Word: jonestown
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...success of the Espys and other middle-class blacks is a fragile thing. Welfare payments are the largest source of income in rural areas, greater than King Cotton. The Third World poverty in towns like Tunica (23.5% unemployment) and Jonestown (pop. 1,400, of whom 1,300 are black) is a reminder that civil rights laws alone cannot guarantee opportunity...
...places like these the problems are so basic they seem anachronistic: plumbing, paving and food. Jonestown's energetic Mayor Bobbi Walker is scrounging for $3,000 in private money so the Habitat people will come in and help replace 30 dilapidated shacks. Cotton planting and ginning take only about six months of each year, and there is no other work for the Jonestown families. Yet Mayor Walker and her small cluster plod on. A sewer system will be completed in a few weeks. Running water is now in most homes. She's working to get hot water to every family...
There is in Baghdad the feeling of a huge new Jonestown, with another demented preacher leading his flock to death. The isolation is profound. The awareness of the real world limited. The government of Saddam is deeply paranoiac. Officials read single events as connected by strands of conspiracies. Even the Information Minister, not part of the most powerful circle around Saddam, worries enough about his welfare to have at his side a guard armed with...