Appeal of Peoples Temple
I found People's Temple as a beacon of hope, that this may be a place that can actually make a difference in the world. And because I see things -- I see things. I see the people actually, actually living it. And so that's where I felt it was a beacon of hope. I felt, people who may had come off the streets or who would get educated through Peoples Temple. And I found that to be the way it's supposed to be, you know? We are supposed to reach down and help one another. We are supposed to reach across and help one another. We are supposed to, lift people up, you know, give them the nurturing, give them the self-confidence, give them an opportunity to believe in their own self-worth. And I could see that happening not only with the young people, but with older people. I saw older people, working with youth, not in a degrading way or not condescending way, but kind of sharing wisdom back and forth. And if that's not a beacon of hope, I don't think what is in the world.

Turning Point
With a number of the doubts kind of welling up in me over a period of time, one time they called me on the floor, on the red carpet with Jim Jones up there on the pulpit. And I came down and it was over nothing. It was over nothing. And I saw that he was bringing me to task and trying to create conflict and humiliation. And I thought to myself, "How did I get here?" And, you know, you're looking out in the audience and you're looking up in the balcony and, you know, people that you know and love, some people you know closer than others, and they're looking at you and you're on the red carpet and it's like, "Well, this is the last place I expected me to be. So why am I here?" And you're dealing with all of that at the moment and you're dealing with Jim Jones and he's saying to you, "Well, why did you not do this?" And you're thinking to yourself, or at least I'm thinking to myself, "Well, what's the big deal?" (Laughs) But you're not going to quite say that, you know what I mean? So I thought to myself, "How did I get here?" But this brought up again within me another example and a very personal example of people being manipulated and people being used, and people being compromised. And in retrospect now that I look back on that, it helped solidify my direction of questioning, you know, because it was so minute that I shouldn't even have been there.

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