Jonestown Survivor Hosted Table at Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley
Jonestown Survivor hosted a table at the Bay Area Book Festival for the fourth year in a row.
On April 28 and 29, 2018, I traveled up to Berkeley from San Diego. I hosted a table for two days, refreshing people's memories about Peoples Temple and Jonestown. I now always carry a large sheet of the faces from Peoples Temple. I feel like my friends accompany me wherever I go. While I was at the Book Festival, several of my dearest Peoples Temple friends and other friends stopped by. It is always a highlight for me to mingle with both Peoples Temple and Synanon friends at the same time – sort of joins my two decades in two different cults, now that I have come out the other side..
In the Bay Area, so many people have connections to Peoples Temple. I met the nephew of one dear member. I also met with a man who was working at the San Francisco passport office, a man who remembered all the people during that era who came in for passports to an unknown destination – we were very secretive. I met another woman from Attorney Charles Garry's office, and many people who remembered their lost relatives, and their neighbors and co-workers.
I want to make sure that these wonderful people are not forgotten, always. I also want to be sure that we have learned important lessons from the whole tragedy – to never shut down critical learning skills, to always be vigilant and watch everything! There are many con men in the world. Jim was just one. They spend a lot of time finding our soft spot, our naive spot.