With meticulous integrity\u00a0and an unshakable compass that goes for the heart, Leigh Fondakowski\u2019s book, Stories\u00a0<\/i>from Jonestown<\/i>, mines the depths of reflection, conclusion, and attempted resolution\u00a0of each survivor\u2019s 30-year history following what she calls, \u201ca tragic day in\u00a0human history.\u201d From the time I started reading, I couldn\u2019t put it down.<\/p>\n It was for me\u00a0literal survivor comfort food, thrilling in the many articulate expressions\u00a0that resonated with my own perceptions, and providing new insight into\u00a0perspectives I had not considered. It recalled the good, the empowerment, the\u00a0personal transformation that seemed effortless at the time, eclipsed by the\u00a0all-encompassing nature of Peoples Temple as it enfolded you.<\/p>\n Remembering anew\u00a0the solidarity, the unity of purpose, and its collective expression in the\u00a0periodic rituals we called \u201cservices,\u201d it caused a twinge, and I agree with the\u00a0interviewee who called it addictive. I\u2018ve thought before that, as sure as our\u00a0species has five senses, there is an instinct in us to \u201cput it all right\u201d \u2013 to\u00a0save the world, if you will \u2013 and in enabling, massaging, embellishing and galvanizing our identification with his agenda to the extent we acted as a group, Jim Jones knew of this instinct and how to engage it.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t do\u00a0that with lies. You do it with truth. Then you work the lies in very gradually,\u00a0very carefully.<\/p>\n Leigh\u2019s mirror\u00a0also reflects the compromises, deceptions and coercions that accompanied assimilation\u00a0and soft lockdown into the group identity of Peoples Temple. The joy of unity\u00a0was a two-edged sword, however: as surely as our (still!) hunger for the\u00a0tight-knit strike force of The Cause was stoked by this rarest of all\u00a0intoxicants in a do-your-own-thing culture, it was also a surgeon\u2019s blade, paring\u00a0off and rooting out any temptation to disagree, act unilaterally, question leadership\u00a0or even draw attention. In the day, we had a lot of rationalizations for that\u00a0which I won\u2019t expand on.<\/p>\n Parsing the\u00a0lessons of Jonestown 34 years later, it seems to me that the only morality may\u00a0consist of the courage to express disagreement when you feel it, with the\u00a0consensus of whatever group you think you represent, or are represented by. And,\u00a0that if someone can make you give up tobacco or drugs, they can talk you into believing\u00a0anything. Just look around.<\/p>\n Leigh\u2019s research\u00a0was in many cases the icebreaker in eliciting the incredible responses she did\u00a0from survivors as they began to surface in the 80s from the blanket of shame\u00a0that attended the survivor\u2019s guilt we felt. I believe that same shame caused\u00a0many, if not most, whites who were not personally connected to Peoples Temple\u00a0to distance themselves as a natural protective reaction and to objectify us as\u00a0people who in the end must have deserved what we got.<\/p>\n Non-survivors\u00a0interviewed by Leigh gave priceless insights, and disclosed burdens that in\u00a0many ways matched those carried by the survivors themselves in the wake of\u00a0Jonestown\u2019s fall. There was guilt, as they searched their souls for any\u00a0culpability and asked what they could have done differently. There were\u00a0observations of the effects of the murder\/suicides on communities and society.<\/p>\n The shame and the\u00a0paralysis it caused are described by Rev. Arnold Townsend, a community activist\u00a0in San Francisco and one of the non-survivors interviewed by Leigh. He\u00a0characterized the effects of Jonestown as \u201ctearing the heart\u201d out of his\u00a0community, in extinguishing the progressive African-American leadership that\u00a0would be in place today. \u201cIt almost doesn\u2019t matter whether anybody intended it\u00a0or not,\u201d Townsend says. \u201cWhat happened couldn\u2019t have served the reactionary\u00a0forces in this country and in this state any better than if it was planned.\u201d<\/p>\n For me, this was a nugget, and hopefully will snag other readers\u2019 attention as it did mine. I\u2019ve thought that, too, and have even written about it, and if I take issue with Rev. Townsend, it\u2019s the use of the word \u201calmost\u201d in his statement. I think it would be hugely significant if \u201csomeone\u201d (besides Jones himself) intended it.<\/p>\n Because then one\u00a0must ask, who and why? That it is not now known is a given. Remember, the\u00a0suicides were soon followed by the Moscone\/Milk murders, which were followed by\u00a0the wave of AK-47s and crack in the 80s.[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> This resembles the pattern of psychological warfare called \u201cThe Shock Doctrine\u201d\u00a0by Naomi Klein in her book of the same name, as a tactic used to \u201cwipe clean\u201d\u00a0the collective memory of a people to prepare them for political, social and\u00a0economic manipulations, which they are then too numb to resist or recognize. Klein\u00a0never mentions Jonestown, but focuses on a path of ruin through several South\u00a0American countries in the 80s and then on Russia and former Soviet states, after\u00a0the end of the cold war.<\/p>\n Townsend\u2019s words\u00a0were echoed with a chilling twist by John Hall, a UC Davis scholar also\u00a0interviewed in the book, who described the mass murder\/suicides of Jonestown as\u00a0marking the end of 60s utopianism \u201cfor everybody\u2014not just for them\u2014but for\u00a0everybody.\u201d I disagree with Hall\u2019s subsequent statement, though, that \u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0really lost any interest in a utopian reconstruction of American society.\u201d He\u00a0may have impressive evidence to support that, but I have to wonder if he was being\u00a0entirely forthcoming when he later called our inability to do so tragic, in\u00a0light of the worsening of the problems of economic and social inequality that\u00a0these sought to remedy. Substituting \u201cleft-wing\u201d for \u201cutopian,\u201d his statement\u00a0sounds like the conventional wisdom that the U.S. has \u201cmoved to the right\u201d\u00a0which has been so often repeated it may by now be inarguable. The tragedy is\u00a0that the movement has been more of a forced march, a perception created,\u00a0repeated and ingrained by controlled media and political forces, a two-party\u00a0complicity to mask the steady shift from representation of the people to that\u00a0of the super-citizens, the corporate elite, instead.<\/p>\n To quote Archie\u00a0Ijames, one of the intellectual giants of the Temple \u2013 who was quoting Jim \u2013 \u201cThings\u00a0don\u2019t just happen, they happen just.\u201d He also said, \u201cthe first thought\u2019s the\u00a0highest.\u201d A.J. added, \u201cHe used to say that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Could it be that\u00a0it was too inconsistent with the shift to a consumer society at endless war to\u00a0allow attempts to \u201cdo\u201d utopian reconstruction of American society\u2014like bringing\u00a0back The Commons? Are pesky problems of social and economic Balkanization far\u00a0preferable to any solutions that might remind us that we are one people, able\u00a0to work together to solve them? Is the continual crisis a deliberately-contrived\u00a0environment, working for those who work it, to be capitalized on, while distracting,\u00a0deluding and diverting the rest of us into loggerheads of partisan stasis where\u00a0we serve as a passive audience to the carefully managed two-party stage show? That\u00a0should be of universal and national concern.<\/p>\n We as a country are\u00a0more insecure, miserable and mean-spirited than ever, more lawless and arrogant\u00a0than ever. And shame is the forgotten emotion, or maybe it\u2019s just archaic, gone\u00a0the way of blessed are the poor and all men being created equal. All\u00a0imperceptibly, gradually, over the last 30 years, to engulf us with a vengeance\u00a0once this century dawned as an inevitable reality. Coincidence.<\/p>\n Was Jonestown\u00a0just the kicker for the great right-wing takeover? Was Jim being used, hooked\u00a0on something that fed neatly into his personality and need for absolute control\u00a0over many, many others? As many as possible? Was he allowed to operate with complete\u00a0impunity as long as it took to accomplish the predestined outcome? Or, did Jim\u00a0know of that plan even then and feel he just had to get \u201cour\u201d \u2013 i.e., this\u00a0nation\u2019s \u2013 attention in advance? And miscalculate, not realizing that no one\u00a0would much care for 40 years, at least no one who mattered?<\/p>\n That the\u00a0conclusion was long planned was one of my first certainties after the shock of\u00a0Jonestown. I remember the slip-up. It was long ago, back in Redwood Valley \u2013\u00a0three or four years before \u201cJonestown\u201d \u2013 and there may have been something too\u00a0rote about our crescendo of feeling in response to his oft-repeated finale: \u201cand\u00a0we\u2019ll die together!!\u201d He was silent a moment, then let loose a bitter outburst,\u00a0at us, his audience. \u201cYou think it will all be glory and honor! You\u2019ll be seen\u00a0as the brainwashed followers of a mad preacher!\u201d A rare moment of honesty, and\u00a0a disconcerting thought, at least. Maybe someone else reading this remembers\u00a0it. He never said it again.<\/p>\n His faithful\u00a0recording secretary, the last true believer referred to in the book, remembers him bragging once, \u201cno one will ever be\u00a0able to figure me out.\u201d<\/p>\n So the story\u00a0continues, despite Leigh\u2019s iconic ending. (The end.) Was this her humor, her\u00a0optimism, or was she just being matter-of-fact? The work is illuminating, a\u00a0great contribution to all of us who still struggle to understand. Thank you, Leigh.<\/p>\n (Kathy\u00a0Barbour [Tropp] joined Peoples Temple in 1970 with her companion, Richard\u00a0Tropp, and was living in the San Francisco Temple on November 18, 1978. Her\u00a0other article in this edition is Coming to Terms with \u201cDrinking the Kool-Aid\u201d<\/a>. Her earlier writings on this site can be found <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n