Let's Remember Some Civil Unrest! The MOVE Bombing

WYTS: Philadelphia Eagles. Original post here.

I only learned of this story a few years ago. My jaw hit the ground. Wonders truly never cease in this country's history. This is the 1985 MOVE Bombing.

This is largely the story of two men: John Africa and Frank Rizzo. One was a mayor, the other was the founder of a revolutionary anarchist cell. Arguably they were both cult leaders. One would literally go down in flames, in a millenialist apocalypse that shocked the city. The other might terrify you more.

We'll start with John Africa, which is a name he chose for himself in 1972. He lived in Powelton Village, a neighborhood right by the big universities, a cool bohemian area with beautiful Victorian homes – I’d love to live there. Africa was part of a diverse movement of extreme Black leftist politics, which were fermenting during the Civil Rights Movement and after the assassinations of MLK and Malcom X. Africa was mostly illiterate, a Korean War veteran, and very charismatic. His philosophy combined extreme green eco-politics with extreme Black leftism. And admittedly, this stuff gets very weird, he'd be an anti-vax guy now (he might have been one then too). Africa's ambition was not quite "Black nationalism" though it was closely-related to such movements, since Africa was an anarchist. He ate raw food, protested vigorously against the Philadelphia PD, and wanted to abolish zoos.

In the 1970s, his group called themselves "MOVE", which is not an acronym, it was more a metaphor. They dreamed of a return to pre-industrial, even pre-agrarian society, rejecting science and technology and most things we’d call “civilization”. Or it referred to what the police barked at Black people every single day in Philadelphia: "Move!".

At first, MOVE was similar to other extreme leftist African American organizations like say, the much bigger Black Panthers. Just like the Panthers, they were despised by the police and authorities, who had no interest in understanding what they were trying to achieve. Then MOVE got weirder. The entire group began to live with John Africa in Powelton Village, as a kind of hippie commune, raising children there, they all took the surname "Africa", and had Rasta haircuts. They were also very loud, choosing stunts like yelling in court rooms for unrelated cases involving African American defendants and willingly going to jail for disrupting the legal system. They were aggressively opposed to police brutality, and that created a bad dynamic with a mayor who's stated politics were in fact, pro-police brutality.

Mayor Frank Rizzo was a (Real Bad) Guy we need to Remember. He was an ex-navy man but spent WWII as a beat cop in Philadelphia. In his years on the force, he discovered how to play the media: which is to be as loud and as stupid as possible and since you’re a white guy, you'll get airtime for days. There’s an assumed folk wisdom with ignorant white guys in American culture, its real toxic. Rizzo became Commissioner of the PPD in 1967 and openly championed thug behavior by his officers. Philadelphia had one of the most integrated police forces in the country with 20% Black officers in the 60s. Rizzo made sure those numbers would decline. He'd just say whatever came to mind, such as in 1975, "I'll make Attila the Hun look like a [F-slur]". And in gross kind of wrestling heel dynamic, the media kept becoming more and more obsessed with the guy. He told his supporters to "vote white" in 1978, saying the quiet part out loud.

Does this remind you of anybody?

There is no doubt Rizzo’s police were brutal to their own citizens and especially targeted Black neighborhoods. There's been extensive investigations into their misconduct, not helped by Rizzo and the police union president admitting everything on the air. In 1970 they raided the Philly Black Panthers for a murder they had nothing to do with. In 1971 Rizzo became de facto mayor in a kind of weird coup when the previous mayor just resigned one day out of the blue. He actually was elected legally in 1971. He was deeply corrupt and failed a lie detector test, proving he was taking bribes. He tried to keep running for an unconstitutional third term. Rizzo was a Democrat but switched to Republican once that party became the home for reactionaries and shitbags.

Eerie, right? Time is a fucking wheel, dude.

In the 70s, Philadelphia ended up with a Mayor with a hard-on for big loud strong-man actions, and a tiny political cell (I think MOVE's total membership never grew beyond 30 people) who also knew how to play the media. The confrontation was inevitable.

John Africa's house in Powelton Village became increasingly fortified. MOVE members patrolled outside with rifles. The PPD spent God only knows how much money in overtime hours for officers to watch the house 24/7. In 1976, MOVE accused the police of beating one of their members who had a baby in her arms, killing the infant. In a grisly scene, MOVE had a city councilman, Lucien Blackwell, come visit for dinner. Then they took him upstairs and showed him something in a crib, Blackwell did not confirm what it was, claiming it was the dead baby. I’m guessing nobody was hungry for dessert after that.

On August 8th, 1978, Mayor Rizzo vowed to "drag them out by the backs of their necks". Many had already fled the home (including John Africa), but the remaining MOVE fighters, led by Delbert Africa, vowed to hold on to the end. As the PPD raided the home, one police officer was killed, maybe by MOVE, maybe by friendly fire. Delbert was beaten on the street and kicked on the ground from all directions by arresting police after he surrendered, unarmed. 16 other officers were injured. 9 MOVE members, including Delbert, were convicted of third-degree murder. Women and children were in the building as the battle raged, and in interviews, Mayor Rizzo did not care before or after. Delbert's assailants were found Not Guilty of police brutality.

Eventually John Africa and his remaining few members were discovered hiding in upstate New York. They were found Not Guilty of any wrong-doing in court. So in the early 80s, they moved back to Philly. Rizzo was out of office by this point. They bought a new home on 6221 Ossage Avenue, now in a poorer and almost entirely Black neighborhood in West Philly (where the Fresh Prince is from). It was a street full of connected rowhouses, common to the city, which is going to be an important detail. The MOVE survivors decided to keep up their mission with a new tactic: being maximally annoying to everybody.

This was a bad time to live on Ossage Avenue. The MOVE guys were the worst neighbors you could imagine. They were loud, and would keep getting louder until their compatriots were freed from jail. They left garbage everywhere, they threatened to murder people, they made anarcho-primitivist speeches that nobody understood on a bullhorn, they built a turret bunker up on their roof as they were still at war with the police. Philadelphia's city government, now under an African American mayor, Wilson Goode, just wanted this all to go away. They would ignore the neighbor's complaints, let citations go unpaid, and not follow-up on warrants for arrest. It all looked bad after Rizzo's assault in '78. Until eventually the nonsense became too much for any mayor ignore.

What's irritating is that we this character, Frank Rizzo, and he's not here! He's a perfect villain, and he's not around for the most unbelievable part of this story. It's so... un-neat. History is rarely what anybody wants it to be. This tragedy is Rizzo's legacy though, it was his cohort of cops that came up with this awful idea.

On May 13th, 1985, Philadelphia decided to have its second battle with MOVE. Hundreds of residents around were evacuated for their safety. The exact details of who made what call are muddy, on purpose, because this became such an enormous fuck-up. It was a difficult situation and handled in probably the worst way imaginable. In the morning, the police demanded MOVE surrender. When they didn’t, it turned into an open firefight with thousands of rounds of ammunition fired (though only the police had automatic weapons). The bunker on the roof was an issue, along with the fact that connecting neighbor homes made it impossible to attack from the sides without destroying property. In the evening, somebody got the brilliant idea to drop C4 from a helicopter down on the bunker.

Yeah, Philadelphia bombed itself. What follows is disturbingly similar to events that would play out on a larger scale some years later, that being the Waco Siege of 1993. That also did not end well.

The bombs lit a fire in the bunker and the police simply let it burn for 30 minutes. At this point, it appears Mayor Goode ordered the fire department to stop the fire, and hoses were turned on. But then the firefighters turned them off, nobody will take responsibility for that. 90 minutes passed with the bunker burning wildly, until it fell through the roof into the house. Then the fire went out of control and the entire block went up. Some MOVE members fled out the back garage for their lives, but several turned back when confronted with the police. The PPD claim they did not stop anybody from leaving. However, it is hard to imagine people running back into a burning building no matter their ideology, no matter how weird they are about raw food, without good reason. 11 MOVE members died: 6 adults, 5 children. Only two escaped, an adult woman and a boy. John Africa did not make it out.

As for the neighbors, who just wanted to get some damn sleep, 250 of them were now homeless. MOVE in death proved their point: the city did not care about black people, and the neighbors had the ruins of their lives as proof. The legal battle, involving some qualified immunity claims, eventually ended with Philly settling for about 1.5 million to the MOVE survivors in 1995. In 2005, they had to pay 12 million to the neighbors. Mayor Goode at the time said "mistakes were made in this process", and formally apologized in 2020, around the time of the George Floyd protests.

MOVE effectively ceased to exist. Most of the membership were in jail. Their last public action was maybe murdering John Africa’s widow’s ex-husband, which is a whole other story. They're most likely defunct at this point. Most Black power movements ran out of steam in the 80s thanks to FBI interference but also internal politics. That whole post-Civil Rights scene of Black militant leftist counterculture was already a relic of the past even in 1985. Now in a wild twist of fate, MOVE's anti-science quack ideology and Frank Rizzo's "vote white" politics have found a happy home together... in the White House.

Frank Rizzo's statue was taken down in 2020.