WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th October, 2019) A US Department of Peace and a separate Department of Children and Youth would help free the United States from a culture rooted in violence and help create a peaceful future in the country and world, Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson told reporters at the National Press Club on Thursday.
"When elected president of the United States, I want a United States Department of Children and Youth," Williamson said. "And I want a United States Department of Peace."
In both cases, Williamson said, the departments would be "basically coordinative."
Williamson explained the United States has experts in peace building, social work, early childhood, international affairs and the expansion of opportunities that are needed.
"It is simply that this is not what we fund," she said.
Williamson cited an underlying culture of violence as responsible for a litany of problems facing the United States, including environmental policies that contaminate air and water, health policies that allow drug companies to flood the US with pain killers and education policies that force poor children into substandard schools.
"For that matter poverty is violent; for that matter hunger is violent; so this idea that we're going to deal with violence, what, by building more prisons, fix violence by having tougher gun safety laws - ladies and gentlemen, we have to look in the mirror as an American society and realize we will be violent until we decide to be non-violent," she said.
Williamson, a minor candidate in a crowded field of Democratic candidates is best known as a self-help guru with a prolific output of best-selling books.
