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15. Jim Jones Invented the Gay Agenda (feat. Olivia Morgan, Inchunwa)
8 Plays3 years ago
CULTS: Jim Jones/Jonestown Massacre
cw: anti-black racism, extreme violence, assault, murder, suicide, child abuse, slavery
In 1978, over 900 people died at a remote settlement in Guyana after ingesting a poison-laced drink. Their leader, Jim Jones, declared this a “revolutionary suicide.” In our first episode about a cult, we dig into the Jonestown massacre – the event that had the largest number of American civilian casualties due to a non-natural cause, until 9/11. In our third collaborative episode, Olivia Morgan*, a co-host of the podcast Inchunwa, joins Akshi as they explore the events that led up to this heartbreaking tragedy, uncovering how Jim Jones drew a group of idealistic, marginalized folks in with promises of utopia, and violently led them to their deaths. Why did this happen? Who did this happen to? How did it get to this point? Tune in to find out how white supremacy, colonization, narcissism and abuse dynamics all tie into this devastating story. And as always, take care of yourselves, coz’ this one’s a doozy.
*Olivia Morgan (she/they) is a social worker and citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and descendent of Chickasaw Nation. Olivia is a co-host of Inchunwa, a podcast that shares the story of the ongoing Southeastern traditional tattoo revitalization movement. On their podcast they talk with influential artists, southeastern scholars, as well as folks directly involved in the movement: those looking forward to being tattooed and those tattooing southeastern folks. To learn more about Inchunwa, you can find them anywhere you get your podcasts and follow them on Instagram @inchunwa.
Sources
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, you are not alone. Here are some resources that you can reach out to for support, we also encourage you to reach out to your community & find local crisis lines in your city, state or country.
You can find a list of suicide hotlines all over the world here. The crisis lines listed below are for those located in the United States. You can find more crisis lines at this link, and search for longer-term help with a therapist on Psychology Today.
24/7 Crisis Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
24/7 Crisis Text Line: Text TALK to 741-741
Veterans Crisis Line: Send a text to 83825
The Trevor Project (Support for the LGBTQIA2S+ community ): 1-866-488-7386
Outro last updated April 2023
FYI: we've recently unpublished older episodes as we are in process of re-editing for a smoother flow & audio experience. they will be available again as we finish.
Thank you for listening to our passion project <3 You can find us on social media here! We're a team of 2 people & have always been ad-free. If you are enjoying, please consider supporting our sustainability on Patreon or by making a one-time contribution via CashApp $unpacktheeerie.
- your grateful hosts
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Transcript
Jim Jones's Contradictions and Humor
00:00:03
Speaker
But he also, like, had sexual relations with both men and women in the community.
00:00:08
Speaker
The internalized homophobia.
00:00:09
Speaker
So I don't know what's going on with Jim.
00:00:11
Speaker
Okay, but, like, is this the beginnings of what people call the gay agenda?
00:00:15
Speaker
Because I'm just, like, like, Jim Jones created the gay agenda.
00:00:19
Speaker
The gay agenda.
00:00:20
Speaker
It's like, everyone is a homosexual except for me.
00:00:23
Speaker
It's okay to be gay, Jim.
Introduction to 'Unpacking the Eerie' Podcast
00:00:26
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshi.
00:00:28
Speaker
And I'm Shayna, and you're listening to Unpacking the Eerie.
00:00:31
Speaker
a podcast that explores the intersections of our dark and morbid curiosities through a social justice lens.
00:00:38
Speaker
You're welcome.
Content Warning
00:00:47
Speaker
Before we get started, just want to offer a brief content warning.
00:00:52
Speaker
This episode will contain mentions of anti-Black racism, extreme violence, assault, murder, suicide, child abuse, and slavery.
00:01:04
Speaker
Well, hello everyone.
00:01:07
Speaker
Back again for another episode.
Introducing Olivia and Her Background
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Speaker
But this time we have someone new on the podcast.
00:01:13
Speaker
Hello.
00:01:13
Speaker
Hello.
00:01:20
Speaker
Halito.
00:01:22
Speaker
Varnakam.
00:01:22
Speaker
We decided to say hello in our native tongues.
00:01:27
Speaker
Minus Tamil.
00:01:29
Speaker
Olivia's is... Chok-chok.
00:01:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:33
Speaker
Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, Olivia?
00:01:36
Speaker
Yes.
00:01:37
Speaker
Well, Halito again.
00:01:42
Speaker
So, hello.
00:01:47
Speaker
I am Olivia.
00:01:48
Speaker
My name's Olivia.
00:01:49
Speaker
I'm a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a Chickasaw descendant, and I'm also white.
00:01:55
Speaker
And I live on Duwamish land, occupy Duwamish land, which is also known as Seattle.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:01
Speaker
And I am a co-host of another podcast called In Choon Wah.
00:02:08
Speaker
So yeah, that's me.
Olivia's Podcast and Social Media
00:02:10
Speaker
Do you want to share a little bit about In Choon Wah?
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:14
Speaker
And Choonwa is like this podcast that I've been working on.
00:02:18
Speaker
I guess we started recording last year, but it's a larger project that we've been working on since about 2018.
00:02:24
Speaker
So what it's about is the revitalization movement of southeastern indigenous tattoos in what is now known as like the southeastern part of the U.S.
00:02:33
Speaker
And so we've been doing a lot of research about traditional tattoos.
00:02:38
Speaker
And then, you know, we've gathered all this information and we're like, okay, how are we going to like share the knowledge that we've been accumulating?
00:02:47
Speaker
And at first we were like, oh, maybe we write a book.
00:02:48
Speaker
And then we're like, well, that's not really as accessible.
00:02:52
Speaker
And so then the podcast idea kind of came about.
00:02:55
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One of the co-hosts, Britt, got some funding.
00:02:58
Speaker
And so we were able to launch the podcast.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:00
Speaker
It's been really fun.
00:03:02
Speaker
Just finished our first season in January, which covered history and other implications around traditional tattooing.
00:03:12
Speaker
And then March, we'll be starting a new series, which is our interviews that we did with some Chatta or Choctaw people who are wanting to be tattooed.
00:03:22
Speaker
And kind of like what their anticipation is to getting tattooed because that's kind of like one of the goals of the project we started years ago was like we want to get this like revitalization movement going.
00:03:34
Speaker
And so like to do that, we have to like have these conversations with our community.
00:03:40
Speaker
If you're interested at all in this podcast, you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook.
00:03:46
Speaker
And our username is at nchunwa, which is I-N-C-H-U-N-W-A.
00:03:53
Speaker
Cool.
00:03:54
Speaker
Thanks for sharing.
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:56
Speaker
Podcast friends.
00:03:58
Speaker
I don't know anyone else who has podcasts in my personal life, except for me and you and Shana.
Olivia's Interests and Admiration
00:04:06
Speaker
Who is your co-host.
00:04:07
Speaker
So yeah.
00:04:08
Speaker
Who is my co-host?
00:04:09
Speaker
Exactly.
00:04:09
Speaker
Which people know.
00:04:11
Speaker
I hope that, you know, if you're listening, but maybe this is the first episode you're listening to.
00:04:14
Speaker
I mean, you don't know.
00:04:15
Speaker
Maybe you don't know.
00:04:16
Speaker
You don't know, but usually it's me and Shana.
00:04:19
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:04:19
Speaker
Today it's me and Olivia.
00:04:21
Speaker
And Olivia and I met surprise, surprise, through the social work program that we were in together.
00:04:33
Speaker
And yeah, I remember, I'm not really exactly sure...
00:04:37
Speaker
when we had a conversation but I do remember you came over to my house and we had a conversation about non-monogamy that was the beginning of our friendship but our like friend friendiversary is like around Valentine's Day it is is this is this us celebrating our friendiversary this is our second year friendiversary celebration
00:05:02
Speaker
Welcome, we're going to talk about some sad, dark shit, as per usual.
00:05:07
Speaker
Tracks, tracks.
00:05:09
Speaker
I also didn't know if you wanted me to say any more about myself.
00:05:13
Speaker
You can.
00:05:13
Speaker
I don't know.
00:05:14
Speaker
What else to say?
00:05:14
Speaker
What do people say when you have guests?
00:05:19
Speaker
What are your interests, Olivia?
00:05:21
Speaker
Why did you want to come on the podcast to talk about the subject that we're talking about today?
00:05:25
Speaker
Why am I here?
00:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, actually, you know, I do live in Seattle, but I am from the South.
00:05:30
Speaker
And so I grew up in the South and moved up here for, you know, my MSW.
00:05:36
Speaker
And, of course, before I moved to Seattle, I, you know, Seattle's claim to fame is serial killers, you know?
00:05:44
Speaker
And, like, I've always been super interested in, like, learning about serial killers and, like,
00:05:49
Speaker
cults specifically as well of course your pod people that live below your podcast are like classic like seattle yeah that's why like i'm here now other interests i enjoy just like creating stuff i like to bead like to do music stuff yeah you're an artiste art artiste yeah what kind of what kind of work do you do in your capitalist job life well currently i'm unemployed
00:06:16
Speaker
What kind of jobs are you searching for?
00:06:18
Speaker
Well, yeah, I'm like, I want to do more like program management because I just like connecting with resources, other organizations and stuff like that.
00:06:28
Speaker
I spent a lot of what I've done in the past.
00:06:31
Speaker
I did a lot of like organizing and like bringing communities together.
00:06:36
Speaker
And so I really want to continue doing that.
00:06:38
Speaker
And of course, I got my MSW for a reason.
00:06:40
Speaker
Like, you know, mental health is really important to me and just like the systems in which we exist.
00:06:47
Speaker
And so I think like whatever work I'm going to end up doing is like working to like dismantle those systems, but also just like you have to work in systems.
00:06:57
Speaker
Clearly, it doesn't matter how hard you try.
00:07:00
Speaker
You're always in a system.
00:07:01
Speaker
A lot of my work also, I think, is like trying to help people like navigate.
00:07:06
Speaker
you know, if you're, if you have to be in the system, what can you do to like kind of push against it as well?
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:12
Speaker
But yeah, back to just like why I'm here.
00:07:14
Speaker
I just, one, love your podcast.
00:07:17
Speaker
You and Shana do such a good job.
00:07:19
Speaker
Thank you.
00:07:20
Speaker
Thank you.
00:07:20
Speaker
We appreciate the support.
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes I can't, like, listen to, like, some of the episodes fully because it's scary.
Cultural Connections in Tattooing
00:07:28
Speaker
That's fair.
00:07:29
Speaker
I mean, it is scary and it is a lot.
00:07:32
Speaker
But I was listening to your podcast the other day about, um, it was the episode...
00:07:38
Speaker
About how modern tattooing connects back to Indigenous tattooing and how, like, the white people from Europe were, like, getting tattoos but then having to, like, hide it when they went back.
00:07:51
Speaker
And I was like, these people really have...
00:07:55
Speaker
I don't know what's going on with them.
00:07:56
Speaker
What's happening?
00:07:57
Speaker
It's a lot of chaotic shit.
00:07:58
Speaker
I appreciate y'all listening.
00:08:00
Speaker
I know you and Shayna both have told me you've listened to some of the episodes.
00:08:04
Speaker
And so, yeah, we did cover one of our episodes.
00:08:07
Speaker
I think it was the second to last one of our last season.
00:08:10
Speaker
You should listen if you're interested in what I'm talking about.
00:08:14
Speaker
It's a teaser.
00:08:14
Speaker
It's a teaser.
00:08:16
Speaker
Um, thanks, Oxi, appreciate it.
00:08:19
Speaker
Uh, no, but, um, it's just, it kind of just blows my mind, like, you know, you're walking down the street and you see somebody with, like, a facial tattoo or, like, very heavily tattooed, and you have an immediate reaction of, like, ugh, investigate.
00:08:32
Speaker
Like, why do you feel that way?
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:34
Speaker
Because it's, it's a visceral reaction, and they don't even know why.
00:08:37
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:08:39
Speaker
Let's unpack it.
00:08:40
Speaker
In case of the visceral reactions, we're going to bring it back to our topic of today.
Jim Jones and Jonestown: A Historical Overview
00:08:46
Speaker
It's the first episode of a topic that we've never covered before.
00:08:50
Speaker
Gotcha.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, because we've done, like, we've done the ghosts, we've done the aliens, we've done conspiracies, we've done true crime, you know?
00:08:59
Speaker
You're really doing it all.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:00
Speaker
We're doing it all.
00:09:01
Speaker
And, like, you're probably like, oh, but you're missing one, and
00:09:05
Speaker
Today, we're going to be doing that one.
00:09:08
Speaker
Yay!
00:09:10
Speaker
So, in November of 1987, more than 900 people died after ingesting a poison-laced drink.
00:09:22
Speaker
And as some of you may already know, this was the tragic mass suicide or murder of members and children of the People's Temple in Chicago.
00:09:35
Speaker
jones town so bringing it back all the way to 1931 james jones is born his birthday was may 13th 1931 and he was born in crete indiana i looked up his chart because of course i did and he has an aries stellium so he has aries moon aries venus something else in aries as well but he's a taurus oh
00:10:03
Speaker
A Capricorn rising and has a Leo Mars.
00:10:05
Speaker
There's a chaotic chart.
00:10:07
Speaker
So that's Jim Jones.
00:10:10
Speaker
So a little bit of historical context.
00:10:12
Speaker
Like, this is the 1930s.
00:10:14
Speaker
So, like, Jim Crow laws are still in place.
00:10:16
Speaker
This is Indiana.
00:10:17
Speaker
And the KKK, Indiana group, was...
00:10:21
Speaker
one of the most powerful KKKs in the entire country.
00:10:25
Speaker
So just keep that in your brain as we go through talking about this.
00:10:32
Speaker
I'm gonna share a little bit about Jim and his childhood and how he grew up.
00:10:39
Speaker
Keep this in mind as well.
00:10:40
Speaker
A lot of this information comes directly from him and he's not always the most reliable source of information.
00:10:48
Speaker
So his parents were James Thurman Jones, who is a veteran of World War One.
00:10:54
Speaker
He was actually a victim of mustard gas and lived on disability.
00:10:58
Speaker
His mom was Lynetta Jones, and she's quoted to be a feisty independent woman.
00:11:05
Speaker
And she was much younger than her husband.
00:11:08
Speaker
JTJ is how I refer to his dad.
00:11:10
Speaker
Their entire family grew up in poverty.
00:11:13
Speaker
It was a combination of like a Baptist slash Quaker family where like his dad believed in God and his mom doubted that.
00:11:23
Speaker
Jim talks about how his dad was emotionally absent while his mom was working all the time.
00:11:29
Speaker
I didn't have any love given to me.
00:11:31
Speaker
I didn't know what the hell love was.
00:11:33
Speaker
He once told his congregation.
00:11:36
Speaker
He also said, I was considered trash of the neighborhood.
00:11:40
Speaker
He was considered to be a rebel.
00:11:42
Speaker
He fought off kids who bullied other children.
00:11:46
Speaker
He often rescued stray pets and, quote, took home beggars, whatever the heck that means.
00:11:53
Speaker
He was a weird kid.
00:11:54
Speaker
He was obsessed with death and religion.
00:11:58
Speaker
He would entertain his friends in the loft of his family's barn by performing experiments on animals and then conducting funerals for them.
00:12:07
Speaker
One time he even locked his friends up in the barn.
00:12:12
Speaker
One of his friends, Chuck Wilmore from childhood said, I thought Jimmy was a really weird kid.
00:12:20
Speaker
You think?
00:12:24
Speaker
And he also said that a friend, Chuck said a friend of his said that he saw Jim kill a cat once, which is in line with this.
00:12:34
Speaker
When Hitler died by suicide in April 1945, Jimmy was impressed.
00:12:43
Speaker
What?
00:12:43
Speaker
That he, like, evaded capture and was, like, able to, like,
00:12:48
Speaker
be master of his own death or whatever.
00:12:50
Speaker
You know, this is really tracking so far.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:53
Speaker
I'm like, man.
00:12:54
Speaker
It's like we're already... Cat killing.
00:12:55
Speaker
It already makes sense.
00:12:57
Speaker
Cat killing.
00:12:57
Speaker
Hitler.
00:12:58
Speaker
Obsession with death and religion.
00:13:01
Speaker
Another weird story.
00:13:02
Speaker
His ex-girlfriend from high school, Phyllis Wilmore, shared that...
00:13:10
Speaker
There was a pep rally where Jimmy decided to stage an elaborate funeral for the other school.
00:13:19
Speaker
And he got up in the middle of the pep rally and started preaching.
00:13:23
Speaker
His ex-girlfriend says, he had the control and inflection.
00:13:26
Speaker
It was like the real thing, but was all intended to be a joke.
00:13:30
Speaker
He was very self-assured on stage.
00:13:33
Speaker
He had that coal black hair and piercing eyes that would look right through you.
00:13:38
Speaker
Oh.
00:13:39
Speaker
He also stated later in his life that when he was a kid, he identified strongly with the Soviets, and he often used to play as if he was a Russian soldier killing Nazis in the snow.
00:13:52
Speaker
And then this one quote I saw of him was just, like, gross.
00:13:56
Speaker
He said, I used to play a role of a Japanese because I have certain Asiatic appearance.
00:14:03
Speaker
What?
00:14:03
Speaker
I'm like, dude, you're fucking white.
00:14:06
Speaker
Why you do this?
00:14:07
Speaker
Why?
00:14:08
Speaker
Why?
00:14:09
Speaker
Why?
00:14:10
Speaker
Why?
00:14:12
Speaker
As he, like, grew up, he explored every single church in his town.
00:14:16
Speaker
Quaker, Nazarene, Methodist, Apostolic?
00:14:20
Speaker
Apostolic?
00:14:21
Speaker
the Church of Christ, and he would often just throw himself into all of their rituals, and then he would kind of get disillusioned with whatever was the church he was at, and then move on to the next one.
00:14:31
Speaker
This is a quote from him.
The Rise of The People's Temple
00:14:33
Speaker
I acted out against the conformities in the community.
00:14:37
Speaker
First, because I was never accepted, or I didn't feel accepted, I joined a Pentecostal church, the most extreme Pentecostal church, the oneness, because they were the most despised, they were the rejects of the community.
00:14:51
Speaker
So you can see how he's very much like I identify outside of mainstream society and outside of the norm.
00:14:59
Speaker
So he graduated high school with an interest in medicine and in 1949 was working as an orderly in a hospital and met Marceline Baldwin, who ended up being his wife.
00:15:09
Speaker
She was a nursing student and they got married in the same year.
00:15:12
Speaker
In 1952...
00:15:15
Speaker
He entered the ministry and got a job as a student pastor at the Somerset Methodist Church in a poor, predominantly white neighborhood in Indianapolis.
00:15:26
Speaker
By 1953, he had a reputation as a, quote, healer and evangelist, and he started holding racially integrated services.
00:15:35
Speaker
So this was in the 1950s.
00:15:36
Speaker
And, like...
00:15:39
Speaker
this was not normal at all.
00:15:42
Speaker
Like, it was time of Jim Crow laws, and it was in Indiana.
00:15:47
Speaker
And so him, like, holding racially integrated services was pretty frowned upon by a lot of people in the community.
00:15:54
Speaker
So the church that he formed, which was a people's temple in Indiana, preached Rachel... Rachel?
00:16:02
Speaker
Who's Rachel?
00:16:07
Speaker
Anyways...
00:16:11
Speaker
The church preached racial equality, freedom from poverty.
00:16:16
Speaker
It was actually first called the Wings of Deliverance Church, and then it was later known as the People's Temple.
00:16:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:22
Speaker
Jim bought time on an AM radio station to air his sermons and also build a following in that way.
00:16:29
Speaker
And he would often say how his life was guided in pursuing justice and racial equality.
00:16:37
Speaker
And he also said that because he felt like an outsider, he could relate to the struggle of the black community.
00:16:44
Speaker
A white man?
00:16:45
Speaker
Bitch, that's not the same.
00:16:46
Speaker
It's the 1950s.
00:16:47
Speaker
Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
00:16:49
Speaker
Even now, that's not an appropriate statement.
00:16:52
Speaker
But oh, man, Jim.
00:16:54
Speaker
Oh, man.
00:16:55
Speaker
But anyway, through his church, he would offer free food, offer employment.
00:17:00
Speaker
He presented an image of being this leader who was committed to social justice and racial harmony.
00:17:06
Speaker
Hmm.
00:17:07
Speaker
I mean, it was just, like, pretty cool, you know?
00:17:09
Speaker
Progressive for the time.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:11
Speaker
They had a free diagnostic clinic.
00:17:13
Speaker
They would offer physical therapy.
00:17:15
Speaker
They had, like, a program for people with substance use disorder.
00:17:19
Speaker
And they fed more people than the city's program did.
00:17:24
Speaker
And they had no government money that was, like, tied with this.
00:17:28
Speaker
A lot of people didn't like what he was doing.
00:17:30
Speaker
And people who were part of that congregation faced a lot of racism.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:34
Speaker
The people who were drawn to the church were those obviously who were saying the most amount of oppression because those were the people that he was like offering this kind of utopia for.
00:17:44
Speaker
It was black folks, poor people, disabled people.
00:17:47
Speaker
They used to put ads in like newspapers and the radio with the statement, people's temple, interracial, interdenominational progress, food, healers.
00:17:57
Speaker
And this is how they would like attract people in.
00:18:00
Speaker
He kind of stole this whole idea from this black evangelist, Father Divine.
00:18:08
Speaker
So Jim Jones was motivated to start the temple because, one, he disliked mainstream religion, and he disliked the single-race congregations.
00:18:18
Speaker
And he found this model for his new church in Father Divine's peace mission,
00:18:25
Speaker
which was in Philadelphia.
00:18:26
Speaker
So Father Divine was a controversial black separatist, and he was very charismatic.
00:18:34
Speaker
His meetings were very theatrical.
00:18:37
Speaker
He also had an interracial congregation.
00:18:40
Speaker
His worshipers would often like
00:18:42
Speaker
rise and fall to their knees.
00:18:44
Speaker
There was like healings that occurred within that congregation.
00:18:49
Speaker
And a number of people noticed in Jim that after he met Father Divine, his way of preaching kind of like changed because he was very inspired by that.
00:19:01
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That's the word.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yes.
00:19:02
Speaker
The Father Divine possessed these qualities that Jim Jones started mirroring in himself and for his congregation.
00:19:09
Speaker
So him and Marceline
00:19:13
Speaker
used to call themselves the Rainbow Family because in 1961, they were the first family in Indiana to adopt a black child.
00:19:23
Speaker
And then they went on to also adopt a Korean child and an indigenous child.
00:19:28
Speaker
So that was their family.
00:19:31
Speaker
i don't like this i'm uncomfortable i know right i'm like okay okay if i got adopted by a white man and they called me a part of the rainbow family
00:19:47
Speaker
I'd be like, I'm okay.
00:19:49
Speaker
Thanks.
00:19:51
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:19:52
Speaker
I feel for these children.
00:19:54
Speaker
Jeez.
00:19:55
Speaker
But you know, this community felt very welcoming and safe for a lot of folks who were feeling really like marginalized, oppressed, targeted by violence.
00:20:05
Speaker
The Jones family actually often got anonymous threats and received notes from people, like, praying for the death of their children.
00:20:14
Speaker
Okay, that's pretty fucked up.
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:20:17
Speaker
So, like, they weren't viewed well by...
00:20:20
Speaker
Mainstream society in Indiana.
00:20:24
Speaker
Linking back to Father Divine, in 1965, Father Divine passed away and Jim Jones actually tried to, like, seize power for, like, the peace mission organization.
00:20:39
Speaker
And he literally claimed he was the reincarnation of Father Divine, which makes no sense.
00:20:45
Speaker
That's not how reincarnation works.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:20:47
Speaker
And Father Divine's wife, who was Mother Divine, responded by kicking him and his followers out.
00:20:53
Speaker
But Jim Jones was able to, I guess, convince a small number of people from the peace mission to join him and his congregation.
00:21:02
Speaker
Oh, my God.
00:21:04
Speaker
In 1965...
00:21:07
Speaker
Fears of nuclear attacks led Jim and many of his followers and many of the families that were part of his congregation to move to Israel.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yukiya, California.
00:21:19
Speaker
In this specific time, he declared to all of his followers that the Bible was false and that he is God's true prophet.
00:21:29
Speaker
He came across an article that listed a bunch of places that would be safe in case of a nuclear catastrophe and chose this place in California based on that list.
00:21:38
Speaker
He kind of like very fear-mongered his congregation into thinking that like a nuclear attack was going to happen on
00:21:46
Speaker
on the specific day in 1967 um so he convinced them to move to California there's also stuff that I read that was saying like one of the other reasons that they moved was because of all this like hate that they were facing from the community in Indiana and they felt like the place that they were in like weren't ready for their church but like you know there was a lot of
00:22:12
Speaker
civil rights movements taking place in California at the time.
00:22:16
Speaker
And so they were like, maybe we go there.
00:22:18
Speaker
It was like during the time of the Vietnam War and there was a lot of protests going on in the Bay Area.
00:22:24
Speaker
So 1965, Jim Jones, his family, and about 70 of his followers moved to Redwood Valley in Northern California.
The Temple's Expansion and Influence
00:22:31
Speaker
His church would later extend to both San Francisco and Los Angeles by the mid-1970s.
00:22:38
Speaker
Around this time also, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
00:22:41
Speaker
MLK Jr. was assassinated.
00:22:44
Speaker
Nixon was like kicked out.
00:22:46
Speaker
The Cold War was going on.
00:22:47
Speaker
And there was just generally like massive mistrust of the government in the air.
00:22:53
Speaker
Right.
00:22:54
Speaker
And amongst this climate, Jim Jones is here and he's in San Francisco by this point.
00:23:01
Speaker
And he's like allying with progressive politicians.
00:23:04
Speaker
People from the People's Temple are like volunteering for this, like these like progressive campaigns and
00:23:09
Speaker
And at the same time, they were also running homes for the elderly, running foster homes, had a ranch for people with mental illness to live and work at.
00:23:19
Speaker
They had social workers who were part of the people's temple that would help people navigate systems.
00:23:25
Speaker
And they had a free dining hall.
00:23:27
Speaker
They had a drug rehabilitation center.
00:23:29
Speaker
They had free legal aid services.
00:23:32
Speaker
They had day camps for low-income kids to
00:23:35
Speaker
learn how to ride horses and swim and do different activities like that.
00:23:40
Speaker
And, like, all of that sounds really great, right?
00:23:42
Speaker
Sure.
00:23:42
Speaker
Especially during this, like, time where there's, like, a huge mistrust for the government and, like, a lot of, like, divisiveness.
00:23:53
Speaker
So the kind of people...
00:23:55
Speaker
that the People's Temple was attracting because of, like, all of this really progressive social justice work that they were doing.
00:24:02
Speaker
They attracted young, idealistic activists who wanted to do something meaningful with their lives.
00:24:07
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:24:07
Speaker
Like, I probably would have been like, this sounds great!
00:24:09
Speaker
This sounds amazing!
00:24:10
Speaker
I want help!
00:24:11
Speaker
I want to join!
00:24:14
Speaker
So this is a quote from a People's Temple member, Glenn Hennington.
00:24:20
Speaker
Robert Kennedy had been killed.
00:24:22
Speaker
Malcolm had been killed.
00:24:23
Speaker
Martin Luther King had been killed.
00:24:25
Speaker
So you're looking at a period of time of civil rights consciousness when there were those in this country that were trying to stomp racism out.
00:24:34
Speaker
And you had somebody here who was not only speaking about it, but as far as I could see, it was being demonstrated before my very eyes.
00:24:42
Speaker
And that was a testimony within itself.
00:24:44
Speaker
So this is what was like really drawing people towards the people's temple.
00:24:48
Speaker
There's a,
00:24:49
Speaker
other member, Catherine Barber, stated the people were the attraction of the temple.
00:24:55
Speaker
So much of the information was revolving around Jim Jones, and he is always the one who's given credit for everything, but the people were the attraction.
00:25:04
Speaker
Right?
00:25:04
Speaker
So that makes sense, too.
00:25:05
Speaker
For a lot of people, this, like, integrated life was also, like, a sort of lifeline.
00:25:11
Speaker
For example, Vernon Gosney and Cheryl Wilson were a couple of
00:25:17
Speaker
that were mixed race.
00:25:18
Speaker
Vernon was white and Cheryl was black.
00:25:20
Speaker
Vernon was also wanting to like help himself to stop being like addicted to drugs and alcohol.
00:25:27
Speaker
So the reason that they decided to join the People's Temple was one, because they were in an interracial relationship, which was like at the time, not even like legally allowed.
00:25:38
Speaker
And also, you know, they wanted a place that would be like supportive of their healings.
00:25:43
Speaker
Vernon says, we were not accepted, her family didn't accept me, my family didn't accept her, and it was really important to us to be in a place where we were accepted and embraced and celebrated, and People's Temple was that place.
00:25:56
Speaker
It was around this time, late 1960s, that Jim Jones starts networking with public officials, the media, donating money to charitable causes, and helping with different campaigns.
00:26:07
Speaker
There was some weirdness associated with the People's Temple because the screening process was very, very extensive before people were accepted into the church.
00:26:19
Speaker
Pass it over to you.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:20
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about who was part of it.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah, the temple.
00:26:26
Speaker
Part of the temple, I have this kind of concise quote, and it says, his congregation was completely mixed, which is like, you know, with race, age, creed.
00:26:37
Speaker
The composition of Jonestown population before they moved was 75% black, 20% white, and 5% Asian, Hispanic, and Native American, which...
00:26:48
Speaker
Also, I think that's an interesting how they just lumped those three together.
00:26:52
Speaker
But whatever.
00:26:53
Speaker
And like what you've said earlier, from the outside, it looked like an idealistic picture of a society that was unattainable in mainstream culture.
Jonestown's Complex Community
00:27:03
Speaker
Also, you've already mentioned this briefly, but like, you know, many of his followers had been addicted to drugs prior to joining the temple or they were homeless or houseless or escaping abusive situations.
00:27:17
Speaker
Wow.
00:27:18
Speaker
So you have people that are like coming from these places of like trying to escape their oppressive situations or they're trying to like find an environment where they'll feel supported and like they're if they have a goal to like stop using drugs.
00:27:35
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:27:36
Speaker
Also, I found this really cool.
00:27:39
Speaker
There's actually a whole website that's just about Jonestown.
00:27:41
Speaker
Is it the San Diego State University?
00:27:45
Speaker
I think so.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's jonestown.sdsu.edu.
00:27:51
Speaker
They have a whole thing, so a lot of stuff that I'll be talking about is from this website and other things.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of my stuff is also from this website.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:00
Speaker
But anyways, what was really interesting, they had a breakdown of where people are from.
00:28:06
Speaker
So the state of origin, which is pretty interesting.
00:28:10
Speaker
So of course in California, they had a total of 374 people.
00:28:13
Speaker
And they also divided it for race.
00:28:15
Speaker
So for black people, there were 232.
00:28:17
Speaker
For white people, there was 106.
00:28:24
Speaker
Mixed people, 29.
00:28:26
Speaker
What up?
00:28:26
Speaker
And then they do have an other category, which is seven.
00:28:31
Speaker
So that's just in California alone.
00:28:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:28:34
Speaker
I think the majority of people that joined, not a majority, but a good portion was from the South.
00:28:39
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:28:40
Speaker
And they have it broken down by state.
00:28:42
Speaker
I'm not going to break it down by state, but total from the United States South is 345 people.
00:28:45
Speaker
And the most came from Texas.
00:28:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:28:54
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:28:55
Speaker
And then, like, they have other states that are, like, New York, Washington, Illinois, you know, Indiana, Ohio.
00:29:00
Speaker
But majority is from California and from the United States South.
00:29:04
Speaker
In terms of, like, you know, intersectionality, gender, race, distribution, majority of the congregation were Black women.
00:29:14
Speaker
That's also something to note.
00:29:17
Speaker
That is what makes up the congregation...
00:29:20
Speaker
Yeah, so that kind of, like, illustrates, like, this picture of, like, the majority of people that were part of this temple were black people, people of color, people, like, struggling with mental illness, substance use disorder, like, survivors of abuse.
00:29:37
Speaker
So people who are, like, very isolated by mainstream society.
00:29:42
Speaker
And if you know anything about abuse dynamics in general, that...
00:29:47
Speaker
It starts to make a little bit of sense.
00:29:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:51
Speaker
And, like, that really ties in, and I think with a lot of the things that I was reading, and even when I learned about Jonestown, like, a long time ago, they didn't talk about, okay, why do people...
00:30:02
Speaker
that are escaping abusive situations or going through these hardships and they're trying to find like solace and like community and then like a lot of times end up back in a situation where the abusive situation continues but a lot of times they don't see it as such because it's like maybe a quote-unquote better situation but it's not like not abusive yeah yeah
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I have some stuff about that later, so we'll put a pin in it.
00:30:31
Speaker
Pin in it.
00:30:32
Speaker
Come back later.
00:30:33
Speaker
So go ahead.
00:30:34
Speaker
So up until this point, like everything that I've shared makes this community seem like a really great place to live and be a part of in this really sociopolitically very intense time.
00:30:49
Speaker
Seems like a really great community to be a part of where you're kind of giving back and providing support to larger communities.
00:30:56
Speaker
and at the same time feeling like accepted and like part of this group of very different people.
00:31:03
Speaker
So his congregation started growing and growing because it just attracted a lot of people.
00:31:08
Speaker
And he was also at the same time like networking with politicians and media.
00:31:13
Speaker
And so like was spreading the word wider and wider.
00:31:17
Speaker
So more and more people are like coming to join the congregation.
00:31:21
Speaker
And it was estimated that in 1977, the group had about 20,000 followers.
00:31:26
Speaker
Whoa.
00:31:26
Speaker
Kind of an estimate.
00:31:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:28
Speaker
And it was at this point where slowly, slowly, some not so positive reports start surfacing about stuff that's happening and the people's temple.
00:31:40
Speaker
People were being forced to give up their belongings.
00:31:43
Speaker
They were being forced to give up their homes.
00:31:45
Speaker
They were being forced to give up custody of their children.
00:31:50
Speaker
And there was also reports of Jim Jones staging fake, quote, cancer healings
00:31:56
Speaker
and people being subject to beatings.
00:32:00
Speaker
So there were reports that children would be physically disciplined.
00:32:05
Speaker
So because they were living in a communal society, the children were also being raised communally.
00:32:11
Speaker
And they would hold these things called disciplinary boxing matches, where it would be like between a child and other members.
00:32:21
Speaker
And then as time progressed, these boxing matches also included adults.
00:32:26
Speaker
They were disciplinary boxing matches, whatever the heck that means.
00:32:30
Speaker
Gone.
00:32:31
Speaker
Just like, what?
00:32:32
Speaker
It's like really weird to see these things side by side, right?
00:32:36
Speaker
Because like, it feels like this just does not track with like the values of the people's temple or whatever.
00:32:44
Speaker
Okay.
00:32:45
Speaker
They also had these things called night long catharsis.
00:32:50
Speaker
where members would pretty much, they would be like called to do like hot seat, but they would be emotionally dissected.
00:32:58
Speaker
So like people would ask them like, why are you wearing such nice clothes when there's people in the world that are starving?
00:33:05
Speaker
They would be accused of like engaging in many activities that were like not allowed.
00:33:10
Speaker
It was inappropriate for the people who are in the hot seat to defend themselves at all.
00:33:14
Speaker
So they basically just had to sit there and take it while they were just like, you know...
00:33:20
Speaker
verbally and emotionally abused by everyone who was watching.
00:33:24
Speaker
But it was called a night-long catharsis.
00:33:27
Speaker
So this was happening when they were still in California.
00:33:30
Speaker
The temple also would ask adults to sign papers admitting that they had engaged in various crimes and wrongdoings and conspiracies against the U.S. government, including, like, terrorist attacks and, like, agreeing that they had, like, molested their
Control and Manipulation in Jonestown
00:33:47
Speaker
own children.
00:33:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:33:48
Speaker
Even if none of this was true, they were, like, forced to sign these papers.
00:33:53
Speaker
And the reason that they were forced to do that is because if at any point that they threatened to leave the church... Oh, my God.
00:33:59
Speaker
They would be blackmailed to stay because Jim Jones would say, well, I have this...
00:34:05
Speaker
Papers that you signed.
00:34:07
Speaker
And I can release them if you leave.
00:34:09
Speaker
I'm having like whiplash.
00:34:11
Speaker
I'm having whiplash because you're like... This is such an idealistic community.
00:34:16
Speaker
But also sign these papers.
00:34:18
Speaker
And we're gonna have your children fight.
00:34:21
Speaker
And we're also... And we're gonna take custody of your children.
00:34:23
Speaker
And we're gonna like... Break you down so emotionally... That you're gonna just forget who you are as a person.
00:34:30
Speaker
Wow.
00:34:32
Speaker
Continue.
00:34:33
Speaker
So in 1973...
00:34:35
Speaker
Eight members leave the People's Temple.
00:34:39
Speaker
This is the first time that Jim Jones mentions revolutionary suicide.
00:34:44
Speaker
So in San Francisco, this is 1973, he handed out Kool-Aid to his entire congregation.
00:34:51
Speaker
And after they drank it, he told them that they've been poisoned.
00:34:54
Speaker
And then he goes, JK, it was a test of your loyalty.
00:34:59
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:35:00
Speaker
Like...
00:35:02
Speaker
Really just, like, doing the research about Jim and this whole situation, just, like, it's very, very parallel with, like, dynamics of abuse, which I'm going to get into later.
00:35:11
Speaker
But, like, people who are listening and who are already familiar with that, like, I'm sure you're making those connections, too.
00:35:17
Speaker
Like...
00:35:20
Speaker
We feel this escalation happening, right?
00:35:22
Speaker
But it's going to get so much worse.
00:35:24
Speaker
It's going to get so much worse.
00:35:27
Speaker
In 1974, and you'll tell us a little bit about this in a bit, but 3.8 thousand acres were leased in Guyana.
Exodus to Guyana and Settlement Challenges
00:35:37
Speaker
for Jim Jones to build Jonestowns.
00:35:39
Speaker
So very few of his followers in 1974 went to Guyana to establish this like agricultural cooperative.
00:35:47
Speaker
And it was literally in the middle of the jungle.
00:35:50
Speaker
And I know you'll tell us a little bit about this later, but I just want to say like to get to Jonestown from the capital of Guyana, which is Georgetown,
00:35:59
Speaker
You had to, like, go a whole day in, like, ocean waters and then in a river.
00:36:05
Speaker
And then you had to, like, drive in, like, very bad conditions.
00:36:09
Speaker
So this is the middle of fucking nowhere.
00:36:12
Speaker
Like, you are going to be fucking isolated from the world.
00:36:16
Speaker
Stuff is still happening in San Francisco, though.
00:36:20
Speaker
1975, Jim Jones is really at his peak, you know?
00:36:23
Speaker
He helped to elect George Moscone as mayor and Harvey Milk as city supervisor.
00:36:30
Speaker
And he was also named the head of the San Francisco Housing Authority.
00:36:33
Speaker
Jim Jones was.
00:36:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:36
Speaker
But two years later, August 1st, 1997, the New West magazine releases an article that is...
00:36:48
Speaker
about the people's temple but it's about all of the fucked up shit that's happening in the people's temple exposed yes exposed it was an expose it was called inside the people's temple and it was written by marshall killed off and phil tracy um they interviewed 10 people who had been part of the organization and who had left um and the article described instances of manipulation cruelty
00:37:12
Speaker
and abuse at the hands of Jim Jones.
00:37:14
Speaker
He kind of got word a couple days before the article was going to come out that this was about to happen.
00:37:21
Speaker
And so he said, okay, well, I know we weren't going to go to Guyana until later, but we're going to go right fucking now.
00:37:29
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:37:29
Speaker
So the day the article was released, he left the U.S. and went to Guyana and a thousand people went with him.
00:37:38
Speaker
Most of these people had planned to go anyway, but because they left in a rush, when they arrived in Guyana, houses weren't completed, there was a lot of problems with infrastructure, and there was just, like, not enough space for, like, the amount of people that were there.
00:37:52
Speaker
Pass it to you.
00:37:54
Speaker
To tell us about, like, where were they?
00:37:57
Speaker
Why did they go to Guyana?
00:37:58
Speaker
What's up with that?
00:38:00
Speaker
Why are we here?
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:02
Speaker
So there's a trend, right, with, like, cults about how these cults are just like, let's just move to this random land.
00:38:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:11
Speaker
And I always think...
00:38:13
Speaker
colonizer why do you get access i'm just like and even though they bought the land it's still like what are you doing here so it's important to me yeah to get to know like okay where are they at like let's get some context so we just want to give a disclaimer we want to acknowledge that there are moments in this episode where guyana is pronounced wrong and for that we apologize
00:38:42
Speaker
Guyana is, the full name is the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.
00:38:46
Speaker
It's a tropical country situated on the northern coast of South America.
00:38:52
Speaker
It is the only country in South America where English is the official language.
00:38:56
Speaker
And it is bordered by Venezuela on the west, Serename on the east, and Brazil on the south.
00:39:02
Speaker
And the Atlantic Ocean is in the north.
00:39:04
Speaker
Guyana has an area of 214,969 square kilometers.
00:39:13
Speaker
It's about the size of Great Britain for context.
00:39:16
Speaker
Oh, that's pretty big.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty big.
00:39:18
Speaker
It's pretty big.
00:39:19
Speaker
So the name Guyana is an Amerindian word meaning land of many waters.
00:39:25
Speaker
And they are known as the country of six people, which is Africans, Amerindians, Chinese, East Indians, Europeans, and Portuguese.
00:39:37
Speaker
it's uh notably famous for i think it's called kaiter falls sorry i pronounced that wrong um it's situated on the portoro river which is like where it falls off this like plateau so when i was doing this research i had to google what a mere indian was because i was like what is that i was gonna ask the definition from the free dictionary.com um
00:40:02
Speaker
is the contractions Amerindian and Ameriand occur infrequently in modern American English, especially with reference to the Native American peoples of the United States and Canada.
00:40:16
Speaker
They are somewhat more common in anthropological contexts or when used of the Native peoples of the Caribbean and Central and South America.
00:40:26
Speaker
So, it's like... It's kind of like the indigenous people of the area, I believe.
00:40:33
Speaker
It's like... It's just kind of like... I'm like, what is this word?
00:40:37
Speaker
And like, why are they not just saying like indigenous people?
00:40:41
Speaker
Even that definition, I'm still kind of like, okay.
00:40:45
Speaker
It's like...
00:40:46
Speaker
Any member of the peoples living in North or South America before Europeans arrived.
00:40:50
Speaker
Like, that's, like, what they... Yeah, so the Native people.
00:40:54
Speaker
It's kind of like some, like, how we say Native American for the U.S. Yeah.
00:40:57
Speaker
They would say American Indian.
00:40:58
Speaker
Okay, I see.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah, so back to the beginning.
00:41:02
Speaker
So it's believed, generally believed, that Gaiwana's first inhabitants, the Amerindians, originally entered the territory of what is now known as Gaiwana about 11,000 years ago.
00:41:13
Speaker
Initially, they lived on the low swampy coastline region.
00:41:17
Speaker
And I'm going to go in a little bit about like who the people were because it's very important.
00:41:23
Speaker
And also like gives you an idea of like the landscape, like what you were mentioning about how it's like very secluded in certain areas.
00:41:30
Speaker
So there are some studies done that reveal that the Northwest District and the
00:41:36
Speaker
pomerun.
00:41:37
Speaker
The diet of the early Amerindians consisted of fish, turtles, crabs, snails, variety of wild animals, larvae of beetles that deposited their eggs in the ite palm, wild cashew, ite palm flower, and wild honey.
00:41:53
Speaker
And those who lived later lived in a savannahs hunted waterfowl, fish, turtle, cayman, deer, sloth, and monkey.
00:42:02
Speaker
So many of the animals were trapped in isolated, like, pools during the rainy season.
00:42:07
Speaker
In the rainforest area, the Ameri-Indians lived on fish and wild animals, while near the Brazil border, wild nuts form part of the diet.
00:42:16
Speaker
So they're, like, living off the land, as Indigenous people do.
00:42:20
Speaker
Honestly, sounds great to me.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, sounds like a chill time.
00:42:24
Speaker
Like a chill time.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:26
Speaker
Beginning about 4,000 years ago, the riverbank areas were affected by severe droughts.
00:42:32
Speaker
And as the water levels in the rivers dropped, the salt water from the sea encroached further inland.
00:42:39
Speaker
So a lot of the animals had to migrate further inland to steady fresh water supply.
00:42:45
Speaker
Human communities also moved to those areas because, you know, fall of the animals, but also because the land was water.
00:42:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:51
Speaker
And they showed that, like, the droughts dried out many of these, like, swamps in the Northwest District.
00:42:57
Speaker
And, like, the Ite Palm suffered as a result.
00:43:00
Speaker
So a lot of the, you know, food supply is being, like, affected.
00:43:04
Speaker
So the subsequent decline in the supply of starch forced early people to look for alternatives in the higher regions.
00:43:11
Speaker
And this included cassava.
00:43:13
Speaker
And the domestication of this root vegetable saw the gradual establishment of permanent agricultural communities.
00:43:18
Speaker
So the earliest of such settlements in the Northwest District were established.
00:43:23
Speaker
You know, I'm going to apologize in advance.
00:43:26
Speaker
Lottie's words, I will not know how to pronounce.
00:43:27
Speaker
Um.
00:43:29
Speaker
But it's around this like area around the Iroka River about 3000 years ago.
00:43:35
Speaker
But the research has shown that Ameri-Indian groups actually began living in those areas, though not on a permanent basis from about 3400 years ago.
00:43:45
Speaker
Moving forward, so the adoption of the bitter cassava played a major role in Amerindian substance.
00:43:54
Speaker
They were able to use it for travel.
00:43:56
Speaker
It was such an easy thing they could eat.
00:44:00
Speaker
It lasted for a long time.
00:44:02
Speaker
They used it in
00:44:03
Speaker
bread, preservative for meat, for flour.
00:44:06
Speaker
It was just like, there's a lot of uses for it.
00:44:09
Speaker
So that's great.
00:44:10
Speaker
Random tidbit.
00:44:11
Speaker
You'll notice this with a lot of indigenous groups, but just most cultures is that like, they usually have like a starch that a lot of their foods are like based off of.
00:44:18
Speaker
And so it's cool.
00:44:19
Speaker
I'm like, what is the starch?
00:44:21
Speaker
What is your starch?
00:44:22
Speaker
For me, it's rice flour.
00:44:25
Speaker
Rice flour.
00:44:27
Speaker
I mean, rice generally, but then there's like all of these things that are made from rice flour, like dosas and idlis and like all this stuff.
00:44:34
Speaker
I love when you make those and I'm like, yes, I'm good.
00:44:38
Speaker
This is a side note, but like just a great quote from Shana about me talking to her about the foods that I eat.
00:44:44
Speaker
And then she just goes, you know, it can't just be all cherry tomatoes and idlis.
00:44:51
Speaker
Is that what you eat?
00:44:52
Speaker
No, it's just like two things that I eat really often is cherry tomato pasta and idliies.
00:44:58
Speaker
Listen.
00:44:59
Speaker
It's a diverse by my diet.
00:45:01
Speaker
Just throw some berries in there.
00:45:02
Speaker
True.
00:45:03
Speaker
You know?
00:45:04
Speaker
No, I mean, for Southeastern, like, what is not known as the...
00:45:09
Speaker
us southeastern area um typically it's corn um so that's like our tonchi that's what we call it so we use it for like we'll use corn flour we'll use it for like all their we'll make uh like dumplings out of it it's just everywhere yeah we just grind it up we eat whole we just you know um i love corn i love corn i have corn earrings oh my god that's kind of awesome
00:45:37
Speaker
So I'm like, what is your starch?
00:45:39
Speaker
Tell me.
00:45:40
Speaker
It's rice.
00:45:40
Speaker
It's rice.
00:45:42
Speaker
But anyways, starches.
00:45:44
Speaker
We love the starch.
00:45:45
Speaker
But that's an important thing to know, too, because most cultures, that's how they've survived.
00:45:51
Speaker
And they usually have amazing stories about where it comes from.
00:45:55
Speaker
We have a creation story about when we were gifted corn, and it was by the corn woman.
00:46:00
Speaker
And so...
00:46:02
Speaker
Even that.
00:46:02
Speaker
And like I've heard other stories about like other cultures and like their starch.
00:46:06
Speaker
They have like these beautiful creation stories about how it came to be.
00:46:10
Speaker
It's very beautiful.
00:46:11
Speaker
That is very beautiful.
00:46:13
Speaker
And so for them, it was the cassava.
00:46:16
Speaker
The cassava.
00:46:17
Speaker
So we love that.
00:46:18
Speaker
Moving forward, by the 19th century, the principal Amerindian tribes and inhabiting Gaiwana were the Caribs.
Guyana's Historical Context
00:46:27
Speaker
The, again, I'm going to mispronounce these, just fair warning.
00:46:31
Speaker
The Akawoiz or Waikas, the Arawaks, and the Waros or Garanos.
00:46:41
Speaker
Interestingly, the Arawaks, Caribs, and Arawaks.
00:46:45
Speaker
Akwos called themselves Lokono, Kriña, or Capon, respectively, and all meaning the people in their respective languages, which in a lot of cultures, that's what, like, their...
00:47:03
Speaker
They call themselves the people in their language.
00:47:06
Speaker
And, like, for my tribes, actually, that's not true.
00:47:09
Speaker
It's just, like, it's funny.
00:47:11
Speaker
Both my tribes, they're actually connected.
00:47:13
Speaker
And they're actually, like, said to be names of the leaders of our first... We decided to, like, become a separate people.
00:47:22
Speaker
Those are names of, like, two brothers that, like, separated.
00:47:25
Speaker
There's a whole story about it.
00:47:27
Speaker
And that's why, like, our languages are very similar because we used to be one people.
00:47:30
Speaker
And then we split...
00:47:32
Speaker
There's other tribes, though, where, this is unfortunate, where it's, like, their name that we now know of is actually what other people would call them.
00:47:39
Speaker
Right.
00:47:41
Speaker
Do you know about, like, your, like, did y'all give yourself that name?
00:47:44
Speaker
Or, like, was that?
00:47:45
Speaker
I mean, I think it's, like, hard to know.
00:47:47
Speaker
I know that, like, just a million people generally, like, have always been very, like, we are our own thing compared to, like, other folks in India.
00:47:57
Speaker
And there's, like,
00:47:57
Speaker
been a lot of like protests when they're like they were trying to make him be the national language right you know it's yeah it's a very very old culture and has like a ton of history associated with it that i am not aware of i know like what my grandma has told me and i know about like kind of like politics and tumul not do today but gotcha yeah knowledge of like past a few generations back in my family is like
00:48:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:25
Speaker
Non-existent, which is kind of sad.
00:48:28
Speaker
This is the result of colonization, though.
00:48:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:32
Speaker
You know?
00:48:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:33
Speaker
It's like, we don't need to know.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:34
Speaker
It's like, we... Yeah.
00:48:35
Speaker
But why not?
00:48:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:38
Speaker
So also in addition to the nine existing Gaiwanese Amerindian tribes, other groups also lived there and over time had been absorbed into the other tribes or are together have disappeared.
00:48:49
Speaker
There was a survey done in 1843 by Robert Schcomberk, who surveyed the boundaries of Gaiwana and listed 13 tribes in a paper he presented to the Royal Geographical Society of London.
00:49:03
Speaker
Very diverse, you know, people.
00:49:05
Speaker
So now we're going to talk about colonization.
00:49:07
Speaker
Classic.
00:49:07
Speaker
Classic, classic.
00:49:08
Speaker
You know, in 1492, the classic year that we all know...
00:49:17
Speaker
The first known European colonizers, they're not explorers, reached the Caribbean region when Christopher Columbus, sailing under the Spanish flag, but he's actually Italian, landed in the Bahamas.
00:49:32
Speaker
And for nearly 50 years after, very few ships sailed in the region.
00:49:36
Speaker
So immediately after the territorial discoveries were made by Columbus, King Ferdinand and Queen Elizabeth petitioned Pope Alexander III, I think it's the third, to recognize the new lands, quote unquote, new lands, as Spanish possessions, particularly at the same time when the Portuguese explorers were reaching lands in Africa and Asia.
00:50:00
Speaker
The Portuguese also had approached the Pope to recognize their African, quote-unquote, discoveries as their legal possessions.
00:50:07
Speaker
In 1493, as a result of these requests, the Pope drew on a map a north-south line with 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands and proclaimed that all lands discovered west of that line belonged to Spain.
00:50:24
Speaker
Thus, the American continent, with the exception of Brazil, fell under Spanish dominion.
00:50:29
Speaker
Hmm.
00:50:30
Speaker
So moving forward to like specifically Guyana, many expeditions came to Guyana.
00:50:37
Speaker
The Dutch and the Spanish are like the important players in early colonization of this area.
00:50:42
Speaker
And then we have slavery.
00:50:46
Speaker
So the date of the first arrival of enslaved African people in Guyana is not known, but it is believed the first group were brought by Dutch settlers who migrated from Tobago from as early as the mid 17th century.
00:51:00
Speaker
As plantations expanded on the coast of Guyana, more enslaved people were brought from West Africa and ships owned by the West India Company.
00:51:09
Speaker
And there were occasions too when planters bought people that were smuggled from the West Indies by English traders.
00:51:17
Speaker
The white plantation owners used so many methods to maintain what they called complete control over people they enslaved.
00:51:25
Speaker
And their principal method was that of, quote, divide and rule.
00:51:31
Speaker
And members of like same tribes were separated on different plantations to prevent communication between them.
00:51:39
Speaker
The aim behind this was to prevent any plans to rebel if they were together.
00:51:43
Speaker
The separation, though, created a problem of communication since the plantation would have had different groups of enslaved peoples like speaking different languages.
00:51:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:52
Speaker
So the planters had to find a way to communicate with them.
00:51:56
Speaker
And then a new language known as Creole Dutch developed.
00:52:00
Speaker
And this became a common tongue among enslaved people.
00:52:03
Speaker
So when the British took over of Guyana in the 19th century, English words were injected into the language and it became the basis of the Guyuanese Creoleese language.
00:52:16
Speaker
So enslaved people were also prevented from practicing their religions.
00:52:20
Speaker
Quite a few enslaved people were Muslim, while many others had their own tribal beliefs.
00:52:25
Speaker
But since their Christian planters saw non-Christians as pagans, they made sure that they could not gather to worship in the way that they were accustomed when they lived in Africa.
00:52:36
Speaker
This is a very similar structure of slavery, like, in the U.S. Right, yeah.
00:52:41
Speaker
They would have, like, different sects of, like, people.
00:52:44
Speaker
So they would have, like, people in the field, people in the factory, blacksmith, people that were in the house.
00:52:49
Speaker
And a lot of this labor was divided based on their skin color.
00:52:53
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:52:54
Speaker
So in 1762, a rebellion of 36 male and female enslaved people occurred on Berbice, a Dutch colony.
00:53:04
Speaker
And after the enslaved people repelled the militia force sent by the governor, Van Hooggenheim,
00:53:12
Speaker
The rebellion was finally repressed by a stronger force of Dutch militia, and some of them escaped, yeah, but at least one was executed.
00:53:23
Speaker
The repressive techniques of the planters were bringing matters to, like, a boiling point, and just a few months later, around, like, February 23rd of 1763, a more organized revolt took place.
00:53:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:38
Speaker
And this became known as the Burby Slave Rebellion.
00:53:44
Speaker
So this rebellion lasted 10 months.
00:53:47
Speaker
And this marked the first serious attempt by a large group of enslaved people to win their freedom in Guyana.
00:53:53
Speaker
Significantly, it was also the first organized attempt to win freedom in the entire American continent.
00:54:00
Speaker
Wow.
00:54:01
Speaker
So, you know, ahead of the game, I mean, they were making some very progressive moves.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:06
Speaker
Beginning of something.
00:54:07
Speaker
Beginning of something.
00:54:08
Speaker
And then as we will see, like, a...
00:54:11
Speaker
domino effect in other countries like the US.
00:54:15
Speaker
But despite the division and the ranks and the eventual failure of the rebellion from it emerged the first group of Guyanese revolutionary heroes who initiated the struggle against colonial oppression.
00:54:29
Speaker
So this campaign for the end of slavery gained momentum in Great Britain.
00:54:34
Speaker
And it was expected that enslaved people in the British colonies would soon be set free.
00:54:40
Speaker
And finally, on August 28th of 1833, the House of Commons in England approved the Emancipation Bill, which was earlier introduced by Thomas Buxton.
00:54:50
Speaker
While it was abolished, outside of that, they had outside immigration and labor, what they called contract labor, which we know.
00:54:58
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:54:59
Speaker
So that was from like the West Indies.
00:55:02
Speaker
Then they had Chinese immigration, which was also brought by the government around 1851.
00:55:08
Speaker
British, this is the British Gaiwana government, agreed to pay the planters a bounty of $100 for each Chinese landed in the colony.
00:55:17
Speaker
The period from like 1853 to like 1879, a total of 13,541 Chinese landed in Gaiwana.
00:55:25
Speaker
worked on plantations, and it was also noted there was a high suicide rate among Chinese men.
00:55:31
Speaker
But a lot of the Chinese, like many of the Indians, used their savings to purchase land from African landowners.
00:55:38
Speaker
So they became like business people, particularly, I guess, businessmen, because, you know, usually the men that were doing that in that time.
00:55:45
Speaker
So they were able to like start operating like grocery stores and like other laundromats and like restaurants.
00:55:51
Speaker
In the U.S., it would not be colonization without the U.S. getting involved.
00:55:57
Speaker
Yeah, because they just, like, want to be in everybody's business.
00:55:59
Speaker
They just want to be in all the... Everybody's business.
00:56:03
Speaker
Right.
00:56:04
Speaker
So, in 1940... So, we're getting close to the timeline, right?
00:56:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:07
Speaker
So, we're getting closer.
00:56:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:09
Speaker
Since 1940, the United States had established a firm political and military interest in Gaiwana.
00:56:17
Speaker
And during the Second World War, the British government allowed the USA to set up a naval base...
00:56:23
Speaker
This is just scratching the surface of this area.
00:56:26
Speaker
But like, just to give context, it's like very complicated.
00:56:29
Speaker
And it's like this constant pull for power.
00:56:32
Speaker
So now I'm gonna talk about Gaiwana's independence.
00:56:35
Speaker
So throughout the early part of 1966, preparations for Gaiwana's independence celebration went in full swing.
00:56:41
Speaker
A special committee appointed by the government designed the new coat of arms and selected the congee peasant as a national bird.
00:56:49
Speaker
It became an independent nation on Thursday, May 26, 1966.
00:56:54
Speaker
But the independent celebrations began four days before and continued until May 29th.
00:56:59
Speaker
It took a long time for them to gain that independence.
00:57:03
Speaker
And at this point, the, like, demographics of the area, I mean, clearly there's a lot of immigration happening, so it's a very diverse area.
00:57:12
Speaker
Clearly, yes, there's, like, the white population that's, like, the conch.
Jonestown's Demographics and Infrastructure Issues
00:57:17
Speaker
colonizers but a very diverse population of different types of people so which is kind of interesting considering that like the population of Jonestown also yeah very diverse which is my next point now switching gears to like okay we just learned all this about this area that kind of some of the politics the indigenous populations like also very diverse so now I'm
00:57:41
Speaker
jones town like what's the deal um with jones with jones town and the deal is it's kind of wild uh the deal is wild also i just want to like take a moment and be like do you have any reflections on like all that i just said i mean whenever i uh hear histories of colonized land it really just feels like
00:58:03
Speaker
It's like over and over and over again.
00:58:06
Speaker
All this shit is happening.
00:58:08
Speaker
But it's interesting to me that literally the country gained independence in what, like 1967?
00:58:15
Speaker
66?
00:58:16
Speaker
It was 1966.
00:58:17
Speaker
And they moved there like 10 years later.
00:58:21
Speaker
Exactly.
00:58:21
Speaker
So like very soon after that.
00:58:24
Speaker
And then, I mean, when you also in the beginning when you were kind of introducing Guyana as a country, I was like...
00:58:30
Speaker
I wonder if like the draw was because of the diverse population as well because they were like, oh, we are a rainbow family.
00:58:40
Speaker
We are.
00:58:40
Speaker
Get out.
00:58:44
Speaker
Oh, boy.
00:58:45
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:58:46
Speaker
So I think I'm going to go ahead with, like, who made up Jonestown, who moved there.
00:58:51
Speaker
68% of the population of Potempo members living in Gaiwana were African Americans.
00:59:00
Speaker
So it's, like, top two-thirds in the pie.
00:59:05
Speaker
24% were white.
00:59:08
Speaker
5% were mixed.
00:59:09
Speaker
So, calculated that approximately 1,020 members of the People's Temple were living in Gaiwana as of November 18, 1978.
00:59:20
Speaker
Again, black females made up the largest group of residents of Jonestown of 45%, with white females comprising 13%.
00:59:32
Speaker
Black males made up of over one fifth and white males making up a tenth and the remainder falling into the mix or other categories.
00:59:39
Speaker
Classic.
00:59:40
Speaker
Also, I realize it's very binary language.
00:59:43
Speaker
The research doesn't mention any gender variance aside from like cisgender people.
00:59:50
Speaker
So, yeah.
00:59:52
Speaker
The numbers show two age bumps for those living in Gaiwana, a large group of number of children under 20, as well as those in their 20s, and a secondary group of senior citizens.
01:00:03
Speaker
131 children were under the age of 10.
01:00:04
Speaker
Wow.
01:00:05
Speaker
234 were between the ages of 10 and 19, and 186 were in their 20s.
01:00:15
Speaker
So, pretty young group.
01:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:00:18
Speaker
The number of seniors may indicate a sizable, like, non-productive workforce in the community, but they played a really important role in supporting Jonestown, primarily because of social security income.
01:00:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:00:35
Speaker
So this is where a lot of their money came from.
01:00:38
Speaker
So how are they able to buy the land?
01:00:40
Speaker
How are they able to move there?
01:00:43
Speaker
What do you know?
01:00:45
Speaker
Because you mentioned they don't take government funds.
01:00:49
Speaker
But they do.
01:00:51
Speaker
But they do.
01:00:51
Speaker
Okay.
01:00:52
Speaker
So the research, they took a snapshot of the Social Security income for the month of September 1978.
01:00:58
Speaker
And they found the greatest amount of information for that month.
01:01:03
Speaker
Because there was a public concern about Social Security fraud in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, they provided a list of the beneficiaries and the checks which had been recovered from Jonestown.
01:01:14
Speaker
And in that month, 173 beneficiaries received a total of $36,548.30 in checks, which were recovered uncashed at the site of the tragedy.
01:01:30
Speaker
Of those, 173 beneficiaries were 157 were black, 15 were white, and one was Native American.
01:01:39
Speaker
The one, the one Native.
01:01:42
Speaker
The one.
01:01:44
Speaker
But if we add, they said if they add to that figure those who had received Social Security income in other months, the number of, like, black people that, like, got the checks jumps to 182.
01:01:55
Speaker
The number of white people to 18 and still, like, the one Native person.
01:02:00
Speaker
And a single Latino person.
01:02:03
Speaker
All this means that African Americans, particularly the elderly, were helping to finance the community in Guyana.
01:02:11
Speaker
So that's wild.
01:02:13
Speaker
They had also this breakdown of like family units because we have a lot of children.
01:02:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:02:17
Speaker
So family units, 36% was made up of like three family members.
01:02:24
Speaker
26% was of two members and then like four members was like 20% of the population.
01:02:30
Speaker
And then five plus was like 18%.
01:02:32
Speaker
Hmm.
01:02:34
Speaker
They did a breakdown of professions of people.
01:02:37
Speaker
Because, like, this gets brought up later.
01:02:41
Speaker
A comment.
01:02:42
Speaker
I'm like, what?
01:02:43
Speaker
I have a comment later that relates to the professions.
01:02:46
Speaker
The highest number of people in a certain occupation was the medical profession.
01:02:52
Speaker
Which made up 155 people from the medical profession.
01:02:56
Speaker
I'm like, what?
01:02:57
Speaker
I wonder if they have, let's see...
01:03:02
Speaker
I was like, do they have social work?
01:03:03
Speaker
No, I'm just kidding.
01:03:04
Speaker
Well, they did have social workers.
01:03:05
Speaker
They did, but the numbers... I think probably the number falls into medical, probably, because I don't see any other... One that it would fall under.
01:03:15
Speaker
Right.
01:03:16
Speaker
No, food cooks and waitstaff was 104 people, was the second largest, and then clerical was 102.
01:03:24
Speaker
So we got like, you know...
01:03:26
Speaker
kind of a really weird variety yeah yeah um they have mechanics we have education we have we have all kinds of stuff i think too what's interesting is that like the gender distribution is also like mostly like women
01:03:40
Speaker
Which I guess makes sense when we talk about the cycles of abuse.
01:03:45
Speaker
So in conclusion, about, like, demographics and, like, where the money comes from, like, they are really relying on the Black elderly population to, like, fund their efforts, which is, like, very much not... Mm-hmm.
01:04:02
Speaker
what they like you know what i mean like in the beginning they're like we are diverse we so we are um really come together to like help those who are like oppressed also we're gonna like take your money and i'm like the guys right of this and then you're like taking this this money from the elderly particularly like people of color come on yeah yeah so that's fucked it's pretty fucked
01:04:27
Speaker
Thanks for sharing all of that.
01:04:29
Speaker
I feel like the information I'm about to share really parallels both with the stuff that you shared about Guyana and the land and what you just shared as well.
01:04:39
Speaker
So, like, they moved there in August 1st, 1997, right?
01:04:44
Speaker
And if you remember at the beginning, the massacre happens in...
01:04:55
Speaker
1978.
01:04:55
Speaker
1978.
01:04:57
Speaker
Yes.
01:04:57
Speaker
Correct.
01:04:59
Speaker
Sorry, in the beginning I said 1987.
01:05:02
Speaker
Correction.
01:05:03
Speaker
Correction.
01:05:04
Speaker
It's 1978.
01:05:05
Speaker
So obviously they were not there for very long.
01:05:08
Speaker
And as I shared earlier, it was already bad when they were in San Francisco.
01:05:15
Speaker
And at that point of time, they're living in a city that
01:05:19
Speaker
And now they have moved to this place that is legit in the middle of nowhere.
01:05:24
Speaker
Right?
01:05:25
Speaker
We've already... Yeah.
01:05:25
Speaker
The landscape.
01:05:26
Speaker
We're there.
01:05:27
Speaker
Yes.
01:05:28
Speaker
They arrive.
01:05:29
Speaker
A thousand people arrive at a camp that was meant to serve 50 people.
01:05:35
Speaker
Are you kidding me?
01:05:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:36
Speaker
So, like, that's what I meant when, like, things were not ready.
01:05:39
Speaker
Oh.
01:05:40
Speaker
And it was... So far, they had only had enough resources for 50 people.
01:05:46
Speaker
So...
01:05:48
Speaker
The members worked long, hard days in the fields.
01:05:53
Speaker
Oh, um, hello?
01:05:55
Speaker
Hello?
01:05:57
Speaker
Did we not just talk about... Did we not just talk about how... There's a history of... There's a history of enslaved people doing the same thing.
01:06:06
Speaker
And also... And what is the majority of the population of Jonestown?
01:06:09
Speaker
I'm so sick of this.
01:06:11
Speaker
And I'm like... It gets worse.
01:06:13
Speaker
It gets worse.
01:06:14
Speaker
It gets worse.
01:06:15
Speaker
Because they were subjected to harsh punishments if his authority was ever questioned.
01:06:22
Speaker
The organization was like literally like they have an organizational chart.
01:06:26
Speaker
So clearly they were like a established organization that had all of these different people that were in charge of different things.
01:06:35
Speaker
While at the same time, like Jim Jones was like the person who.
01:06:41
Speaker
You constantly needed to be listening to for your own safety.
01:06:45
Speaker
When they arrived in Jonestown, their passports and medication were confiscated.
01:06:50
Speaker
There were armed guards that patrolled the compound around the jungle and their letters and phone calls were censored.
01:06:59
Speaker
out and they got no information about what was happening in the rest of the world except through Jim Jones and so he kind of like fed them a lot of like paranoid shit about how the US was now like basically like sharing like a very apocalyptic view of what was happening in the US and the reason that they needed armed guards was so that to protect against these people who are like gonna come and like take them back into this like very oppressive world
01:07:28
Speaker
society.
01:07:29
Speaker
At this point, he has, like, declined a lot as well.
01:07:34
Speaker
The medication that he confiscated from residents, he kept for himself and alternately medicated himself with amphetamines and barbiturates.
01:07:45
Speaker
He had a throne in the compound's main pavilion, and he often would compare himself to Vladimir Lenin and Jesus Christ.
01:07:56
Speaker
Oh.
01:07:56
Speaker
Oh.
01:07:59
Speaker
There was public punishments.
01:08:01
Speaker
There were public humiliations.
01:08:04
Speaker
An ex-member, Joyce Houstons, also said that Jim said that all of us were homosexuals.
01:08:12
Speaker
Everyone except him.
01:08:13
Speaker
He was the only heterosexual on the planet and that women were all lesbians and the guys were all gay.
01:08:20
Speaker
He also said anyone who showed interest in sex was just compensating.
01:08:23
Speaker
Wait, is this the gay agenda?
01:08:25
Speaker
Is this what is happening?
01:08:26
Speaker
He's the only heterosexual, but he also had sexual relations with both men and women.
01:08:31
Speaker
Ugh.
01:08:32
Speaker
the internalized homophobia so I don't know what's going on with Jim okay but like is this the beginnings of what people call the gay agenda because I'm just like what is is this what they mean and they're like the gay agenda like Jim Jones created the gay agenda everyone is a homosexual except for me
01:08:51
Speaker
It's okay to be gay, Jim.
01:08:53
Speaker
He's a very, like, hypocritical person.
01:08:55
Speaker
There's a lot of things going on that don't make a lot of sense.
01:08:58
Speaker
But he also was... He would try to control people's romantic relationships within the...
01:09:07
Speaker
know what to call it within jonestown because he saw them as a threat to the cause and like you can see how this is actually really similar to what they did with enslaved people where they would try to separate them from their families he also like members were encouraged to inform on one another and which is also exactly it's like divide divide and
01:09:31
Speaker
Like, he's literally replicating, you know, patterns and strategies that were used during slavery.
01:09:41
Speaker
And he's a white man.
01:09:42
Speaker
And he's a white man.
01:09:45
Speaker
And majority of three quarters of the people who are living there are black.
01:09:50
Speaker
He really said.
01:09:51
Speaker
And he really said, come here, I will save you from oppressive society.
01:09:56
Speaker
This is what, god damn it.
01:09:59
Speaker
When actually what he meant was, I want to benefit.
01:10:03
Speaker
And I want to be the leader.
01:10:04
Speaker
I want to be... And I want to be the king.
01:10:08
Speaker
And... Yeah.
01:10:08
Speaker
He's also... I'm just, like, very confused about this whole, like... Everyone's gay but me.
01:10:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:14
Speaker
I'm like, what is this?
01:10:16
Speaker
What?
01:10:17
Speaker
Like, why?
01:10:18
Speaker
Like, I'm just very curious about that.
01:10:19
Speaker
Well, I think that's his way of also being like, oh, I'm, like, Jesus Christ.
01:10:23
Speaker
I'm, like, a messiah.
01:10:24
Speaker
I'm, like, a god.
01:10:25
Speaker
Because I'm different than everyone else.
01:10:29
Speaker
But then also making people who...
01:10:31
Speaker
Probably a majority is straight.
01:10:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:33
Speaker
Because, like, if we look at, like, the distribution of, like, queerness in general, especially during the time.
01:10:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:41
Speaker
Like, who's out or whatever, you know?
01:10:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:44
Speaker
Like, I'm just curious about, like...
01:10:46
Speaker
I mean, it's clear from even in San Francisco and especially now, like, he is playing severe mind games with everyone who lives there.
01:10:56
Speaker
Because even if you're straight and he's like, okay, but, like, you're actually gay.
01:10:59
Speaker
And can you imagine what that does to someone?
01:11:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:03
Speaker
It's, like, okay, I guess it, I can't imagine.
01:11:06
Speaker
I get it.
01:11:07
Speaker
But also think about how it's kind of interesting that he's doing that because when people who are actually queer or gay, people keep telling them they're straight.
01:11:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:17
Speaker
But you're straight.
01:11:18
Speaker
But you're straight.
01:11:19
Speaker
But you're straight.
01:11:19
Speaker
And like the emotional toll that takes on people, like because they're like, well, that's not true.
01:11:24
Speaker
Right.
01:11:25
Speaker
And they're having to pretend a lot of times.
01:11:27
Speaker
Right.
01:11:27
Speaker
It's like he's taking that tactic and like he's like reversing it.
01:11:32
Speaker
to just add more emotional turmoil he really is like disintegrating everyone's identity yes here you have no identity yeah you have no identity you're you've like gone through whatever these emotional dissections you have children who are being like put in these like really abusive situations where they're then taught to like inform on their parents and then
01:11:56
Speaker
He is trying to break families up and, like, basically asking people to, like, tattle on each other.
01:12:02
Speaker
And people are doing it because their identity has been so stripped down.
01:12:07
Speaker
And, like, all the information they're getting is filtered through him.
01:12:13
Speaker
This really reminds me also of boarding schools that Native children had to go through.
01:12:19
Speaker
Like, literally, the slogan was, um, kill the Indian, save the man.
01:12:24
Speaker
And a tactic was to strip people, native children, of their identity and told you are white now.
01:12:30
Speaker
We're giving you a white name.
01:12:32
Speaker
We're cutting your hair off.
01:12:34
Speaker
You're not allowed to wear what you usually wear.
01:12:36
Speaker
And you're telling them these rhetorics over and over again and, like, to children, right?
01:12:42
Speaker
And so these tactics...
01:12:45
Speaker
He literally got from colonizers.
01:12:49
Speaker
He's a colonizer.
01:12:50
Speaker
He's a colonizer.
01:12:50
Speaker
But, like, he really used these types.
01:12:53
Speaker
I feel like people are going to listen to this and be like, wow, he was so awful.
01:12:55
Speaker
It's like, yeah, but also, like, he's doing the same.
01:12:58
Speaker
He's using strategies and tactics that have been used for centuries.
01:13:01
Speaker
For centuries.
01:13:02
Speaker
Like, this is how you dehumanize people.
01:13:04
Speaker
And, like, he knew.
01:13:06
Speaker
He knew how to dehumanize so well.
01:13:09
Speaker
He was really smart and he learned about a lot of different religions and I'm sure he learned about colonization that way and I'm sure that he learned about strategies of manipulating large groups of
01:13:21
Speaker
people that way.
01:13:23
Speaker
I mean, this is the same time of boarding schools.
01:13:25
Speaker
Exactly.
01:13:25
Speaker
This is the same time period.
01:13:26
Speaker
He knows what the fuck he's doing.
01:13:28
Speaker
Yes.
01:13:28
Speaker
You know?
01:13:29
Speaker
He, like, literally built this organization from the ground up, targeted marginalized people, and then now...
01:13:37
Speaker
We'll come back to it.
01:13:38
Speaker
We'll come back to it.
01:13:39
Speaker
We're getting ahead of myself.
01:13:41
Speaker
Okay, keep going.
01:13:42
Speaker
So like I said, Jim Jones would report news from back home, and that was the only way that people were getting information.
01:13:49
Speaker
Letters were censored both ways.
01:13:51
Speaker
So letters that were going out were censored.
01:13:52
Speaker
Letters that were coming in were censored.
Abuse and Control Dynamics in Jonestown
01:13:54
Speaker
Telephone calls were either restricted or scripted, and relatives would say that they could hear people being coached on phone calls on what they should be saying.
01:14:06
Speaker
Wow.
01:14:08
Speaker
This is fucked, but there were these things called white knight exercises where, um, so there was also speakers, like, all across Jonestown where he would just be, like, preaching the whole time, and so people are just, like, inundated with his voice and...
01:14:27
Speaker
24-7.
01:14:28
Speaker
24-7 they're being inundated with his voice.
01:14:31
Speaker
And so these white knight exercises, he would call everyone to come to the main pavilion and they would listen to him preach about how the government conspiracies, how the media wants to destroy them, how the government wants to destroy them, how their own relatives wanted to destroy their community.
01:14:47
Speaker
Everyone wants to destroy them.
01:14:49
Speaker
And he would say, the enemy is about to overrun us and the only hope is mass suicide.
01:14:55
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:14:55
Speaker
So they would, during these white knight exercises, they would practice drinking poison, but they had no idea whether it was actually poison or not.
01:15:04
Speaker
Like, they would just have to drink it and not know, and it was, again, this, like, test of loyalty that he was doing on them.
01:15:11
Speaker
The way they're just traumatizing these people.
01:15:13
Speaker
You see how he's really just, like, breaking people down to, like, oh my god, I don't even fucking know.
01:15:20
Speaker
Like, just... These people, these people who, like, were...
01:15:24
Speaker
Already marginalized, people who are, like, really idealistic and wanting to be a part of a community that is, like... Safe!
01:15:31
Speaker
Safe, supportive, like, you know, different, and... And seemed very progressive with time.
01:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, seemed very progressive.
01:15:41
Speaker
And now...
01:15:43
Speaker
Such an awful situation.
01:15:44
Speaker
Right, right.
01:15:45
Speaker
And, like, you can see how this, like, very slowly escalates because if he engaged in this kind of behavior, one, when they were in San Francisco, even though it was happening a little bit then, but, like, if he was engaging in this kind of behavior from the get, like, obviously people would have left.
01:16:03
Speaker
Which is par for the cycle of abuse.
01:16:05
Speaker
Exactly, exactly.
01:16:07
Speaker
You need to break people down to the point where, like, you can engage in this kind of behavior and,
01:16:12
Speaker
And they just take it because they think that this is what they deserve.
01:16:16
Speaker
And like you are the only person in their life who has control over anything.
01:16:21
Speaker
And so they just have to do what you're telling them to do.
01:16:24
Speaker
Throughout, we've been talking about dynamics of abuse, right?
01:16:27
Speaker
And so I'm going to go into that more specifically now.
01:16:31
Speaker
And I'm not going to go deeply into it.
01:16:32
Speaker
I'm just going to state things that are related to dynamics of abuse and escalation.
01:16:39
Speaker
And you will be able to make the connections with the story.
01:16:45
Speaker
So domestic violence is a pattern of behaviors used by a person to maintain power and control over
01:16:53
Speaker
another person.
01:16:53
Speaker
So usually it's in an intimate partner relationship, but you can see how this plays out on a larger scale.
01:16:58
Speaker
So there's this thing that's called a power and control wheel that has all of these different things that are involved in this.
01:17:04
Speaker
Isolation, emotional abuse, financial abuse, sexual abuse, using children, threats, intimidation.
01:17:19
Speaker
All of that is present here.
01:17:22
Speaker
There is always a kind of like way that this violence escalates over time.
01:17:31
Speaker
Often there's also this cycle of narcissistic abuse, which is idealization, devaluation and discarding.
01:17:37
Speaker
And the beginning stage is idealization, also known as love bombing.
01:17:43
Speaker
And it's at the beginning of stage, it feels really intense.
01:17:45
Speaker
It feels really, really good.
01:17:47
Speaker
Often people said, like several former members said that during early days of involvement, Jones made them feel very special, very welcome.
01:17:54
Speaker
He was very charismatic, friendly, supportive, and also seemed like he had divine power.
01:17:59
Speaker
So like really positive in the beginning to kind of draw you in.
01:18:04
Speaker
Then it builds to this place of jealousy where the abuser is questioning people's loyalty and always testing people's loyalty.
01:18:13
Speaker
Then there's control.
01:18:14
Speaker
What, like, what can you wear?
01:18:16
Speaker
What can you do?
01:18:17
Speaker
What can you see?
01:18:18
Speaker
You see that their belongings were taken away from them.
01:18:22
Speaker
You know, their children were taken away from them.
01:18:24
Speaker
The way that they lived their life was being controlled by him.
01:18:28
Speaker
Verbal abuse.
01:18:29
Speaker
So a lot of condescending statements.
01:18:32
Speaker
So you can see that within the, like,
01:18:34
Speaker
Those like night catharsis things that they were doing.
01:18:37
Speaker
And then threats.
01:18:39
Speaker
If you leave, I will.
01:18:41
Speaker
If you leave, I will release these documents which are incriminating that I got you to sign.
01:18:45
Speaker
Then physical abuse.
01:18:47
Speaker
Beatings.
01:18:48
Speaker
And then it escalates to the point of plans for homicide and or suicide.
01:18:53
Speaker
So you see how literally this whole thing is present.
01:18:57
Speaker
within the story.
01:19:00
Speaker
So obviously, too.
01:19:03
Speaker
Like, you can make the connection very easily.
01:19:07
Speaker
And you can also see how, like, the cycle of narcissistic abuse of love bombing, devaluation, and then there's, like, discard.
01:19:15
Speaker
But in that case, it was, like, we're all going to die, was the discard, period.
01:19:20
Speaker
So often abusers...
01:19:23
Speaker
Many abusers, not everyone, are people who fit criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, which is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins in early adulthood and presents in a variety of contexts.
01:19:43
Speaker
So I'm just going to go through the symptoms.
01:19:45
Speaker
And so...
01:19:47
Speaker
There's 10 symptoms and you need to fit five of them to get a diagnosis, right?
01:19:53
Speaker
DSM.
01:19:53
Speaker
Yeah, DSM.
01:19:55
Speaker
First one, has a grandiose sense of self-importance, exaggerates achievements, talents, expects to be recognized as superior.
01:20:04
Speaker
Quote from Jim Jones, if you see me as your savior, I will be your savior.
01:20:09
Speaker
If you see me as your god, then I'll be your god.
01:20:12
Speaker
So check.
01:20:13
Speaker
So check.
01:20:14
Speaker
Next one.
01:20:15
Speaker
is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
01:20:22
Speaker
Like I said before, he had recordings of himself speaking, going on loudspeakers for literally 24 hours into the day.
01:20:30
Speaker
He often referred to himself as father, king, savior, socialist hero, and God.
01:20:35
Speaker
So, like, yes, he is preoccupied with some fantasies of success power.
01:20:40
Speaker
So check.
01:20:41
Speaker
So check.
01:20:42
Speaker
Three, believes that they are special and can only be understood by or should only associate with other special or high-status people or institutions.
01:20:51
Speaker
So when he was in San Francisco, he was like, you know, networking with all these politicians.
01:20:57
Speaker
And, you know, he viewed a lot of people... He treated those who were below him very, very poorly.
01:21:05
Speaker
They were beaten, emotionally abused, held against their will.
01:21:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:08
Speaker
And progressively that became more and more people.
01:21:11
Speaker
And like at the end, it was pretty much like everyone is below me and I'm like up here.
01:21:16
Speaker
So check.
01:21:17
Speaker
So check.
01:21:18
Speaker
Four.
01:21:19
Speaker
Believes that they're special or unique.
01:21:21
Speaker
We've been over this.
01:21:22
Speaker
Check.
01:21:22
Speaker
He thinks that he's God.
01:21:24
Speaker
He said, for some unexplained reasons, I happen to be selected by God.
01:21:29
Speaker
For unexplained reasons.
01:21:31
Speaker
Requires excessive admiration.
01:21:34
Speaker
People who are close to him said that this is definitely something that he needed.
01:21:37
Speaker
And like, clearly he made his beliefs law.
01:21:41
Speaker
So we're there.
01:21:44
Speaker
Number six has a sense of entitlement, unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment, and automatic compliance with expectations.
01:21:53
Speaker
He didn't believe any laws applied to him.
01:21:56
Speaker
He raped women.
01:21:57
Speaker
He abused drugs and alcohol while telling his congregation both of those things are wrong.
01:22:02
Speaker
He physically, emotionally, he used physical and emotional abuse to control and humiliate people.
01:22:07
Speaker
He felt like he was completely above any kind of reproach or judgment and
01:22:13
Speaker
Obviously true.
01:22:14
Speaker
And then the next one, it's like so obvious, but it's also noted as a symptom, if present, is the dangerous symptom.
01:22:23
Speaker
Danger.
01:22:24
Speaker
Is interpersonally exploitative, takes advantage of others to achieve their goals.
01:22:29
Speaker
So... What, this is like 7 out of 10 already?
01:22:32
Speaker
Yes.
01:22:32
Speaker
So that's number 7.
01:22:34
Speaker
And then the next one is, lacks empathy, is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
01:22:41
Speaker
Which is interesting because the way that he got people to join the cult is by displaying empathy towards marginalized groups.
01:22:52
Speaker
And then number nine is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him.
01:22:57
Speaker
Like he was paranoid, hypervigilant.
01:22:59
Speaker
He literally had like armed people guarding his little Jonestown.
01:23:05
Speaker
And he often felt like the media was smearing the people's temple and like all of these people were against them.
01:23:10
Speaker
And then number 10, shows arrogance, haughty behaviors, or attitudes.
01:23:17
Speaker
Let's just check that one, too.
01:23:18
Speaker
Let's just check.
01:23:20
Speaker
So this is actually comes from an article that I read that was also on that website.
01:23:27
Speaker
It was written by Dr. Gary Maynard, who teaches in the sociology department of Stony Brook University.
01:23:37
Speaker
And he actually wrote a bunch of different articles about Jim Jones and narcissistic personality disorder and goes into like...
01:23:43
Speaker
So this is, like, the intro article that I read, and then there's, like, a phase two, phase three, like, of the escalation where he goes more deeply into it.
01:23:52
Speaker
So if you're interested in that, there's more in-depth articles on Jim Jones and, like, stages of narcissistic personality disorder, including, like, childhood, early NPD, hubris syndrome, and narcissistic enablers, and then the violent stage, which is, like, the last one.
01:24:08
Speaker
So if you're interested...
01:24:11
Speaker
You can check that out.
01:24:12
Speaker
But, like, yeah, I wanted to kind of go into that because it's, like, how does this happen?
01:24:17
Speaker
Because of abuse dynamics is how it happens.
01:24:20
Speaker
Because of narcissistic personality disorder is why it happens.
01:24:23
Speaker
Because of, like, male privilege and white supremacy is why this happens.
01:24:28
Speaker
This happened.
01:24:29
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:24:30
Speaker
It's, like, all these things happening all at one time within this person.
01:24:35
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:24:35
Speaker
Because, yeah, the fact that he was – he came off as empathetic initially –
01:24:40
Speaker
It plays into like the levels of privilege that he held, but yet somehow he felt discarded by society.
01:24:52
Speaker
It's like... He like very victimized himself.
01:24:54
Speaker
He victimized himself to an extent where he was like, I can relate to the struggle of black Americans.
01:25:01
Speaker
And it's like, actually, no, you can't.
01:25:04
Speaker
But then, like, but it worked.
01:25:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:06
Speaker
Like, that worked.
01:25:08
Speaker
He knew what the fuck he was doing.
01:25:10
Speaker
He knew.
01:25:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:11
Speaker
And it's hard to say that, like, narcissists, not all narcissists are cult leaders.
01:25:16
Speaker
Not all narcissists are cult leaders.
01:25:18
Speaker
Not all narcissists engage in narcissistic abuse, even.
01:25:21
Speaker
Like, everything, there's a spectrum.
01:25:23
Speaker
There's a spectrum.
01:25:24
Speaker
But, like, you can see what happens when, like,
01:25:27
Speaker
Unchecked.
01:25:28
Speaker
Unchecked narcissism combined with, like, whiteness and privilege and power and money can lead to a situation like this.
01:25:39
Speaker
He really embodied the white savior.
01:25:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:42
Speaker
He really did.
01:25:43
Speaker
He embodied that fully.
01:25:45
Speaker
So I'm about to pass it over to you.
Religious Cults vs. Organized Religion?
01:25:48
Speaker
Okay.
01:25:49
Speaker
It's 1977, 1978.
01:25:50
Speaker
Okay.
01:25:52
Speaker
A group of concerned relatives forms in the U.S. because, you know, they're probably seeing how these letters are censored.
01:26:00
Speaker
They're, like, not able to communicate with family members well.
01:26:05
Speaker
There's also some kids who are living there whose parents are, like, in America because they, like, gave custody of them.
01:26:13
Speaker
So there's, like, people trying to literally get their kids back from this place that they know...
01:26:18
Speaker
is fucked, right?
01:26:20
Speaker
So it's 1978.
01:26:21
Speaker
There's around a thousand people living in this compound that was built for much less.
01:26:27
Speaker
And their food is in short supply.
01:26:29
Speaker
Yes.
01:26:30
Speaker
So before we get into this, I mean, you've already talked about how, like, narcissists try to find places of power.
01:26:36
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:26:38
Speaker
So let's talk about what the difference between religion and cults are.
01:26:42
Speaker
I have thought about this a long time.
01:26:45
Speaker
And people are going to probably get like... I don't know.
01:26:48
Speaker
I just feel like people are like... Religion.
01:26:50
Speaker
They get very out of shape about critiques of religion.
01:26:55
Speaker
And then they also get...
01:26:57
Speaker
People get offended when you compare religion to cults, which to a degree, I understand.
01:27:06
Speaker
We can't ignore that Jim.
01:27:10
Speaker
I mean, we mentioned this when he was growing up.
01:27:12
Speaker
He went to several churches.
01:27:15
Speaker
varying denominations.
01:27:18
Speaker
And... He was learning.
01:27:20
Speaker
He was learning from religions, from organized religions, and thus used the rhetoric and techniques of those religions to create this new religion.
01:27:34
Speaker
Or, like, cult, you know.
01:27:36
Speaker
So... I mean, it was called the People's Temple.
01:27:39
Speaker
It's called the People's Temple.
01:27:40
Speaker
So, and this is coming from myself, who grew up...
01:27:45
Speaker
Southern Baptist.
01:27:46
Speaker
And then later it was Baptist.
01:27:48
Speaker
And later I'm like, I don't do that.
01:27:50
Speaker
Like, I'm not involved with the church.
01:27:53
Speaker
I don't, like...
01:27:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:55
Speaker
So, like, I get it.
01:27:57
Speaker
Like, I get people that are like, well, my church isn't bad.
01:28:01
Speaker
My church has never done X, Y, Z or like that.
01:28:04
Speaker
And, like, that's not, like, the argument.
01:28:06
Speaker
The argument is, is as an institution, religion, religious institutions are oppressive.
01:28:14
Speaker
And to different degrees.
01:28:15
Speaker
I mean, as an indigenous person,
01:28:19
Speaker
The church with a capital C, which is the institution, has consistently oppressed indigenous people, but also literally anybody, everybody.
01:28:31
Speaker
The entire world.
01:28:32
Speaker
The entire world.
01:28:33
Speaker
Literally the entire world.
01:28:34
Speaker
Also, I could get more into this, but I talk a lot about, we talk a lot about this in our, and in Chun-Hwa, about how religion and Christianity specifically plays into the oppression of, like, several things.
01:28:49
Speaker
Because it's like, it was the mode.
01:28:51
Speaker
It was, like, the mode of colonization.
01:28:54
Speaker
Yeah, and we talk about that in, we talk about Christian supremacy in one of our early episodes.
01:29:01
Speaker
I remember this.
01:29:02
Speaker
To...
01:29:02
Speaker
So I'm just saying all this to preface, like, you know, maybe you have some, like, personal feelings about, like, you get offended when people, like, compare religion to cults.
01:29:12
Speaker
But, like, let's be real.
01:29:14
Speaker
Like...
01:29:15
Speaker
The parallels exist.
01:29:17
Speaker
The parallels exist.
01:29:19
Speaker
And they exist for, like, a reason.
01:29:21
Speaker
Like, it's not an accident.
01:29:23
Speaker
Because most cult leaders learned shit from religions.
01:29:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:28
Speaker
And so going off that, if you want to get into it, there's, like, definitions, right?
01:29:32
Speaker
So I found this website, and it was, like, cult, sex, and denominations.
01:29:36
Speaker
Like, those are different terms.
01:29:38
Speaker
And denominations are just, like, different facets of, like, Christianity.
01:29:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:42
Speaker
There's some, like, funny quotes they actually have on this website before they get into, like, the definitions.
01:29:47
Speaker
And one of the quotes is, a cult is a church down the street from your church.
01:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, one of the things that I saw about the difference is that, and it's not always true even.
01:29:58
Speaker
Right.
01:29:59
Speaker
But how, like, cults, like, the people within them have less access to, like,
01:30:06
Speaker
the mainstream world, whereas in religion, they're, like, more integrated with the mainstream world.
01:30:10
Speaker
But that's not always true with all religions, and it's not true with all cults either.
01:30:14
Speaker
Yes.
01:30:14
Speaker
So, like, even within this thing, it has, like, what is the positive meaning?
01:30:20
Speaker
Meaning?
01:30:20
Speaker
The neutral meaning?
01:30:21
Speaker
Negative meanings?
01:30:22
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:30:23
Speaker
Very negative meaning.
01:30:25
Speaker
So for cults, they have like all these different meanings and it's like super interesting.
01:30:30
Speaker
So they have like the theological use of Oxford English Dictionary defines cult as worship, reverential homage rendered to a divine being or beings.
01:30:41
Speaker
A particular form or system of religious worship, especially in reference to its external rites and ceremonies and devotion or homage to a particular person or thing.
01:30:50
Speaker
And, you know, it's kind of hard for me to, like, see that and not think this is religion.
01:30:56
Speaker
So that's, like, the theological use of that.
01:31:02
Speaker
There's different uses, clearly, to really get into it.
01:31:10
Speaker
They have the very negative meaning, which is used by the popular media usage, which is like, a cult is considered a small, evil, religious group, often with a single charismatic leader that engages in brainwashing and other mind-control techniques.
01:31:27
Speaker
Believes the world is, the end is imminent and collects large amounts of weaponry in preparation for a massive war.
01:31:35
Speaker
Earliest use of this meaning of the word is believed to have begun in a 1965 book by Walter Martin called The Kingdom of the Cults.
01:31:44
Speaker
Hmm.
01:31:45
Speaker
And, like, yeah.
01:31:47
Speaker
So, like, there's that.
01:31:49
Speaker
They have, like, past uses of the word cult.
01:31:51
Speaker
They have recommended uses of the term cult, which is interesting.
01:31:57
Speaker
So, there's that.
01:31:58
Speaker
And they have, like, denomination, which is basically just, like, different parts of different established religious groups and sect.
01:32:05
Speaker
And, like, to be honest, it's kind of hard to...
01:32:11
Speaker
I'm just saying, like, as someone who grew up in a pretty strict church, and granted, I went to churches later on that were a little more lenient on, like, certain things.
01:32:23
Speaker
But, like, you know, I stopped going to church for several reasons.
01:32:27
Speaker
For several reasons.
01:32:29
Speaker
And, honestly, like, the theological use...
01:32:33
Speaker
of the term cult.
01:32:35
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, that's pretty much what happened.
01:32:38
Speaker
And like, there's so many things that like, I've learned about other different denominations that are just like, very extreme.
The Jonestown Massacre
01:32:48
Speaker
And like,
01:32:50
Speaker
We're talking about mostly Christianity because that's, like, the context.
01:32:52
Speaker
Clearly there's other religions that aren't that way, but I feel like in terms of, like, Christianity, like, one, that's our cultural context.
01:33:01
Speaker
Two, it was used to literally colonize a majority of the world.
01:33:06
Speaker
So it makes sense that cult leaders use Christianity as a starting point.
01:33:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:14
Speaker
It's wild.
01:33:15
Speaker
It's wild.
01:33:16
Speaker
It's like, you know... Yeah.
01:33:18
Speaker
I mean...
01:33:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:20
Speaker
What happens next?
01:33:22
Speaker
So I want to give a content warning.
01:33:25
Speaker
We'll be talking about the mass suicide and there are some details that are pretty hard and graphic.
01:33:32
Speaker
So I just want to like give you a warning now.
01:33:35
Speaker
So we're going to talk about Leo Ryan.
01:33:38
Speaker
So he was a liberal legislator from Northern California who'd become famous for what his supporter called fact-finding missions and his detractors called publicity stunts.
01:33:54
Speaker
So, however you want to take it.
01:33:55
Speaker
So, he, like, as a California State Assemblyman, Ryan briefly worked as a substitute teacher in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles after the riots there, and as a way to, like, check on the state of the local schools.
01:34:10
Speaker
In 1970, while serving on a prison reform committee, he adopted a pseudonym and got himself locked in a Folsom prison for 10 days.
01:34:19
Speaker
So it was within character, like when Ryan decided to visit Jonestown in 1978.
01:34:23
Speaker
And in a letter to the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee requesting permission to visit Gaiwana, Ryan wrote, quote, It has come to my attention that a community of some 1,400 Americans are presently living in Gaiwana under somewhat bizarre conditions.
01:34:42
Speaker
There is conflicting information regarding whether or not the U.S. citizens are being held there against their will.
01:34:49
Speaker
If you agree, I would like to travel to Gaiwana during the week of November 12th through the 18th to review the situation firsthand.
01:34:55
Speaker
End quote.
01:34:57
Speaker
So the approval was given and Ryan left for Gaiwana on November 14th, 1978.
01:35:05
Speaker
He was accompanied by two congressional staffers, nine journalists and 18 relatives of the Jonestown residents.
01:35:13
Speaker
So, though the State Department had said that the trip was unlikely to be dangerous, Ryan's staffers felt differently.
01:35:20
Speaker
So, before they left Gaiwan, one of them, Jackie Spire, took the time to make out her last will and testament.
01:35:27
Speaker
Oh, wow.
01:35:28
Speaker
So, you have people that are, like, very concerned.
01:35:30
Speaker
She's an intuitive person.
01:35:31
Speaker
She's like, I got bad vibes from this trip.
01:35:34
Speaker
You know, me, I would be like, you know, I don't know, something weird is going on.
01:35:39
Speaker
So the delegation first landed in Georgetown, which is the capital of Kainwana.
01:35:44
Speaker
For a while, it seemed that they might not get any further than that.
01:35:48
Speaker
They were anxious to prevent them from learning about the settlement's dire conditions.
01:35:52
Speaker
Jones and the People's Temple officials would not initially allow them to visit.
01:35:58
Speaker
After a couple days of stalling, Ryan announced that he was chartering a flight to Jonestown, whether or not he was welcome.
01:36:05
Speaker
So he's like, I'm coming.
01:36:06
Speaker
Doesn't matter.
01:36:07
Speaker
Jones finally relented and allowed Ryan and his colleagues and several media members and relatives to enter the settlement.
01:36:14
Speaker
They arrived on November 17th and retreated to dinner and some music as part of Joan's attempt to convince the delegation that all is well in Jonestown, which is classic abuser mentality tactic, right?
01:36:26
Speaker
You know, like, yeah, when outside people come in, act very different, and, like, everything's chilling, everything's fine.
01:36:34
Speaker
I'm great.
01:36:35
Speaker
I'm taking care of these people so well.
01:36:37
Speaker
Exactly.
01:36:38
Speaker
The illusion was unconvincing.
01:36:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:42
Speaker
Um, so they're like, everything's great.
01:36:46
Speaker
And they're like, I don't know.
01:36:48
Speaker
Something's weird.
01:36:49
Speaker
Um, so throughout the night, dog, they're like, I don't know.
01:36:52
Speaker
Fire room.
01:36:54
Speaker
The what?
01:36:55
Speaker
The meme of the dog.
01:36:57
Speaker
Oh, everything's fine.
01:36:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:36:59
Speaker
Fire all around me.
01:37:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:01
Speaker
Um, so throughout the night, the visitors were approached by Jonestown residents seeking protection and a way out of their tropical nightmare.
01:37:10
Speaker
Uh, as Spire would later write in a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle.
01:37:14
Speaker
Uh, so when Ryan's, uh, when the Ryan group departed Jonestown the next day, they were accompanied by approximately 15 defectors and were making plans to go back for more.
01:37:26
Speaker
Joan's attempt to deceive the visitors had failed.
01:37:31
Speaker
And he was like, okay, what's the backup plan?
01:37:35
Speaker
I.e.
01:37:35
Speaker
killing the messengers.
01:37:37
Speaker
That was the plan.
01:37:39
Speaker
On the afternoon of November 18th, the group headed for the Port Kaituma airstrip, where two planes had been chartered.
01:37:49
Speaker
Around 5.20 p.m., as a plane filled with defectors was about to take off, one of the passengers, Larry Layton, a Jones loyalist posing as a defector, pulled a gun and started shooting.
01:38:01
Speaker
Oh, my God.
01:38:02
Speaker
I didn't know that.
01:38:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:05
Speaker
So, quote, I heard screams and the unfamiliar sound of gunshots as inside one of the aircraft, Layton opened fire.
01:38:16
Speaker
End quote.
01:38:17
Speaker
Spire later wrote that quote.
01:38:20
Speaker
And so Spire, Ryan, and several others were standing on the airstrip at the time, waiting to board another larger plane, and they didn't get the chance.
01:38:31
Speaker
So here's a quote as well.
01:38:34
Speaker
Within seconds, gunmen leaped from a nearby tractor and leveled their weapons at us.
01:38:39
Speaker
Spire wrote, I dived to the ground behind an airplane wheel and pretended to be dead.
01:38:46
Speaker
Spire survived.
01:38:47
Speaker
Ryan, a defector named Patricia Parks, and three journalists, NBC reporter Don Harris, NBC photographer Bob Brown, and San Francisco examiner photographer Greg Robinson were killed.
01:39:00
Speaker
This happened around 5.20 p.m.
01:39:02
Speaker
20 months later, the settlers had begun taking poison back in Jonestown.
01:39:07
Speaker
In the wake of the shooting, Jones released radio orders for Temple members outside of the compound to...
01:39:15
Speaker
I don't really like saying commit suicide because there's a lot of implications around that.
01:39:20
Speaker
So moving forward, I'll just probably say like died by suicide.
01:39:25
Speaker
Shortly thereafter, Jones enacted his quote, revolutionary suicide plan at the compound, which members had, you know, practice in the past, which we had actually already mentioned.
01:39:36
Speaker
Um, actually mentioned that.
01:39:37
Speaker
Um, and they had a fruit drink that was laced with cyanide, tranquilizers, and sedatives.
01:39:42
Speaker
This is going to get rough guys.
01:39:44
Speaker
Um,
01:39:45
Speaker
So it was first squirted into the mouths of babies and children via syringe and then imbibbed by adult members.
01:39:54
Speaker
So the adult members were giving them these things.
01:39:58
Speaker
Jones himself died by a gunshot wound and fewer than a hundred of the temple members in Gaiwana survived the massacre.
Aftermath and Impact on Communities
01:40:09
Speaker
The majority of the survivors either had defected that day or were in Georgetown.
01:40:15
Speaker
Officials later discovered a cache of firearms, hundreds of passports stacked together, and $500,000 in U.S. currency.
01:40:24
Speaker
Millions more had reportedly been deposited in bank accounts overseas.
01:40:29
Speaker
The People's Temple effectively disbanded after the incident and declared bankruptcy at the end of 1978.
01:40:35
Speaker
And, like, this whole thing is just, like, abuse dynamics on, like, a much larger scale than, like, in a, like, a individual relationship.
01:40:45
Speaker
Because you also see how, like, all of these people are, like, aligning with the abuser in order to, like, maintain some sense of control and safety, even though it's not safe at all.
01:40:57
Speaker
I can just picture Shana right now.
01:40:59
Speaker
Domestic violence!
01:41:00
Speaker
Domestic violence!
01:41:05
Speaker
You know what this sounds like?
01:41:06
Speaker
Domestic violence?
01:41:07
Speaker
Sorry.
01:41:10
Speaker
It's just... It really is.
01:41:12
Speaker
It really is.
01:41:13
Speaker
So moving on.
01:41:15
Speaker
So there were 918 people who died that day, including the people, you know, that were part of, like, the news crew.
01:41:22
Speaker
There were four other people, Sharon Amos and her children, Leanne Harris, Krista Amos, and Martin Amos.
01:41:30
Speaker
They died at the People's Temple House in...
01:41:33
Speaker
Lahama Gardens in Georgetown.
01:41:36
Speaker
And then their remaining... Georgetown?
01:41:38
Speaker
Georgetown?
01:41:38
Speaker
Georgetown.
01:41:40
Speaker
Georgetown, okay.
01:41:40
Speaker
And their remaining 909 died in Jonestown.
01:41:43
Speaker
Gotcha.
01:41:44
Speaker
They were killed.
01:41:46
Speaker
Yes.
01:41:47
Speaker
Yes, they were killed.
01:41:48
Speaker
Going back to demographics about who died, a portion of black people who died was 69%.
01:41:54
Speaker
That percentage does not differ significantly from the proportion who lived in Gaiwan, like I just said.
01:42:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:42:02
Speaker
So it's like a pretty, like...
01:42:05
Speaker
And that was 68%.
01:42:07
Speaker
So 68% lived there, 69% died.
01:42:09
Speaker
Like 69% of the people who died were black, yeah.
01:42:15
Speaker
Yes.
01:42:16
Speaker
So half of those who died in Jonestown were black females, so 47%, corresponding to their presence in the community, which was 45%.
01:42:24
Speaker
And then black males also died at the same proportion as their presence, which was 22%.
01:42:29
Speaker
It's pretty fucked up.
01:42:30
Speaker
It's pretty fucked up.
01:42:31
Speaker
It's pretty fucked up.
01:42:32
Speaker
There's a great quote that's from this Time article that I read that's related to how 69% of those who died were Black.
01:42:41
Speaker
This article was written by Leigh Fondakowski and Margot Hall.
01:42:47
Speaker
Leigh is a New York-based playwright, screenwriter, author, and director, and she was a head writer of the Laramie Project, and she wrote a book of stories from Jonestown.
01:43:01
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:43:02
Speaker
Um, and Hall is an award-winning actor, director, activist.
01:43:06
Speaker
So quote from this article, the children of these survivors and other grandchildren to struggle to understand their own family lineage and the legacy of trauma that has been passed down through generations.
01:43:18
Speaker
Um,
01:43:18
Speaker
An entire generation of black wealth, as well as black leaders, teachers, lawyers, business owners, and mentors in San Francisco and LA were lost that day in Jonestown.
01:43:29
Speaker
The Fillmore neighborhood of San Francisco, which at the time was a predominantly black neighborhood, was devastated and it was like a ghost town.
01:43:37
Speaker
So you see like the impact.
01:43:39
Speaker
Yeah, the impact.
01:43:40
Speaker
Like you killed an entire community of black people.
01:43:43
Speaker
You did.
01:43:45
Speaker
Just ended their lineages there.
01:43:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:43:48
Speaker
People who were thriving in their community.
01:43:50
Speaker
Yes.
01:43:51
Speaker
Fucked.
01:43:51
Speaker
It's fucked.
01:43:52
Speaker
I have some more about people who died.
01:43:54
Speaker
I think it also relates because like the family units, like what you just said, like these families ended, like these lineages ended there.
01:44:02
Speaker
And so there were only 256 people who died in Jonestown who had no apparent family connections with anyone else present.
01:44:11
Speaker
So, or that was like 20% of the total.
01:44:14
Speaker
But the remaining 80% identified 182 family units, with the family unit being defined as at least one parent and at least one child.
01:44:25
Speaker
Three quarters of these family units consisted of three or more members.
01:44:30
Speaker
100 family units combined to make up 43 extended families, which they grouped by blood ties or adoption.
01:44:37
Speaker
So like grandparents, parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins.
01:44:41
Speaker
So this means...
01:44:42
Speaker
About half of the 182 family units which existed in Jonestown had additional family ties with each other.
01:44:50
Speaker
Only 30 children under the age of 19 survived.
01:44:54
Speaker
And with that figure dropping to 14 survivors under the age of 10.
01:44:57
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
01:44:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:00
Speaker
Just imagine the trauma.
01:45:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:02
Speaker
That they've had to endure.
01:45:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:03
Speaker
And I'm very curious.
01:45:04
Speaker
I mean, you're going to talk about these survivors and their stories.
01:45:10
Speaker
Yeah, so there were a couple of letters that were found after the massacre.
01:45:16
Speaker
One of them was found on Jim Jones's body, and it was a letter written by Tish Leroy, who was Letitia Marie Eichler, a 48-year-old white woman and accountant.
01:45:28
Speaker
She was on the Planning Commission and often met with Guyanese officials.
01:45:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:45:33
Speaker
It's so sad.
01:45:35
Speaker
It says, Dad, I see no way out.
01:45:37
Speaker
I agree with your decision.
01:45:39
Speaker
I fear only that without you, the world may not make it to communism.
01:45:43
Speaker
She's also referring to Jim Jones as Dad.
01:45:46
Speaker
Oh, I was confused.
01:45:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:48
Speaker
Oh, my God.
01:45:49
Speaker
For my part, I am more than tired of this wretched, merciless planet and the hell it holds for so many masses of beautiful people.
01:45:58
Speaker
Thank you for the only life I've known.
01:46:01
Speaker
So that was a note that was found on Jim Jones's body.
01:46:03
Speaker
Then there was an unsigned, really long letter who they're not sure who it was written by, but it's thought to be Richard Trapp, who is a teacher and writer.
01:46:15
Speaker
And basically this letter, you can find it on that same website that we were talking about, but it explained why it was necessary for the mass suicide to occur.
01:46:24
Speaker
And it also says that Jim Jones did not order the attack on the congressman in his party,
01:46:29
Speaker
And the letter ends, if nobody understands, it matters not.
01:46:32
Speaker
I'm ready to die now.
01:46:33
Speaker
Darkness settles over Jonestown on its last day on Earth.
01:46:38
Speaker
However, there's disputes against, like, the belief that this person, Richard Trope, wrote the letter.
01:46:46
Speaker
Because Tim Carter, a survivor, said that he witnessed Trope arguing with Jim Jones against the plan on that same day and states that, like, this letter doesn't resonate with someone who was against what was going to happen.
01:47:01
Speaker
So he was probably coerced into writing it, is the...
01:47:07
Speaker
What is suspected to happen?
01:47:09
Speaker
So that's dark.
01:47:12
Speaker
There were 85 people who survived, most of whom ran away into the jungle.
01:47:18
Speaker
This was the largest number of American civilian casualties in a non-natural event until 9-11.
01:47:24
Speaker
Yep.
01:47:25
Speaker
I saw that.
01:47:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:28
Speaker
So I'm just going to go through some of the survivors.
01:47:30
Speaker
So one of the survivors was Odell Rhodes, a formerly houseless Vietnam War veteran.
01:47:36
Speaker
He found a home at the People's Temple and escaped through the jungle during the mass suicide.
01:47:42
Speaker
This is an interesting story.
01:47:44
Speaker
So there was an elderly black woman.
01:47:46
Speaker
Her name was Hyacinth Thrash.
01:47:48
Speaker
And she hid under her bed and the next morning walked over to the pavilion and saw these bodies covered by sheets.
01:47:55
Speaker
And one of the bodies was her sister, Zipporah Edwards, also known as Zippy.
01:48:00
Speaker
Hyacinth wrote a memoir called The Onlyest One Alive that came out in 1995.
01:48:07
Speaker
And a quote from that is, there were all of those dead being put in bags, people I'd known and loved.
01:48:16
Speaker
God knows I never wanted to be there in the first place.
01:48:19
Speaker
I never wanted to go to Guyana to die.
01:48:21
Speaker
I didn't think Jim would do a thing like that.
01:48:23
Speaker
He let us down.
01:48:25
Speaker
So she and her sister Zippy were actually members from Indiana.
01:48:28
Speaker
So for a long time.
01:48:30
Speaker
And when the announcement was made right before the shit happened, for everyone to report to the pavilion, Hyacinth, I think, just was like, I don't want to.
01:48:41
Speaker
So it clearly had some kind of inclination of what was going to happen and hid under her bed.
01:48:47
Speaker
um intuition yeah yeah um so that that's some some stories um the website that we're referencing which will be in the references has like this a link to this whole like excel spreadsheet of like people who died but also like all of these different stories of survivors but one thing that i really wanted to state is that like
01:49:11
Speaker
Something that has come out of this is this phrase, right?
01:49:14
Speaker
Like drinking the Kool-Aid.
01:49:17
Speaker
This phrase is extremely offensive to survivors of this event and also their relatives.
01:49:24
Speaker
Like, obviously.
01:49:26
Speaker
Who are still alive.
01:49:27
Speaker
Who are still alive.
01:49:28
Speaker
And also, you know, their relatives and their, like, children and people who came after them.
01:49:34
Speaker
So...
01:49:35
Speaker
Swanelle Smart, whose four children, mother and uncle, all died in the tragedy, said in the book The Road to Jonestown, it still hurts every time I hear it.
01:49:47
Speaker
I hated that people laughed when they said it, like what happened was somehow funny.
01:49:52
Speaker
Like, it's not funny.
01:49:53
Speaker
It's not funny.
01:49:54
Speaker
In any way.
01:49:55
Speaker
Like, oh my gosh.
01:49:57
Speaker
People don't even know that that's, like, where it comes from.
01:50:01
Speaker
And, like, I didn't know.
01:50:02
Speaker
I mean, clearly, like, it's, like, so embedded in our culture.
01:50:06
Speaker
Like, in the U.S. culture.
01:50:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:50:08
Speaker
Because I remember, like, even as a younger person, like, as a kid, people would say that.
01:50:13
Speaker
And I never, like, understood what that was about until I learned about Jonestown as, like, a young adult.
01:50:18
Speaker
And I was like, whoa.
01:50:20
Speaker
Like, that's where it comes from.
01:50:21
Speaker
No.
01:50:22
Speaker
Yeah, there was a book that came out in 2005 called Dear People Remembering Jonestown.
01:50:26
Speaker
And in that, a survivor, Mike Carter, said that he was deeply offended the first time he heard it.
01:50:32
Speaker
And he thought, how can these people trivialize such a horrific event as the mass suicide murder of over 900 people?
01:50:39
Speaker
Probably because most people don't realize what the fuck they're saying is, like, stemming from this, like, extremely fucked up event.
01:50:49
Speaker
Yep.
01:50:49
Speaker
Oh, my gosh.
01:50:50
Speaker
So, I mean, we've gone through all this shit now, and you're all probably, like, what the fuck?
01:50:57
Speaker
I have, unfortunately, more very sad things.
01:51:00
Speaker
Yeah, so you're gonna take us through, like, what happened after.
01:51:05
Speaker
Post.
01:51:06
Speaker
This is also gonna be very graphic.
01:51:09
Speaker
This is immediately after the mass suicide and murder.
01:51:14
Speaker
It was not just a suicide.
01:51:15
Speaker
It was a murder.
01:51:18
Speaker
So roughly 900 corpses laid before the Gaiwani State pathologist, Dr. Leslie Mutu.
01:51:25
Speaker
They were one of the first on the scene at Jonestown.
01:51:29
Speaker
And they were arranged in, like, uniform rows on the ground.
01:51:35
Speaker
And because of the climate, they were, like, rapidly decomposing because of, like, the heat, a rainstorm, and, like, animals.
01:51:44
Speaker
So the U.S. military cleanup crew used snow shovels to pick them up, and they wore face masks to block the stench.
01:51:52
Speaker
I can't imagine...
01:51:54
Speaker
So, quote, the pathologist was called to a scene for which there was absolutely no precedent.
01:52:01
Speaker
They were completely overwhelmed with the crime scene they found.
01:52:06
Speaker
There was an urgency to process the bodies contaminated by a rainstorm and then rotting in the sun.
01:52:12
Speaker
Everyone was in a state of panic.
01:52:14
Speaker
This was Fielding McGee, who was with his now wife, Rebecca Moore, when the news broke.
01:52:19
Speaker
Right.
01:52:20
Speaker
Moore lost two sisters, Annie Moore and Carolyn Layton, and four-year-old nephew Kimo, who was Carolyn and Jim Jones' son, to Jonestown.
01:52:30
Speaker
So most of the bodies of the people who died there in November 1978 were transported to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for identification and notification of Next of Kin.
01:52:43
Speaker
Within a month, about 600 of the bodies had been identified, and families were able to make funeral arrangements.
01:52:52
Speaker
Some relatives could not be located.
01:52:54
Speaker
Others declined to assume custody of their dead.
01:52:58
Speaker
In addition, nearly 300 people, mostly children, whose medical and dental records were minimal or non-existent, were never identified.
01:53:07
Speaker
Oh, man.
01:53:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:53:09
Speaker
In May of 1979, the Gaiwana Emergency Relief Committee, which was an ad hoc group formed by the San Francisco Council of Churches, arranged to have 409 of the Jonestown dead transported across the country and buried in a mass grave at Evergreen Cemetery.
01:53:28
Speaker
And I believe they have plaques on the site where they were, where they died as well.
01:53:37
Speaker
In terms of like legal things, only one man was tried in the United States for his involvement in the November 18th events.
01:53:46
Speaker
His name was Larry Layton.
01:53:48
Speaker
He was found guilty of conspiracy and aiding and abetting in the murder of Ryan and the attempted murder of U.S. Embassy official Richard Dwyer and was sentenced to life in prison.
01:54:00
Speaker
Though he was released in 2002.
01:54:04
Speaker
Another man, Charles Beekman, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of a young girl and served a five-year prison term in Gaiwana.
01:54:11
Speaker
Not a lot.
01:54:13
Speaker
I mean, clearly Jim Jones died, so he can't really be held accountable.
01:54:17
Speaker
The fact that there was literally just one person, I was just like, cool.
01:54:22
Speaker
And I also want to go into Gaiwana's suicide rate.
01:54:29
Speaker
And this is from an NPR article from 2018.
01:54:32
Speaker
So there was a story NPR did.
01:54:36
Speaker
It was called Trying to Stop Suicide.
01:54:38
Speaker
Gaiwana aims to bring down its high rate.
01:54:41
Speaker
I watched a video, a YouTube video, just to like, when I first started doing research about gaiwana.
01:54:47
Speaker
And I was like, it kind of gives you like the overview.
01:54:49
Speaker
This is who we are.
01:54:50
Speaker
Right, right, right.
01:54:51
Speaker
At the very, towards the end, it talked about the high suicide rate.
01:54:54
Speaker
And I was like, wait.
01:54:57
Speaker
currently so there um there's a story that NPR does and they talk about this person Govan Monswamy um considered like taking his life he returned to his family farm after his visiting his wife in the hospital the morning before that happened she had like left home to go visit her mom and so when she approached the front gate she realized she forgot her purse she turned around went back inside her house to retrieve it and then attempted uh suicide
01:55:27
Speaker
whoa escalate there's there's definitely details missing yeah clearly but yeah so her her husband sat by the hospital bed for seven days as she she died he listened as she apologized and she said that she'd made a mistake and couldn't explain her motive six months prior when swami's mother uh ivan took her own life after a fight with her husband
01:55:52
Speaker
And then when Swami's father died from a heart attack the next day after that happened.
01:55:57
Speaker
Oh, man.
01:55:58
Speaker
So this guy is going through a lot.
01:56:00
Speaker
So he felt compelled because of all these losses in his life to take his own life.
01:56:05
Speaker
But then he thought about his wife.
01:56:07
Speaker
I guess she had asked him for two things before she passed away.
01:56:10
Speaker
To forgive her and to finish his degree.
01:56:12
Speaker
Hmm.
01:56:13
Speaker
The reason why this story is important, well, it's important, period, but also, Monswami began to speak out against suicide in his rural community of, it's called Black Bush Polder, and this actually, this area has a name, it's known as the suicide belt of the small Caribbean nation of, uh,
01:56:32
Speaker
So the fact that it even has a name is like, wow.
01:56:37
Speaker
In a 2014 report by the World Health Organization, Gaiwana was cited as the country with the highest suicide rate in the world.
01:56:44
Speaker
Wow.
01:56:44
Speaker
44.2 suicides per 100,000 deaths, four times the global average.
01:56:47
Speaker
Wow.
01:56:51
Speaker
Wow.
01:56:51
Speaker
And so the article also says, you know, there's many reasons for this high suicide rate.
01:56:57
Speaker
So the president and co-founder of the Gaiwana Psychological Association and also a government psychologist said that he agrees with the assessment of the National Suicide Prevention Plan issued by the Ministry of Health, which...
01:57:11
Speaker
Which identifies poverty, persuasive stigma about mental illness, access to lethal chemicals, alcohol misuse, interpersonal violence, family dysfunction, and insufficient mental health resources as key factors.
01:57:25
Speaker
And so, like, we know this.
01:57:27
Speaker
So it's like...
01:57:29
Speaker
I think it's really important that they're, like, these are, like, the contributing factors to, like, why these things are happening in our community.
01:57:39
Speaker
It says it's, like, one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean.
01:57:41
Speaker
And approximately 60% of Gaiwan's population, 800,000 citizens live in isolated villages on the coast where jobs and community resources like mental health facilities are limited.
01:57:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:57:56
Speaker
70% of the country's suicides occur in rural regions because they're dealing with, like, hopelessness, poverty, and economic despair.
01:58:04
Speaker
And the story is pretty impactful, and they continue to talk about survivors who are, like,
01:58:11
Speaker
sharing their stories about how Manswami has, like, impacted them and, like, what he's doing to, like, help people do these things.
01:58:20
Speaker
And I think this is important to bring up because the fact that there are so many weird parallels.
01:58:28
Speaker
But, yeah, like, you know, a very diverse place where...
01:58:33
Speaker
Jim is like wanting to go and I don't I don't think I did research on like when this suicide rate started going up yeah but I can only imagine you know and we can talk more about this later if you want but I feel like now is a good moment to be like you know if you are struggling suicidal ideation suicidal thoughts you're not alone a lot of people deal with that and a lot of people also want to be there for you yeah
01:59:02
Speaker
It's something that I've struggled with.
01:59:04
Speaker
Reading these numbers and like seeing these things is very hard.
01:59:08
Speaker
It was hard.
01:59:09
Speaker
And like that was probably one of the hardest things when we were doing research on this.
01:59:14
Speaker
I was like, man.
01:59:16
Speaker
This country is, like, going through it.
01:59:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:59:19
Speaker
And, like, the people, too, of Jonestown.
01:59:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:23
Speaker
And so just know that you're, like, not alone.
01:59:26
Speaker
I'm sure that Unpacking the Erie will, like, provide resources.
01:59:30
Speaker
Yeah, because this is, like, triggering.
01:59:32
Speaker
And it's very sad and, like, very, like, it's a lot.
01:59:35
Speaker
And so I just want to make sure people know that, like...
01:59:39
Speaker
There are people that, like, want you.
01:59:41
Speaker
Who care about you.
01:59:43
Speaker
And so I just want to, like, put that out there.
01:59:46
Speaker
We are going to be shifting gears.
01:59:49
Speaker
Shifting gears.
01:59:50
Speaker
Let's take a moment.
01:59:51
Speaker
Take a deep breath.
01:59:54
Speaker
I'm definitely going to have to, like, so we're recording in my room.
01:59:56
Speaker
I'm going to have to cleanse the space after this because this is a heavy topic.
02:00:00
Speaker
Topics.
02:00:01
Speaker
Topics.
02:00:03
Speaker
Let's summarize, right?
02:00:04
Speaker
Like, why did this happen?
02:00:06
Speaker
What is in the suitcase of Jonestown?
Root Causes of Jonestown's Tragedy
02:00:10
Speaker
Let's unpack it.
02:00:13
Speaker
White supremacy?
02:00:13
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
02:00:15
Speaker
Colonization?
02:00:16
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
02:00:17
Speaker
Christian supremacy?
02:00:19
Speaker
Check.
02:00:20
Speaker
The patriarchy, patriarchy, unbridled confidence of a mediocre white man.
02:00:25
Speaker
Yeah.
02:00:26
Speaker
Literally this whole time I've been like looking at your sweatshirt.
02:00:29
Speaker
Yes.
02:00:30
Speaker
And I keep thinking about it.
02:00:31
Speaker
I'm like, so it reads seize the day with the unearned confidence of a mediocre white man.
02:00:39
Speaker
And he seized the day.
02:00:42
Speaker
He really, he seized so many days.
02:00:44
Speaker
He seized so many days and murdered him.
02:00:47
Speaker
I will say murdered because I don't agree that any of these people knew what the fuck they were doing.
02:00:52
Speaker
Probably a lot of them were coerced.
02:00:54
Speaker
Yeah.
02:00:55
Speaker
They were coerced over several years.
02:00:57
Speaker
Yes.
02:00:58
Speaker
You know?
02:00:59
Speaker
To the point where, like, this seemed like the only option to them.
02:01:03
Speaker
So, like, he literally murdered, like, almost a thousand people.
02:01:08
Speaker
Because when he was a kid, he felt left out because he was interested in death and religion.
02:01:17
Speaker
Unchecked narcissism, dynamics of abuse, and the targeting of marginalized groups, specifically, to a large extent, the black community.
02:01:32
Speaker
Yes.
02:01:34
Speaker
So, this is a super fucked up story.
02:01:37
Speaker
It's pretty fucked up.
02:01:37
Speaker
And, like, there's no real way to, like...
02:01:42
Speaker
Yeah.
02:01:56
Speaker
saw recruitment ads, I would have probably joined.
02:02:00
Speaker
Honestly.
02:02:01
Speaker
Because it sounds exactly like the kind of thing that, like, we would engage in, right?
02:02:05
Speaker
And it's, like, so much community-based work as well.
02:02:09
Speaker
As people that literally are, like, community.
02:02:11
Speaker
It's like, oh, that's nice.
02:02:13
Speaker
I could just, you know.
02:02:14
Speaker
Yeah.
02:02:14
Speaker
I'm just imagining, like, people, like, at that stage of the People's Temple when they're, like, in Indiana or San Francisco engaging in these, like,
02:02:23
Speaker
community work and like feeling really I guess fulfilled and then you blink and you're like in the middle of the fucking jungle being like forced to drink poison and you're just like
02:02:36
Speaker
how did I get here?
02:02:38
Speaker
It's like those montages of shows where you see the ending and the person looks at the camera and is like, I bet you wonder how I got here.
02:02:46
Speaker
And it shoots to them doing volunteer community work.
02:02:49
Speaker
And you're like, what the fuck happened between there?
02:02:51
Speaker
It's like those moments and you're just like, oh my God.
02:02:54
Speaker
And it's like, the thing was, he really did attract people with a religious front.
02:03:00
Speaker
That is what it is.
02:03:03
Speaker
Also what drew people in was this religious front.
02:03:06
Speaker
And so it just, like, man, he used all these modes of, like, attracting, abuse, manipulation.
02:03:17
Speaker
Just, like... Yeah.
02:03:20
Speaker
And I'm sure he got a lot of inspiration from a lot of historical events and white people in history.
02:03:29
Speaker
Fuck him.
02:03:30
Speaker
Honestly.
02:03:32
Speaker
Fuck him.
02:03:32
Speaker
Fuck Jim.
02:03:33
Speaker
I'm sorry.
02:03:34
Speaker
A mediocre white man who caused so much harm that, like, you know, we talk about in every episode how, like, this is, oh, there were 900 people who died.
02:03:45
Speaker
But there was 900 people who died who all knew people who are all relatives.
02:03:51
Speaker
And so this trauma has permeated everything.
02:03:55
Speaker
He really traumatized these people.
02:04:02
Speaker
This broke them down so much.
02:04:04
Speaker
And then his actions are still affecting us today.
02:04:09
Speaker
It's a pop culture reference.
02:04:11
Speaker
Documentaries are being made about it.
02:04:13
Speaker
Clearly you're doing an episode about it.
02:04:16
Speaker
It is the cult people know about.
02:04:21
Speaker
It's the one that everyone's like...
02:04:23
Speaker
oh, what do you think about cults?
02:04:24
Speaker
And probably one of the first... Jonestown.
02:04:26
Speaker
Jonestown.
02:04:26
Speaker
Yeah.
02:04:27
Speaker
Or, like, they'll say, and I quote, don't drink the Kool-Aid.
02:04:30
Speaker
Like, you know what I mean?
02:04:31
Speaker
Like, they'll, like, say that.
02:04:32
Speaker
Don't say that.
02:04:33
Speaker
Don't say it.
02:04:33
Speaker
If you learn anything from this episode, just don't say that.
02:04:35
Speaker
Don't say that.
02:04:37
Speaker
Also, if you're a white man...
02:04:41
Speaker
Check yourself.
02:04:42
Speaker
Check yourself.
02:04:43
Speaker
Do some internal inventory.
02:04:45
Speaker
Yeah.
02:04:45
Speaker
Seriously.
02:04:46
Speaker
Geez.
02:04:47
Speaker
And, you know, I just, yeah.
02:04:50
Speaker
In summary, it's all fucked in summary.
02:04:55
Speaker
And, like.
02:04:56
Speaker
This is a lot.
02:04:58
Speaker
Honestly.
02:04:59
Speaker
That was a lot.
02:05:00
Speaker
It was a lot.
02:05:00
Speaker
That was a lot.
02:05:01
Speaker
Thanks for joining, Olivia.
02:05:03
Speaker
This was a wonderful.
02:05:04
Speaker
I mean, not a wonderful.
02:05:05
Speaker
But it was a very interesting conversation where I learned a lot.
02:05:09
Speaker
I learned a lot.
02:05:11
Speaker
I learned so much.
02:05:13
Speaker
Probably more than I wanted to know.
02:05:14
Speaker
Yeah.
02:05:15
Speaker
There were things I was like, I don't know if I needed to know that.
02:05:19
Speaker
Yeah.
02:05:19
Speaker
But now that I do, I'm like, yeah.
02:05:21
Speaker
Wow.
02:05:22
Speaker
Yeah.
02:05:23
Speaker
You know.
02:05:24
Speaker
So, as always, take care of yourself.
02:05:26
Speaker
Maybe go do something.
02:05:27
Speaker
Chill after this, you know.
02:05:29
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
02:05:30
Speaker
Check on your friends.
02:05:32
Speaker
Check on yourself.
02:05:34
Speaker
Give yourself a little self-care hug.
02:05:38
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in.
02:05:41
Speaker
And thank you, Olivia, for joining us.
02:05:43
Speaker
Do you want to share again info about Inchunwa, which we will put in our...
02:05:49
Speaker
references and notes as well.
02:05:51
Speaker
Yeah.
02:05:52
Speaker
So, uh, in Choonwa is spelled I N C H U N W A. We are on Facebook and Instagram and we are on all streaming sites.
02:06:05
Speaker
Um, so yeah, if you're interested,
02:06:08
Speaker
Give us a listen, a follow, and maybe you want to learn more about colonization.
02:06:15
Speaker
Yeah.
02:06:15
Speaker
Because we talk about it a lot.
02:06:17
Speaker
But also just the positive side of things, too, about indigenous culture and obviously the tattooing tradition.
02:06:24
Speaker
So, yeah, thanks for having me.
02:06:27
Speaker
Yeah, this was great.
02:06:28
Speaker
Well, bye, y'all.
02:06:31
Speaker
See ya.
02:06:32
Speaker
See ya later.
02:06:46
Speaker
Thanks for listening and for supporting
Acknowledgment of Supporters
02:06:48
Speaker
us.
02:06:48
Speaker
You can find us on Instagram and Facebook at Unpacking the Eerie, on Twitter at Unpack the Eerie, and on our website at www.unpackingtheerie.com.
02:07:01
Speaker
Yes, and special thanks to all of you who subscribe to our Patreon.
02:07:06
Speaker
As we've mentioned before, we do all the research for this, we edit, and we don't have any sponsorships or ads.
02:07:15
Speaker
So Patreon support is super helpful in just keeping this project sustainable, keeping the Buzzsprout subscription going, paying for the website, all the stuff.
02:07:25
Speaker
So thank you so much.
02:07:27
Speaker
Sari, Liz, Clifton.
02:07:29
Speaker
Jill, Victoria, and Lindsay.
02:07:31
Speaker
Lauren, Vivian, Valerie.
02:07:34
Speaker
Micheline, Montana, Katrina.
02:07:36
Speaker
Raina, Allie, Jake.
02:07:38
Speaker
Drithi, Daphne, and Katie.
02:07:40
Speaker
Vern, Meredith, H, and Vince.
02:07:43
Speaker
To April, Aaron, and Ellen.
02:07:46
Speaker
And to Brittany, Alyssa, and Meredith R. Yay, thank you so much.
02:07:51
Speaker
Thank you.