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Jonestown massacre should serve as a lesson
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Some nights television offers some fascinating shows. Other nights, you'd be almost willing to watch Ellen just to have some chatter in the background.
This past Thursday night, CNN took a look back at the massacre in Jonestown. While I was only 13 years old when this happened, I remember it vividly.
Back on Nov. 18, 1978, 909 Americans fell victim to the Rev. Jim Jones in a mass murder-suicide pact in a South American jungle.
The starting point of the mass killing was the murder of visiting California congressman Leo Ryan, who was on a fact-finding mission to Guyana, and was attempting to leave with some residents of the compound who wanted out. As Ryan and several former members boarded two planes, shots rang out and Ryan, along with four others, lay dead at a nearby airstrip.
That same day, Jones ordered the mass suicides of innocent men, women and children. The victims either willingly took cyanide via injections or made to drink it from a punch container. One-third of the victims were children, many of whom were killed by Jones' aides, who squirted cyanide down their throats.
Of the nearly 1,000 church members who began the day in Jonestown, only 33 lived to walk out of there.
The tragedy had a huge impact on California, as many of the victims had come to Guyana from the Bay Area. More than 400 of the victims, both adults and children, were later buried in a mass grave in Oakland.
Jones, it turns out, was a self-appointed minister from Indiana, who first led his flock to California, where he hoped to avoid fallout from a possible nuclear war. He then moved the group to Guyana when he came under fire for church beatings and financial abuses.
Authorities would report that many of the members of the church gave significant amounts of their money to Jones, along with property.
With his world crumbling around him that November day in 1978, and some members wanting to leave, Jones put his diabolic plan into motion. It turns out that Jones did not drink the cyanide, but died of a gunshot wound to the head. To this day there is debate over whether one of his aides fired the shot or Jones, who was later cremated, did himself.
Although it has been 30 years, many questions remain. Just who were these people? Was this gathering of people actually a CIA-led mind control and expiremental drug program being run by Jones with the CIA's blessing? Where were local officials and military in Guyana and did they have any part in turning the other way?
While 33 people did walk out of Jonestown, many have had trouble over the years re-entering the mainstream. Drugs, run-ins with the law and even some deaths have confronted these people.
As for the Jonestown compound, the settlement disappeared, the buildings were torn down and carried away by natives.
While Jonestown is just now a part of history, hopefully many people learned something from it. Most importantly, be accountable for one's actions.
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