Leo Ryan
Congressman Leo Ryan’s intellectual curiosity, introspection, and a desire to perceive the harsh realities of life first-hand led the late politician to Guyana 46 years ago this month. My Thanksgiving week memory seems like yesterday. After declining an invitation to join him on that trip I spent much of the last evening of the 95th session of Congress in 1978 with the Democrat from Northern California. It was his final night in Washington before he would head back home and then, several weeks later, embark on his fact-finding mission to Jonestown, Guyana.
We talked over a relaxed dinner at Romeo and Juliet, an intimate downtown bistro in D.C. and later in his office in the Longworth Building where, between votes on the House floor, we shared a little brandy – the Spanish brand, Fundador, Ryan’s favorite – to celebrate the imminent Congressional recess.
It was an all-night session of Congress. Most members were anxious to adjourn and return to their districts for hectic campaigning in the few weeks before the off-year election. Ryan, for his part, was so confident about holding his San Mateo, Ca., congressional seat that his main concern was his post-election journey to a remote part of Guyana, searching out the truth about Jonestown.
It was this same intellectual curiosity and insatiable appetite for experiencing the unfamiliar — to see the truth for himself, however unpleasant the sight might be — that had persuaded Ryan to give up his safe academic career for the chaotic uncertainty of politics; to don clown makeup on one occasion and enter the circus arena as a tramp; to work as a high school teacher in Watts after the riots; to voluntarily spend eight days behind bars in Folsom’s maximum-security prison during his tenure in as a state legislator; and finally, to lead an investigative mission to a primitive South American country where a controversial American religious sect, the Peoples Temple, had established a community in exile.
While most of his colleagues preferred junkets to more glamorous destinations (Tokyo was the favorite during this recess), Ryan was not at all averse to roughing it. A loner by temperament, he had to see Jim Jones’ settlement firsthand — not knowing he along with others would die in the process.
As a journalist for the Congressional newspaper, Roll Call, I knew Ryan well during his six years in Congress and followed his activities in both California and Washington. He was keenly sensitive to everyone, especially the underprivileged. Sometimes his bluntness rubbed people the wrong way.
Certainly, no one could have dissuaded him from making the trek to Guyana short of predicting the unimaginable — the airport ambush and mass suicides when cult members drank cyanide “kool aid.” He wanted to verify personally the “deplorable’’ conditions at Jonestown, where Jones’ cult followers were subjected to mental and physical abuse.
The last evening, we talked, Ryan drew parallels between his observations during his self-imposed stay in Folsom Prison in 1970 and what he had heard about conditions in Jonestown, where the relatives of many of his California constituents were held against their will.
Following his stay in Folsom, Ryan wrote a play about his newfound “friends’’ in that dark, different world, and he gave me a copy of his unproduced script. Ryan titled it “A Small Piece of Sky’’ — a metaphor for the hope that each prisoner feels on viewing his life as though seen from the bottom of a deep well. Anticipating the worst in Jonestown — though not, of course the very worst — Ryan told me that he wanted to sit down at his typewriter –those were before the days of computers– on his return and write a sequel.
Imprisonment, he implied, comes in various guises, and one can be as damaging as another. The years since have revealed that truth whether in Gaza, the pandemic lockdown or victims of abuse and human rights violations.
In the foreword to the play, Ryan wrote of Folsom: “I did meet many men who have become members of a subculture that is both distinct and unknown to the rest of America. It is also a violent subculture . . . This play is about those men, and others like them. Society was their victim and so they are now inside the walls. But unless we change that system, we will be their victim again. Where does it end? . . . How shall we end it?’’
That’s what Leo Ryan was all about, always curious, always questioning, always seeking his own answers. His fierce independence lit his path from California to Washington, as it lit his mission to Guyana. This had nothing to do with partisan politics. It had to do with some vulnerable Americans who became cult followers. Not just this cult in Jonestown, but other cults as well, many that began on American soil in the 60’s and are still functioning.
That light went out when violence erupted on the edge of the jungle, plunging all of Jonestown into unspeakable darkness. Shocking the nation, the congressman’s murder reflected the “other world’’ he had wanted so profoundly to describe.
Since 1978, the mass suicide of Heaven’s Gate members and the fiery tragedy in Waco, Texas of the Branch Davidians in 1993 opened American eyes briefly to the subculture of the enforced religious regimentation in our own country. There are still thousands of “cults” operating in the U.S., many under the radar. But this pales against the dreadful assassination of an elected official, an American hero, innocently seeking information to comfort his hometown constituents.
But few knew that just a few years before Ryan was slain in Guyana by members of the People’s Temple he lost his nephew (his late sister, Sheila’s, son) to another cult, the Scientologists. After Ryan’s death and at the urging of his sister, I wrote her story in Family Circle Magazine about that personal tragedy felt deeply by the Ryan family. It was his own family story that prompted him to delve into and investigate the phenomenon of pseudo-religions eventually leading him to Jonestown.
Ryan, a strong believer in the First Amendment and the protection it offered to encourage freedom of thought, believed it was important that individual religious decisions were free from coercion and manipulation. He also felt strongly that the First Amendment should not offer immunity when specific groups — religious or otherwise — violate civil or criminal laws.
Today, post- pandemic and in an era of intense political divisiveness and bitterness, it’s easy to forget politicians of yesteryear, many who acted on intense passion for the betterment of the country rather than just following dollars to re-election and self-serving power.
A light went out when violence erupted on the edge of the jungle, plunging all of Jonestown into unspeakable darkness. Shocking the nation, the congressman’s murder reflected the “other world” he had wanted so profoundly to describe.
It’s troubling that although we’ve advanced technologically and medically during the decades since this one independently spirited Member of Congress traveled to Guyana, little has changed in our culture in terms of curing the social ills that precipitate similarly tragic events.
Are the lessons of Guyana forgotten? Lessons we learned from inhumane acts and the bravery of one public servant who received the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously. Our deep human and cultural need to belong drives some of us to cults which take various forms but are still flourishing in this country. Let’s hope Americans will not let fear or guilt take over their free will and that Leo Ryan’s memory will keep the awareness and danger of cult mentality in all forms alive to protect the most vulnerable.
Originally published on Substack.com