“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid,” “They must be drinking the Kool-Aid,” “Keep on drinking the Kool-Aid”, or similar variations have become common figures of speech, so conventional that their use is without knowledge of its origins, yet tonight altered that. The PBS Documentary, Jonestown, describes the life of cult leader James “Jim” Jones, and his deadly effect on hundreds of people. As a member of a dysfunctional family from the wrong side of the tracks, Jim grew up poor. Described, by those that knew him as a child, as a “weird kid” obsessed with religion and death, he lacked acceptance from the members in his Indiana hometown. Due to this, he developed a kinship with black members of society and found the home and acceptance he’d wanted in the Pentecostal Church. He became a dynamic preacher, but his ethnically integrated church drew hatred from the white community, consequently he left the racist Indianapolis society behind for the promise California appeared to hold. Settling in Ukiah, California, he constructed a commune, and performed cross country tours on their Greyhound buses, promoting his socialist message, based, he …show more content…
Additionally, Jones built high levels of political power by having his members ready to mobilize, by the hundreds, to attend the rallies, a politician’s dream. However, his paranoia regarding the government trying to destroy the church, and assassinate him, grew and when his San Francisco temple burned, he began to build a new compound in Guyana, to flee the oppression and racism that had a hold of the United States. Finally, as the walls were on the verge of crumbling around him, in the form the expected release of an article, Jones and numerous of his followers escaped to