My good friend spoke at Bucknell at a class studying Peoples Temple and the events of Jonestown thirty-five years ago.

Jordan Vilchez, one of the survivors of the tragedy at Jonestown, spoke to the University community on March 6, about her experiences as a young member of the People’s Temple.

At age 12, Vilchez became a member of the People’s Temple and subsequently relocated to Redwood Valley with her older sister. Just eight years later, they moved to Guyana. Vilchez left Jonestown the day before the mass loss of life, in order to attend a meeting in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana.

On Nov. 18, 1978, Vilchez lost her sisters and nephews during the infamous tragedy. As a member of the community, her job included being an active participant of the Planning Commission, which subsequently allowed her to familiarize herself with the inner workings of the movement. On a personal level, Vilchez recollected feelings of repression and a diminished sense of self worth and self-esteem.

“For me, I did not really exist for myself. I grew up feeling that my hopes, my dreams, my wishes, none of that mattered,” Vilchez said.

As a trusted youth in the community and the youngest member of the Planning Commission, Vilchez was chosen to complete tasks such as counting money, processing living requests and doing security shifts. Vilchez spoke about practices, such as the separation of families upon their arrival and public chastisement known as being “brought up.” Vilchez recalled specific instances, where ideas of complete control and total revolution were reflected in Jim Jones’ actions. For instance, Jones forced the youths to watch videos and read books such as “The Glass House” by Philip Johnson.

Vilchez currently lives in Berkeley, Calif. and has an integrative mentoring practice called the Cosmology of You. She also contributes to the yearly publication, “The Jonestown Report,” which includes biographical data, photographs and information of those who resided at Jonestown. It is also a compilation of remembrances and personal accounts of the experiences of living in Jonestown.

This semester, Professor of English Carmen Gillespie and Professor Emeritus Bob Gainer are teaching a course on the Jonestown massacre.

“It’s one thing reading all of these very different books to see Jonestown from different perspectives, but it’s another thing entirely to read a book or see a documentary and be able to hear the words from a person’s mouth and ask them the questions that ran through our heads as we’ve studied the tragedy. It’s really incredible,” Allison Friedlander ’16 said.

“The focus and purpose of this work is to remember and revisit the stories of Jonestown, to use narrative to uncover a deeper meaning to these events than the catchphrase about ‘drinking the Kool-Aid.’ The tragedy of Jonestown is an important piece of contemporary American history that bears continued examination in order to come to a better understanding of the intersections of power, race, sexuality, politics and the desire for social change that occurred leading up to that fateful moment. Of course, studying these events and coming to that more nuanced understanding will hopefully mean that we can learn from them, gleaning whatever positives we can from a situation with a terrible outcome, and preventing tragedies like this from happening again,” said Rebecca Willoughby, lecturer in English and interim assistant director of the Griot Institute.

“The Jonestown narrative engages fundamental questions of religion, race, nationality, power, civil rights, sexuality, poverty, aspiration and identity that are not disconnected from the dilemmas of the present moment,” Gillespie said. “I hope that both the Jonestown class and the series reintroduce the fundamental questions that the Jonestown tragedy invokes and brings about the recognition that this story resonates with issues that remain central in 2013.”

“Jonestown Reconsidered, 35 Years Later,” a series of events sponsored by the Griot Institute for Africana Studies, reflects on the events surrounding the Jonestown massacre. The lecture series creates a forum for students, professors and members of the community to discuss questions of religion, race, sexuality, power and aspiration. The talks are free and open to the general public.

Since I first started opening up about my experience with Peoples Temple at the 20th anniversary in 1998, I have been interviewed hundreds of times. I have been interviewed by all media types, and have been in a number of documentaries. I have also been interviewed by researchers, authors, and multitudes of students. There has never been a time without at least one person in contact with me about writing a paper. I have also written many articles for The Jonestown Report, an annual publication put out by the Jonestown Institute.

I published my book, JONESTOWN SURVIVOR: An Insider’s Look, three years ago – March 2010. It originally came out in hard-bound, soft cover, and eBook. Last year, I added it to Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook. I expect to have it available as an audio book soon.

I still teach full time in San Diego, but I travel around the country a lot on Book Tours. Sometimes, I make a connection with event organizers and I explain that I am a Jonestown survivor, and that I would like to arrange a Book Talk. Then, I am told that there may not be much interest in such an historic but distant event. Inevitably, I get a callback. Yes, after speaking with others at their business, they have found that there is great interest.

These days, the sixty survivors from Guyana, and those who were part of Peoples Temple still living in the United States, are taking ownership of that experience. More and more, the survivors want and need to clarify and expand on the event. And, communities seem to be very curious to find out more.

My desire always is to ensure that my loved ones are not forgotten. I treasure my memories. I feel different levels of nervousness before speaking events, but always feel like a heavy burden is lifted off of my shoulders afterwards. The audiences seem willing to help lift the burden, and to gain a better understanding of the mystery surrounding Jonestown.

This is an article I just wrote for volume 14 of the jonestown report.
Recently, I opened an innocuous-looking piece of email that turned out to be hate mail. The sender must have seen one of my interviews in the documentaries that show up on PBS or one of the cable channels periodically. The people of Jonestown deserved what they got, he said. He added that when I cry about anything related to Peoples Temple, I’m just being stupid, ignorant, etc., and that I should just shut up.

Why would anyone write such a hateful and vicious diatribe, I wondered, and what should my response be, beyond my knee-jerk temptation to trash him in kind? I didn’t answer him specifically, since I’m not interested in further correspondence with him. But here in general is how I wanted to reply,

First, there is a sense – unfortunately, not unique to this writer – that if you ever succumb to the embrace of cults, you automatically become a “throwaway” person for the rest of your life. There is there no room for forgiveness, for charity. The door for us to return to mainstream society is forever locked by the society itself. Is this really the lesson we want to emerge from this tragedy?

I have been interviewed for countless documentaries, theater projects, books, articles, and research projects about Peoples Temple. I do try to broaden the understanding of Peoples Temple, Jonestown, and – the wider issue for me – practicing humanity. There is nothing I do that encourages cult-like behavior. If I cry – and I admit it, I do in almost every interview – it is because of my memories of the wonderful, optimistic people who had such dreams for their families. We – and I’m proud to include myself in their number – were willing to move beyond talking to doing. We wanted to build a model community based on equality and dignity for all. We were not experienced “cult followers” who jumped from one group to the next, but instead, we were learning as we grew up in this single community. We worked hard to create this Utopia. We were so determined, we rarely took a breath. We didn’t spend time discerning if there were dangers for us or others. We were busy. We were naïve and hopeful, so much so that it clouded our critical thinking. And yes, we blew it.

Whatever anyone believes about Jim Jones, we were not villains. My friends in Jonestown did not deserve to die. I miss them, not only for who they were, but for what they could do to help us in our efforts to clean up the world these days. They were visionaries and workers, not just “pie in the sky” folks. They were people who believed in their dreams enough to work on building them, on realizing them.

I have seen more than enough hate in my life. I have seen how resentment and cruelty affect us all. Replacing one cult with another one – a “Cult of Hate” – makes everything even worse.

Hate accomplishes nothing.

Here are the details:

PEOPLES TEMPLE AND SYNANON – MODERN COMMUNITIES

THE ROLE OF WOMEN

                During the two decades from 1970 until 1990, I was a resident in two modern residential communities – both, controversial and unique communities.  I am the only one from either community who experienced them both.  We continue to have rich friendships and frequent contacts.  I will compare and contrast the leadership styles, including the role of women.  I will share the thoughts from my fellow survivors of Jonestown, and fellow ex-members of Synanon.  In conclusion, I will share my own experience in the groups.  I speak only for myself in this paper.  In both communities, there is a wide range of reflection and opinion about almost every aspect of the group.

I do know that there is a very thin line between good and really evil behavior, and that it is too easily crossed.

I don’t pretend to have the specific remedy for you to forgive yourself and to move on in your life. I can only share my own process and you can pick and choose the things that fit for you and your friends who have suffered so horribly.

The first and main thing that made the most difference in my survival was to get away from everyone involved in Peoples Temple so that I could find out who I was. Most survivors, and certainly my family, couldn’t imagine how I could look to and join another group. Both fortunately and unfortunately – I have forged my own path in my life. I found really good friends in Synanon who were nowhere near as crazy as I was, and they just supported me through the guilty and self-destructive period. I really had to get to know myself. I had to do the work, but I was surrounded by community members, from a different community, who understood much of what is required by a participant in a controlling community.

A second part of my survival was giving myself time. Everyone told me that “time heals all wounds.” That was never true. Never. Over the first three years or so – I didn’t feel any better, but I had decided to survive myself at that point. After that, the horror was spread out more. I could see the sunrise through the night. It started slowly at first, but then I had more sunlight in my life.

After getting my internal and emotional life somewhat in order, I started putting my practical life together. I started my family, finished my education, and began in my profession.

The most significant part of my healing and surviving has been my introspection and reflection on what went wrong and my support of and from other survivors of Peoples Temple. We know how things went and we know much more about the details of why. The level of secrecy still surprises me, as do many aspects of the whole movement of Peoples Temple. But, I know enough of the details to logically put together a framework of understanding. I now discuss the whole experience and my thoughts and understanding continue to evolve. That is a huge part of moving forward for me.

The final piece that has allowed me to live a good life is that the experiences I had in Peoples Temple, and really Synanon and everything else, is that they are all integrated into who I am today. I am a conglomeration of all of those things – good and bad, crazy and sane, committed and flaky – that is me. And, I like who I am today, imperfect that I am. I know that IF I had died in Jonestown on November 18, 1978, and IF I could have gotten a message to those who survived, I would have told them to appreciate the life they were fortunate to have. I would have reminded them that life is fragile and that you only get one. I would have wanted them to live their lives to the fullest. I know that.

I know that we each have a path that might make our lives a bit easier – my path wouldn’t have worked for everyone. Some are still searching for their paths. I couldn’t wait. Some don’t want to go public. I feel a burden to remind people about what we lost, who we were, what potential we had. I feel that burden and still live my life, and I have a rich, wonderful life. I am surrounded by a wonderful family, and, a humungous extended family from all parts of my life. In addition to that – since I am not one to sit on a front porch and knit at this stage of my life – I am an activist (and Quaker and teacher) and I pursue justice and integrity.

Posted: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 2:00 am | Updated: 9:52 pm, Mon Apr 9, 2012.

By Susy Kelly For HeraldStandard.com | 1 comment

It took 20 years before Laura Johnston Kohl could publicly utter what happened at Jonestown.

It wasn’t until 1998, when Kohl attended a memorial service in Oakland, Calif., for the 918 people who died at Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple in a remote commune in Guyana, that she reached a point when healing could begin by helping others understand what occurred.

After reuniting with other survivors in 1998, she said she told herself, “I can’t really keep living as though I didn’t live through that.”

Today, Kohl, who is a bilingual educator living in San Diego, Calif., writes and speaks widely about her experiences. On Monday, Kohl spoke at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus, about her affiliation with the Peoples Temple.

Kohl said what drew her to the Peoples Temple was social activism, not religion. Growing up in the 1960s, Kohl was immersed in civil rights and anti-war activism. After college she joined the Black Panthers. Kohl said she began to feel like attending rallies and living with the Black Panthers “wasn’t working,” so in 1970 she moved to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district with her sister. Kohl said her sister had heard positive things about the Peoples Temple and suggested Kohl might find her place there.

“I was an atheist at the time,” Kohl said. “I didn’t see a place in the church for me, but Jim Jones was a political being.” Kohl said Jones used his political clout to affect the kind of social change she had been working toward. Kohl was impressed by the ethnic diversity not only within the church, but within Jones’ family. He was a preacher, happily married to a nurse, with several adopted children of mixed racial backgrounds.

Kohl became active in the church, and later in the project in Guyana, where she said she fell in love immediately with the “wonderful, mixed, vibrant country.” Mostly stationed in the capital city of Georgetown, Kohl was a procurer, gathering supplies and shipping them upriver to Jonestown.

“Most of us loved Jonestown,” Kohl said. “When we were in the United States, we looked to Jim for direction,” but in Jonestown the members could focus on building the ideal community.

“The people who moved to Jonestown knew it would be primitive,” Kohl said.

The people expected hard work, and welcomed the remoteness of the location, said Kohl.

“They wanted a new kind of lifestyle for themselves and their kids,” she said, a racism-free community where illegal drugs were not available on street corners.

“I never wanted to leave Jonestown,” Kohl said.

In 1978, Leo Ryan, a congressman from the state of California, along with a group of delegates, reporters and concerned family members, visited Guyana to investigate claims that members were being held against their will.

While attempting to transport some members who asked to be evacuated, the group was ambushed on the airstrip on Jones’ orders. Ryan and four others were killed and nine more were injured.

Back at Jonestown, Kohl said Jones announced, “We’re killing the congressman and you are all co-conspirators.”

For the next hour and a half, she said Jones told followers they no longer could go home, and that Jonestown would be eliminated once word got back about the fate of Ryan’s party.

Jones ordered the children to be poisoned first, Kohl said, knowing that the adults would be less inclined to try to survive, and then ordered the remaining members to drink cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid.

Kohl was in Georgetown that day, and Jones sent the same order to the members living there and back in San Francisco. In Georgetown, Kohl explained, it was Jones’ son Stephan who said, “We’re not doing it, he’s a mad man,” and called members in San Francisco to stop them as well.

Kohl reflected on the refrain she’s heard as a survivor, that she and the others who lived must be special or blessed.

“I never felt blessed by it,” she said. “The people who died had it easier than those of us who survived it.”

Kohl said spreading the word about what really happened helps her heal, as does organizing events which bring together the unique community of survivors and families of those who perished. Kohl has written a book titled “Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look.” She also maintains a blog at www.jonestownsurvivor.com and a collection of about 1,400 pictures on the website www.flickr.com.

© 2012 heraldstandard.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

UNIONTOWN, Pa. – Laura Johnston Kohl, a survivor of the 1978 Jonestown incident in northwestern Guyana, will speak at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus at noon on Monday, April 9, in the Biomedical Building lecture hall.
Jonestown was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, a community led by Jim Jones. It became internationally notorious when nearly 1,000 people died on Nov. 18, 1978, in the settlement and in Georgetown, Guyana’s capital. In an event termed “revolutionary suicide,” a total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning.
As an idealist and activity for civil and human rights, Kohl met Jim Jones and moved into Peoples Temple in 1970, not knowing that she would barely escape the fate of the others who would die there.
In the past year, Kohl has received several awards, including the National Association of Professional Women award as a 2011-12 Woman of the Year and a nomination for Teacher of the Year 2011-12 at her middle school.
Kohl’s book, “Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look,” was published in March 2010.

Ekta Garg, of thewriteedge.wordpress, just did a Book Review of my book JONESTOWN SURVIVOR: An Insider’s Look:

Review: Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look by Laura Johnston Kohl

By Ekta R. Garg

“When I flew into Guyana to join my friends in Peoples Temple, I was immediately enthralled and believed I might have found the ‘promised land.’” So says author Laura Johnston Kohl in the introduction to her book Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look. Kohl refers to her short time in Jonestown, Guyana as a member of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project. The Project grew as an extension of the work church founder Jim Jones had begun here in the United States in his ministry known as Peoples Temple, an organization many call a cult due to its socialist leanings and the dynamic method in which founder Jones led his people and eventually convinced more than 900 of them to commit mass suicide in November 1978.

In the 1950s Jones began Peoples Temple after observing the power of religion to move people and compel them to make financial contributions to churches. Some people of that time considered Jones’ messages of racial integration and a communal thought process radical; others embraced wholeheartedly his seemingly innocuous ideas. Most did not know that his methods were more calculating and more self-serving.

Jonestown Survivor author Kohl first walked into a Peoples Temple service in March 1970. Although she didn’t feel at home in the beginning, soon she realized that she had found a place for herself.

“As I looked around, others in the building seemed to be comfortable, happy and engaged also. The Temple services were never just fashion shows and places to wear your newest duds. They had accepted me as one of them and I had eventually accepted that I was in a place I belonged.”

Quickly Kohl became involved in all aspects of the temple, and as she describes her experiences readers will still feel her amazement at being accepted there and with the work she accomplished. Readers will also become aware of Kohl’s naiveté, a fact she freely admits more than once throughout the book. Kohl and many of the other temple members participated wholeheartedly in activities (such as panhandling on the streets to raise funds for the temple.) Kohl and her friends truly believed they were working towards a better temple, a better community, and a better world. They honestly felt each and every action would transform the world, making it a place where everyone would accept the integration of races and shining focus on the needy and homeless.

Jones’ dynamism had such a deep affect that he convinced his entire flock that a new home for Peoples Temple could be developed in the South American country of Guyana. Plans began for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, and author Kohl eventually moved to Jonestown, Guyana to participate in the initial ground-up construction of a viable community there. She split her time between Jonestown and Georgetown.

On the surface to temple members all seemed to be well. But following the investigation of the IRS into the questionable tax-exempt status of the temple as well as increasing concern raised by the public and others for temple members, Jones made the decision to convince his people to kill themselves. And they did.

Kohl’s succinct memoir tells her story, beginning with a quick recapture of her childhood so readers can understand her background and how she came to join Peoples Temple in the first place. She doesn’t waste words in this short book that doesn’t even hit 150 pages in paperback, and Kohl manages to convey the essence of her feelings on the belief system of the temple. Clearly Kohl, like many others, got caught up with the utopian concept of Peoples Temple; they either missed the obvious signs of Jones’ deception or else closed their eyes to those signs. Regardless, being a member in Peoples Temple—especially considering the tragic events of November 18, 1978 in Jonestown—had a deep, life-altering impact on the survivors and those who were members but had not migrated to Guyana. And Kohl does an excellent job of making the point without belaboring it.

I highly recommend Jonestown Survivor: An Insider’s Look to better understand some of the thought processes behind those who join such ventures. Readers will certainly enjoy Kohl’s book and will appreciate its insights.