1985 MOVE bombing to be remembered as Philadelphia City Council calls for "reflection" 40 years later

CBS News ^ | 05/09/2025 | Joe Brandt

[Kid Shelleen]

May 13, 2025, will mark 40 years to the day after the MOVE bombing, when the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb on the headquarters of the Black liberation, back-to-nature group's Osage Avenue headquarters.

The bomb started a fire that ended up destroying more than 60 row homes in the West Philadelphia neighborhood. Five children and six adults in the MOVE house were killed. All shared the adopted surname Africa.

---

TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: anarchists; banglist; crime; domesticterrorism; move; philadelphia; terrorists

[Kid Shelleen]

After 40 years still a case study in political extremism and blue city incompetence.

[Kid Shelleen]

**** PA Ping ***

[ClearCase_guy]

Followed by Waco and Ruby Ridge. The Democrats take out their enemies with extreme prejudice.

Meanwhile, the Republicans play Nice-Nice, because — you know — if we did anything mean ... well ... who know what the Democrats would do when they got the chance??

Hint: They’ve been doing it since at least 1963.

[GaltAdonis]

Dang, that was 40 years ago?
I remember that very clearly.

[cpdiii]

Move was a leftist anarchist organization taking illegal actions. They most definitely needed to be arrested and prosecuted.

What has always puzzled me is why the Philadelphia police dropped Tovex and C4 on them. Tovex is a very stable explosive derived from Ammonium Nitrate it is easy to handle safely. It is hard to set it off thus the C4 to make it go boom. C4 is also stable but a blasting cap will make it go boom. It was almost certain it would kill anyone close to the blast. It was probable it would start a fire. Natural gas for heating burns like hell.

Why did the cops not just keep shooting tear gas in until they came out?

[Highest Authority]

The whole thing was on tv live. The adults were criminals and the standoff lasted several days. Mayor Wilson Goode ordered the the attack as a last resort. They were warned, but refused to come out.

[Mouton]

Yeah, like they did with the SLA.

[Eurydice]

Mayor Goode ordered social workers to make periodic wellness checks on the MOVE family. Before a check police would alert neighbors and advise them to evacuate in the event of a violent confrontation. It became normal and routine to evacuate.
When I would visit my uncle I could hear the MOVE members digging a tunnel right underneath my uncle’s row house.
Early one morning my uncle and aunt ( with luggage already packed for a cruise to Hawaii ) were asked to evacuate as usual and with only coats and wallets walked to a nearby relatives home to wait it out. Unfortunately they never saw their home or cherished belongings again.
Several bodies were recovered from that tunnel!
The city awarded a contract to a shoddy contractor to rebuild the row houses. In the meantime all the displaced residents were relocated to low rent apartments.
Upon completion once everyone was resettled back to Osage Avenue, they were beyond despair to find uneven floors and thin easily damaged walls and ill fitting windows. There was a second relocation while everyone awaited another demolishment and rebuild.
During this time my uncle succumbed to cancer and my aunt was placed in a nursing home where she also lost her battle with the incompetence of the City of Philadelphia.

[No name given]

And it all started with the assassination of John F Kennedy.

[Chode]

they NEVER should have allowed the situation to get that far out of hand...

[lightman]

Pennsylvania Ping!

Please ping me with articles of interest.

FReepmail me to be added to the list.

[lightman]

The Filthadelphia Inky (Inquirer) habitually referred to MOVE as a “radical, back to nature compound”.

[NFHale]

I remember it well.

I also remember that they killed Officer Jim Ramp, shot him dead in the street and then shot at anyone trying to get to him.

They got what they deserved.

[Dr. Franklin]

Why did the cops not just keep shooting tear gas in until they came out?

Because they had a bunker on the roof of the building and in a previous confrontation with police in 1978 one cop, officer James Ramp, was shot dead, and 16 other police officers and firefighters were injured from the firefight. Firefighters were working a water canon to distract them and flood the basement of the house. Officer safety was a real problem.

MOVE was an anarchist group that used their children as hostages in the standoff with police. They called themselves a "back to nature group", while living in a squalid urban house without plumbing. After the '85 incident the joke locally was that MOVE members didn't need to go to bars because they could stay home and get bombed.

[cpdiii]

“Because they had a bunker on the roof of the building and in a previous confrontation with police in 1978 one cop, officer James Ramp, was shot dead, and 16 other police officers and firefighters were injured from the firefight. Firefighters were working a water canon to distract them and flood the basement of the house. Officer safety was a real problem.

MOVE was an anarchist group that used their children as hostages in the standoff with police. They called themselves a “back to nature group”, while living in a squalid urban house without plumbing. After the ‘85 incident the joke locally was that MOVE members didn’t need to go to bars because they could stay home and get bombed. “

Good answer to my question. The whole damn thing was bizarre.

[Dr. Franklin]

Good answer to my question. The whole damn thing was bizarre.

Yes, the police commissioner decided to drop the bomb because he lost patience. I vaguely remember that they had tried to enter the house through the basement of an adjoining property, but that was unsuccessful due to a shootout. Lives and property could have been saved by waiting them out a little more. It was a hostage situation. A jury determined it was excessive force, and innocent children died. If the point was to save the kids from the lunatics, the operation failed.