MOVE
From Free net encyclopedia
MOVE is an organization formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1972 by John Africa (Vincent Leaphart) and Donald Glassey. It was described by CNN as: A loose-knit, mostly black group whose members all adopted the surname Africa, advocated a "back-to-nature" lifestyle and preached against technology. They also disrupted meetings and lectures by personalities as varied as Jane Fonda and Buckminster Fuller.
Contents |
Confrontations With Police
Powelton Village, 1978
Glassey owned a large twin house at 33rd and Pearl Sts. in the Powelton Village neighborhood of Philadelphia, and it became the first home base for MOVE. The members erected a wooden stockade and ramparts along the front and sides of the house and established a curb-side carwash business. Neighbors allegedly began to complain about the sanitation aspects of their back to nature philosophy and their use of bullhorns to lecture and admonish authority.
MOVE refused access to health inspectors and other state and city officials. The situation escalated until the members one evening marched along the ramparts carrying rifles. In response, Mayor Frank Rizzo ordered a blockade of the immediate neighborhood, in order to prevent food and supplies from reaching MOVE and thus force the members out of the house. However, since the blockade was announced in advance, supporters were able to bring in large supplies of food. (It was also later discovered that MOVE members had dug a tunnel through to Powelton Ave., outside the police perimeter.)
The blockade lasted several weeks, during which time residents of a roughly two-square-block area had to show identification to reach their homes. Several hundred members of the police department were involved in the action. The MOVE members ultimately refused to meet the city's demands, and on August 8, 1978, Philadelphia police attempted to clear the house by force. Every tactical move was telegraphed to the house via bullhorns. One of their first tactics was to turn fire hoses on the house. The police even considered the depth of the basement of the MOVE house and the height of the basement windows, to ensure that nobody would drown if the basement was completely flooded.
Who began shooting is disputed; MOVE claims that they never fired a shot; videotape of an unconfirmed moment of time during the incident shows muzzle flashes from the basement windows of the MOVE house. One police officer, James Ramp, was killed. The autopsy of James Ramp revealed that the bullet had entered his body in a downward direction. At the time, the inhabitants of the house had reportedly been in the basement. Rizzo had the house demolished illegally the next day. Leaphart and eight other MOVE members were sentenced to prison for the murder. None of the MOVE members that were arrested were taken into custody with weapons.
Osage Avenue, 1985
Background
The MOVE group then moved to a house in West Philadelphia owned by Louise James, a relative of a MOVE member. They continued their back to nature philosophy, and added a new agenda – freeing John Africa (Vincent Leaphart). In a change from their previous tactic of staging protests downtown, MOVE began to pressure their neighbors, in predominatly working-class, racially mixed, western Philadelphia. The Osage Avenue houses were connected, and their roofs formed a convenient jogging track for MOVE. Neighbors listened to the MOVE physical training program through their bedroom ceilings in the morning; this was soon joined by MOVE's loud speaker system, broadcasting political diatribes for hours at a time that were laced with profanity and included personal attacks on neighbors as "pedaphiles" and "homosexuals." Neighbors complained, but with then Managing Director W. Wilson Goode running for mayor the neighbors were convinced that Philadelphia's first African American mayor would be able to reason with MOVE, and so they did not press the issue pending the election. Goode was elected in November of 1983. The situation on Osage Avenue did not change.
Confrontation Leads Police to Bomb MOVE House
On May 13, 1985, in a failed attempt to serve arrest warrants on four members of the group, Philadelphia police became engaged in a gun battle at MOVE's communal residence. The mayor had, in response to pressure from the neighborhood that included a threat to use "vigilante justice," turned over the situation to Managing Director Goode with the instructions to find a way to arrest the MOVE memebers. At this point it became a police matter and an entry plan was drawn up under the direction of Police Commisioner Sambor.
The plan called for a mixture of civilian and military explosives to be dropped on the fortification that had been built by MOVE on top of the house in order to destroy it. The satchel of explosives, alternately charaterized as a "bomb" and an "entry device," was to be dropped on MOVE's rooftop structure. The fortification was also described as either a "gun turret" or a purely defensive fortification. The structure was unoccupied at the time the bomb was dropped, although the house itself was occupied.
The bomb did not significantly damage the rooftop structure, but did start a fire which destroyed the entire block and killed eleven people. City hoses, deployed as a part of the original entry plan, were not turned on until 40 minutes after the fire started burning. Ironically, the city's best firefighting equipment had been trained on the rooftop bunker all morning, but "the decision was made to let the fire burn" in the words of Sambor. About 10,000 rounds of ammunition were fired by the police towards the house. 62 houses burned to the ground; only Ramona and Birdie Africa escaped. Six adults and five children in the MOVE house were killed.
Police initially said they had been fired upon first with automatic weapons, but only a small number of non-automatic weapons were found in the burned-out home. MOVE supporters have described the raid as a revenge attack for the 1978 shooting.
Aftermath
In the aftermath of the catastrophe the city launched a special investigation which found, among other things, that "Dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable." The mayor was re-elected in the next election, and no police officer was suspended, fired, or fined.
Philadelphia has paid over $32 million to the victims, including $840,000 to Birdie Africa, $1.5 million to Ramona Africa and the relatives of John and Frank Africa, and has been ordered to pay $29 million to residents of Osage Avenue and Pine Street whose homes were destroyed by the fire. (The city of Philadelphia is appealing the latter award.)
On December 1, 2005, U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam cut the original jury verdict of $12.8 million in half, to $6 million.
References in Music
The song lyric "The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire / We don't need no water / Let the motherfucker burn" used in several musical pieces by a variety of bands (including The Bloodhound Gang's "Fire, Water, Burn") was first produced as a Rap lyric shortly after the Osage Avenue MOVE incident in the 1985 track "The Roof is On Fire" by Rockmaster Scott and the Dynamic Three. This lyric directly references the 1985 Osage Avenue bombing and actually originated as a chant by onlookers and protesters during the MOVE firestorm that watched in outrage as the Philadelphia Fire Department and Philadelphia Police chose to let the MOVE house burn to the ground.
Operation M.O.V.E by Leftöver Crack is about the events surrounding the group and the fire. Mumia's Song by Anti-Flag also mentions the MOVE 9. MOVE9, Mumia Abu Jamal, and others are mentioned in Aus Rotten song, No Justice, No Peace.
The song heavy on class commentary, "In the Middle of the Road" by the Pretenders contains the phrase "WELL I GOT A SMILE FOR EVERYONE I MEET AS LONG AS YOU DON'T TRY DRAGGING MY BAY OR DROPPING THE BOMB ON MY STREET."
References in Print
Pamphlet Architecture 23 - Move: Sites of Trauma by Johanna Saleh Dickson
See also
External links
- CNN article
- Report of the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (AKA the "MOVE Commission")
- MOVE homepage
- "John Africa's MOVE Organization"
- "25 Years on the MOVE"
- MOVE block residents awarded $12.83 million (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
- 6221 Osage Ave. from Google Maps
- Alice Walker's Thoughts about MOVE and the bombing
- Newest CNN article on the 2005 verdict
- Criticism of MOVE by former group member Tony Allen
Further reading
- 20 years on the MOVE. MOVE, Philadelphia. 1996, 72p.