Posted on 08/16/2019 12:04:00 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
---SNIP----
But it was also the scene nearly 35 years prior, when more than a decade of animosity between an anti-establishment black liberation group and the city where it was based reached a fiery crescendo. It ended when police dropped a bomb on a rowhouse killing 11 people, including five children. Wednesday’s battle recalled the chaos in West Philadelphia on May 13, 1985 — but the buildup to each incident, and their outcomes, were very different.
MOVE, which is not an acronym, was founded in 1972 by Vincent Leaphart, who later took the name John Africa
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Nice to see the City has moved on from that kind of thing.
I was in Philly that day and watched the city burn. Most people I tell about it have no idea what I’m talking about.
Good old Mayor Rizzo.
Mumia Abu Jamal gained fame because he got close to MOVE and covered them from the inside as a reporter for WHYY, the Philadelphia NPR station.
I remembered that tragedy and here, in 2019 have but ONE question...
Will today’s media and Philly citizen’s utter one SINGLE word regarding the action of the Philadelphia Police showing sensible and true caution restraint this time.
I bet not a word....not a single word of “Well done” in these crazy days.
To the cops...”Well done.. six shot, but not a SINGLE fatality in a terrible situation.”
The only child survivor - “Birdie Africa” - accidentally died in a hot tub on a cruise ship nearly a decade ago.
Ramona “Africa” isn’t going to be around too much longer: https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/ramona-africa-move-survivor-city-bombing-osage-1985-20180821.html
By the way, one of the members of MOVE was a white woman.
about a year ago I asked my 30 year old son if he’d ever heard about it?
NO.
He went on Youtube and watched in amazement.
Mayor Ratso Rizzo, what a hack.
“Most people I tell about it have no idea what I’m talking about.”
There are theories about why that is: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/18/407665820/why-did-we-forget-the-move-bombing
I remember that well at the time. I did not live anywhere near Philly.
To be honest I am amazed that the Philly cops, after so many of them were shot, didn’t make this guy dead.
Course I would bet the farm his time spent in a Philly jail is not going to be pleasant.
Philly mayor at the time was Wilson Goode, not Rizzo (FWIW: Goode was Philly’s first black mayor).
I was there on the street in 85 as a sophomore at lower merino high school
I loved close to overbrook and Osage ave was walkable
One Wilson Goode , mayor , dropped that bomb and let the whole block burn to the ground killing most of the “ family “
Firefighters were told to stand down so as not to get shot
one of the more surreal things I’ve ever seen in my adult life - the other was the 1991 Oakland firestorm where I was there on bike long before firefighters and road closures
if Wilson good was not a black mayor , Dropping that bomb on all those black people and burning them to death,there would’ve been riots in the street every day for months
but the fact that he was black meant it just all get swept under the rug like
“ oh well ! the mayor dropped a bomb on a city block burned to the ground and killed a bunch of people A la David koresh
It was actually Philadelphia’s first black mayor, W. Wilson Goode.
“if Wilson good was not a black mayor , Dropping that bomb on all those black people and burning them to death,there would’ve been riots in the street every day for months
but the fact that he was black meant it just all get swept under the rug like
“ oh well ! the mayor dropped a bomb on a city block burned to the ground and killed a bunch of people...”
Tell that to the then serving police & fire commissioners — both of whom were left holding the political bag for the first black mayor. During the televised hearings it was almost as if Wilson Goode was suddenly ‘invisible’. He went from being very high-profile to virtually non-existent.
Wilson Goode was no good.
That MOVE bombing was a disaster.
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