The ongoing struggle over the meaning of the MOVE bombing

Forty years after the city bombed the MOVE compound on Osage Avenue killing five children and six adults impassioned debates continue over what exactly happened that day and what broader social and political meanings should be drawn from the tragic event A symposium held on Tuesday the th anniversary brought together MOVE members journalists who covered the siege scholars archivists and museum leaders who research and teach about the organization and activists focused on the politics of telling Black public histories I m against subjugated storytelling If we re going to free ourselves and we re going to talk about liberation organizing we got to free the stories because memory is political announced Eric Grimes known as Brother Shomari a WURD radio host and anti-racism activist So this conversation is political It s not academic Memory is political People will act on what the memory tells them they re worthy of The symposium at the Society College of Philadelphia was one of several latest commemorations of the anniversary Others include an exhibit at the college s library a MOVE rally on Tuesday in Cobbs Creek a City Council resolution a podcast and numerous articles about MOVE the bombing and how to remember it The day-long event at CCP was in part a space for recollection by people who were there and are still shaken by the mayhem and destruction of that day and in part a chance to ruminate and argue over how the story of MOVE is shaped and used MOVE supporters also took the opportunity to argue that the group should be remembered for its role as a Black liberation organization that pushed back against racist cabinet oppression rather than primarily as a militant cult that mistreated its children made life intolerable for its neighbors and fought with the police People say Mike you know your people was crazy man They did chosen crazy things You wouldn t even want to live next to them noted Mike Africa Jr a son of original MOVE members who has written a book about the group Yeah that s true I really wouldn t want to live next to the way things were either But I do understand why they were mad You just couldn t believe it The retired journalists at the symposium recalled the chaos and violence of May and described their work to keep the population informed while avoiding constant gunfire from MOVE and the police Pete Kane a longtime photojournalist at NBC stated he holed up in a home near the MOVE house and phoned in updates as bullets rained down and the police tried to figure out where he was The bullets were whizzing by my head I never thought I would get to go see my -week-old son again But as a journalist I decided to get into the business to tell the story If I had lost my life that day at least I was telling the story he noted From left journalists Ernest Owens Larry Litwin Larry Eichel Barbara Grant and Pete Kane participated in a panel discussion on the th anniversary of the MOVE bombing at the Society College of Philadelphia May Meir Rinde Billy Penn Barbara Grant then the news director at WDAS a radio station focused on the Black district spent hours on the scene before returning to her office to file her stories and watch the siege play out on TV I was sitting in the studio and watched that bomb fall and you really couldn t believe it You just couldn t believe it she revealed You almost thought that somebody took a break and sent you to selected you know chosen drama that was on the air It just was incredible Inquired what part of the MOVE story people are still missing she revealed it was essential to remember the events that led up to the bombing They include a police confrontation that resulted in the death of a baby Life Africa and a standoff at the group s previous home in Powelton Village in which police officer James Ramp was shot and died By the MOVE people were regularly rousted in the street arrested beaten up They got so countless beatings that they got tired of getting beaten up she explained Grant and Larry Eichel a former Inquirer reporter and editor noted a number of questions about the Osage Avenue siege remain unclear such as whether police shot at MOVE members who were trying to leave the house through an alley Eichel reported it s also been something of a mystery why the police pushed to end the standoff so briskly I think there are a number of reasons one of which was they d evacuated all these people and reported them they were only going for one night and they weren t sure what they were going to do with them Eichel commented All this seems very petty in retrospect compared to what happened Another concern was that MOVE members might escape through suspected tunnels under the house he explained The angry version of MOVE Mike Africa Jr gave a keynote speech recounting MOVE s history from its founding by John Africa as an anti-technology anti-government pro-animal welfare Black revolutionary group through the police confrontations and the imprisonment of nine members in connection with Ramp s death He described the siege and bombing which happened when he was years old his gradually learning about the group s history the botched rebuilding of Osage Avenue and his work to free his parents and the other surviving jailed members He also noted the city s million settlement with a MOVE survivor and relatives and the revelation that the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University both had kept bones of MOVE children killed on Osage Avenue Africa defended the group s militant resistance to harsh police tactics under Mayor Frank Rizzo in the s and recalled what he described as his enjoyable early childhood with the group A lot of people didn t meet MOVE when MOVE was down at headquarters washing cars and just paying their bills and playing chess and riding bikes in the neighborhood he mentioned They met an angry version of MOVE They met the version that was so radical that they strapped a bullhorn to their house built a bunker and mentioned We are willing to die because you re killing us anyway They re killing the babies they re killing the men and the women and then pretending that it didn t happen he noted Africa also defended MOVE s core anti-government pro-self-reliance quasi-environmentalist message We ve given our allegiance to a system that doesn t care anything about us We re breathing in air that is polluted We re drinking water out of bottles because you can t out of the tap he declared This system don t care about us They never have and they never will When people say we got to fix the system they re confused because they think the system is broken It s created to do this to you Africa has purchased the Osage Avenue home built on the site of the former MOVE house and is raising money to pay off the mortgage and make it into a memorial site Earnings from sales of his book On a Move go toward that project Working to disrupt racist traditions Other symposium panels focused on archiving and storytelling about MOVE and Black communities and on memory-making by museums and schools Josu Hurtado a coordinator at Temple University s Special Collections Research Center described the school s work to preserve and expand citizens access to materials from the MOVE Commission which did an exhaustive probe of the bombing From left Jason Osder Krystal Strong Josu Hurtado and Eric Grimes Brother Shomari participated in a panel discussion on the th anniversary of the MOVE bombing at the Area College of Philadelphia May Meir Rinde Billy Penn Jason Osder a George Washington University professor who directed the documentary Let the Fire Burn about the bombing discussed the essential role of the Temple archive in making his project accomplishable He also noted the importance of thinking deeply about the complex origins of the practice of collecting historical and social artifacts about Black communities It s not just archiving that should be thought about that way but image-making itself that photography and documentary and all these things have deep roots in a colonial project he explained Any of us who do that work need to try to be aware and what are we doing to disrupt or deconstruct traditions whole traditions that are deeply embedded in a colonial or racist project Dr Krystal Strong a Rutgers assistant professor who is archive director at The MOVE Activist Archive described a governing body or institutional archive as a a form of state violence and a gatekeeper that in certain cases steals a neighborhood s artifacts and controls access to and interpretation of those materials She cited the Penn Museum s holding of the MOVE children s remains as an example and noted that Temple is a state-sponsored university The archive of MOVE is one that was created by the state quite literally How do we tell an authentic story one that honors the people who were murdered by the state one that provides an authentic accounting of how we get to a moment where a bomb is dropped onto a house she required By contrast activist archives admit a wider range of materials valued by area members help them tell their stories and facilitate ongoing political protests or disruptions of official institutions and narratives Strong noted It s grandma it s the uncle it s the locality members I ve met who kept newspapers over years because they couldn t believe that this happened right Or the person who kept the bulletins and the flyers from the action she stated referring to the bombing They have a story to tell as well and the greater part especially we have to tell the story of the folks who were the drivers who were directly impacted who suffered the largest part she noted And if we re not doing that what are we doing The post The ongoing struggle over the meaning of the MOVE bombing appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY