Annie Dawid
speaker
147 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Annie Dawid’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yes. They had done these drills before, suicide drills. Back in the States, they did at least one, and there was at least one in the jungle itself. So back in the States already, Jones had instituted these mock mass suicides, which he called White Nights. And people would drink a liquid, and he'd tell them it was poisoned. And then guess what? It wasn't poisoned. It was just a loyalty test.
Now, there's disagreement about how often this happened. It happened at least once in Jonestown, where Jones, I believe, and a lot of people believe, he kind of staged an attack on the compound. a year earlier, and this had to do with that custody dispute over the boy who was supposedly Jones's son, and the parents wanted him back, and they had gone to the law, and they'd gone to Guyana.
And so he staged this attack. He said they were under siege, and the only way they could get out of it was to die. And so they stayed up all night, and Jones is... They have a PA system there in the jungle where Jones can yell at them all the time. And if he's not yelling at them, they can play tapes of him.
And so the shooters get back from the airstrip and they tell Jones, you know, mission accomplished. And the shooters have stopped one of the planes from leaving by shooting out the tires. So only the little plane takes off. And Larry Layton and the two pilots and one wounded person are on that plane.
Larry Layton did shoot on the plane and then the gun malfunctioned and then somebody got it away from him. So he's no longer an active shooter when he's on the plane. So all the people on the flatbed get back. They tell Jones, OK, it's done. And then Jones needs to tell his congregation that this is it. There's nothing they can do except to die because the Guyanese forces will be coming for them.
And he says, OK. You know, our children will be taken and our seniors will be taken and we can't let that happen. So we're going to do revolutionary suicide. Now, important point of terminology is that he stole that term from the Black Panthers. And in the Black Panther literature, revolutionary suicide means you keep fighting until they get you.
It does not mean you take poison and lie down and die.
You know, it's another kind of white people taking black people's language and perverting it.
But he keeps using that term and then it gets parroted by his disciples. And so what's really important to recognize, though, is that Jim Jones is not the sole perpetrator of this deed. He has all of his henchmen who stay there with the guns. Right. Okay, they don't put their guns away when they get back to Jonestown from the airstrip. The poison has been prepared in advance.
He's had a committee, like you were saying last time, about all these committees running things. He's had a committee about what's the best way for everybody to die, preferably with the least amount of pain. And what is most... horrible is that it's the doctor who has prepared the poison.
He did all the study and there's the tranquilizers as well as the cyanide and some other stuff that's supposed to make it more palatable, especially for the children. And so... Everybody's there at the pavilion. He's on the loudspeaker. And as has often been the case through all of People's Temple's history, there's tape recording going on. And so that's why we know about things that happen.
There's a tape going. He's trying to convince them, OK, the congressman's been killed and, you know, I could turn in the people, but everybody is me. And, you know, nobody's different from anyone else here. So we all have to die.
It's called Flavor-Aid, and one survivor just calls it ghetto Kool-Aid. You know, it's like a knockoff of the Kool-Aid brand.
Well, so the cyanide is the poison. You've probably read about how cyanide has the smell of almonds. And so that's a kind of weird... Side effect. So it smells good, but actually it tastes terrible. I mean, they tried to make it so it would taste good. So there's cyanide, there's valium. And then I think there's one other kind of tranquilizing element in the brew.
No. OK, so the vat is set up and there are cups. There's also at the table all these pre-prepared syringes that have been set up by the nurses with the poison for infants, infant doses and child doses. There's other syringes for injections. that are prepared for people who are refusing to take it. And there are people who refuse. So it's really orchestrated.
And it's orchestrated by all of Jones's top lieutenants, you could say.
Yeah, it's going to take a few hours. And before they start the poisoning... He gives his people some chance to talk back to him, right, because he's the socialist and it has to be a group decision. And at this point, all these people, they're exhausted, they're malnourished, they've had not enough sleep. And a lot of them are just ready because he's been preparing them for a long time.
But there's also a big contingent, though, the more silent contingent who don't want to die, who don't think death is the answer. And one very brave woman starts saying, we shouldn't do this. There's no reason why all of us should die. And her name is Christine Miller. And I dedicated my book to her. And interestingly, when you listen to the tape, you know, he keeps letting her speak.
And she's saying, well, can we go someplace else? Because he's talked about going to Cuba, like the whole group could go to Cuba or the whole group could go to the Soviet Union. She's rational and responsible, talking to him about other alternatives. I think it should be an individual choice. And. Eventually, the other people shout her down.
And Jim McIlvaney, who is top guy under Jones, he's saying, you're only here because Jim Jones gave you this possibility. And when he talks against her, then everybody else starts yelling out, like, shut up. And we don't know what happens to Christine if she takes the poison willingly. There were approximately 70 people they found who had injections in the back.
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