30 years ago today ... Jonestown

Always amazed me how, in less than 24 hours, it went from Ryan giving that "you're doing great here" speech in front of that ominous hanging sign to him and 900+ others being dead.

 

Always wondered how they had audio of that.

He was taping himself?

 

Cue slow piano music and Tom Rinaldi talking about USD's Rob Jones in .... 3 .... 2 .... 1

 

As weird as all of it was.... How bizarre is THAT?

 

Introspective recollection of Jonestown by Jackie Speier:

 

About as bizarre as the (apparently unfounded) rumours that suggested Charles Manson went off the deep end after unsuccessfully trying out for "The Monkees."

"I'm a Believer," indeed. :-\

 

I grew up in the Bay Area too and was of similar age (12) when it happened. The thing I remember most vividly was it was only a matter of days before the City Hall killings of mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk. And people in SF wondered what the F was happening to their world.

 

I was 12 in 1978 and I didn't grow up anywhere near SF but I remember the Moscone-Milk thing. That was a huge national story at the time.

I didn't realize Jonestown occurred at roughly the same time though. For some reason I thought that happened in the spring.

 

i remember watching the news accounts and have sen countless news and documentary pieces in the years since and to this day don't understand the ultimate mass suicide or some of the very weird crap that came before it. i just don't understand how people can act so "normal" while believing in people like jones and ultimately falling victim to what appears to an outsider as so off the deep end.

 

I watched the CNN special on youtube the other night (all nine parts took about 90 minutes or so) and I'm pretty sure they showed a picture of Jones after he was shot in the head.

Phenominal job by CNN. Riveting, and sad, stuff.

 

It's interesting to speculate what Moscone and Milk might have thought of Jones after November 18, considering the mayor had played an important role in Jones' rise to prominence and Milk was one of Jones' staunchest defenders.