Thank you so much, what an honor to be here. Very exciting to be here and I can't imagine a conversation richer, more meaningful and more potentially exciting.
I'd like to start with a little bit of history and of course I'm speaking as an American woman when I talk about this history. It was a hundred years ago that women won the right to vote in this country. And I think it serves us to recognize and to really remember why that was so important. For anyone who hasn't seen the HBO Iron Jawed Angels, it came out quite a few years ago with Angelica Houston and Hilary Swank. It's a great little piece of popular history, a dramatization of a very important part in our history that really demonstrates and really expresses the power of the meaning and the difficulty of that time. Before then, let's say a woman was married to a man and he was a violent alcoholic and let's say he beat her every night, let's say he beat the children. What was her recourse, could she leave him? Well she could, but she couldn't take the children with her and she couldn't take any items. Even if she had brought money into the marriage from her own family, she was not entitled to any of it. She could leave the house if she wanted with a small suitcase and whatever she could put into the suitcase, that's what she could take with her. This was the condition of the American woman. And American women, the suffragettes, were saying if we could vote maybe we could change things. And we should remember what these women suffered as well. When these women were marching for the right to vote they were thrown into prison for doing so. And the conditions in the prison were so terrible that they went on a hunger strike. And the reaction of the prison guards was to send men into their cells and put these metal contraptions on their necks in order to force them to eat. The story is extraordinary but like so many of the great social justice movements in our history, abolition is an example, civil rights is an example. I think sometimes we forget. We forget to remember what others have had to sacrifice and struggle so that we could have what we now take for granted on a daily basis. I think that's also an important thing because we're called on by the conditions of our time, I believe, to have some courage of our own.
Once when they got the right to vote a hundred years ago, the path of the 20th century since that was 1921, the issue then became how to get the power that we wanted. And it has been a struggle, it started with the fact that we finally got the right to vote and I think we'd all agree we still have a ways to go. We still need to get the ERA, we haven't gotten it yet. We don't have equal pay, we don't have family leave. There are a lot of things that we still don't have. However in the 21st century I believe we need to shift now. I don't believe the main conversation should be how to get power that we do not have yet. That is an important conversation, but I think we need to shift now into what we're going to do with all this power that we have now.
You know every time, obviously I'm running for the Democratic nomination for the presidency and I'm so aware, particularly as a woman, every time I'm up on a stage and every time I say the things that I say, I'm very aware that there are countries in this world where if I were to say a fraction of what I say in my talks every single day in criticism of my government I would be hauled off. I would be hauled off, I would be tortured almost assuredly and possibly worse. So I think every time for the women in this room who are who are American, I'd like to say this we really need to lift the bar on what we call courageous. Every time somebody says “oh Marianne you're so courageous,” you're right they're gonna say lies about me in Vanity Fair. You're right they're gonna make fun of me and mischaracterize me and lie about my career and trash me in Rolling Stone. What is that compared to what women every single day in this world go through. And so I think that every time a woman in a free democracy speaks her mind we should remember we're not only speaking for ourselves, we're speaking for hundreds of women who cannot speak but whose hearts would express exactly what our hearts want to express. And it is time for us to do that.
When we talk about the mission of this conference, when we talk about redefining rules, I'll tell you how I see redefining rules; get rid of the rules. That's what it means to redefine the rules in my mind. the rule that should guide us is the dictate of the heart. The rule that should guide us, is the dictate of the cells in our own bodies. The rules that should guide us, is the knowledge of the wisdom that is inborn into every single one of us.
You know in every advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, there is a common anthropological characteristic and that is the fierce behavior of the adult female of that species when she senses a threat to her cubs. You go and you hike somewhere, let's say a montana some other great National Park. They'll talk to you about something like the black bears and they'll say, well you know they won't mess with you just don't get anywhere near their babies. You get anywhere near their babies, they’re coming after you. That is true of the bear that is true of the tiger that is true of the lioness. You come after their babies, they're coming after you. You know what that is, that is how species behave which intend to survive. What does that say about our species? What does that say about our species when there are 12,000 children who starve every day on this planet and as yet there's no dearth of food? What does it say about us who are American women that there are 13 million food insecure children in the United States? What does it say about us who are American women about the fact that there are a hundred thousand homeless children in the United States? What does it say about us that millions of American children in this country who go to school every day in schools that do not even have the adequate school supplies with which to teach a child to read. And if a child cannot learn to read by the age of eight, the chances of high school graduation are drastically decreased. The chances of incarceration are drastically increased. What does that say about us? And we're sitting here talking about the power we don't yet have. A generation of Americans more concerned about its own childhood traumas than any on record is more neglectful of the childhood trauma of children in our midst than any in our past.
So I believe, to be honest I think as an American woman we could afford to be a little less self congratulatory right now. When you have millions of American children who are going to school every day asking, “Do you have any food for me?” We have elementary school children on suicide watch in this country. We have children who are traumatized before preschool. We have children in this country who live in what's called domestic war zones, where the PTSD that they experience because of the violence in their homes, the violence in their communities, even the violence in their schools every single day is so great that psychologists say that the PTSD that they are experiencing is no less severe than the PTSD of a returning veteran from Afghanistan and Iraq. And remember if you're a returning veteran, PTSD means post-traumatic. For these children, its present traumatic because it is triggered and retriggered every day. And we're not even talking, we're not even having a national conversation about the trauma of these children every time there is another school shooting. That every child, basically every child, in America goes to school every day with some level of prayerfulness that this won't be the day somebody shoots me. And that's true of the teachers as well. Every time, we've all gotten in a habit every time we see a military personnel, saying thank you for your service. I'll tell you what we should do, every time you see a public school teacher in this country you should say thank you for your service. We’re not even having this conversation.
You might have noticed the debate stage the other night and there were women on that stage and in this last one there were women asking the questions. But, you see we've become Stepford citizens. And there are Stepford journalists and Stepford politicians and we're only talking about the things that the establishment wants us to talk about. Nothing too disruptive girls, don't you go there. Because what you might want to happen doesn't really create any corporate profits on any short-term basis. So the system doesn't really want to go there. Where are these kids gonna be in 20 years? All those traumatized children and what kind of effect is it having on these children, that they are having to do these lockdowns. Get down just in case in order to prepare and to learn how to drill in case there's a school shooting. And think about what they're going through every time they have somebody in their class or in the hallway who seems antisocial. The problem is so huge, it is so overwhelming, we're not talking about it and it's the women who need to be talking about it. We need to talk about the fact that these vulnerabilities and challenges of our children overwhelm the capacity of our established agencies such as the Department of Education and the Health and Human Services to handle. But we're just coloring between the lines, that's all that we're doing. And I can tell you from my own experience, once you start coloring outside the lines, they know what they'll do with you. They do to you exactly what was done during the Middle Ages. You see they used to call her a witch if she spoke her own mind. They used to call her a witch if she was dealing with some kind of power that wasn't the establishment power. All they've done is to change the continent from W to B because we haven't routed out of Western consciousness, we have not routed out of Western consciousness.
The projection of suspicion onto the woman who speaks her own mind and how I wish I could say that this deep levels misogyny was only in men. How I wish I could say that. There are a lot of women who I'm sure think of themselves as real feminists, really into sisterhood, really into supporting women. But, if you really get down and see how it goes down in this country, too often that means supporting the women they like. Sisterhood has got to be a lot bigger than that, sisterhood has got to mean standing for every woman's right to be herself and to speak her mind whether or not you agree with it. And feminism means nothing if it doesn't include the fact that we must stand not only for each other but for each other's children. And the love that will save the world does not just mean love for our own children, it does not just mean for love for the children of other women who are in our tribe. The love that will save the world and this is what the 21st century must be.
We are on an unsustainable path here. What are we doing? What are we doing when it comes to ecosystem collapse that could occur within 20 years if we do not take radical measures at climate reversal. When it comes to the fact that in the United States alone, our national security agenda is basically dominated by military industrial complex which counts short-term profit maximization for defense contractors as the guiding principle of our foreign policy. You don't just take medicine, you also cultivate health and we should not just have a preparation for war, which of course we must have, we should also cultivate peace.
We need to repair this world, we need to repair this planet, we need to repair our country, we need to repair our souls, we need to regenerate, we need to recreate and we need to renew and we need to get going. We need to recognize the parts of ourselves that are like cellular memory of a time when we were punished for speaking our truth. Perhaps every woman carries within us a cellular memory of having been burned at the stake. Perhaps that is true because there are ways that we all feel sometimes that our throats tighten and we’re so afraid to say what we really feel. I read a study that said that for a woman to feel confident to share her opinion she has to feel 80% sure of her facts but for a man to feel confident to share his opinion he has to know he's 20% sure of his facts. And that's because in a society like ours, men are used to speaking their minds and having everybody go ‘oh okay’ and too many women are used to speaking our minds and having this kind of silence as though everybody's kind of embarrassed that you said that.
But I read another study that said that if that occurs, if a woman speaks up and says something which is, let's say I don't know, I don't think that would be very healthy for the children. I don't know maybe she feels like challenging the idea that a corporate bottom line should be our false god. Maybe she thinks we should shift from an economic to a humanitarian bottom line. Maybe she feels that in the 21st century we should run our civilizations not like a business, but like a family. Maybe she feels that in order for us to survive, women should do what the adult females of every species does: first you take care of the children. That's what species do that intend to survive. And so if we run our civilizations like families, that means first you take care of the children, first you take care of the elderly and then when somebody comes around and says ‘oh you're so naive, you don't understand economics.’ Oh please let me tell you feminine economics. Let me tell you the economics of the 21st century. Let me tell you the economics of a survivable future. It's not an economics where we see money created by a bunch of corporate aristocrats who are dropping crumbs from their table in the form of job creation. That's not where money comes from. Money comes from the creativity and productivity of human beings, each of whom carry within us god-given potential. That's where money comes from. Help people live their dreams, everybody will have enough money. Help people thrive, everybody will have enough money. Help people thrive, make all public policy aligned with what would help people thrive. That's why here in the United States the goal of our society should be that every school be a palace of learning and culture and the arts. I went to South Carolina and I hear there's another state that has these as well, I'm not sure which it is. They have these things called governor’s schools, the Governor’s School of Math and Science and the Governor’s School of Arts and Humanities. These schools are like--I couldn't even believe it, they were both so inspiring and also heartbreaking. Inspiring because you thought, well I want to be here, this is what schools should be. Every single thing about it, you could just feel the place was just sizzling with the excitement of learning and culture and art and food and community. But what was so sad about it is that there were 280 children at each school. America could have every school be like this if this was where we put our resources.
But the economic system of the United States was invented and designed before women had a voice in the public sphere. All of this was designed at a time when women didn't even have a voice in the public sphere and we just saw taking care of children as women's work, but we have a voice now. We have a voice now, it is not liberation for us to know wow I can mix money too and I can work in the corporate boardroom and I could maybe even get elected. It is not liberation if all we do in that power is to mimic the patriarchal power that has held us down for centuries. That is not power. That doesn't mean we were liberated, that means we were co-opted. Power is when you have some courage and power is when you have some grit but that study that I read about what happens when a woman says, well actually I don't agree with that. I think I think we should make sure it's healthy. We should make sure that product is healthy before we talk about how much money it might bring in this quarter. I think we should talk about whether or not it serves the community before we should only talk about whether or not it brings in more profit this quarter. I think we should talk about whether it would help the children, whether it would help the community, whether it would help the environment, whether it would serve older people.
So what this study was talking about was that too many times and every woman has had this experience, you're afraid to say it and then you might say it and then that awful, embarrassing humiliating moment. When you say it and then there's like silence in the room and everybody's sort of embarrassed for you, because it's just not cool that you brought that up, that's not what this meeting is for or whatever. But the importance of this study was that if even one other person, if even one other person will say, ‘actually, I agree with her’ then the entire system will change. It's not enough to just speak up. We have got to support each other when somebody else speaks up as well. And too many times in this society and I know about it far too well right now in my life. Too many times, it's women trashing other women and trashing--I can't even imagine anything worse than what happens that someone would trash someone else, trash someone else's career in order to build up their own.
You know when I was growing up and that wave of feminism in the 70s, it was understood that none of us were gonna get there unless all of us got there and that was why sisterhood was so important. In order to renew, in order to recreate, in order to regenerate and in order to repair our society and our world, we not only have to serve the children and we have to think about the children on the other side of the world as I said. For those of us who are American, for instance. Right now for the sake of a $360 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, the United States is giving aerial support to a genocidal war. A genocidal war that Saudi Arabia's prosecuting against Yemen and tens of thousands of people have starved because of this. Including children, children whose pictures are all over the internet.
Now life is not just about what happens to us. It's also about who we choose to be in the space of what happens to us. I'm not just appalled that war is happening. I'm appalled that we're not even discussing it. Yes, there was a bipartisan effort to stop that policy, the president overrode that effort and they were not able to override his veto and that was it, next day's news.
When I was young there was a terrible incident. It was during the Vietnam War and it was called the My Lai massacre. With the My Lai massacre, it was American military personnel that massacred Vietnamese villagers. Now I'm not white washing or romanticizing what the United States was before the 1980s, but I can tell you that there was a sense, not that America was always the good guy but, at least we had the social consensus we were supposed to be the good guy. So the bad news is that the My Lai massacre happened, but the good news is the whole country hung it’s head in shame. There was healthy shame. There was a sense of oh no this is not supposed to happen. It wasn't a sense that America was always good, we were never that stupid, or that naive about our country, but there was a sense that we were supposed to try to be. And today, this idea that whatever increases that corporate short-term, bottom line for the stockholders has not only corrupted our government, it has hijacked our moral values system so that we're not even discussing such things as this. For that matter the Iraq war, what were we thinking exactly. Women just like us with children just like us, with fathers and brothers, lovers and husbands, parents, homes just like us. We were going to rain fire on their homes. There would be absolutely nothing they could do to stop that and why exactly? Oh right, because they might have weapons of mass destruction. See the problem with that is we do business with countries that have weapons of mass destruction every single day. Where were we?
I envisioned a world--this is my dream and I hope that many of us will start dreaming it and I hope many of us will start inhabiting the space where it will be a reality one day. And that is that there are terrible things that might happen in this world. Terrible things that might happen, but that there would be people all over the world who could turn to one another and say and say reasonably and legitimately and with good reason, well we don't have to worry about that because American women would never let that happen. Given that ours is the largest and most powerful country in the world, this does not just give us rights, it gives us moral responsibilities. That could be our world. Let us not be so busy talking about ourselves that we forget the larger picture. We're living at a time where a very legitimate issue, which is self-care has become too often just a cover from what we used to call good old selfishness. That will be the death of feminism. That's the death of female empowerment. If we're so busy talking about ourselves that we never look outward at each other and the planet and the world in which we live.
Seven hundred and sixty billion dollars the United States spends on our military budget every year. We spend 40 billion on our State Department budget and within the State Department there's something called the USAID. And the USAID is long-term development and humanitarian assistance. And in addition to that also within that $40 billion budget is less than $1 billion that's spent on peace building measures I think a lot of people aren't aware really that peace building efforts are as sophisticated a set of expertise as is military prowess. And in many cases where it is exercised it takes just as much courage. What are the statistics here, the statistics are the following, there are four factors which when present, statistically indicate there will be a greater incidence of peace and a lower incidence of conflict and guess what they are because I don't think they're gonna surprise anybody. Number one: greater economic opportunities for women, number two: greater educational opportunities for children, number three reduction of violence against women and number four the amelioration of unnecessary human suffering. We should see large groups of desperate people as a national security risk. Desperate people do desperate things. You lessen human despair guess what, your community is more peaceful. You lessen human despair and guess what, people thrive, people become educated, there's more money, there's more peace. We know this, this is written into our hearts. Are we so afraid to say that? Large groups of desperate people should be seen as a national security risk, whether it's in a corner of our cities or another corner of the world.
And the women of the world should rise and insist on this, that's what our foreign policy should be based on that which would lessen human despair. Desperate people do desperate things, desperate people are more vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces. All public policy both domestic and international in all of our countries, as we shift from this economic to a humanitarian bottom line, should be built around that one core principle of what would help people thrive. But can we face, can we really allow ourselves to look in the mirror here and face why it's not happening now? It's not happening the same reason we don't have universal health, because they are more corporate profits in sickness than there is in health. And it's the same reason why do we spend so much more money on preparing for war and so much less in comparison on waging peace. Because there is less corporate profit on a short-term basis in peace than there is in war.
It is time for us to be real here. Most women in this room have read books like The Sociopath Next Door and we attended seminars and we've read books and we know that if you're dating a sociopath, you don't let him do that to you, you don't let a sociopath do this, or a sociopath do that. All that a sociopath is, is someone who has no empathy. A sociopath is someone who has no sense of moral responsibility to anyone other than themselves. So if you have an economic system, a virulent strain of capitalism and I'm not anti-capitalist at all, but this is a virulent strain of capitalism that has been so dominant in our country since the 1980s. It has corrupted our government, it has it has hijacked America's value system. Short-term profits for corporations has become our new false God. Whether it's health insurance companies or big pharmaceutical companies, or gun manufacturers, or food companies, or chemical companies or oil and gas, or defense contractors. First, we make sure--we have a government that has been so corrupted by this that it does more to advocate for short-term corporate profits than it does for the health and well-being of our children, for the health and well-being of ourselves, of our loved ones, of other people in the world and the planet on which we live. Who is going to intervene if not us? Listen, we've all been in homes and we have no problem, we have no problem. If you're messing with our baby, we have no problem saying to the man or to the woman or to whoever it is, stop right there, this is not right there. In our personal lives we get this. In our personal lives we’re good people. Who at this table doesn't try to live a good life? I think the vast majority of people in this world do. We're good people, humanity's good, we're good people. There are far more lovers than there are haters in this world, but the haters are on the march and they're big-time on the march today probably in all of our countries.
Those of us who love, need to love with as much conviction as is now being displayed by those who hate. When those who hate--you know I can't imagine a kind of, sort of, sometimes when it's convenient commit a terrorist. Most people know what they want and they're convicted and they're willing to do whatever it takes to effectuate the fear-based agenda that they wish for the world. But those of us who love sometimes and I've certainly seen this in myself, you know. I'll be there for the love thing when it's convenient, listen I have between 2:00 and 4:00 on Thursday, you can call me. We'll do the love thing when it's convenient. This is not a time in the world when we can show up for love when it's convenient. This is not a time in the world when we can show up for love just when it's our own we must expand the purview of our inquiry into what makes a good life beyond just the context of our personal lives.
We shouldn't just ask, is this the right thing that I'm doing? We must be citizens of the world now, in all of our countries. We must ask not just, is what I am doing the right thing? We must ask is what my country doing the right thing? I don't think that the government should have anything to do with our issues of private morality, but I think all of us should be weighing in on issues of public morality. All of us should be concerned that the United States is participating in a genocidal war for the sake of three hundred and sixty billion dollars in an arms sale and tens of thousands of people are starving, including children. The worst part of it is that we have been lured, we've been seduced. Don't worry your head about it honey, somebody else is handling that and oh you bet they are. So this is a moment of decision-making. This is a moment of decision-making as critical as any, of any time in the history of the world. Will we go into greater darkness or will we go into greater light, because I don't think that the choice is anything less stark than that. Are we going to go into further, further, further down the road of such a marriage of corporate and governmental interests?
And by the way, when you have a government that does more to advocate for short-term profits for huge corporate interests than it does for us and when that becomes codified and when that becomes accumulated in policy after policy, tax policy, regulatory policy, subsidies. You know the word for that don't you? When government is simply a handmaiden to corporate dominance. Need we remind ourselves that that's what fascism is? Because it is what fascism is. We've all had the screensaver that ‘well-behaved women rarely make history.’ Well to me what's not well-behaved is that we're so well behaved. That's what we should be concerned about. There's nothing spiritual about complacency and there's nothing negative about yelling fire if in fact the house is burning down. But we're all living with that, oh if I yell fire then look what they might call me.
I'm going through that right now, oh she is dangerous, she said you should pray if you're sick so she must be anti science, anti Medicine, oh she's dangerous. They actually used those words, you’d think it was the Salem witch trials. She's dangerous, she's a danger to feminism. Danger to feminism? Danger to feminism, her ideas could kill Americans. You're right, I suggested maybe meditate as well as take the chemo, not don't take the chemo. Can you believe that, in the year 2019 somebody's having to defend the body-mind connection? But you see I'm in an experience right now, I'm having an experience that I'm speaking to you from the belly of that beast.
So I know, you start saying the things I'm saying here today. You start disrupting those patterns by which corporate profits as the new false god which feeds the political establishment to such an extent that everybody's supposed to stay within that box. I know what they do to you, I know what they do to you if they don't want you I'm back on that stage. I don't want to hear this, they don't here you're talking about reparations for slavery, they don't want to hear you talking about the fact that we shouldn't just talk about how to pay for health care, we should also talk about why Americans are so sick compared to other countries, counterparts in other countries. why do Americans have a higher level of chronic illness compared to the citizens in other democracies. Could it be, which we know it is, our food policies, our chemical policies, our agricultural policies? Could it be and we know it is, the contaminants in our water or the carcinogens in our food or the toxins in our air, which we know it is. What about talking about what American foreign policy has been in Latin America. Perhaps we should discuss that and have some conversation about that in order for us to have some deeper understanding of what is happening at our southern border today. Not allowed.
And they don't kill you now, they just assassinate your character and sometimes women join the piling on. And I've also found out, much to my dismay, that the mean-spiritedness on the left is every bit as vicious and toxic as the mean-spiritedness on the right. So you and I, I believe for me anyway, we have a lot to learn from the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. who talked about non-violence and how non-violence has to begin with the purification of our own hearts. Non-violence has to begin with the recognition inside us that if we have any thoughts of harm towards other people then we ourselves are not yet vessels for the recreation of the world. And that's an art isn't it, finding that place? Finding that place where we will not be quiet, we will not be shut down, we will speak our truth and we will speak it boldly and we will speak it honestly and we will speak it knowing that there are other people who might feel the same but might be in social and political conditions where they're not allowed to speak that truth. But at the same time to find that sweet spot where we're not doing it in anger and we're not doing it in attack.
You know I think of being a woman much like a bathtub, where when you turn on a bathtub that hasn't been used for many years and at first this brown water spurts out and you have to just let the brown water spread out and then finally there'll be this clear stream. I think that's what it's been like for women. We suppressed our truth for so many decades, for so many centuries and our mothers had to suppress their truth and our grandmothers had to suppress their truth and then the grandmothers grandmother had to suppress their truth. But then when we were allowed to suppress our truth it came out like this brown water that was spurting everywhere because we didn't know how to put it out like a clear stream yet. And so then I know for a lot of us we lived in that place where sometimes it would come out like just too harsh, too angry, too strident but then other times the only choice we seemed to make was do I do that or do I shut down and not tell my truth at all. And then in time you find that place, this is what it is. It's that, I'm not gonna shut up but I'm gonna be as elegant as possible in my very fierce {expletive} no stop right there. So what I'm from a generation of women and I know there are other women in this room who can understand, I'm from a generation of women who had to claw our way into certain rooms.
And then there are younger women in this room who the door opens so easily and you might not even realize how hard that door was for other women older than you, your mother's and your grandmothers to open, we had to claw our way. But a common experience in my generation was the door was open, finally we said, “oh great I don't need my claws anymore,” and found that they had become cemented to our fingernails. That that toughness had become an aspect of our personality. Which had been survival and strength in one decade of our lives in one phase of the culture and then the challenge in the next phase of the culture is, can you drop the toughness but retain the radical truth-telling?
I'm not there 24/7 but I know that that's a sweet spot and that's where I try to be that's why we need to take a stand. We take a stand for instance in my candidacy. For me that means not just a Department of Defense, which of course we need, but we must also and should have a Department of Peace. We need the equivalent of the health and wellness space in the body politic. You don't just take medicine, you also cultivate health. You don't just prepare for war, you should also cultivate peace. Health is the absence of sickness, sickness is not the absence of health and war is the absence of peace, peace is not the absence of war. We should have a peace academy just like we should have a Military Academy.
All this is new, it is different, it is regenerative, just like we have regenerative agriculture. Look what agribusiness has done, look what the corporatization of farming has done. You've had in India where you had where we heard so much about farmers who committed suicide because of the monsantoization of their seeds. We have farmers in Iowa who have committed suicide for similar reasons. Are the women of this world are we going to be quiet? Do you realize that this is the erosion of our topsoil. This is the erosion of our land, this is the misuse of our of the fragile bond between humanity and agriculture. You can't get more primal than that and food and yet and this is the thing that's important. In every single area that I've mentioned today. Whether it has to do with children, whether it has to do with peace, whether has to do with the environment, whether it has to do with repair of our historical wrongs, making right our historical wrongs. Which is why in the United States we should pay reparations for slavery, we should take reparative measures towards Native Americans because if you're going to repair a situation you can't repair and have the future that you want if you're not willing to clean up the past.
It is time for us to give birth to a reborn world and when we do this what we find, what I find and what I think all of us find whose eyes are open, is the people who know how to do this are everywhere. We have them in the United States, we have them in every country in the world. All over this world, this is a global phenomenon this is not in one culture, it is not in one religion, it is not in one ethnicity, it is not in one people it is not in one country. It is coming up from deep and the psyche of the human race and people are feeling it and people are demonstrating it. There are the people whose passion has shown them, this is what we should do with the animals and this is what we should do with the land and this is what we should do with the children and this is what we should do with the streams and this is what we should do with the rivers and this is what we should do with each other and this is what we should do with the formerly incarcerated and this is what we should do for racial healing and this is what we should do to create peace. Everybody's feeling it but we must inhabit the space of owning.
John F. Kennedy, who died on this day and this year he would be 100 years old, I think it's the 53rd of the 56th anniversary of his death today. He said that mankind will end war or war will end mankind. We should have among all of us, we should all leave here with the thought that at the end of this century, because no generation should live only for itself any more than any person should live only for themselves, no generation should live only for itself. We should be thinking about our great-grandchildren who we will never even see and we should think about the end of this century and think at the end of this century either war will be eliminated or close to it. And then we should step into that and we should work back from there. What are we gonna do, just hope? Well we hope Iran won't get one, we hope North Korea doesn't get one. This is not foreign policy, this is insanity and the women of the world should not stand idly by.
In every cell of the human body starts with a sperm and an egg and then this extraordinary process occurs and the cells not only materialize, they know where to go. There's a natural intelligence within every cell and some it leads you to the pancreas, some it leads you to the lungs, some they're led to the stomach, some they're led to the heart, some of they're led to the bones, some of they're led to the blood. And then once they get where their natural intelligence leads them to go, not only do they actualize as the cell that they are meant to be, but their natural intelligence leads them to collaborate with other cells to serve the healthy functioning of the organ and the organism of which they are a part. That is how nature operates. And every once in a while, for the reasons that scientists understand to some extent, don't understand fully. Every once in a while a cell disconnects from its natural intelligence and it goes off, it breaks off from its collaborative function and it goes off to do its own thing. That is malignancy. It is malignancy in the body and it is malignancy in consciousness and that is what has happened to the human race.
We've been infected by malignant consciousness and that malignancy is the thought that it's all about me. It's not just all about me, it's about us and that's the 21st century and just as every cell in the body is assigned so we are assigned. The cells in the body are assigned to different organs and we're assigned to that place that our lists would lead us to. Some of us are assigned to the arts, some of us are assigned to science, and some of us are assigned to business, and some of us are assigned to education, and all of us are assigned to the relationships that we’re in. We're all assigned to the issue that we care most about, some of us it's environmentalism, some of us it's sex trafficking, some of its its children, some of its the elder. We’re all assigned to where we’re assigned.
But, I want to leave you with this thought because an idea grows stronger when it is shared and we can share this thought, all of us are assigned to this earth at this time. Some of us are assigned to this country and some of us are signed to that country. Some of us are assigned to this part of the world and some of us are assigned to that part of the world. But all of us are assigned to this precious earth. Some of us are assigned to be who we are, the men and the women that we are living at this time and we have some serious problems to look at. But we shouldn't look just at the problems, we should also identify the problems and identify with the great problem solvers of our past and every country has them. And there were no more perfect people, they weren't people unchallenged by the issues that caused pain in their lives any less than we. In my country, as an American, we can look to the abolitionists and we can look to the civil rights movement and we can look to the women's suffragettes and we can say, “if they could do it, we can do it.” We're not dealing with anything that other generations before us have not dealt with ladies and gentlemen, let's just not be the first generation to wimp out on doing what it takes to answer the challenge of our times. When we do this something happens inside of us, we find meaning in our lives that we didn't even know was there. Sometimes people have said to me, “Marianne how do you find your power?” I'll tell you how you find your power, use your power on behalf of someone else. That's the awakening to me of the woman the woman today the women in the world. It's really not about old rules, it's about the ruling dictates of love. How can I be of service to say that the God of our understanding, where would you have me go, what would you have me do, what would you have me say, and to whom. And to honor the fact that everybody else is doing that to the best of his or her ability and something is happening on this earth. Something is being born, something is dying, something is dying away, it needs to. The 21st century isn't like the 20th century, the 20th century wasn't like the 19th century, let the 21st century be born. Nature is infinitely creative, nature knows how to repair itself. Within every acorn there's already the architecture of the oak tree. Within every bud there's already the architecture of the blossom. Within every embryo there's already the architecture of the baby and within each and every one of us there is already the architecture of the person who stands forth and even begins to manifest the unlimited potential that lies within each and every one of us. That carries with it a guidance system and when that is what we serve, not how can I get what I want when I want it but rather your love, your God whatever our words are, use me, we shall be used and we shall all be the wombs out of which arises a new humanity and a new earth. We need young women to continue to have babies, their earth is the womb out of which new life is born. But, we need those of us who are no longer of childbearing years for our consciousness to be the womb, our wisdom to be the womb. Out of which will emerge a recreated world, otherwise these children will not be safe.
The hour is late and we must not tarry. It is the eleventh hour but it is not midnight yet. The way I look at life let us be humble, let us love in our own way, let us pray and let's go kick-{expletive} thank you.