{"id":29423,"date":"2013-07-25T17:02:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T17:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=29423"},"modified":"2013-11-15T01:03:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-15T01:03:45","slug":"mickeytouchette","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=29423","title":{"rendered":"Eradicating an Expression, One Step at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"04-02-touch_young\"<\/a>
Mickey Touchette and Guy Young<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back in February of this year\u00a0I participated in a work-related\u00a0forum with 50 to 75 of my colleagues. When I read the agenda we had been given a week before the event, I was shocked at the items: \u201cDrink the Kool-Aid: How to improve communication between departments.\u201d<\/p>\n

As always, my stomach turned when confronted with that statement, but this time, I felt a strong need to confront the slur publicly. I prepared a speech that was as graphic and as short \u2013 and yes, as confrontational \u2013 as I could make it. After talking to a couple of people about it, though, I realized that I had assumed everyone knows where the expression \u201cDrink the Kool-Aid\u201d came from. Many of the people attending the forum were younger than I am and may have never even heard of Jonestown, much less have made the association with the expression.<\/p>\n

During the lunch break, I approached the director in charge and told him there was some very offensive verbiage in the agenda. Fortunately his reaction was completely supportive. \u201cI\u2019ve heard that phrase,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I never associated it with Jonestown. You\u2019re right, it is very disrespectful and should not be repeated. If you\u2019re okay with it, I\u2019d like to use this as a teachable moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

True to his word, near the end of the day he addressed the forum. \u201cIt has been brought to my attention by one of your colleagues that there is some very offensive verbiage in our agenda. I was not aware of the verbiage, but after hearing what your colleague had to say about it, I think we need to listen to her story and allow this experience to heighten our sensitivity so we do not repeat this. Mickey, do you want to proceed?\u201d<\/p>\n

I directed everyone to\u00a0look at the\u00a0page and item number of \u201cDrink the Kool-Aid,\u201d then continued with the following:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how many of you know where\u00a0the phrase \u201cDrink the Kool-Aid\u201d came from.\u00a0It\u2019s commonly used\u00a0in sports, business, standup, politics. But\u00a0do you know it is referring to the more than\u00a0900 people who died in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, and that 304 of those 918 were children under 18 years? Dozens were babies and toddlers.\u00a0Seven of those 918 were my family, and\u00a0as many as are sitting in this room, maybe three times more,\u00a0I knew personally. All dead in one day.<\/p>\n

To be correct,\u00a0people\u00a0ingested cyanide poisoning\u00a0in Kool-Aid, or people were injected with cyanide poisoning.\u00a0When I hear \u201cDrink the Kool-Aid,\u201d no matter what I\u2019m doing or thinking,\u00a0I am thrown off course completely and reminded of the worst day of my life, when\u00a0newspaper headlines across the world screamed of the deaths in Jonestown which included my mother, brother, sister, grandfather, uncle, aunt, and nephew,\u00a0and all of the other people, many of them friends who died a horrible death.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how they died.\u00a0Autopsies weren\u2019t done, so I don\u2019t know\u00a0if my family died by ingesting the cyanide or if\u00a0it was injected. I\u00a0claimed their ashes,\u00a0but\u00a0was it really them? They were ID\u2019d by passport photos\u00a0but they\u2019d been laying dead face down for two or three days in the jungle heat and moisture. It took me months to realize they were bloated from decaying in the jungle\u00a0heat and moisture\u00a0and were not overweight.<\/p>\n

I tell you this because I have to speak for my family, for those that died, for those living who lost people.\u00a0\u201cDrink the Kool-Aid\u201d is insulting, disrespectful, and slurs the memories of our loved ones. Please don\u2019t use it. It isn\u2019t funny.\u00a0I want it known that this should not appear in any of our professional documents. Perhaps one day it will not be politically correct to say.<\/p>\n

The author of the agenda item stood to say she had not meant to be insulting when she included the phrase, and she would be more aware in the future. When the forum ended, a few told me they didn\u2019t like the phrase either. I was congratulated a few times for having the guts to speak up, and have been asked by a few to speak to them about my experience in Peoples Temple. I\u2019m not a great public speaker, and was very concerned that I would not do justice to the subject,\u00a0but the audience was silent and respectful.<\/p>\n

I believe that in the future that phrase will not appear in departmental literature. I also believe the people who were in attendance that day will pause and remember whenever they come across the phrase in the future. I only wish that more people had reason to pause.<\/p>\n

(Mickey Touchette is a former member of Peoples Temple.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in February of this year\u00a0I participated in a work-related\u00a0forum with 50 to 75 of my colleagues. When I read the agenda we had been given a week before the event, I was shocked at the items: \u201cDrink the Kool-Aid: How to improve communication between departments.\u201d As always, my stomach turned when confronted with that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":29512,"menu_order":11,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-29423","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29423"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48620,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29423\/revisions\/48620"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}