People so casually toss around the term "drink the Kool-aid" nowadays. When it comes from younger folks, I have to stop and wonder if they really understand where and how the term originated.
Wilson and others attend annual memorial services at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, where 407 Jonestown victims, mostly children, are buried in a mass grave.
The bodies were so badly decomposed when they arrived at Dover Air Force base in 1978 that they could not be identified. It was the only cemetery to accept the unidentified remains of Jonestown victims.
"People were afraid of contagions from the decomposing bodies and the impurity of the cult, believing they died a shameful death," Moore said.
The granite slabs with the names of the victims were installed just last year - almost 33 years after the tragedy. Including the name of Jim Jones sparked a huge controversy; that was apparent at today's sparsely attended ceremony, as one speaker repeatedly decried the inclusion of the man that took these lives. When the speech became more about that than the memorial, the obvious fear and anger still raw in this woman's words, I took my yellow rose and headed out.
There are 305 children here. It is for them that I post this, in honor and memory of that time, now so long ago.
