MOVE

The group's name, MOVE, is not an acronym.[6] Its founder, John Africa, chose this name to say what they intended to do. Members intend to be active because they say, "Everything that's alive moves. If it didn't, it would be stagnant, dead."[7] When members greet each other they say "on the MOVE".[7]

When the organization that would become MOVE was founded in 1972, John Africa was functionally illiterate.[8] John Africa dictated his thoughts to Donald Glassey, a social worker from the University of Pennsylvania, and created what he called "The Guidelines" as the basis of his communal group.[1] Africa and his mostly African-American followers wore their hair in dreadlocks, as popularized by the Caribbean Rastafari movement. MOVE advocated a radical form of green politics and a return to a hunter-gatherer society, while stating their opposition to science, medicine, and technology.[9]

Members of MOVE identify as deeply religious and advocate for life. They believe that as all living beings are dependent, their lives should be treated as equally important. They advocate for justice that is not always based within institutions. MOVE members believe that for something to be just, it must be just for all living creatures.[7] As John Africa had done, his followers changed their surnames to Africa to show reverence to what they regarded as their mother continent.[5][10][11]

In a 2018 article about the group, Ed Pilkington of The Guardian described their political views as "a strange fusion of black power and flower power. The group that formed in the early 1970s melded the revolutionary ideology of the Black Panthers with the nature- and animal-loving communalism of 1960s hippies. You might characterise them as black liberationists-cum-eco warriors."[12] He noted the group also functioned as an animal rights advocacy organization. Pilkington quoted member Janine Africa, who wrote to him from prison: “We demonstrated against puppy mills, zoos, circuses, any form of enslavement of animals. We demonstrated against Three Mile Island and industrial pollution. We demonstrated against police brutality. And we did so uncompromisingly. Slavery never ended, it was just disguised.”[12]

John Africa and his followers lived in a commune in a house owned by Glassey in the Powelton Village section of West Philadelphia. As activists, they staged bullhorn-amplified, profanity-laced demonstrations against institutions that they opposed, such as zoos, and speakers whose views they opposed. MOVE activities were scrutinized by law enforcement authorities,[13][14] particularly under the administration of Mayor Frank Rizzo, a former police commissioner known for his hard line against activist groups.[12]

In 1977, according to police accounts, the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) obtained a court order for MOVE to vacate the Powelton Village property in response to a series of complaints made by neighbors. MOVE members agreed to vacate and surrender their weapons if the PPD released members of their group who were being held in city jails.[15]

Nearly a year later, the PPD came to a standoff with members of MOVE who had not left the Powelton Village property.[16][17] When police attempted to enter the house, a shootout ensued. PPD officer James J. Ramp was killed by a shot to the back of the neck. 16 police officers and firefighters were also injured in the firefight.[15] MOVE representatives claimed that Ramp was facing the house at the time and denied that the group was responsible for his death, insisting that he was killed by fire from fellow police officers.[18] Prosecutors alleged that MOVE members fired the fatal shot and charged Debbie Sims Africa and eight other MOVE members with collective responsibility for his death.

According to a 2018 article in The Guardian,

"Eyewitnesses, however, gave accounts suggesting that the shot may have come from the opposite direction to the basement, raising the possibility that Ramp was accidentally felled by police fire. Move members continue to insist that they had no workable guns in their house at the time of the siege. Several months earlier, in May 1978, several guns – most of them inoperative – had been handed over to police at the Move house; however, prosecutors at the trial of the Move Nine told the jury that at the time of the August siege there had been functioning firearms in the house."[19]

The standoff lasted about an hour before MOVE members began to surrender.

6221 Osage Ave

Location of the MOVE house, bombed in 1985 by the police, within Philadelphia

In 1981, MOVE relocated to a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue in the Cobbs Creek area of West Philadelphia. Neighbors complained to the city for years about trash around their building, confrontations with neighbors, and bullhorn announcements of sometimes obscene political messages by MOVE members.[30][31] The bullhorn was broken and inoperable for the three weeks prior to the police bombing of the row house.[31]

The police obtained arrest warrants in 1985 charging four MOVE occupants with crimes including parole violations, contempt of court, illegal possession of firearms, and making terrorist threats.[4] Mayor Wilson Goode and police commissioner Gregore J. Sambor classified MOVE as a terrorist organization.[32] Police evacuated residents of the area from the neighborhood prior to their action. Residents were told that they would be able to return to their homes after a twenty-four hour period.[15]

On Monday, May 13, 1985, nearly five hundred police officers, along with city manager Leo Brooks, arrived in force and attempted to clear the building and execute the arrest warrants.[15][32] Nearby houses were evacuated.[3] Water and electricity were shut off in order to force MOVE members out of the house. Commissioner Sambor read a long speech addressed to MOVE members that started with, "Attention MOVE: This is America. You have to abide by the laws of the United States." When the MOVE members did not respond, the police decided to forcibly remove the thirteen members from the house,[15] which consisted of eight adults and six children.

There was an armed standoff with police,[6] who lobbed tear gas canisters at the building. The MOVE members fired at them, and a 90-minute gunfight ensued, in which one officer was bruised in the back by gunfire.[33] Police used more than ten thousand rounds of ammunition before Commissioner Sambor ordered that the compound be bombed.[33] From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-pound bombs (which the police referred to as "entry devices"[32]) made of FBI-supplied Tovex, a dynamite substitute, targeting a cubicle on the roof of the house.[30] The ensuing fire killed eleven of the people in the house (John Africa, five other adults, and five children aged 7 to 13). The fire spread and eventually destroyed approximately sixty-five nearby houses. Although firefighters had earlier drenched the building prior to the bombing, after the fire broke out, officials said they feared that MOVE would shoot at the firefighters, so held them back.[30][33][34]

Goode later testified at a 1996 trial that he had ordered the fire to be put out after the bunker had burned. Sambor said he received the order, but the fire commissioner testified that he did not receive the order.[35] Ramona Africa, one of the two MOVE survivors from the house, said that police fired at those trying to escape.[36]

After John Africa's death, his widow, Alberta, married John Gilbride, Jr. Together they had a child, Zackary Africa, before divorcing in 1999. By 2002, Gilbride had no longer supported MOVE and resettled in Maple Shade, New Jersey. Alberta Africa was living in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with their son, John Zachary Gilbride, as he was legally known.[45]

On September 10, 2002, in the course of their bitter custody dispute, Gilbride testified in court that MOVE had threatened to kill him.[46] The court granted Gilbride partial custody of Zackary, allowing him unsupervised visits.

On September 27, shortly after midnight and prior to Gilbride's first visitation date with Zackary, an unknown assailant shot and killed him with an automatic weapon as he sat in his car parked outside his New Jersey home.[45] Investigators did not name a suspect and the Burlington County Police did not release ballistics information.[47]

The case remains unsolved. A MOVE spokeswoman initially said that the U.S. government had assassinated Gilbride in order to frame MOVE.[47] His ex-wife Alberta Africa denied that the murder had occurred. She said in 2009 that Gilbride "is out hiding somewhere".[47] Tony Allen, an ex-MOVE member, says that MOVE murdered Gilbride.[47]

In 2012, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Gilbride had told friends and family that he had recorded incriminating evidence in a notebook as security against a "hit" by MOVE. Gilbride said he had placed the notebook inside a locker for safekeeping. The Burlington County Prosecutor's Office declined to follow up on the report.[48]

Ramona Africa acts as a spokesperson for the group. She has given numerous speeches at events in the United States and other countries. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a journalist and activist, was convicted and originally sentenced to death for the unrelated 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. In 2011 his sentence was commuted to life. He had reported on MOVE and expressed his support for them. MOVE continues to advocate for Abu-Jamal's release as well as for that of imprisoned MOVE members. MOVE regards them all as political prisoners.

Michael Moses Ward, known in MOVE as Birdie Africa, was the only child to survive the 1985 bombing. Ward was 13 years old at the time of the incident and suffered serious burns from the fire, which killed his mother.[49] Ward's father, Andino Ward, sued the City of Philadelphia, and the parties reached a settlement.[50] He lived with his father afterward and did not remain involved with MOVE. He died in 2013 in an accidental drowning.[51]

In June 2020 MOVE member Delbert Africa died.[52]

• David Shrager – trial lawyer who represented Michael Ward's father in a lawsuit against the city for injuries suffered in the fire.
• List of unsolved murders
• Neo-Luddite
• Partisan Defense Committee

• Richard Kent Evans, MOVE: An American Religion. Oxford University Press, 2020. ISBN 9780190058777.
• John Anderson and Hilary Hevenor, Burning Down the House: MOVE and the tragedy of Philadelphia, W.W. Norton & Co., 1987, ISBN 0-393-02460-1.
• Robin Wagner-Pacifici, Discourse and Destruction: The City of Philadelphia versus MOVE, (1994) University of Chicago Press
• Johanna Saleh Dickson; Move: Sites of Trauma (Pamphlet Architecture 23) (2002) Princeton: Architectural Press
• Toni Cade Bambara, The Bombing of Osage Avenue, Philadelphia: WHYY. DVD OCLC 95315483
• Margot Harry, Attention Move! This is America (1987), Chicago: Banner Press, ISBN 0-916650-32-4
• Maurantonio, Nicole (2014). "Archiving the Visual: The Promises and Pitfalls of Digital Newspapers". Media History. 20 (1): 88–102. doi:10.1080/13688804.2013.870749. S2CID 143002576.
• Michael Boyette & Randi Boyette, Let it Burn! (1989) Chicago: Contemporary Press, ISBN 0-8092-4543-4
• Ramona Africa (Contr. Author). This Country Must Change: Essays on the Necessity of Revolution in the USA (Arissa Media Group, 2009) ISBN 978-0-9742884-7-5

• Official MOVE website
• "John Africa's MOVE Organization", collection of pro-MOVE documents
• "9 Nine The Story of MOVE", 9 Neuf Histoire de communaute MOVE (in French), French website about MOVE