Richard Tropp’s Memo on Ryan’s Visit

Transcript  ||  Annotation  || RYMUR 89-4286-AA-1-x-1  ||  Back to Last Month at Jonestown

If Ryan, Lane come – plans to consider now

  1. Clean up and beautification – especially painting should start NOW
  2. Plan meals for that day or days – for whole community
  3. Every area should be presentable – he should be able to walk all around the place, even in cottage areas. When Front entrance here at community should be presentable. We should start planning NOW.
  4. I suggest that all pre-school and primary teachers begin to gather some childrens art to show Ryan, and also there should be a wide variety of entertainment, including chi children’s entertainment. Should reflect variety and creativity – to counteract any propaganda about our people being mind-programmed. Band should start working on some stuff. We don’t need a red-white-and-blue approach – I would be against any “canned patriotism” acts we would do for Ryan’s benefit.
  5. If possible, I would like to present Ryan with texts of many of the oral history stories of our residents, so he can read about the lives of people who had to go through a lot of pain in their lives in the U.SA. If possible he should be able to talk to some of our seniors and teenagers who were on the streets or lived in misery. Our aim should not be merely to present a Clean and Neat Jonestown, and defend against the lies, but to EDUCATE this Congressman, to open his eyes to what we are doing here. Not that he will be terribly responsive, but we need to take an offensive with him, and show him a side of America he may not know about in his world.
  6. We should document his visit, note his responses, detail what we present him with, and offer that report to the American public, to the press, to the U.S. Congress. We should be prepared to maximize his visit, especially in the event that he is impressed, but even if he is not impressed, so we can show just what he was presented with and didn’t appreciate. Mark Lane should be present at every possible turn to bear witness to what we are doing and provide a kind of “check” on the visit of Mr. Ryan. And keep him honest later on down the line.
  7. He should definitely see the pre-school area and the kids should just be playing – no quiet, controlled set-up shit.