30 years after, the legacy of Jonestown (by Tim Reiterman, reporter who survived the massacre)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

NOTE: In addition to the MSNBC story, there is also a YouTube clip featuring rare footage and an interview with Reiterman.

30 years after, the legacy of Jonestown
More than 900 people died by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid in a mass suicide

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27743208/



Stephan Jones, son of Rev. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, Calif., Thursday, Nov. 13. He was 19, and in Georgetown with other basketball team members on the temple's last day. Today, he is the father of three daughters and is the vice president of a small Bay Area office installation and services company.

By TIM REITERMAN
Associated Press Writer
updated 2 hours, 58 minutes ago

Dark clouds tumbled overhead on that afternoon 30 years ago, in the last hours of the congressman's mission deep in the jungle of Guyana.

With a small entourage, Rep. Leo Ryan had come to investigate the remote agricultural settlement built by a California-based church. But while he was there, more than a dozen people had stepped forward: We want to return to the United States, they said fearfully.

Suddenly a powerful wind tore through the central pavilion, riffling pages of my notebook, and the skies dumped torrents that bowed plantain fronds. People scrambled for cover as I interviewed the founder of Peoples Temple.

"I feel sorry that we are being destroyed from within," intoned the Rev. Jim Jones, stunned that members of his flock wanted to abandon the place he called the Promised Land.

[murielm99]

1. As I have mentioned here in the past,

I lost someone at Jonestown who was a friend.

She was a young social worker living in San Francisco. Her father was a pastor. She joined the church because she thought it was doing a lot of good for racial equality and for poor people. She was committed to helping people.

Many of the people who joined that church were idealists.

Many people use the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid," or "Kool-Aid drinkers." I can't. The origins are too personal for me.

[acmavm]

2. Did she willingly take the poison? Do you know why? Do you yourself

understand any of this? Because I never will.

[murielm99]

4. I have no way of knowing that.

I saw her a few years before she died. She was already a church member and very intense about it.

She was sleeping with Jim Jones at the time I saw her, too. I think she was in love with him. He was always charismatic, and charisma can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

I thought it was wrong that she was sleeping with him, because he was married, but I kept my feelings about that to myself. Some people during the sixties seemed to have more fluid morality than I did.

Knowing the kind of person she was, intense and idealistic, I would be tempted to say that she was a willing follower, even into death. But I will never know.

I will never understand, either. I would like to think that I would be immune to the lure of a cult or a cult leader. But can I be sure?

[acmavm]

5. Damn. So sad.

[Atman]

3. I hate to day it, but the MSNBC Jonestown special is pretty good.

I didn't want to watch it. I hate any of that crap MSNBC puts on outside of it's regular news cycle. But this show was actually informative and very interesting. Stephen Jones is interviewed prominently...check it out. Worthwhile.

.