Marianne Williamson on her US presidential campaign, the economy and Gaza

Washington, DC – Marianne Williamson says she is not merely running a protest campaign.

A spiritual author who is challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in the 2024 presidential race, Williamson believes someone needs to stand up to the growing corporate influences in the United States government.

“And I’m not the kind of woman who keeps my mouth shut,” Williamson told Al Jazeera from her apartment in Washington, DC, earlier this month.

Only once in US history has an elected president not received his party’s nomination for a second term. That makes Williamson’s campaign a long shot. But she remains undeterred. Her campaign is one of two Democratic challenges seeking to thwart Biden’s nomination, amid drooping poll numbers for the incumbent president.

While the other Democratic contender, Dean Phillips, is running from a centrist platform, Williamson hopes to rally progressives, a growing force in the party.

With her voice rising at times in indignation, Williamson decried how corporate greed was shifting the country — and the Democratic Party — away from their long-held ideals.

“We are at a point now where short-term profit maximisation for huge corporate entities has become America’s bottom line,” she said.

“And that corporatist perspective supersedes democratic values, humanitarian values and the safety and the health and the wellbeing of the American people.”