White Night at Jonestown - Berating Stanley Clayton (12 April 1978) HD

Recorded during a White Night probably in April 1978, this tape alternately shows the anger, fear, and isolation within Jonestown. Jones feels under attack due to the pressure from the Concerned Relatives and the absence of some of his supporters within the Guyana government from the country. The danger of a fascist coup growing within the USA adds more tension to the meeting. The tape begins with Jones talking about being under attack for holding a child named Dana Truss. He says the community needs to make its decision about what to do, but he knows what he wants to do for himself: he’ll take Dana and John Victor Stoen into the jungle, get to America, kill some enemies, and then die someplace. He faces death as a reality, he says, and lives with it every day. Even though the community needs to make up its own mind, the first commitment needs to be to the children. “If you’re not prepared to die for your children, you will not stand up for your children.” He says he will die for the communist collective, he will die for principle. Much of the meeting is about Stanley Clayton, and about lust and sexual love within the Jonestown community. “And that’s trouble. It’s trouble here also. All you that are in love, it’s trouble.” In times of crisis, he says, you’ll make the wrong decision based on personal love. He returns to this several times: “you people won’t even rise above your vaginas and your dicks,” he says at one point. Later, he says, “we ought to cut the pricks off so we can have fried sausage at night. We’d be better off.” One thing he can’t understand is why one young woman – Janice – insists on being with a loser like Stanley, instead of Dr. Schacht. Janice is berated over and again, but Stanley takes most of the heat. Part of Stanley’s problem is that he sleeps around, but Jones also says Stanley is the class enemy, because he dealt drugs in San Francisco. Jones says he can’t figure it out, and ends his angry lecturing of Stanley by breaking off and saying, “I’m ready to die.” Jones’ point on infidelity and, by extension, lust is, “when you won’t be loyal to a woman, how in the hell do I know, what the fuck you’re going to do on the front line” of the coming war. Others join in the attack on the wounded Stanley and Janice, sometimes to the point of hysteria. The crowd is angry enough that Jones has to tell them not to tear clothes, because we got to replace them. Provided, of course, they get through the White Night. Which they always do, he adds with sadness or bitterness. At the end of the tape, though, he muses, “Don’t I’d like for one to come and not pass.” The residents are going to have to get on the radio and talk to their relatives. Jones want them to speak with gut. He wants it rehearsed so they get it right. Marceline says she’s upset that no one reacted when Jim said he would die for the cause. Jones chides her gently, saying, it’s their lives, it’s their decision. Jim says he knows what Stanley is thinking, but he