The nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, marked the 45th anniversary of the MOVE organization with recollections of when MOVE members were undergound in Rochester, New York. There, they “lived a life of peace that was unthinkable in Philadelphia,” because “they lived out of the eye of a merciless media,” he said. “Absent the ‘zone of negativity by the media, people met MOVE as people, and loved them.” In contrast, police and media hostility to MOVE in the City of Brotherly Love led to life sentences for nine MOVE members in 1978, and the bombing of the MOVE residence in 1985, killing eleven members, including five children.
Social media companies, from Zoom to Facebook and Twitter, are reinforcing Israel’s erasure of Palestinians.
Entrenched in anti-racist theory and practice today is the belief that all racial and ethnic domination is structured around a global hierarchy, with “white” people at the top and “black” people at
Activists and community organizers should be inspired by the work of elders engaged in social change.
There is a need and desire among folks in activist communities for resources of ritual and spiritual grounding.
Remains that were found to be those of a Black MOVE teen-ager who was killed by Philadelphia police in 1985 were treated as an anthropological specimen.
