NB Commentary:
Let's Talk About the Difference Between Who is Considered a Patriot and Who is
Considered a Terrorist.
While the MOVE
Organization was not officially declared a Terrorist Organization they were
indeed treated like they were Enemies of the State. I am from the area
and was there when it happened.
The group was/is
called MOVE. they were/are a back to
nature group of Africans who leader's name was John Africa. They felt that the
government was vile and used vile language to express their contempt for it.
On the other hand,
they were mostly self sufficient, planted their own food and were vegetarians
and wore dread locks.
A group of them
moved onto Osage Ave., in West Philadelphia and built a fortress within the
house because they had been threatened jailed and tortured by the police for
their way of life. They claimed freedom of speech and continued to express
their discontent with the government, local, national and global.
In 1978 they previously
lived in an area of West Philly called Powelton Village
In 1985, the
Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb on the house located on a city
block of Osage Ave. There was a bunker on top of the house and the fortress
was so well constructed that the police after firing multiple rounds could not
penetrate the walls of their home. The next option was to drop a bomb, this
bomb ignited a fire that cause the MOVE members to escape while others, women
and children, died in the blaze. Because it was allowed to burn, the entire
block succumbed to the fire and was destroyed, and the mostly homeowners,
displaced and/or homeless.
The city did a
make-shift job rebuilding their homes but never could they return to those
people the valuables and memories and momentums. Some of these people had
lived on this block their whole lives and had grand children who visited them
there. It was devastating to the neighborhood, who simply believed that by
asking the city government to intervene that they would simply remove the
occupants of the MOVE home and all would go back to normal. This blazing
inferno could be seen for at least a mile radius. It turn a beautifully
sculptured community neighborhood into a war zone.
Jason Osder spent ten years making Let the Fire Burn, a harrowing documentary account of the confrontation – and ensuing conflagration – between members of MOVE and the Philadelphia Police Department, resulting in the death of six adult members of the Afrocentric back-to-nature organization, and five children. Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/entertainment/movies/MOVE-doc-gets-theatrical-distribution-Will-open-in-fall.html
The war against
civilians is not a recent occurrence. However, it is demonstrated in a certain
and accurate strategy of terror, control and manipulation and in many cases is
racist at best and xenophobic at worse.
One thing that is
certain, if they can drop a bomb on a residential area in the middle of a
large city, no place is safe from the aggression of the militarized
police.
"I took a cab to the 6200 block of Osage Avenue this week, to the block where
the City of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on a rowhouse in 1985. I had been at work that day, in my office which is also in West Philadelphia and I wanted to see for myself what the location looks like now. While the driver waited, I walked up and down the sidewalks with my cellphone camera and my small Cannon PowerShoot A2500. The street was narrower than I had imagined. I was shocked by the townhouses that had been built to replace the homes destroyed in the bombing and fire. At most they were a step off the ground. No stairs to sit on, no porches. Small areas for a chair or two are enclosed with black wrought iron fencing. Many houses are boarded up. Others appear occupied but look unfinished. There are flowers and other signs of life where people are living. I tried to be discrete as I took snapshots. I failed. A man came up from the western end of the block … grumbling. He pointed out 6221, the location of the MOVE house; maybe he assumed that was what I was looking for. I introduced myself to a woman sitting in front of her property. She expressed mild dissatisfaction with visitors/voyeurs like me. She said that all she wants is for the city to fix up the vacant properties and allow the neighbors to live in peace. Thirty years and the MOVE fiasco is not over yet for either of us." Source: https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/5657-collective-trauma-transitional-justice-and-two
Check out this
information: 25 Years Ago: Philadelphia Police Bombs MOVE Headquarters
Killing 11, Destroying 65 Homes
Remembering Philly’s infamous bomb-dropping, guns-blazing,
child-murdering day.
In this May 1985 photo, scores of row houses burn in a fire in
the west Philadelphia neighborhood. Police dropped a bomb on the militant
group MOVE’s home on May 13, 1985 in an attempt to arrest members, leading to
the burning of scores of homes in the neighborhood.
A version of this article was originally published in 2012.
On May
13, 1985 at 5:20 p.m., a blue and white Pennsylvania State Police helicopter
took off from the command post’s flight pad at 63rd and Walnut, flew a few
times over 6221 Osage Avenue, and then hovered 60 feet above the two-story
house in the black, middle-class West Philadelphia neighborhood. Lt. Frank Powell, chief of Philadelphia’s bomb
disposal unit, was holding a canvas bag containing a bomb consisting of two
sticks of Tovex TR2 with C-4. After radioing firefighters on the ground and
lighting the bomb’s 45-second fuse — and with the official approval of Mayor W. Wilson Goode and at the insistence of
Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor —
Powell tossed the bomb, at precisely 5:28 p.m., onto a bunker on the roof.
This was followed shortly thereafter by a loud explosion
and then a large, bright orange ball of fire that reached 7,200 degrees
Fahrenheit. That day, Powell, the mayor, the police commissioner, Fire
Commissioner William
Richmond, city Managing Director Leo Brooks,
and numerous police officers committed, in the words of Philadelphia Special
Investigation Commission (better known as the MOVE Commission)
member Charles Bowser,
a “criminally evil” act that led to the death of 11 human beings, including
five completely innocent and defenseless children, the destruction of 61
homes, and the incineration of thousands of family photos, high school and
college sweetheart love letters, heirloom jewelry, inscribed Bibles and
Korans, and many other totally irreplaceable mementos.
Mr. Bowser, my mentor and the author of the powerful
tell-all expose entitled Let the Bunker Burn, told me that five of the city’s most influential black
political leaders met at the mayor’s home before dawn on May 13, 1985, in
response to the mayor’s invitation and warning that “I’m going to make a move
on the MOVE house … (this) morning.” This was in connection to what Goode
described as complaints by Osage Avenue neighbors and outstanding arrest
warrants. By the way, it should be noted that those same neighbors attempted
to stop the police department’s siege of their community as soon as they realized
what was developing. In fact, as the five influential black leaders watched
the television broadcast of the military-like assault unfolding with shots and
tear gas, two of them repeatedly urged the Mayor to call it off. In
particular, City Council President Joseph Coleman, sitting at the
Mayor’s kitchen table, told him the 500-strong police action was “excessive”
and State Senator Hardy
Williams, standing near the kitchen entrance,
said “Why don’t they just back up and relax? Nobody’s going anywhere.”
MOVE: An Assault That Never Would Have Happened in the Northeast
More
than 500 cops fired more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in less than 90
minutes — in a middle-class, black neighborhood. WTF? No, let me say it: What
the Fuck?! This was blatantly outrageous brutal racism. It never would have
happened in the Northeast or in South Philly, even if the Hell’s Angels had
kidnapped then-President Ronald Reagan.
And everybody knows it.
The
cops would have simply sent in a hostage negotiator. And if that didn’t work,
they would have cut off access to electricity, water and food, and then waited
the criminals out. And if that didn’t work, they would have sent in a
professionally trained SWAT unit to storm that specific house with surgical
precision. Goddamnit, even Osama’s
house and neighborhood in Abbottabad weren’t firebombed. The mayor, police
commissioner, fire commissioner, managing Director, and the cops — and
especially the public — would not have approved, allowed or tolerated the
burning down of a white neighborhood and the destruction of 61 white homes.
And don’t tell me some shit about the incineration of
Osage not being racist simply because the mayor and the managing director were
black. It’s the victims that make it racist! They were black. And they lived
in a black neighborhood. Furthermore, Powell, the bomb-dropping cop, was
white. Moreover, William
Klein, the cop who made the bomb, was also
white. As eloquently stated by Bowser, “Goode and Brooks did not shoot 10,000
bullets into that house. They did not put military explosives into the bomb.
They did not decide to let the bunker burn. And they did not shoot at children
trying to escape the fire. I know none of that would have happened in a white
neighborhood and so do you.” That’s exactly why the MOVE Commission pointed
out, in one of its final official comments, that none of this would have ever
happened “had the MOVE house and its occupants been situated
in a comparable white neighborhood.”
MOVE: The Making of the Bomb
Tovex
TR2 was a commercial explosive invented in the 1960s as an option to dynamite,
and its purpose was to dig trenches through rock in order to lay pipes. The
“TR” is the abbreviation for trench, and the “2” refers to the second DuPont
Company item in its trenching products. The company’s explosive products
division was located a little more than a half hour from Philadelphia in
Delaware. But not one fire or police department official ever cared enough to
contact DuPont and ask what could happen if TR2 were used in a residential
neighborhood. And that’s because they didn’t give a shit about black people.
If they had asked, DuPont would have told them that it had been designed
exclusively for, and had been used exclusively for, underground purposes. And
the last time I checked, every black man, woman and child in the Osage
community lived above-ground.
It gets
worse. As horrifically explosive as TR2 was, Klein fired things up even more.
Exercising his independent judgment, he decided that TR2 wouldn’t be strong
enough to breach the bunker. So what did he do? He unilaterally placed a
one-and-one-quarter-pound block of C-4 on top of the two sticks of Tovex —
despite the fact that the U.S. Army in 1979 had ended distribution of C-4 to
all local police departments throughout the country. But, as documented in an
October 22, 1985, letter from a special agent who headed the FBI’s
Philadelphia office, approximately 30 blocks of C-4 had been delivered to the
city by an FBI agent without the city requesting it and as a proposed solution
during discussions regarding an anticipated confrontation with MOVE. Wow! And
the rest, as they say, is history — or better said, it’s Philly’s 9/11, but as
our own city, state and federal governments’ inside job.
MOVE: The Scene of the Crime
If
that’s worse, and it certainly is, here’s worst: The children, and some of the
adults, were shot at or shot and killed by police as they were fleeing the
flames and surrendering. Wow, again! The police covering the alley leading
from the rear of the MOVE house had automatic weapons and shotguns. No one
ever claimed that MOVE had automatic weapons or shotguns at the scene, and no
automatic weapons or shotguns were found among the ashes. Police officer
William Stewart, a 28-year veteran of the department and a firearms instructor
at the academy, was asked by investigators, “Did you hear gunfire at this
time,” meaning when people were fleeing the MOVE house from the alley in the
rear. With his lawyer present, he responded “Oh yes, automatic fire.” And when
asked about who was firing the weapons, he replied, “Police officers. All the
stakeout officers were running into the alley. They all had Uzi machine guns.”
Strangely, though, 16 days later, he told the MOVE Commission that he never
heard any police gunfire in the alley.
Fire
Department Lt. John Vaccarelli and
fireman Joseph Murray, who were
veterans of the Vietnam War and who were in the vicinity of that very same
alley, said they did, in
fact, hear automatic fire when the MOVE members were running away from the
flames. In fact, Vaccarelli pointed out that he saw at least three MOVE
members in the yard next to the alley. This was corroborated by police
officer James D’Ulisse. So since
these people were outside the property lines of the interior of the house
itself, how is it that their bodies were later found inside those property
lines among the charred rubble? Only the police (and no reporters or other
civilians) had access to the sealed-off crime scene during and after the
inferno. Hmmm ...
And why does the official report of the city’s own medical examiner provide proof from the autopsies of six of the 11 dead — namely, 7-year-old Tomasa, 9-year-old Delicia, 10-year-old Phil, 11-year-old Netta, 13-year-old Tree, and 25-year-old Rhonda — that they did not die inside from flame-fire but died outside from gun-fire? If, as the police later testified under oath, these victims died from the flames that exceeded 2,000 hellish degrees inside the house, why were Tomasa’s long locks still long? Why was Phil’s body not burned? Why was Netta still wearing her white blouse with red trim? Why were Tree’s pubic hair and blue jeans still intact? And why did Delicia’s body and Rhonda’s body have in them metal fragments consistent with shotgun pellets as noted by an FBI ballistician? You think maybe they were fatally hit when they all were being shot at while trying to run from the flames and surrender?
Even MOVE Commission Chairman William Brown, stated, “I
firmly believe that more people got out than Birdie and Ramona and
that’s something that still nags at me. I believe that someone, someday will
deliver a deathbed confession …” And the Commission itself noted in Finding Number 28 of
its official report that “police gunfire in the rear alley prevented the
escape from the fire of some occupants of the MOVE house.”
Also,
consider this: Detective William Stevenson,
who was assigned to take contemporaneous notes during the entire
confrontation, wrote that Sgt. Donald
Griffiths, a commander on the scene, “from stake-out is in the rear of
Osage Avenue, 6221, and is pointing to an area that he states, ‘I dropped an
adult male from the MOVE property who fired at me when the female and child
escaped.’” And Battalion Chief John
Skarbeck said he had overheard a police sergeant say, “something
to the effect that 'I got one back there' or 'I shot one back there.'” But
Sgt. Griffiths testified that he had been misquoted, that what he really had
said was people had “dropped out of sight” at that particular time and place.
Yeah. He actually said that. With a straight face, too.
The overkill police presence, the military-style assault,
the malicious bombing, the callous burning, and the evil shooting at fleeing
victims were not just “grossly negligent” and “unconscionable” as the MOVE
Commission properly and officially noted in Findings Number 15 and 18. They were also murderous. And justice demands the
prosecution of each perpetrator because there’s no statute of limitations for
murder. If it were your family, your neighborhood, your home, your property,
and your memories — even if it weren’t — wouldn’t you agree?
If you
do agree, join Dr. Cornel West, Angela Davis, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Fred
Hampton Jr., me, and hundreds of others by attending the daylong
"Memorial and Empowerment" event beginning at 11 a.m. on May
13th at 62d and Osage — 30 years to the day after the bombing. For more info,
call 215-307-3960.
Michael Coard's radio show, "The Radio Courtroom," airs at noon on Sundays and Wednesdays. It can be heard locally
on WURD 900 AM and on the Internet at 900amwurd.com. Follow @MichaelCoard on Twitter.
"It’s the
week of the 29th anniversary of the MOVE bombings, and for those who were
in the middle of it and are still with us, the memories of those tragic events
still linger all these years later. As the haunting story unfolds in Jason
Osder‘s Let the Fire Burn, which
premieres tonight on Independent
Lens on PBS (check local listings),
you may be curious as to what became of some of the people involved."
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Thanks for your comment. Peace, NB