- In uncovering the blackness of Peoples Temple, I began to better understand my community and the need to belong.
If you were at Jonestown in 1978, you'd been practicing mass suicide since 1976. If you were at Jonestown in 1978, you'd agreed that anyone coming to visit was a CIA operative bent on your destruction. If you were at Jonestown in 1978, you'd agreed that anyone attempting to disrupt your socialist paradise was an enemy operative that you needed to fight to the death. The news gathering community is not a large one. A lot of it is hereditary. I know three people who worked with Steve Sung, who lay unmoving under an idling Twin Otter, shot twice, staring into the face of his dead friend Bob Brown for two hours. Then he had to wait, shot twice, on the airstrip overnight before any authorities showed up, wondering if the Jonestown murderers would come back. He walked with a limp the rest of his life, jumped at loud noises, and stuttered. A lot of kids died at Jonestown. A lot of people who didn't really mean anybody any harm. But I'm not okay with reframing everybody there as "victims."