Welcoming New Jonestown Members (April 2 1978)

Jim Jones leads a meeting of the Jonestown community, and many elements of such meetings – references to specific items in the news, conjecture of the coming economic collapse of the U.S. and/or nuclear war, reminders both of the miracles which Jones performs to save people’s lives and the health care that residents receive on a daily basis – are present. The main difference between this and many other Jonestown tapes is that this was recorded on a night that a number of new people had arrived. In the course of this meeting, then, Jones talks about the benefits of living in Jonestown, even as he acknowledges some of the hardships and temporary inconveniences they have to endure. He and other leaders review some of the rules which govern the community. Newcomers also witness what happens when people break the rules: there are several reviews of the misbehavior of some Temple members already in Guyana, and Jones decides on several penalties, ranging from placing miscreants onto the Learning Crew, to requiring a woman to let a large snake crawl over her. “Don’t expect to come over here and find Hollywood,” Jones says as the tape opens. There are problems in Jonestown. Living conditions are more crowded than what they want, family housing has not yet been constructed – although couples can live together – and people are working harder than he intended them to. Both the CIA and Social Security have blocked their money, there are essential supplies needlessly – and sinisterly – being held up at the docks in Georgetown, and the Federal Communications Commission is giving them trouble about their radio transmissions. But still, Jones adds, the community provides what’s necessary for its survival. The people just have to decide what’s more important, if “you have your little creature comforts, or is it really important that your children are taken care of in their hour of need?” A moment later, he points out that most of the people who come, especially the blacks and poor whites, are grateful to be there. Addressing the people who do complain, Jones says, “The only reason you got problems is ’cause you give yourself time for problems.” The theme returns through the two-hour tape: “Cuba was surrounded for ten years, we got no reason to complain,” Jones says later in referring to the their proceedings as a “trouble night meeting”; “You realize you have no reason to complain when two out of three babies are going to bed hungry,” Jones says about halfway through. It isn’t that they don’t allow dissent within Jonestown, he adds at one point. But “[y]ou got to be awful careful about dissent. Dissent better be over something mighty crucial, mighty crucial.” He makes another less direct mention of dissent later, when he says how important it is for the people to stand up to their enemies in the U.S. by staying in Jonestown – thereby denying them a chance to disgrace and kill them – and that Jonestown will survive only if they stand in solidarity. “So we demand that. Solidarity, cohesiveness, unity, and no talking behind anyone’s back. You got any improvements, constructive suggestions, we welcome it. Any ideas on how to make this a better place, we welcome it, but we don’t want any back talk.” The conversation also turns – and also returns several times – to the conspiracy against Jonestown. The forces that have aligned against them, both government and relatives, require the community to be more restrictive than it will be in the future. While there are some people coming and going, in general, Jones doesn’t want anybody to leave until everyone from the U.S. is down there. The problem is, people who leave are subject to kidnapping. Worse, some of them – he mentions Tim Stoen and Yolanda Williams by name – turn into traitors themselves and start working against the things they once believed in. Jones reminds them of what the conspiracy has done – laid seige to the community for six days, fired shots from the jungle – even as he recalls the protection they all have, including from the beasts of the jungle surrounding them, as long as they stay within the encampment. “We’re in a war,” Jones says several times, and their enemies are not just those who attack their community. He criticizes the capitalist system, the military that would produce a weapon as insidious as a neutron bomb, the “right wing” that wants to have a nuclear war, and an intelligence system that is so out of control, even the president is not above investigation. He brings that back to the importance of adapting to the hardships of Jonestown. “[W]hen you stop to think of the murderous shit that’s being done by United States,” he says, “you’ll adjust.” As with other subjects in the meeting, the theme of neceessary adjustments recurs several times.