MOVE

Founded in 1972 in Philadelphia by John Africa, MOVE is a collective that advocates Black liberation, armed self-defense, and a back-to-nature lifestyle. Living communally, the group has Black, White and Latin@ members, and all take the surname Africa. In 1985, police bombed MOVE's house, starting a fire that killed 11 people and destroyed 65 houses in western Philadelphia. The group's name, not an acronym, "means exactly what it says: MOVE, work, generate, be active."

NYC Anarchist Black Cross has up-to-date information on how to write to the MOVE 9 political prisoners: Charles Sims Africa, Debbie Sims Africa, Delbert Orr Africa, Edward Goodman Africa, Janet Holloway Africa, Janine Phillips Africa, and Michael Davis Africa. They list the following two websites to support the MOVE 9: [move9parole.blogspot.com] and [onamove.com].

Beliefs and Structure

With notable contradictions, MOVE has had anti-authoritarian tendencies. Although the founder John Africa created much of MOVE's philosophy and strategy, the group's website asserts that Africa "is not our leader. JOHN AFRICA has equipped each of us with the wisdom, strength, and understanding to lead ourselves." According to the group's member Jerry Africa, MOVE makes decisions by consensus.

MOVE should not be viewed as consistently anti-authoritarian. One study refers to John Africa as the group's "patriarch," and MOVE's website implies that "natural law" prefers heterosexual, monogamous relationships.

MOVE's activities and practices in the 1970s included protests against zoos, circuses, Dow, Du Pont, and other corporations and institutions that exploited humans, animals and ecosystems. MOVE members composted, ate raw food diets, and birthed children at home, well before such trends became fashionable.

MOVE 9

Police clashed with MOVE throughout the group's early existence. "Given [Mayor] Rizzo's iron-fist rule, confrontation with MOVE was inevitable. Infamous for his racist brutality as Police Commissioner from 1968-71, Rizzo once publicly boasted that his police force would be so repressive that he'd 'make Attila the Hun look like a faggot.' He was elected mayor in 1972, with campaign slogans like 'Vote White.'" In 1974, police beat and jailed two female MOVE members, causing them to miscarry. In 1976, as family greeted seven MOVE members being released from prison, police descended on the crowd and stomped three-week old Life Africa to death.

In 1978, Philadelphia's Mayor Frank Rizzo blockaded four blocks surrounding the MOVE house for two months, preventing food and water from reaching the group's house. Police arrested and beat neighbors who tried to deliver food and water to the house. Eventually, the sides reached an agreement under which MOVE members would move out of the house.

On 8 August, accusing MOVE of not leaving fast enough, hundreds of riot police seized the house and used bulldozers, cranes and high-pressure hoses to force the residents out of the basement where they hid. Gunshots were fired, "likely from a house across the street," and police responded with 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Officer James Ramp was killed during the shooting. Police arrested 12 adult MOVE members and beat several others. After the incident, police bulldozed the house, destroying physical evidence of what happened.

In the subsequent trial, the state used questionable evidence to frame and convict the "MOVE 9" of killing Ramp. According to journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, the MOVE 9 "were convicted of being united, not in crime, but in rebellion against the system and in resistance to the armed assaults of the state. They were convicted of being MOVE members."" MOVE argued that it would have been impossible for them to shoot Ramp since they were busy holding the children and animals up from the seven feet of water from the hoses the police used to flood the basement.

1985 Bombing

On 13 May 1985, police fired over 100,000 rounds of bullets at MOVE's house and, without giving any warning, bombed the house from the air. Ramona Africa, the only adult survivor of the bombing, says that when MOVE members tried to send the children outside to safety, police responded with a barrage of bullets, forcing the children back inside the burning house. Six adults and five children died. The fire destroyed 65 of the neighborhood's houses.