Citizens Party Candidate Johnson Says Women Make Better Presidents

Citizens' Party presidential candidate Sonia Johnson told an audience of about 40 at Radeliffe's Bunting Institute yesterday that if she were elected President, her first day in office she will announce a national emergency plan to eradicate the "conquistador mentality from our culture."

Strongly critical of both the Democratic and Republican parties, Johnson said she was running for the same reasons as the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, but opposes the idea of a woman settling for the vice-presidency, an idea Jackson supports.

For the most part Johnson stuck to her own feminist platform, saying that women "have the tools to solve today's problems. People must listen to us to make the world a liveable place."

"The system in the United States is deliberately set up not to work for women, but I'm not willing to wait two or three hundred years, so I perform civil disobedience now," she added.

Her platform consists of fighting for ERA, worldwide nuclear disarmament, withdrawing troops from Central America and the Middle East, free higher education and medical care and "the right to a decent job for all."

During the past few years she has helped organize more than 19 acts of civil disobedience among them the burning of President Reagan in effigy. She has been active in the national Organization for Women, and ran for president of that organization in 1982. The same year she fasted for 37 days in support of ratification of ERA.

Her immediate goal, however, is "to get a women on the ballot in 40 states. If we can do that and nothing else, it's a victory."

The audience did not react strongly in her favor. "I found her vague and without focus," said Linda Green, a fellow at the Bunting Institute, who said she plans to vote for Jackson.

Johnson gained national attention in 1979 when she was excommunicated from the Mormon Church for supporting the Equal Rights Amendment. "The Mormons helped me enormously by shooting me out into the world," she said.

Before that, she taught English, lived with her husband and four children and played the organ for the Morman Church. Johnson is now divorced and living with her two younger children in Washington. D.C.