Dear John,
Marianne just finished her first major campaign swing through South Carolina, and as with her trip to New Hampshire the energy was fantastic. People are harkening to a message that they already know to be true…a truth in our hearts we’re just glad to hear someone say!
In the words of James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Only when we face some inconvenient truths about America will we be able to change our course.
Policies that are considered too much to ask for here are considered mainstream positions in every other advanced democracy: universal healthcare, tuition-free college and trade school, free childcare, paid family and sick leave, a guaranteed living wage.
But in America we've been trained to expect too little, to limit our political imaginations and simply accept situations that are unacceptable.
68,000 people in this country dying every year because they don't have healthcare is unacceptable.
1 in 4 Americans living with medical debt is unacceptable.
40 percent of all Americans having a hard time earning enough to pay for rent, food, healthcare, and transportation costs is unacceptable.
Robbing our children of the guarantee of a habitable planet so Big Oil can make more billions of dollars in profit is unacceptable.
All of this while the richest among us increase their wealth by trillions and our government continues to subsidize industries already making billions in profit.
Our policies of the last fifty years have been so tilted in the direction of short term corporate profit maximization that the health, safety and well-being of the average American has been given short shrift. Time and time again, the good of people and the planet are sacrificed at the altar of corporate greed.
And this will not stop unless we the people stop it.
Corruption has burrowed itself deep into the core of the way our government functions. Marianne’s message is that it’s time for we the people to step in and change that.
Our generation needs to stand for something better.
It will not be easy, but it’s time to begin. Marianne is running for president to help America launch a season of repair, a new beginning for a wounded nation. We need an awakening of our hearts and an economic u-turn.
In order to build a campaign powerful enough to truly make a difference - one that can actually pierce through the resistance an elite political class consistently wages against fundamental economic change – we must all participate.
