to lack of access to quality healthcare, to insecure voting rights, America has not yet completed the task of healing our racial divide.For that reason, I propose a $200 billion – $500 billion plan of reparations for slavery, the money to be disbursed over a period of twenty years. An esteemed council of African-American leaders would determine the educational and economic projects to which the money would be given.
Williamson feels so strongly about this issue that she leads her followers in a “prayer of apology to African Americans” at many of her speaking engagements.
Her 2016 prayer begins as follows (full text here):
On behalf of myself, and on behalf of my country, to you and all African Americans, from the beginning of our nation’s history, in honor of your ancestors and for the sake of your children, please hear this from my heart…I apologize,please forgive us.With this prayer I acknowledge the depth of evils that have been perpetrated against black people in America.From slavery, to lynchings, to white supremacist laws, to the denial of voting rights, to all the ways both large and small, that abuses have occurred — all of them evil, all of them wrong.For all the oppression and all the injustice…I apologize,please forgive us.
When she leads white people in this prayer of apology to black people, she has her acolytes stand and touch the nearest black person (with their permission) and address the words (white congregants are prompted to repeat after her) directly to the black person.
Watch a clip from one such event in 2016:
She did the same thing at a 2018 Houston stop on her “Love America” tour, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Here’s the full video of the same 2016 event from Williamson’s YouTube channel:
Interestingly, and it may be pure coincidence, a woman begins screaming at about 15:40, just after the following part of Williamson’s prayer:
To you, my African American fellow citizen, please accept my apology on this day. It is to you and your grandparents, and their grandparents before them, and their grandparents before them.
Williamson stops intoning her prayer at that point, and the woman’s screaming can be heard (though a camera doesn’t pan over to her). Once she finishes, Williamson picks up her prayer where she left off:
May the screams that were not allowed, be allowed now.May the cries that were never heard be heard now.May the tears that were never heard be heard now.And may the healing begin. [emphasis mine]
I’m not sure this helps the “authenticity” factor Williamson works so hard to cultivate, but her possible theatrics are far less compelling than her “prayer of apology” and demand for “whatever it costs” reparations.
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