AW16 Jonestown Survivor: Laura Johnston Kohl

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welcome to this very special episode of afterwards normally during afterwards you'll see some of the panelists from the week's discussion talking about more in depth about some of the questions that came up or just having another in-depth conversation about the subject but this week we have someone who was unable to be a panelist with us at our last discussion which was is there a difference between cult and religion and she's agreed to speak with us today and have this conversation just to talk about her extraordinary life and experiences and so we're very fortunate to have her I'm Barbara Calderon and I'm here today with Laura Johnston Cole and Laura is the author of a book called Jonestown survivor and insiders look and to start this Laura I just would mind if you wouldn't mind to just read a passage from your book to kind of describe your experiences okay this much as one paragraph can explain my experience my early life was rather ordinary I was an activist with a politically savvy mother from the first moment or I arrived at college I was on a quest to discover what I was all about the next two years took me to Woodstock to the Black Panthers to people simple and inexplicably out of Jonestown then into sin and on into marriage parenting teaching and the Quaker religion I am a composite of all these experiences so you know that struck when I read your book that little paragraph just struck as it's a very pithy statement about just an extraordinary life so far you were really born into the family of a single mother at a time when single moms were not welcome in society they were looked down upon you came of age during the civil rights era yes you were an activist you participated in protests against the Vietnam War you lived in the Washington DC area effect in your book you talk about the time when Martin Luther King gave his I have a dream speech yes you you missed it because you were babysitting for somebody who went to the speech unbelievable and and at one point you also talked about you had black panthers staying in your kitchen you know can you talk about your early years and your activism yeah you know my mother was a single mother she was very smart she was an editor of the newspaper magazine for American public power but her boss took her work as his and so she was the assistant editor even though she was the brains behind the operation so early on I realize you know things aren't fair she was a woman in the world right and so she's never got the recognition she deserved but she just kept going so and she took on the three of us when my father decided you know he really would chase most anything in skirts she said you know what I am out of here I am out of Texas I'm going to go back to a society that I'm comfortable in so my parents separated they had moved to Texas because my father was really anxious to go back and my mother tolerated it for a little while I'm not sure how easy the I mean tolerant isn't really her way of operating anyway so we don't know how that was but anyway so they moved north and my mother raised my two sisters and me and I was the baby of the family and so my two sisters would be off and running and my mother would be precinct chairman of the Democratic Party locally and so I would get stuck passing out leaflets and I would get stuck going to all these events with her because you know as she didn't have a babysitter so so I just was brought along in her activism and she was very circumspect very careful not to look too progressive because not only was she was a single mother raising three daughters but she was also very liberal and so she had to be very careful because that was during the McCarthy period and so a lot of things were difficult for her I do have to say that I almost always cry when I present and it's one of those things it not it isn't necessarily about the particular question but just anticipation or whatever it is so I usually cry so just don't I antidotal pated that okay so don't um also that shouldn't stop any questions I appreciate you it's just what does happen I appreciate your forthrightness yeah this is a difficult subject and I have to tell you in reading your book there were a few times where I had to stop and walk away uh-huh I'm just reading the book can't imagine having lived it so activism was really in your DNA I mean you're raised in it passing out leaflets and it sort of was something that was important to you and I think that growing up like I actually grew up in Rockville Maryland so my mother worked in Washington and commuted so I grew up in Maryland which really even though it was north of the mason-dixon line most people in my school in my educational system and in my community were not in favor of the north they were southern they preferred the south over the north they didn't like that they lost the Civil War and so in realism was probably a yeah yeah unpopular and so I lived in a segregated neighborhood and so one of the activities we involved in was integrating our neighborhood and so you know I lived in an area and so in a way it strengthened me because I said okay so I'm never gonna be miss popular because my ideas are too liberal and so like I got that out of my system early and so I didn't have to worry about that anymore like let's see do I have to pretend I'm a segregationist in order to be you know something important in high school it it didn't matter to me that it wasn't going to be a popular and I had to just follow my own art so in high school I was part of a group that integrated the local community swimming pool in Maryland and then Washington Glen Echo Park is a famous park and so it was segregated and then finally they integrated but not the pool so an integrated group of us from high school went and integrated the pool you know we protested until they finally said okay I guess that's what civil rights means so you know in high school I was trying out for the school play young were integrating your high school you know yeah the experiences that you had at an early age really were a foundation for the rest of your life that's right and you know you you as a young adult you decided to move west well not exactly so one of the things that was pivotal for me there was the 1960s in the United States that was like the time when vigilantism just took over the country so even though I was in high school and I mean I was in the glee club I was in the play and I did these other things you know while I was in high school and early college Bobby Kennedy my John Kennedy Martin Luther King Medgar Evers Malcolm X they were all shot or they were all killed and so somehow you couldn't go through the 60s without having having that defined how you were going to relate to injustice and so you could either say okay well I'm gonna get stoned or drink myself or you know pretend it didn't happen or take over my white privilege and live that life or I'm gonna address these things and try and fix it so that that is not what its perpetuated after the 60s so I mean I think that all of us who grew up in that time had made a very definite move in the direction that we would carry on in our lives so that was defining for me yeah that was your foundation and for me to go like I protested the war in Vietnam with a friend who had a dog and we were yes on Fifth Avenue in Washington and in New York so I mean there were just so many things you couldn't get past it it's not like you could say yeah that doesn't apply to me it already had applied to me yeah and so you know so from there like I was in college and I had met somebody who has kind of inspired me to be a philosophy major sorry there's a philosophy major in college and when I got there I said you know I worked at the housing project as part of paying a work scholarship and then I would leave the housing project and come back to my class and symbolic logic and I can remember you know I failed it the first time the second time I was sitting there and I said you know this is that this is just not really my life this is not who I am or who I want to be sitting in the symbolic logic class I can't be that detached and so I flunked out after three years I got married soon after that to another you know radical and so he finished up his architecture degree and I supported him and then we divorced when he really decided my best girlfriend was his cup of tea nice so um and so then in a way that was a first time I was really on my own because it seemed like I hadn't had boyfriends over the years or somebody who kind of impacted what path I would take so at that moment I was pretty much okay so who am i what do I want to do and so then I got involved the housing project where I worked had a group of black panthers who started serving the kids free breakfast and it was right in 1967 and 68 when the Black Panthers are getting all involved in 69 so I think that they had started in Oakland in 67 and 68 and so by 1969 they had moved into Connecticut in New Haven in Bridgeport and so that was the time that I was there and I said you know I love this I love to see kids eating I love to see role models making sure they get food counseling them you know supporting them I'd love that so I got involved with them then I got involved one of the Panthers who moved into my house then some of his buddies moved into the house and then we had Panther breakfast I mean Panther meetings in my kitchen for six months or so so you know I lived in a Hawaii all Hawaii building in Bridgeport apartment building and so the Panthers would come in carrying cases at like violin cases and guitar cases I said we had a Symphony Orchestra going on in my apartment which yeah yes it wasn't an orchestra okay so I mean it so finally somebody got shot in my apartment and somebody was sitting you too close to me and somebody shot him and so they took him out to the hospital and here I was cleaning blood off my living room floor and down the steps of my apartment building and out the front door and choice about you know this was really not the picture of you know me being revolutionary you know a hero revolutionary woman or something that didn't fit so and I also went to Woodstock and you know you had to be stoned to get there so I tried that and I don't remember much about it except for the smell but because you certainly couldn't hear the music as far back as I was you couldn't hear the music you could see naked people dancing and you could see naked people swimming at first and then as the water turned more more money it was less right you know less um lovely to watch anyway and so you know so I tried that like maybe getting stoned and all that would be the way to get through this really you know terrible times but that didn't work for me and so then my sister who lived in say in the Haight Ashbury of San Francisco said you know Laura you've tried school that didn't work she tried marriage that didn't work you tried would start that didn't work you tried the Panthers that didn't work you're not really making good decisions you need to come live with me so you moved to surveys go so to the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco so if I talked to people from the Bay Area and told them that I moved to the Haight Ashbury for a safe haven they all get a big yuk out of that you know hey Decker was the center of so yeah because at that time like you could walk down the street and they say drugs LSD cold you know as you walk down the street so so you made a decision than to to leave some of the bad decisions behind and moved to San Francisco yes into a different culture yes yes but you know I mean I hadn't you know my sister enticed me out but you know you don't stop making bad decisions and Geographic cures only work if you're really behind the change so when I got there you know I started making lousy decisions right off the bat and so my sister worked for legal services in San Francisco so she I think had talked to some attorneys about me over the years you know cried on their soul as I went through my different you know journeys and so they had told her about Jim Jones the attorneys and attorneys because one of their friend attorneys had been involved with people simple so I went to my sister and I went up to see Jim Jones in Redwood Valley so two hours out of New York San Francisco we went into very rural Mendocino County right and so my sister and I went together so you went to a meeting at First Peoples Temple meeting right at your service yeah they called the church service there Jim did I mean you know it was called People's Temple Christian Church but I had been an atheist since ninth grade like I was not looking for God I didn't want you know I wasn't interested in somebody else's advice I never took anybody else's advice I had to learn every single you know mistake error of my ways by my own insight like I was pretty independent so what what was it that that you saw at the People's Temple meeting that made you want to come back you know I loved having people of all races and ages and education and income I love everybody being in one group like we all collaborated to get things better to take care of kids or in need help straight now you know kid was fronting in school do all those different things like we work together as a team or is one big family I mean we were called rainbow family I know that that's a name that's been copied by other groups too but really it felt like a family and it felt like everybody was pitching in to make it work including Jim and that sort of fit your ideal of my life I mean you in high school you tried to integrate your high school I mean you came out and sought this sort of rainbow family that's that spoke to you have you ever have you ever talked to your sister ever thought about you you both went to see him but you joined and she did not mm-hm is there any thought to why that was him well she said right away that she didn't like his ego hmm and so I mean I don't know if it was because I've been around people with strong egos over the years I don't know if that was it but he's put together something that nobody else I'd found had put together yeah like the Panthers you know they were pretty I love their political views and everything but they were raised in the system a racist system and so they had a lot of things like a lot of baggage of how they had been misrepresented and taken advantage of and you know really harmed in their history and so I came in kind of like an optimist and you know hip liberal and I thought oh yeah you know everything is just as it seems today I was very naive about you know any of that really of that whole story and so to me it seems to me seems that um I want I knew what I wanted but I hadn't found it yet and when I got to people's tip-off that seemed to be a and then you know Jim was a chameleon and in just so many ways but one of the ways was he could look he could be talking about religion and I would get a sense from him that his heart was not in religion part like so I didn't feel that I was being christened or brought in to not being an atheist or anything there was never any attempt to make people change from being atheist into being Christian or Bible toters or you know people who are interested in the Bible so it so it wasn't the the doctrine it was more about the group in the work it was the as I said the real doctor so in other words I thought that Jim Jones was using the church and the Bible and scripture to persuade people it wasn't good to be passive it's time to be active and so he was moving people from a position of going to church every Sunday and believing the minister as if he really were holier than the rest he said you were saying you know what let's let's help why is it if you're white you can have heaven on earth and if you're black you have to wait for the sweet by and by we're not waiting why are we waiting we deserve it as much as anybody so we're gonna have our heaven on earth we're gonna be activists here so it was that doctrine not the doctrine of the church that I thought was the real basis of Peoples Temple and I think to this day I mean I think that what probably happened is that Jim Jones was a young man checking out churches and he saw you know a minister in front of a thousand people and everybody was silent and then listening to every word the preacher said and Jim said that's the job I wanted really well yeah it was oh absolutely you want to be able to worship Him or look at absolutely yeah not the Bible him you know I was also struck in reading the book by some of the descriptions of life in the People's Temple mhm and it seemed that to me that you really thrived in that communal why you spent a lot of your adult life in it in a communal setting it's like you very matter-of-factly talked about for instance you were sleeping in your office in a sleeping bag on an old door mm-hmm for me from the outside I wouldn't get that and going that's not good that's uncomfortable that's something you do while you're waiting for the mattress to be delivered it has not a lifestyle but you seem to thrive in the community life yes I thought what are the funny parts about that though is that when you're really tired it doesn't matter what you're sleeping on yeah and so just to be able to sleep in a sleeping bag you know undisturbed for those few hours that that was what I was looking for and so I mean II now like depending on how exhausted I run myself you know I could sleep on anything or if I've had a lot of sleep over a few days and then I said my mattress isn't very comfortable or I need more pillows or something but in a way it's an extravagance it's the ability to get a lot of sleep and you know really my life I don't operate my life that way but I do love sleep but so the work that you were doing at that time in the Knievel's temple can you describe what what you were doing when was the people temple people's temple all about what were they trying to do so when I moved in I didn't have a job and then I lived in San Francisco for a while before I moved up and I was I got a job through Kelly services or something I said I was just doing you know kind of a minimum-wage job and I had a boyfriend from the temple he was like he was like my perfect boyfriend he was like tall black really funny really smart really interesting to be around he had just gotten out of prison within six months and just gotten off of heroin you know within a couple of months so he was like everything I wanted you know danger and humor and and handsome and everything all at once anyway so he was a member of the temple because Jim has helped get him out of prison and helped get him off of heroin so he was very dedicated to Jim to a point so we lived together in San Francisco for the and finally what happened was Jim came up to me that one service and he said you know Laura it seems like you're gonna be better off if you moved to Redwood Valley and move out of San Francisco which was a good point so he asked you to move him to Redwood Valley up to the the communal living right setting and so he moved me and with one of the assistant pastors Jack bean who is just you know a total doll and just hard workers I mean everybody in the temple worked hard there was nobody's the work they were doing so Jack was in the system ministers so he also worked had like we all had other jobs like I worked at the welfare department right so I went from you know 8:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday and then I get off I lived communally so one of the times you know I mean I did different things but I took care of all the tapes Jim had a regular radio program so I was in charge of tapes receiving him when they came in and identifying them I did the visitation she sang the coolest sick and who needs counseling and who said just got an F in math and stuff like that and then counselors people could get together and figure out what support people needed or write cards to people who were sick I drove a Greyhound bus all over the country I drove it from Canada and Mexico we slept on the beach in Mexico I drove it all the way from you know San Francisco around to Georgia and of New York and this was as the work of the church you know they went to different rallies at different locations and so Jim would have services probably twice a year he would do the loop so you would start in San Francisco and go to LA pickup and we had 18 Greyhound type buses and we would fill them I mean 13 gram type buses we fill them and then go around and dimma do healing services around the whole country and encourage people to move in and so many times we brought people bearing people with you young bus so I did that while I was working at the welfare department on vacations and when I had these and things like that so I did that and then I lived in the dorm I was on the Planning Commission so early on Jim started having a group even before the Planning Commission that I was part of he had formed a group of twenty or thirty people who met on a more regular basis and even though he had made all the decisions he was a hands-on manager and so he was not going to delegate things he would have conversations with people and then if he liked the ideas that came out then he would you share them with people as if they were his yeah so it was kind of like the kitchen cabinet right so it was a small one to begin with then he disbanded that group and then by the time I moved in in 1970 I moved in I got involved in March of what 1970 and I moved in in August of 1970 by about 1971 he had another Planning Commission and it started out with about sixty people of all races and it could be really hard workers or people who didn't work so hard you needed a you know an extra jolt it could be people he trusted or it could be the wives of people he didn't trust our spouses I mean it was kind of a conglomeration it wasn't just the hard workers because because everybody and people still worked hard so what was the Planning Commission for we're planning so um so we would meet and we would talk about okay so we're in Redwood Valley we have some people from San Francisco should we think about buying a temple in San Francisco okay so it's planning of the operations array of the churches and it was mostly like Jim making the decisions but he would have conversations with us saying okay so if we buy these buses how can we get to be the bus drivers who's gonna train the bus drivers so there's kind of setting a establishing kind of a you know a discussion group the good good a problem solve things that came up and so yeah and it grew as we grow so it was about 60 people in Redwood Valley and we would spend the whole night there we would have a meeting on Wednesday night and then all the members of the Planning Commission would go to somebody's house sit around and kind of a cramped setting and me until sometimes 6:00 the next morning and then leave there and go to work so at the time that you lived there did you see anything on the any cracks in the facade I mean McHugh probably have have I noticed that there were things going on that maybe you didn't think of at the time at the time did you see I mean there's there's there's one particular passage in the book that was was very difficult for me to read but you went to what a meeting of some kind and you were tired mm-hmm first of all the description of the meeting was interesting because it's a gym sitting in a chair and the rest of you had the floor around kind of you know looking up at him oh but so that and it selfless was interesting but you're at a meeting you're tired and at one point he pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot you if you fell asleep yeah to your credit you fell asleep again and he didn't show you but you know from an outsider's perspective from from my perspective that was a point in which I had to walk away from the book for a little bit yeah because I you know I'm decades away I wasn't there but how did you see any cracks in the facade or anything you know I okay even to this day like if you are determined to get something done then there are things along the way that you have to not in a way address or not focus on and I don't know that that would have been one but just in general like like if you're a che Guevara or a Castro or it's one of the people who's actually moved their country from one position to a really different position you can't do it without sacrifice and so part of I think part of my brainwashing even in people's simple ways to say okay so this is important and this is not as important right now or this is important today and we'll have to fix this later on but we can get by it today so that the kind of the discrimination between or making a a a qualified decision on what things are going to attend to that was what was really off while I was in people simple so I did not see facades I saw people who had to make a commitment because we were going against the grain we were insisting on integration when the country was really opposed to it and not giving way and so my choice was the ends and the ends were justified by the means so it was it was a way to sort of compartmentalize right behaviors or things that that maybe just kind of flipped a switch in your brain that said that's not right but we're gonna ignore that for now because this is way more important that's right and so you know people said when was a pretty young organization I mean I was only part of it for eight years you have organizations you know that are hundreds of years old or even twenty or thirty years old I did think that there are a lot of things that we would fix later on but then if we got stopped up with them now we'd get nowhere and so the situation with the gun I mean that it's telling a lot of ways first of all there's nothing in people Simplot wasn't pre-planned there's like Jim sitting in a chair and everybody on the floor or whatever happened everything was pre-planned there was nothing nothing ever serendipitous so you think so this was an event that he so I mean for him to have a gun in his pocket it's probably pretty unusual I I mean I don't know but I don't think that he had guns in his pocket most of the time that's just my my assessment I think he was making a point so I think that yeah so I think that he like he would always make a point like I don't know that I would have been to target necessarily but you know it works so so what happened was I was like nodding off because I had driven the bus down to Los Angeles and we were in the Planning Commission meeting and it was like 1 o'clock in the morning or something and I had to drive the next day from Los Angeles to San Francisco to rep the valley I mean just thinking about it today even makes me anyway so I was tired and so I was nothing out and then all of a sudden Jim pulls out a gun out of his pocket and aims at me and he says you know Laura if you nod off one more time I'm gonna shoot you so you know there was nothing credible about that credible in the threat yeah like there was made me feel threatened I didn't feel the least bit threatened or even anxious I knew there was not one chance that he would ever do it I've never seen him do anything violent I mean in with guns and stuff like I'd like they're like there's nothing about that that alarmed me because it was so far from being true and I think that that's something that's really difficult for me and perhaps people watching this little video to understand that that you know because I think in the book you say how he was always dramatic and from you know ten thousand feet it's like a dance that's not drama that's a gun pointed at you but but he was a showman yeah and he was you think that he did it to make a point and there were other things other examples like that maybe not as dramatic as coming down on you but there were other other things like that yeah I think that um what I've noticed like looking back is the people who still come to the reunions every year for instance since in Oakland there's a lot of us at that setting are the people who met Jim in Redwood Valley like I felt like I knew him really well for two years you know or more I saw him five times a week I saw him in every setting I saw him driving home late at night because I was head of security around his house so I saw him drive home in the morn I Drive out in the morning I saw him petting his dogs every day I saw him at the meaning every day whatever project we were working on he'd walked through or call or something so I mean I had all these contacts with him when he was not crazed yeah and so in a way it kind of lulled me into feeling I have nothing to fear and so you know I mean like so my position was I know I'm so well there's no chain she's gonna shoot that gun right and so you know the intimacy of being in that setting with him and I mean a lot of people who saw him in Redwood Valley before you know he got progressively more egotistical and narcissistic and really crazed as he got to San Francisco had all these members he had you know his own power and lead he had all these other things going but when we were in Redwood Valley when he was there with his family and his wife and you know who knew what was going on behind closed doors I think we were in lolled into the sense that he's actually saying and he's just trying his best and so I think that really got in the way of me seeing what he had turned into I didn't see the transition so when you talk about the People's Temple in general folks always go back to Jim Jones who the People's Temple was Jim Jones he was an egotistical person he was you know obviously controlling but what I hear what you're saying is that maybe it was more than than him even though he was controlling it mm-hmm there was more to it than than just the man right and I think you can tell by the quality of our friendships like you know I've known people now for 40 years or actually almost 50 years because I joined in 1970 and so we're coming up on the 40th anniversary of Jonestown yeah this November so I mean I've known people for 50 years and they're still the best people I ever met in my life yeah and so you know so Jim was really a small part Summerlee was able to draw people from all parts of society who are just the best just the best and Jeff Gwen just wrote a book you know he wrote a path to Jonestown Thanks and one of the things he said in it is that so many cult leaders get people involved and then they bring out the very worst in them certainly Charles Manson is amazing and I mean there are many many examples of people who were brought into a church or group and then they just became whole graphic abusers and everything I mean you in the Catholic Church I mean bring people in the church and then you have you know like church leaders who are involved in all kinds of you know being pedophile something so I mean but Jeff quit said which I thought was really profoundly state is that Jim Jones was able to have people bringing the best and the brightest and we didn't do everything great but you know of the people in my life still my People's Temple friends are my very best friends so you were actually among the first group of people to go look at the Jonestown site before it was Jonestown right ok can you talk about that experience a little bit yeah it is interesting um so the Planning Commission went down to Jonestown in 1975 so 90 of us got on a plane that we rented and our pilot one of the members of the temple was a pilot and so he flew us into Georgetown and then into junsu so we sat in I was just in love from the very beginning I mean I I love the tropics I'm a warm you know warm air warm weather rainforest person that would that's my preference of how to live and so I mean I just loved it I love the rivers I love the people they were all so gracious I just loved every second of it and so we were there and then when we left we got on a boat and took the boat from where Joe Saunders into Georgetown so 24-hour boat trip yeah so that again that struck me is how remote it was yeah really in the South American jungle it took you 24 hours to get from Jonestown to the nearest sort of town what was George Town well I mean the capital of Guyana is George sound so the and the bow was not right and Joe said it was important to me but so we had 12 hours down an internal river and they get to Jonestown - yeah - get yeah either way so it's 12 hours on the ocean and twelve hours on an internal that's very real so how you thought it it's remote and I mean for me it was spectacular because you know you go down the internal waterways and you'd have like birds and formation going down in front of you and stuff and you said people waving at you and people with the news fishing and I mean it was just everything about it was unique like it was unlike anything I had experienced in my life and my family was a family of travelers in addition to be you know progressive but everything I mean my mother took us all to Europe for a month when I was 16 she it said satis all down my two sisters it means he said okay so we can even buy a car because our car is falling apart or we could go to Europe for a month so I voted for the car and I was out with a practical one and my mother my two sisters bursted Europe so I said well okay so anyway so I mean we were travelers and so I just was completely in love with the whole country so the planning mission went but a friend of mine was on the boat too and so when I I told me were in the city once with somebody who is interviewing different survivors and so I said in the very first time I was there I fell in love with that doesn't do that and she said you know I hated it from the first time because when I was there I was on the boat too and I just threw up solid for 24 hours and it was the same boat yeah so your experience of someone else's experience which is kind of what I get back to and that you were thriving in the communal setting and I think the others probably didn't have the same experience yes to them it was a hardship it was being you know put upon until you it was like well this is just what you do that's right I mean so many insights have come on I mean some people have talked about Jonas others being like a plantation and we were all the slaves mm-hmm and so I mean I do think that that is true from one point of view but like I mean I didn't have to be leadership I kind of saw what we were doing and for me I was just enthralled by it so there was never a time that I was unhappy there but I would have left so you know when when the decision was made to move to Jonestown mm-hmm there were large groups of people III know you talked about that they came a few at a time so it's not to look like a mass exodus and as well yankles temple was all leaving the country what was the conversation like about why people wanted to go move to the middle of the jungle oh you mean Jim hiked it you know he was saying okay this is a promised land we're gonna go someplace where there no policeman on the corner no drugs being sold to your kids while they're in school nobody abusing you nobody in juvenile hall for things so he talked about it as a place that would really be a utopian community that we would move and we would be in charge we would make the decisions we would set the standards and we would not have somebody from outside impose laws and systems on us so he was he was and and and the folks in the church then or at least Jim Jones was painting a picture of the world that you were living in at the time as being one of being corrupt of you know oppressive not a place that you wanted to live and so therefore it would be better to move to this other place right and in a way a lot of his message was to people who are black because like I have certainly had privileged my whole life I've lived anywhere I wanted to go my mother graduated from college so did my father I mean I had money to go to college they I had to work scholarship but I mean I could go to college I always live in setting you know plenty of room and things and so I mean even though I was somewhat poor didn't qualify we were not impoverished in any way and so I had lived a different life but I saw the prejudice also in all the things that I was involved with and so I did believe that the world was not a safe place particularly if you're black and young and particularly male and black so he did play on that reality that people were at risk and you know even today like my son is Indian from India you know he's adopted and even in my community today I've never been pulled over yeah and he's only when he was at home till he was like 20 he had been pulled over five times by local police because of the color because of the color of his skin so I mean even today we're not over it so when Jim talked the message about okay you're going to be someplace where there's not somebody who's superior to you because of their race you know he played it up saying like we have to stick together because part of his strategy was to pretend he was black obviously he wasn't black and Joe Jones yeah pretended he was yeah I mean like he would say we have to stick together we're gonna move as if he was black but the reality is not only was he not black but his inner circle was not black his mistresses who catered to him night and day they were not black so you know he he muddied the waters so that people wouldn't realize that he didn't live what he was talking so he made them believe that this is the place for them you know he practises empathy he practiced understanding and I think there's a part of him that did understand but I think that that's his mental illness progressed and his drug addiction which was you know happening the last however many years four or five years all of that just really took control and that part of him that you know acknowledged that there was terrible racism and stuff that was just not as important to him anymore then is it you know the drugs and leadership and his ego just took over yeah what was did you live in Jonestown when yet I like to enjoy sin for a year and my job was picking people up at the airport and buying surprised and the boat that carried us into Jonestown they would come in to Joyce and I'd fill it temple in Georgia yeah we had a house we had a house where we all live in Georgetown and so so I lived there for about a year and then after a year I moved to Jonestown and I lived in Jonestown for a year and worked on different cruise and agricultural cruise and tuck kids Spanish at night and then work from the law office until the wee hours and so I kept busy and Jonestown so you talk about in in the book that one of the reasons you ended up going back to gemstones you were kind of called on the carpet from having a a tryst and violating your celibacy and can you talk a little bit about what brought you back to Jonestown from Georgetown so I always think Georgetown and I was on a bust like I went out with this guy who is a pharmacist you know my job was to go pick up people at the airport as more people came I had to make more trips so it was an hour trip everybody flew in at 11 o'clock at night so at 10 the flights yeah so I'd have to get the air load everything up drive an hour back to the house drop them off turn around go back to the airport pick up the next load and come back so that did you never less big enough Terry yeah so 11 person you're making a bunch of trips and so I think that which is really difficult I mean it's an hour's close to the airport to JFK and rough roads and not you know not a freeway like you know old we're gonna ax yes so I'd do that and so that was really exhausting so on my travels going around town I was called to procure I would get donations if people had in a recycled metal I'd take it and we take it to Joan sound and put it to good use anything people had that they could give up we took to Jonestown because we could pretty much use everything so anyway I met this guy and he said well you know I have some friends with vans maybe we'll take a trip with you and go pick up people one night or a couple nights I forgot no dirty details but anyway he was going to do that so one night I just went and and all his buddies came and they just we just made one trip that must have been delightful and I said well boy you know I could get used to this and so then after that we went out and I don't remember exactly how it happened that I went out with them I don't know if it was at the end of a date it I know I can't remember exactly how it happened but anyway we went out and so he said you know here's a hotel over there and I said well you know you have a contraceptive no we're not going there and so then we went out another time when they brought contraceptives so you guys know basically plan to sleep together and yet so again shortly thereafter and so then I came home walking into the house and they said well where have you been I said well I was just you know out with what's-his-name and they said well did you have sex and I said well yes and they said okay well and so I guess they talked to Jim and then they send me back to Jones stuck with celibacy or a rule you know if you wanted to have a position of authority or wanted to have be in Jim's trusted circle you had to be celibate so if basically basically been working your tail off for six years anyway celibate yes ever since I broke up with my friend I think maybe I needed a break on that because I didn't know bad experiences you know that I obviously that was one area that I hadn't fixed my my craziness yeah so you ended up being called on the carpet back to Jonestown and you were put on it said this this position that you had in Georgetown and procuring things and making people up from the airport you were put on work cruise is sort of a punishment oh absolutely we call it the like a work project so first I was like on it and other people you know were in charge and so public services work crew so like you know you had to run everywhere you're going you got up before everybody in the morning you went to bed after everybody you took showers after everybody else finished in the end of the day and so you just on the run all day so you weren't you were there with other people who were also frankly not in good standing with right Jim Jones like probably six or eight other people always there are always six or eight people on the work chrome yeah Blake services so then I did that for I don't know ten days or three weeks or something and then I was put in charge of it so after a short period of time you were kind of given back the position of authority a little bit yeah yeah so and so I did that for awhile I've been I moved away from that and I was in charge of an agricultural crew so and so while you were in Georgetown oh excuse me I'm sorry while you were in Jonestown what was life like there for everybody you know I can only talk for myself and so really this whole interview it's really just me there are many many different points of view on it like some people saw that I was one of the elite because I was trusted to go into Georgetown I think Jim was very careful where he allowed people to go I think that if I had been you know negative about anything or even questioning about anything if I hadn't been blind really blind to all the stuff going on I wouldn't have been soon so I don't know how elite that is but I do think Jim was very careful he was not gonna have somebody who's unhappy or who didn't like Jonestown ever represented what was going on there yeah and so you at this time you were still very enamored with a life there and the concept of the utopian environment you still felt even though you were punished for a short time right you still felt that was a good project a good idea right yeah I mean I always loved doing stuff and I then you know even today I say you know some on public service oh yeah I can do this ten based I can do this you know like I had to sit was falling apart I said okay I can wait another couple months like you know maybe deal a dog yeah I can deal with it and everything that had a life of its own so it was short-term it wasn't forever but that's because you know that was my experience in people's temple and I loved it and so you know I think there was in the lead ISM I think Jim tended to have people who are white in those positions and so he espoused the the rainbow but especially towards the end did not live that right and I mean he never had lived it because he always had white secretaries he was you know in mistresses he was having sex with and having them set up other trysts and stuff so I mean so he would and I mean even from the day I moved in when I thought he and his wife and his kids were like the perfect family he was already having a long-term sex relationship with somebody who was married while he was married and that carried on until the last day in Johnston so it's so sort of the hypocrisy and always yeah yes so you know whatever good I saw that was his public persona behind the scenes he is really vindictive and cruel and that part I never knew right until the end right so there was something I concept that I learned about when reading your book and this is kind of the concept of social suicide I think is what you referred to it so and so revolutionary yeah yeah yeah so so that concept was that something that was always part of the People's Temple or was that just towards the end in Jonestown I would say that Jim always talked about making a total commitment sometimes he means that includes life and death but he would always talk about total commitment don't be fluff you know I mean don't don't be wishy-washy don't be fluff you're here you have a purpose you're gonna make a difference it takes all of you so I mean in a way the message there is you know give me people's temple you know in their all in yeah if there is no in then we're all out and so I mean it wasn't that wasn't a new concept because growing up we always said it's better to be dead than red I mean and uh I mean I just think that he personified saying okay I expect total commitment mm-hmm and he never had to say or else yeah I mean so that's what he said so so I think that it was always built into it that we weren't gonna back down yeah and whatever it took and so I don't know that I pieced together that means or we're gonna kill ourselves I never I never added that on but I think that that was the message and I think as he got crazier and crazier that they were tied together I know around the time of Jonestown as someone watching the media you know there was a big deal made of how there would be these practice sessions yeah was that something that you were around for or um I was around for a once in San Francisco um let me just tell you one more thing about the revolutionary suicide fixers like Jim to a tee first of all in 1973 Huey Newton published his book revolutionary suicide so Jim just kind of stole the title and started using it a lot and people simple never giving credit the huge Newton as being the author of it and so that was exactly what he would do said he talked to you you'd have a really good idea and he'd say yeah I'd like that and they invented makes today yeah and so really they even the phrase revolutionary suicide was something he'd co-opted from somebody else and then take an ownership oh yeah so I mean it's just kind of just the way he did it so that's one thing anyway in terms of the the kind of the pre-rut trials of the preview we had a Planning Commission meeting in San Francisco we were there one of the local high schools and so we were all sitting around this Planning Commission and so somebody handed out juice to everybody so we all drank it and then people pretended to fall off chairs like they were dead so they were acting they are dying and so Jim came in and he said you know I've just given you poison and all of you are gonna die because we need to make a point about whatever we needed to make a point about that we weren't going to take it anymore or something so you know me like I look around and like the people who were supposed to be dead didn't look dead they just looked like you knew it's it just seemed like it was just a you know a show mm-hm and it didn't there was nothing lifelike about nobody clutched her stomach I mean I don't know whatever it would have taken for me to believe it it wasn't there yeah of course I was also in denial so I think it could be said that the whole time I was in people's two brothers in denial of any of the bad stuff I thought you know you know we'd straighten it out it wasn't really what I thought it was give him a break don't be judgmental all those things that you talk yourself out of critical thinking I was doing all of that well yeah and I have to tell you that that we tend to do victim blaming sometimes to help ourselves understand things I mean for example you have a woman who's being beaten by her husband mm-hmm and people say well why don't you just leave you know and as we know it's way more complex than that that's so and I think that that you know again being a contemporary around Jonestown and listening to the news reports there was a lot of that a lot of victim blaming all right why didn't you know anybody who's a much battered women yeah we're very much yeah yeah why didn't you see this why didn't you know that's why I couldn't have yeah so going back to Jonestown there was a point at which you'd been on the work groups and then you were sent back to Georgetown yeah so um at the end of of October we were like working full steam ahead and Jim was talking about what was going on in the world and what he would do is you know listen to the BBC mostly and then through his deranged mind he would rephrase it put it together and have one little inkling of truth and then he would tell us what was going on in the world through this like total paranoia so he filtered everything and he was the only news source right and so that's what we thought was going on then back in San Francisco things were really getting very complicated because the magazine new West magazine had had an investigative reporter research who Jim was and so he had found out you know Jim had been busted in a sting operation in Los Angeles and 72 and I was pretty much covered up and Jim heard what he was he approached a police officer in the bathrooms in Los Angeles in a theater or something for for sex and so Jim and approached somebody for sex and it was a sting operation and so Jim told the people who found out about it that he had been targeted because he had an interracial church so again through his filter he was being persecuted for having this church that's right and they were looking the heat was on that's right back in the States for the church itself right yeah okay so even before Ryan's visit was scheduled he started moving people out of San Francisco because the media had kind of turned on him and over the years he had done all these favors for mayor Moscone and for different people trying to you know like they were giving a any kind of a public meeting he would bring bus loads of people to be the audience I mean Moscone could call Jim and say you know I'm gonna give a whole this very important speech in 45 minutes and there's no one here to listen and Jim would say okay I'll take care of it and he'd bring all these people picked up by the buses to record political favor and so he expected some compensation so when the media came after Jim he tried to call in the chips he said call new West tell him don't defame me look at all the good I'm doing in the community don't do that and so he tried to call in all these chants and new West Magazine and Rupert Murdoch said no we're not gonna stop the press so in a way there was an urgency to get people out of San Francisco especially or out of California but mainly San Francisco to get them to Jonestown before the media kind of exposed everything that was going on and with make people maybe not run ago yeah so Jim expedited that so what happened in Jonestown is that we had more people than we could plan for so it was very primitive people were going out of San Francisco out of the other isn't coming to Jonestown yeah okay and it was swelling right and I've heard that Jim at one point thought we'd have about 600 people in Jonestown and by then we had a thousand people so it was bigger than we had even planned for her because how could you how can you plan how many people would actually leave the country right so you couldn't really plan so anyway so all that was going on so San Francisco was heating up and then so Jim was on top of all of this he didn't always tell the community exactly what was going on he did say you know we're gonna take a sim we're not gonna have people from the United States come over see what we're doing we're not you know they can't make our choices for us we're not gonna allow it so congressman Ryan got involved the concerned relatives let him know that they had relatives in Jonestown that they thought were being V and he was a congressman from San Mateo from the district in which a lot of these folks yes had families that's right so they had complained through their families and and he he came out to investigate that's right and did he you were in Georgetown at the time you'd moved back out of Jonestown to Georgetown first of all that move was that planned do you think Jim Jones and wanted you there for a reason more so what happened was it first of all back in the States two people who were like close to Jim did leave in may they be Layton left and she went right to Washington and said Jim's gonna kill those people don't let him she was written up in the Congressional Record and she said people are beaten in Jonassen and she even used me as an example in the Congressional Record Sam you know people are abused what happened to this person and so then another person left Terry Buford left in September or October with Mark Lane who was one of the attorneys so that happened that happened then the concerned relatives and then all the public media so congressman Ryan I'm going to come to Joe Simon Jim said no you're not gonna come and so they had this you know argument back and forth and finally Jim said okay come so in Jonestown I was living in Jonestown working but the person I had worked with at the welfare department for seven years in a river valley yeah was Sharon Amos and Jim sent her to Georgetown because he needed somebody he had absolutely she was no longer within the People's Temple she was no so I'm probably confusing this story so Ghazi mister so she she was somebody you knew but she was sent to Georgetown so she was one of Jim's you know coming down so generous in her inner circle and so when this whole thing with Ryan came up he picked her to go back to Georgetown to kind of monitor what was going on in Georgetown and I think at that time you know we had cyanide in Jonassen and I think that at that time it's possible that he expected some fallout some problems and so whatever it was gonna be I don't know for sure that he had decided that people were going to die but he expected some problems so he had Sharon in the house in Georgetown and since I had worked with her for seven years and because you know we had had a friendship I knew her kids and you know I driven her to San Francisco when she was too tired to drive done different things I think that Jim thought that if Sharon gave me an instruction like saying Jim said we should all die I think he felt that Sharon could persuade o'course need to follow that disruption yeah so you were in Georgetown and what was your first inkling that something had gone wrong Jack and Jessica so I was out for the day I came back and Sharon came up to me and said Jim needs to talk to his sons on the radio or I need to talk to them can you go get them cuz I had the only car so I do have a crosstown and got Steven and Jimmy Jim's kids brought them back into the house and in Sharon's Stephen and a couple of other people met in the far back bedroom and you weren't privy to that none of us knew that and we went about our business right and so at one point the Guyanese police force stopped and it says everything okay here and we said yeah everything's fine do they do that normally happens I know but you know the Guyanese defense force is kind of like the National Guard you know they're all like 17 years old and kind of friendly and goofy I mean you know it wasn't intimidating and it didn't see militaristic or anything so they just came by to check and see how things were going and then we said oh yeah everything's fine and then they left and so then we all went to our evening activities because we were booked day and night and when we came back they had taken their guy knew his defense force had come back taking over the house and had us all sit in the living room and so did they tell you what was going on no and so while we were sitting there the they brought out the body bags of Sharon and her three kids so that we know yeah yeah and that was the first year something had gone wrong right and so it turns out Sharon had told Stephen and Jimmy and the people she met with Jim wanted everybody to commit suicide people and Joe some were dying so at that point when when they were having the conversation in the back of the house heaven had and the folks in Jonestown already committed suicide yes and they knew it yes but that was not information that you knew right I think Stephen and Jimmy stopped Sharon from telling anybody because they said you know we're not gonna do it Stephen wanted to fly out to Jonestown and save anybody he could but you know that it's that trip was not can it make a long time yeah I mean if he flew back he could fly and the guy to my but he didn't have a night Airport so the flesh closest airport would be Matthews Ridge 35 miles away on and he couldn't make it so there was nothing he could do to stop it but he did stop the word from getting out you'd you talked about that that that he that this was something that I was unaware of that the Jim Jones had created a message to go out yeah in the event that that everyone so aside to tell everybody in every Peoples Temple but it's over and you need to follow me that's right and he got on the phone and called everybody Stephen did yes so Stephen got that message Stephen got the message from Jonestown that people were already dying and dead and so Stephen just got on the front and called all the places in San Francisco in Redwood Valley and in Los Angeles and said don't listen to any message you get that Stephen is his son yeah nineteen year old son Wow so he was this nineteen year old kid have you ever thought to really stop people that's right do you think that had he not done that that that it would have been worse oh absolutely yeah yeah yes so there you are in Georgetown mm-hmm and you're there with the Guyanese army you're seeing your friend and her children being carted out mm-hmm what what was going on at that point in time I mean were you able to talk to one another were you able to help one another through this sort of their like you know we had rooms where we shared you know five or six or seven people in the room so I mean the room that I was in we were all crying and traumatized and everything some of the people in the house including Jimmy and Stephen later flew out to Jonestown to identify people so there could be some identity made so there are some people who survived who went back to Jonestown even and all that and put names on toe tags but then there was a rain in the rain washed everything away so I mean we're in the tropics so their best efforts didn't gain anything but I mean they went back and did Jonas time to see what they could possibly do to help the situation but you know like I'm a teacher right and so we have fire drills every month so I know like a fire drill happens I pick up my notebook I get my kids lined up we go out to a number on a field but there is nothing they could prepare people for a thousand deaths in the interior of Guyana most people can't find Guyana on the so like there was not any way for it to have any semblance of order or anything I mean eventually a doctor from from guy from Georgetown did fly out but you know it was several days before and in the tropics sure in heat so I mean really almost all the assessments from that point are really non-scientific their observation but you know they're not valid in that setting so so much of what happened in those last hours and days we can't really there's nothing we can trust that's definitive to tell us what happened other than Jim's last tape which you know he left running because he thought people would want to hear what he had to say that day right yeah so you know the People's Temple was such a huge part of your life many years I mean I think when you lose someone to death you know part of the mourning process is that people get together and they talk and they cry and they laugh and they talking to cry and they laugh so more it helps you sort of frame that experience and figure out how you're gonna move on yet in your life and in your case I'm struck by the fact that this is a group of people that you were separated first of all everybody you knew and work with it there are many people that you knew and worked with we're dead all it's red and they were just gone so those folks that were left you were separated from in in some sense you were in the house together for a short while but then you went home well I mean we were in the house together we stayed in Guyana for about two weeks it seems like because they wanted to have enough air marshals to keep the group safe and keep people flying and they somebody had said that the basketball team was a hits run so not only the People's Temple basketballs yes in Guyana to play it like an extension Georgetown with Stephen and Jimmy you know really the total loss Jim Stephen and Jimmy had stopped everything and yet they were being held as you know part of ahimsa so the total opposite what was reality so they had to get enough people to enough air marshals to bring them back and so when it was time for them to send people back they were gonna let all the women and all the seniors all the kids go so they told me I could go but I didn't really have anything to go back to I mean I never thought I was gonna go back to the United States it was the last thing I wanted to do so I said well I'm I don't have any place to go on with a stay and so a lot of some of the people who were in the house they're about 50 people in the house a lot of them did go and they're about 15 or 20 of us left and then after enough air marshals came then they sent the rest of us back unless people had legal issues that had to be resolved so then I came back and moved into the temple in San Francisco because that's where the yeah and so we stayed there until March and the conservator kicked us out then we moved in two communes together and I lived in the commune with 12 other temple members and then they moved from that community to another one with two of the members and so you know we tried to kind of help each other and be there but you know nobody outside the temple could understand yeah that experience was unique and nobody in the temple could really give much of a hint because we were all traumatized and so there wasn't somebody who could say okay here I can you can cry on my shoulder cuz of me both cry so well and then part of the other issue that was happening at the time is that the general public of the United States had heard through news reports wouldn't happened yeah and to be a member of the People's Temple was not something you wanted to identify yourself as not something that yeah you could talk about in fact in the book you talk about the bodies were not accepted at cemeteries we all didn't want them in the cemetery that's right so you were kind of a pariah yeah I mean I think that a lot of people had more a harder time with it than I did I didn't want to talk about it because I always sobbed no I didn't want it like oh and by the way I'm a survivor so I didn't talk about it for that but I mean so but I mean in a way that was always part of who I was so but I came back and one of the things I did that US government gave me said they had to lean on my passport I went for my passport and they said well there's a lien on it and I go what's that all about they said well you know about $500 because we brought you back from Guyana and I said well I didn't even want to come back from Guyana and they said yeah but you know we had to have you go before the grand jury so we had to bring you back I said well I have to be on that so I have to pick the underpants alene so I had to pay that off so I went to Kelly services again and I said you know I've been traveling in the Caribbean and so I didn't have anything on my resume but I needed a job yeah so I got a job and then they put me through school at night so I could be a computer operator and I had money so then like to give money to the other survivors who didn't have income and didn't have a place to go so there's one of those things that you know turning lemon and eliminate or something you know so so um one of the things that happened after you came back is you joined Synanon yes which I kind of remember the name so I had to look it up and the first sentence of every description of Synanon is it's a cult yes that was founded to be a I guess to help drug abusers get off Drive right but they then were charged with abusing their members and what with that life well you know Diedrich started sitting on because he was an alcoholic and so he used to go to AAA and then he'd sit for a couple hours every night and then go about his business but he didn't feel it worked so he went in a residential treatment center so he started a residential treatment center and sent it on and at first it was just dope fiends and then it was first it was alcoholics and they added dope fiends and then people who wanted to be part of a community we having people moved in and so you know that was your interaction as being part of that community and well that was earlier was in the 50s so by the time I joined in 1980 it was about half lifestyle or so people who were not dope fiends are addicts and half people who had recovered or who were newcomers and were recovering and so but I mean it had been through the whole cycle I mean Chuck these are it was crazed also I mean he was also you know a an idiot savant in a way I mean he was a genius and putting this together he was a genius and having people research in you know Buckminster Fuller and Thoreau and Walden Pond I mean he had this great visionary just so inspirational and insightful and then on the other hand you know he was crazed and an alcoholic and so his wife Betty diederich who was a really strong former addict when they were married they really went the distance and did a really good job and then she died of cancer and in the tragedy he went back to drinking and so sitting I was on this roller coaster and you know put a rattlesnake in the mailbox of an attorney that was you know fighting the case and I think and then so crazy absolutely crazy things happen but when I come around in 1980 they had like a game circle a therapy called the cinnamon ground and so I just loved that because I when I came back I said well I cannot go and sit in a therapists office for an hour a week what are you doing in power nothing so I went to Sudan and actually for three hours you know a couple times a week I could be surrounded by friends who would just let me sit and cry or talk or they would talk and what happened gradually is I could I'd be sitting in a circle and somebody else would tell me about some trauma they had had and I really said I wasn't the only one who had had tragedies and missteps and traumas in my life somehow it kind of it released in me because I could understand that other people had traumas too and so it just got to be a really special place for me to be able to release the bed when I met my current husband you know we've been married 35 years he could tell days that I was really messed up and he called my friend to say could you put a game together for Laura sure so you felt it a really helpful yeah I felt it really helpful and this game was one of the things that people later called abusive because it was groups of people talking about their spaces and other people in the group saying oh you know maybe yeah not nice things about that is you know but for you it was me it was good and also you know for one thing there are two kinds of games there is the game that Chuck started which is all attack and saying you relate to work you want to leave now and go use dope again even though you just stole from your mother last night like really roughing now we call tough love yeah boy that's right and then there was Betty's game which is okay so your partner has cancer and you need to talk about it or you know your child died or something like that so there were different kinds of games but I was in both kinds of games and I found it helpful I don't mind kicking but I don't mind getting my butt kicked and so I'm still going to be Who I am right and so for me it was really refreshing yeah and like my friends today that my student on friends we have gone through all the all the transparent stuff all the veneer we knew each other so well yeah that that's what the game did it made us really know each other not that how are you gonna act on the show me I really know my friends from cinema I really know their gut feelings I know who's trustworthy I know people's you know trick knees I know all that and so that's what the sooner on game was all about so so what what was the catalyst for leaving cinema so sin and unfolded said you know you're not nonprofit anymore because you don't take end of things in the or and actually that was absolutely true because what happened is we had salesmen who would make a couple million dollar sales over a year and they said well I want more money and so then they started to being distinction of who made the most money they got more money from Cinnabon and so once that started that just devoting everything and so it closed in 1990 but actually I was ready at that point I said okay enough already 20 years I mean enough and so then I got out of that I went back to school my son was born in 1989 I went back I got finished my degree I got a dual philosophy psychology degree I got my teaching credential I started teaching bilingual kindergarten in the year he went to kindergarten know something I taught straight through and you know just kind of got my act together but all that time I had no contact once I moved into Center on I had very little contact with anybody from people simply because my life was pretty full I just needed to break I did go to jail and visit Larry late and just he was in jail in San Francisco so I did that a couple of different times in the early 80s but then by the time I got out I kind of felt like I had to rebuild who I was and then in my at the 20th anniversary I remit with the survivors from People's Temple so that was the first time 20 years later was the first time that you went back and started to revisit that time right and the people and I know in the book you talk about a time in which you were in a restaurant with your husband and the woman walked in and you're like I kind of know her yeah I don't know her and and it was someone that you didn't know was alive or dead because you had kind of yeah pressed that right at times like if the 20th anniversary like what would happen is when I was working like sometimes I'd look out the window and I'd see somebody who is a caricature or a prototype or you know the same person I knew in Joe's I knew they died yeah so you turn off that part of your brain that can we go through your recollections to find things so you just turn that off so I stopped wondering if somebody was alive or dead I stopped asking how anybody was I couldn't remember for sure who was with me who was in San Francisco who was in Georgetown so I just turned all that off and so going back half twenty years later I stopped you were really reconnecting yeah people that you thought you didn't know that's right that's right yeah like a really good friend of mine now she had left the temple when I left for Guyana she's left the temple and I had never asked about her because I you know couldn't bear the thought that she wasn't there yeah so yeah but she was and she wasn't so now we're friends I just saw her in October when I was in Ohio that's kind of a nice gift yes yeah after just a really nice yeah um can I just ask you a little bit about what's what's your definition of a cult no I think the cult is anything yeah I think we're a cult driven Society the United States and I think you know if you like the Marines are simplified like simplify is a cult and so it doesn't matter if it's the Catholic Church or an LDS or anything else if there's something that you are gonna always follow in spite of everybody at your best yeah then I think that's a cold so you know coldest is short for culture I call this a group that has its own way of thinking through things and reacting to things and if somebody tells you not to vote or who to vote for or not to have an abortion or to have an abort I mean if there is somebody in the group who is making your personal decisions for you that's a call and I think that Americans are addicted to cults I think they're all around us and so you have to be really careful do you do you look at the world any differently yeah I do um I think I mean I think life is really precious so I don't know waste my time with fools I will not waste my time with racists I will not waste my time with people who treat people badly who bully so and I surround myself with people that I you know have total trust and not people who you know respond when they feel like it like I am have so many friends I can't keep track of them all and I'm really high standards for friends and I don't waste my time on stuff like I was them you know I teach sixth grade so I had my Chess Club yesterday so one of the kids I said clean up your chest and he went out and so he told another student she's so stupid she told me to clean up my chest side or something like that so the student came back and said mrs. Cole he said you're stupid I said that's okay I've heard a lot worse let me play that game you know yeah so I mean and that's a thing I don't get cata and also I'm a Quaker so I like simple things make it really simple don't be complicated and please don't waste my time talking too long about unimportant things life's too short yeah well my goodness this has been a marvelous conversation and I'd like if you wouldn't mind to end this by again reading a passage from your book see if it has meaning to you now I have chosen life most days I am above the fray of daily life I have simplified things I worry about I make it a point to make the world a better place I try not to be compromised by our society and world I just said yeah I can't tolerate racism sexism or deception by elected officials or anyone else I also can't tolerate violent war bullying whether it's personal or institutional it has made me who I am today and it will take me where I'm going tomorrow my friends and my desire for a better world make my life full and rewarding I am so glad I made that choice about 30 years ago to keep on to doing well honey I said to say before you did absolutely did so Laura John Nicole I appreciate your time today this has got to be so difficult for you but I appreciate you being open and honest and being here and letting us hear your story you know for me it's kind of like I get I'm a little fragile leading up to interviews and then after it's I have this exuberance of I did it that nice survive days again or something somehow it's but it's freeing more than difficult glad to hear that yeah glad to hear that so if you're interested in learning more I highly recommend Laura's book Jonestown survivor a survivor sailor also has a website called Jonestown survivor calm and a Facebook page which is also Jonestown survivor mm-hmm so if you're interested in learning more about it those would be some good places to start and I thank you and I thank you for your time today thanks so nice meeting you you
Info
Channel: Believe In Reality
Views: 48,721
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: cult, religion, Jonestown, Laura Kohl, Laura Johnston Kohl, Jonestown Survivor, Jim Jones, People's Temple, Guyana, Koolaid, cyanide, Leo Ryan
Id: W5zVOat-CZ0
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 85min 33sec (5133 seconds)
Published: Thu Mar 29 2018
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