Word: jonestown
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...preventable tragedy occurred 28 years ago, in Jonestown, Guyana. Some 900 members of Jim Jones? People?s Temple - souls cleansed, brains washed - took poison and died at his command. Stanley Nelson?s documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of People?s Temple interviews survivors and kin of the dead, and has a trove of footage to illuminate, if not explain, the seductive, destructive power of the Temple prophet...
...Housing Authority. But the whispers about his predatory sexual appetite (which devoured parishioners of both sexes) and his reluctance to let disaffected members leave the fold caught the attention of the authorities. Jones moved the Temple to the Guyanan jungle, out of which his flock built an impressive village, Jonestown, housing thousands of Temple worshipers and their families. In a newsreel clip, Jones shows off the stocks of food he has amassed: meats, vegetables, Kool...
...came down in November.1978, when Congressman Leo Ryan and his staff visited the Temple. After a day?s investigation of Jonestown, Ryan announced that he found many people "who thought this was the best thing that had ever happened to them." Before he was to leave the next morning, several members slipped notes to Ryan, saying they wanted to leave but were forbidden to. He agreed to take a few of the disaffected with him - and was shot dead as he attempted to board the plane...
...told the faithful to take and drink. They were committing, he said, "an act of revolutionary suicide, protesting the conditions of an inhumane world." In the detritus of the ensuing carnage, a note was "If nobody understands, it matters not, I am ready to die now. Darkness settle on Jonestown on its last day on earth...
Though the piece does not fully support its claim that the Oregon camp has the makings of another Jonestown, it aptly illustrates Executive Producer Andrew Lack's desire to look at much reported stories from a different, even idiosyncratic, angle. Instead of running a segment about Viet Nam veterans in the U.S., for example, Lack plans to focus on the some 1,000 former soldiers who now live in Bangkok. "My mandate is to be new," says Lack. "I want people to watch this and say, 'Jesus Christ, I didn't know that...