MOVE: A documentary film, at last

Next month will mark the 28th anniversary of the Philadelphia police bombing of the MOVE compound on Osage Avenue, which left 11 people dead, five of them children, and an entire community burned to the ground. Next August will mark the 35th anniversary of the first police siege of MOVE at its then home in Powelton Village, which took the life of a police officer, James J. Ramp, and led to the conviction of nine MOVE members for his death.

These events have deeply scarred the history of modern Philadelphia, and to this day the city hasn't reckoned with them, apparently preferring a form of amnesia.

MOVE, as those of a certain age will recall, was a Christian ecology movement begun in 1972 under the leadership of the self-styled John Africa, though not all MOVE members were black. He and his followers moved into a house in Powelton given to them by a white sympathizer, Donald Glassey, and began to practice a lifestyle which they saw as characterized by respect for life, but which neighbors saw as an undue tolerance for pests, and to aggressively propagandize against what they saw as social abuses.

Armed standoff

MOVE was, in short, an urban commune that, with some distinctive elements, resembled other back-to-nature movements that grew up out of the counterculture of the 1960s. But this was the 1970s, the era of Nixon's Silent Majority backlash, and conflict was inevitable, especially under a mayor (Frank Rizzo) with a near-zero tolerance for dissent.

In 1978 MOVE was ordered to leave its compound. A standoff followed, and negotiations broke down under circumstances that have never been fully clarified. When heavily armed police arrived to clear the premises, a gun battle ensued, allegedly on both sides, although the MOVE "weapons" recovered afterward were inoperable. Police officer James Ramp, a desk cop pressed into service for the military-style assault, was killed by a shot to the back of his head— in other words, most probably by friendly fire.

Nonetheless, nine MOVE members were convicted of having "conspired" to kill him and sentenced to 30 to 100 years' imprisonment each. As for evidence, Mayor Rizzo disposed of that by ordering the compound burned to the ground, although it was a crime scene as well as private property.

No one seems to have unduly questioned the wisdom of laying siege to a house with children in a crowded neighborhood to enforce an eviction notice.

Sambor trumps Rizzo

MOVE failed take the hint to disperse, however. Instead the group relocated to a house at 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, which it fortified against future attack. Again, it called attention to itself vocally, adding to its list of grievances the imprisonment of what it called the MOVE Nine.

By this time Philadelphia had its first black mayor, Wilson Goode. If anything, that worsened matters. Goode's police chief, Gregore Sambor, trumped Rizzo by delivering his eviction notice via a bomb dropped on the roof of the MOVE household, igniting a fire that consumed more than 60 houses. Of the 13 MOVE members in the house, 11, including five children, were killed. The only survivors were one adult, Ramona Africa, and one child, Birdie.

Ramona Africa has testified that police snipers fired at adults and children alike who attempted to flee the burning building. No policeman or any government official was ever charged in the massacre. Ramona Africa herself was the only person convicted of a crime. After her release from prison, she won a civil suit against the city.

You'd think this story would be grist for the mill of an Oliver Stone, or at least a "Frontline"-style documentary. But much of American history has gone undocumented, especially history involving police violence.

Ramona takes questions

No case, at least since the military reoccupation of Newark and Detroit during the great urban riots of 1967, has been as egregious as the MOVE assaults. Philadelphia became infamous as "the city that bombed itself," although it is a little more accurate to say that what it bombed was its black self.

Yet the only film to focus on the 1978 and 1985 assaults is one made by three students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Ben Garry, Ryan McKenna, and Matt Sullivan, and simply called MOVE. It consists mainly of survivor interviews and grainy footage, and Ramona Africa herself disputes some of its accuracy. With due appreciation for this effort and the impulse of conscience it represents, something much better needs to be done.

MOVE was shown on March 25 at Drexel's Earle Mack School of Law, to an audience consisting almost entirely of students and hosted by one of the school's faculty, Donald Tibbs. Ramona Africa was present as a guest, and took questions.

Parole denied

Full disclosure: I've known Ramona for a number of years now, and my regard for her has steadily grown. She is a moral voice of the Philadelphia community, who has devoted her life to rectifying the continued imprisonment of the MOVE Nine. Actually, it's now the MOVE Eight, since one of the prisoners— a healthy woman in her forties— died behind bars 15 years ago under circumstances that remain obscure.

All of the MOVE Eight have served the full minimum sentence imposed on them, and all have been routinely denied parole since. The reason given is their failure to express contrition for the death of James Ramp; that is, to acknowledge their responsibility, and therefore their guilt.

But that guilt was never specifically demonstrated. Neither the judge nor the prosecutor was ever able to establish the shooter's identity, or even to show where the fatal bullet came from. What is demonstrable is that nine individuals could not have pulled the same trigger under any circumstances.

When one adds to that the fact that although all nine were sentenced to prison for what could well be— and in one case already has been— the remainder of their lives, while no officer or official was ever indicted in the Osage Avenue bombing seven years later, the patently political character of the Move Eight's continued imprisonment is evident.

The moral arc of the universe may bend toward justice, as Martin Luther King famously observed. But it certainly hasn't been bending toward Philadelphia.

Still, if even the state of Mississippi can acknowledge the abolition of slavery 150 years after the event, perhaps the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will finally set the MOVE prisoners free. It won't be justice— far too late for that. But at least it will be an end of injustice, and that's a beginning.♦


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