This week, Lizzo isn’t the only self-empowerment icon facing allegations of private actions that don’t match her public persona. Now Marianne Williamson, the best-selling author and former Detroit-area spiritual leader running for president, is also accused of leading a toxic workplace.
That’s according to a letter from seven anonymous ex-staffers published Thursday by independent journalist Jenn Dize in her Courage News Substack newsletter. The former staffers allege that Williamson’s 2024 campaign is a dysfunctional “fraud” with no hope of winning and are urging voters not to support her.
“Today, we come forward with heavy hearts because we were deceived, intentionally or unintentionally, and we know others are still being deceived by the continuance of Marianne Williamson’s presidential campaign,” the staffers, who were granted anonymity out of fear of retaliation, wrote in the letter. “Our goal in making this statement is to be transparent and bring awareness to the fact that the campaign has been repeatedly sabotaged by the candidate herself.”
According to additional reporting by Courage News, the allegations are corroborated by more than a dozen former staffers and volunteers, who accuse Williamson of presiding over a “cult”-like environment where dissent is not tolerated and turnover is high. At least 30 staffers have been fired or resigned, according to Courage News, leading to a campaign in disarray.
“All of us have worked demanding jobs with tough bosses,” the ex-staffers wrote. “This was not the same. Working for her did not feel ‘tough.’ It felt emotionally abusive and hopeless.”
Even worse, the former staffers accuse the Williamson campaign of failing to achieve basic goals like securing ballot access and filling key roles — which they say makes her unfit for the White House.
“Based on our observations and our interactions with her, Marianne Williamson has demonstrated no intention of becoming president, no strategy to win this election, and no ability to effectively lead this country or follow through on her progressive platform,” they wrote.
Those who tried to sound the alarm over those issues were fired, the ex-staffers say.
“She wants to be surrounded by fans, not staffers,” one source said, with another saying, “It feels like a literal cult.”
The allegations were echoed by staffers from her 2020 presidential campaign, who told Politico earlier this year that Williamson was verbally abusive. Williamson has denied many of the allegations.
Williamson gained notoriety in the 1990s thanks to appearances on Oprah and for serving as a spiritual leader for celebrities in Los Angeles and New York. She has faced allegations of mismanagement before. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, Williamson served as a pastor at the Renaissance Unity Interfaith Spiritual Fellowship in Warren outside of Detroit — before stepping down in 2002 amid allegations of financial problems and disagreements over her leadership. In a 1992 Entertainment Weekly article, an insider accused Williamson of using her AIDS organizations to “sell her book and increase her own fame.”
Other former 2024 campaign staffers allege Williamson is more interested in building an audience for her upcoming book The Mystic Jesus: The Mind of Love than actually running for office. Originally due in September, Williamson moved the release to spring 2024 after backlash.
The Williamson campaign did not immediately respond to a request from Metro Times for comment.
Williamson was the first major Democratic candidate to announce a 2024 campaign, throwing her hat in the ring before President Joe Biden even officially announced his own re-election effort. While her progressive, Bernie Sanders-style platform has earned her millions of views on TikTok, recent polls show her trailing the incumbent president, according to FiveThirtyEight.
At a recent campaign stop in Detroit, Williamson declined to say whether she would endorse Biden if he wins the primary.
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