Stretching for the White House: Candidate wants yoga in schools, $500B for slave reparations
While touring Nashua on Monday, Williamson also made it clear she supports paying up to $500 billion to African-Americans as reparations for slavery that ended in the 1860s.
“We have never given the economic restitution that was promised at the end of the Civil War,” she said.
Williamson toured downtown on her second trip to Nashua on Monday, meeting with Mayor Jim Donchess, stopping by Marguerite’s Place, and finishing at Riverwalk Cafe to discuss her campaign and meet with supporters.
Williamson, who has emphasized investing in youth and child development to build the future of the country, spoke at length about child welfare as a way to curb many problems. She said she discussed these topics with Donchess in a private breakfast prior to her public appearances at Marguerite’s and Riverwalk.
Williamson said she spoke with Donchess about his concerns regarding drug abuse – more specifically, the opioid crisis and the creation of safe houses. She said she suggested, as she has throughout her stops during her campaign, that taking preventative steps before addiction would be a more effective strategy in fighting the opioid epidemic.
“The argument I made to the mayor is the argument I’m making in many places,” Williamson said. “We have to do more than treat addiction once it happens – we have to do far more with our very young people so that the risks of addiction aren’t created to begin with.”
“If you prepare a child with values, if you prepare a child with an inner peace, if you prepare a child with a certain confluence of nervous system and an intellectual and emotional alignment with those things that are good and true and beautiful, then they will be far less vulnerable to, whether it’s pathological ideology, or drug addiction or anything else,” Williamson added regarding her yoga in elementary schools idea.
At Marguerite’s Place, Williamson said she was glad to see a location at which women and children are getting the support they need. She spent time talking with staff members and residents, while she learned about the nonprofit. It houses 10 families of homeless women and children, as well as provides day care for its residents and the public.
“This is a miracle here,” Williamson said about the nonprofit while speaking to resident, Janet Monteith – a mother of three. She spoke of the struggle as a homeless mother and applauded the work being done at 87 Palm St.
“What I see here, this is it, but we need to operationalize this on a far bigger scale,” she added “and I think, as women, we know this this is not an accident.”
Williamson told those at the center she plans to make a massive investment in children under the age of 8, including proposing a Department of Children and Youth to track the risk factors and challenges that lead to drug addiction and suicide.
“We need a much more sophisticated and advanced system of tracking what these risk factors are, tracking what these challenges are,” she said, “and connecting the pieces of our society that know how to address them, and then funding them.”
Williamson then headed to the Riverwalk Cafe and Music Bar to continue her discussion of children and issues in America.
“Millions of American children who go to schools, where they don’t even have adequate school supplies to teach them how to read,” she said, adding that this increases one’s risk of going to prison.
Williamson described America as a “veiled aristocracy.” She said most people are struggling to make ends meet, to get education, and health care.
“Ladies and gentleman, this isn’t going to happen because the Republicans fix it. It’s not going to happen because the Democrats fix it. It’s going to happen because the people of the United States need rise up and make it clear, make it clear elegantly, graciously and lovingly, this (expletive) has to stop.”
She called for economic restitution to the African-American community for slavery. She said despite the progress the country has made, there is a noticeable regression in race relations in America.
Williamson also alleged the U.S. Supreme Court is working to suppress the votes of minority groups.
“These voter suppression efforts mean we’re sliding backwards; mass incarceration means we’re sliding backwards; racial disparity in criminal justice sentencing is sliding backwards,” Williamson said. “We have a low-level race war going on in this country.”