Defecting Temple News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

When they took me and lifted me into that plane, i felt like i had just been wrapped in the american flag. i was very close to death. and they saved me. >> of the five people killed on the airstrip, patricia parks is the only defecting temple member. the rest of her family had escaped into the bush. >> do you still have your family? did everybody make it out okay? >> no. they shot my mom's brains out. she's the only one in the family that didn't make it. >> you didn't see that? >> i didn't see her get shot, but i saw her brains in the plane and i saw her laying out on the ground.

Political and social movement, which would effect radical change in the country. my younger sister annie wrote to me and said that peoples temple was the only place that she saw true apostolic christianity being practiced. so she saw it as a christian organization. >> i heard jones talk, and it's like, wow, he's saying a lot of what i believe in. spiritually, politically, in every way. this is something i could do where i felt that i was part of the solution, as opposed to part of the problem. >> seniors will be respected. children will be taught. young people will take on responsibilities. >>...

Politics. i just knew that those people reflected me. they were my brothers and sisters. it was the most alive place that i had ever been in. >> i had $20 to my name, and i was hitchhiking up between ukiah and redwood valley, where the temple was, and somebody picked me up who was a member of the temple and said if you're looking for a place to stay, a place to sleep, get some food, i've got the place for you. i belong to this wonderful church. they feed the hungry. they take care of the sick. and he said, furthermore, the person who runs this thing is god. >> some people see me as the represe...

Unbeknownst to me, they had to buy all that fruit. and i found out later there would be pictures of jim with his hand up holding, supposedly, like these are bananas. he was literally holding those bananas up there. they weren't growing on that tree. >> if jonestown was not yet a tropical paradise, jones was determined to one day make it the socialist utopia he dreamed and preached about. but for now home was san francisco. and by 1976, jones had made peoples temple a major player in local politics. >> if any movement in san francisco needed 100 bodies to show up for a demonstration, they'd jus...

We needed to be totally committed to this cause, period. and you can't be part way. you can't do it part way. >> it was told over and over again that we were going to be -- everybody was going to be killed. >> suicide drills and beatings became as much a part of the temple's internal life as social service was to its public face. devotion to jones had to be total. >> one of the very powerful things in the church was that you weren't really allowed to express how you really felt. it was like, i would be there and i would look around and i would think, am i the only one that feels this is bizarr...