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Q: What was the biggest challenge for you in doing the reporting for the book?Ī: One was going back into Indiana to try to learn everything I could about Jones’ childhood and early life there.
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He was making sure that everybody listening to him heard exactly what they wanted to hear at some point. The genius of Jones is that he could have thousands of followers collected together for varying reasons and could in the course of one of his four- or five-hour sermons - if you listened carefully, it wasn’t rambling. And in a sense, it’s a trait that ministers and politicians want to have. That’s supposedly a trick that all great salespeople have. Where did he get that skill?Ī: I think there are rare individuals among us who have a gift for discerning what the other person wants to hear and being able to make that person believe they share the same beliefs. Q: Your book shows Jim Jones as someone who could tailor his message to his audience. They truly believed that if they could set a positive socialist example, everybody having equal opportunity and showing respect to the least in society, then by dint of what they did everyone else would want to follow that example. We’re talking about capable, intelligent, decent people whose motivation for being part of Peoples Temple was to try to bring about a more equitable world. I had not realized that he accomplished so many good works in Indiana and even later in California.Īnother thing that surprised me was the quality of the people who chose to join Peoples Temple. If he had been hit by a car and killed between establishing his church in Indianapolis and then moving it out to San Francisco - for what he accomplished in Indiana, he would still be remembered as one of the leading pioneers in the early civil-rights movement. I was in my early 20s at the time and like everybody else I was stunned, couldn’t believe it happened, and started to say every once in a while over the years, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” without knowing that it wasn’t Kool-Aid and that a lot of the victims didn’t even voluntarily take it.Ī: It was amazing to me to learn some of the great works that Jim Jones and Peoples Temple accomplished. A: All I knew was that this horrific event had occurred in Guyana.