November 18, 2003
- November 18, 2003 Remembering the Guyana tragedy, by Les Kinsolving, WorldNetDaily
News of American history's worst mass killing of American citizens, besides 9-11, first reached me 25 years ago in a radio news report...
...That, instead, they died is an eternal moral indictment of both the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as the dozens of other metropolitan dailies and other media to whom I pleaded to send their own reporter to investigate, if they had any doubts about the evidence I mailed them.
The Examiner killed the last four of the eight stories I wrote in cooperation with Carolyn Pickering, a courageous reporter of the Indianapolis Star, who knew Jones before he moved from Indiana to California. The Star censored none of her reports...
- November 18, 2003 Jonestown began here,
Marshall Kilduff, San Francisco Chronicle, California
...It's the 25th anniversary of Jonestown. Or more pointedly, the day when more than 900 one-time San Franciscans drank poison and died in the Guyana jungle...
...But the horrific ending undercuts the full story. Jones led his troupe to their end after years of flattering acceptance here. Name the group and Jones was on their good-guy list: the ACLU, religious organizations, local media (this paper included) and reigning Democrats, including fallen heroes Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, as well as then-Assemblyman Willie Brown
It's not fair to lay blame for the Jonestown tragedy on these names. No one could have predicted what happened. But there were warnings, years before the final moment, to be wary of Jones. Yet, few objected to his conduct...
...San Francisco had a chance to reject Jones, to signal that it wanted no part of a dangerous exploiter. Why didn't we?
- November 18, 2003 Tribute to congressman Leo Ryan held in Foster City, Bay City News Report via SF Gate, San Francisco, California
A quarter-century after U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan of South San Francisco was killed during the Jonestown tragedy, friends and family members gathered today to celebrate the congressman's life.
Ryan's daughters, along with state Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, and other local politicians and friends, remembered him during a 25th anniversary memorial service in Foster City...
- November 18, 2003 Jonestown survivors recall fateful day, CNN.com
Threat from cults still exists, they say
OAKLAND, California (CNN) -- A memorial service Tuesday at a mass grave will mark the 25th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, in which 913 men, women and children died in the worst mass murder-suicide in recent history...
..."The shots rang out," recalled Jackie Speier...
..."There are still over 1,000 cults operating in the United States and around the world," she said. "And we -- in terms of the government -- have always looked the other way because of our great appreciation of the First Amendment and freedom of religion we have allowed many of these cults to operate outside the law."
Norwood agrees that the threat still exists.
"I don't think we have really learned anything from the massacre of Jonestown," she said, "because the Wacos are still happening. Heaven's Gate is still happening, September 11th is still happening."
- November 18, 2003 Timeline: Road to tragedy in Jonestown, Associated Press via CNN
(AP) -- The Rev. Jim Jones and his followers participated in a murder/suicide that took the lives of more than 900 people, including a U.S. congressman, 25 years ago. The massacre was so shocking that every case of mass suicide with religious overtones afterward has been compared to it...
- November 18, 2003 How spiritual journey ended in destruction/Jim Jones led his flock to death in jungle, Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer, San Francisco Chronicle, California
...But there were other spirits at work. Cordell and several other early associates said Jones changed in 1957 after he and a busload of church members rode off to Philadelphia to visit an infamous black evangelist called Father Divine...
- November 18, 2003 Survivors Remember Jonestown Tragedy, Associated Press via KRON 4 News, California
- November 18, 2003 Memorials for 25 Year Anniversary of Jonestown Massacre, CBS 5, San Francisco, California (...A memorial was set for 11am at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, where 400 of the victims are buried. At 2pm, there will be a memorial for San Mateo County Congressman Leo Ryan, who was shot to death with others who were investigating the cult just before the mass suicide. That ceremony will be at the Foster City Community Center.) (Free video included.)
- November 18, 2003 In Guyana, many recall Jonestown massacre 25 years later as distant American tragedy - Bert Wilkinson, Associated Press Writer, Associated Press via SFGate ((11-18) 17:14 PST GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) --
Market vendors sold plantains and secondhand clothing Tuesday as children skipped home from school -- business as usual in Guayana where the deaths of more than 900 U.S. cult members a quarter century ago are a distant American tragedy.
No memorials were held for victims of the Jonestown massacre, a horror that is barely known to half the population that hadn't yet been born on Nov. 18, 1978...
...Tourism and Industry Minister Manzoor Nadir said...
...He said the government would support any private groups wishing to restore the site, but would not offer any state funds...)
- November 18, 2003 Jonestown: 25 Years Later WISH-TV Channel 8, Indianapolis, Indian, by Mike Ahern, News 8 Anchor/Reporter (On this day 25 years ago, the world was shaken by a story of unbelievable horror. Nearly a thousand people had been killed in a mass suicide and murder at a remote South American jungle compound called Jonestown. News 8 looks back at one of the most disturbing events in modern history.
For those of us in Indiana, the horror was compounded by the news that the man responsible for this massacre was born and raised on Hoosier soil. At one time headed up one of this city's most important organizations...)
- November 18, 2003 Survivors to mark 25th anniversary of Jonestown tragedy, by Michelle Locke, Associated Press via San Francisco Examiner (OAKLAND -- Twenty-five years later, remembering the tragedy of Jonestown hasn't grown easier.
"It's still an enigma -- What happened? How can we stop this from happening again?" says Jynona Norwood, who lost 27 relatives the night Jim Jones ordered more than 900 of his followers to drink cyanide stirred into fruit punch...
...Yulanda Williams joined Peoples Temple as a 12-year-old along with her parents. Like many, she remained loyal even after seeing the darker side of the temple...)
- November 18, 2003 Losses Linger 25 Years After Jonestown - ABC News
Jonestown Survivors Recall Cult Suicide-Murder 25 Years Later
It has been 25 years since the followers of the Rev. Jim Jones passed cyanide-laced grape drink around to his cult followers as part of a mass suicide-murder that left more than 900 people dead in Jonestown, Guyana.
An annual memorial service will be held today at a mass grave in Oakland, Calif., where more than 400 of the victims are buried...
...Norwood and her supporters have a fund-raiser planned in February and are also working on a documentary...
- November 18, 2003 Past lurks beneath surface for Jim Jones Jr. by Jason Dearen, STAFF WRITER, Oakland Tribune Online, California
..."I've been successful. Why? Because I feel I have an obligation to everyone who passed away and an obligation to my family," he said. "I'm not saying I'm OK. But I wake up every day and I've got a reason to live."
For the last 25 years, Jones Jr. has done dozens of interviews about his adoptive father and Jonestown, and over time it has become a sort of therapy for him...
- November 18, 2003 Erin Ryan wants father to be appreciated, by Jason Dearen, STAFF WRITER, Oakland Tribune Online, California (Erin Ryan was a 21-year-old student at Georgetown University when her father, Democratic Rep. Leo J. Ryan, was murdered on an isolated airstrip in Guyana by followers of the Rev. Jim Jones.
She heard of her father's death from a television news report.
"It was a very sensational story, it was huge," said Ryan, sitting this month in Leo J. Ryan Park in Foster City. "It bothered us at the time that much of the coverage didn't appreciate him or what he did or why he was doing it." Today, she would like to change that...)
- November 18, 2003 Reminders constant for Jackie Speier, By Jason Dearen, STAFF WRITER, Oakland Tribune Online, California (...Twenty-five years ago, Speier was shot and nearly killed in Jonestown. At the time she worked as legal counsel for Democratic Rep. Leo J. Ryan of San Mateo, who led a congressional delegation to Guyana after obtaining letters and evidence about Jonestown from a group called Concerned Relatives...)
- November 18, 2003 Jonestown Anniversary, AMERICAN MORNING, CNN.com (Today marks a tragic anniversary, the mass murder/suicide known as Jonestown. On November 18, 1978, more than 900 member of the Peoples Temple lost their lives in Guyana under the cult influence of the Reverend Jim Jones...
...Like as you mention, Jones was not seen as a wacky cult leader from California for most of his ministry, his career. He was a mainline Protestant denomination, with a denomination called The Disciples of Christ. Of course not typical of that group at all. Started out in Indiana 50 years ago...)
- November 18, 2003 Answers elusive 25 years later, Ruth Holladay, IndyStar.com The Online Edition of the Indianapolis Star, Indiana
It's said he integrated Methodist Hospital when he insisted on taking a room in a black ward. He staged sit-ins at Downtown restaurants that refused to serve blacks. He fed the hungry. He cared for the disenfranchised. He adopted mixed-race children from foster care and orphanages. His praises were sung by individuals and entities far too numerous to recount, but they include the editorial pages of The Indianapolis Times, a Methodist church leader in California, The Washington Post and the Congressional Record.
Who was this saint, who mingled with the poorest of the poor and rubbed shoulders with high and mighty politicians?
Only Hoosier native son James Warren Jones...
- November 18, 2003 Outlook, BBC World Service, UK (United Kingdom)
In Outlook today:
We mark the 25th anniversary of the tragic death of more than nine-hundred people - apparently by mass suicide - in a remote settlement of Guyana. They were members of the People's Temple cult, and today, Outlook's Russell Fuller remembers those events with one of the survivors...
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