Democratic presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson made a campaign stop at Café Dodici in Washington on Nov. 20.

Speaking to a group of about 20 people, Williamson, an author and spiritual leader, talked about how the country needs a “season of repair.”

“How are we ever going to unwind this gnarly knot of crisis that’s in our democracy that seems to be terribly complicated?” Williamson asked. “We need a season of repair. We are a wounded nation. We are wounded economically; we are wounded politically; and in many ways, we are wounded socially. We have drifted from democracy.”

She decried what she called the corporatization of the U.S. government since the 1980s.

“Our government is not currently acting to serve its people,” she said. “Because of the undue influence of money – particularly corporate money – on our governmental functioning, it’s too busy passing laws like tax cuts and subsidies and so forth that increase short-term profit maximization for those huge multi-national corporate entities. Money dominates Washington.”

Williamson said that it will take a movement of the people in order to change the way government currently operates.

“A political status quo does not change itself,” she said. “A political status quo perpetuates itself.”

She pointed out that the major changes in the country’s history have come from people rising up.

“Generations rise up, and generations push back,” Williamson said. “That is why slavery was responded to with abolition. That is why the oppression of women was responded to with women’s suffrage. That is why segregation in the American south was responded to with the Civil Rights movement.

“In none of these cases, did the government initiate the change. In all three cases, the change happened because people rose up and people stepped in.”

She said that, as president, she would establish a department of peace to push back against the military industrial complex.

“I want the peace builders to have equal weight in our national security agenda as our military,” she said. “Right now, we have a $760 billion military budget and a $40 billion state department budget.”

Williamson said that the country is in a state of constantly preparing for war, feeding corporate profits.

“Are we just going to hope that if we’re constantly preparing for war, one day we will back up into peace?,” she asked. “There are corporate profits in war. There are not corporate profits in peace.”

Williamson suggested that the country could have a peace academy as well as its current military academies.

She also said she would establish the United States Department of Children and Youth to look after the rights and needs of young people.

“We should not run this country like a business,” Williamson said. “We should run this country like a family.”