@BYLINE = BY BOB HELMS @DROP CAP = T<%-3>HE ANARCHIST COMMUNITY OF<%0> <%-2>Philadelphia hosted a discussion with Ramona Africa of MOVE at the A-Space on Baltimore Avenue on September 28, 1992. Over eighty people squeezed in for the hour-long talk and the hour-long question and answer session.<%0> Ramona is the only adult survivor of the City of Philadelphia's bombing- slaughter of eleven MOVE members, including five children, on May 13, 1985. She was released this past May after serving the maximum sentence of seven years on riot charges relating to the day of the state murders. @SUB HEAD LG = MEMBERS MASSACRED Riot, as Ramona explained during the talk, is the official term for sitting in one's own home and minding one's own business while hundreds of cops dump thirty-seven pounds of the military explosive C-4 (which cannot be used legally by police) and 10,000 rounds of ammunition into the house, burning it (and about sixty other homes) to the ground. Before the shooting began that day, the cops watched some of the MOVE women take the children out of the house, across police barricades, and into Cobbs Creek Park. (The park is one block <%-2>from the MOVE house, where the women would chat and the kids would play every morning of every year.) The cops then watched them go back, past the barricades and into the house. Then the cops proceeded to burn them all alive. Anyone, of any politics or any intelligence, can see that the city government deliberately exterminated these non-combatants, with obvious malice aforethought.<%0> While MOVE is not an anarchist group, and anarchists might not concur on every particular of MOVE's philosophy, anarchists and MOVE have far more in common than we have in contention. Based on John Africa's teachings, MOVE's mission is: first, environmental to stop industry from poisoning the environment and enslaving people and animals; second, educational to set the example of revolution for people to follow when they realize how they've been victimized and tricked by the government and the system in general, and to show people the need to totally divorce themselves from the system. I, for one, think that these purposes are in harmony with those of most anarchists. Ramona was a law student at Temple University when she began keeping track of MOVE's legal troubles and attended some of the trials. It became clear to her that none of the jurisprudence she'd learned in the classroom was being practiced before her eyes in court. All this began Ramona's life On The Move. Her training in law was well in evidence in the clarity and precision with which she presented her organization's case to the Philly anarchists. @SUB HEAD LG = MYTHS SHATTERED One by one, Ramona crushed the misconceptions about MOVE members, about the myths related to the 1985 siege at Osage Avenue, and about the 1978 police riot on Powelton Avenue. (These two sites are in different parts of West Philadelphia, each within a mile of A-Space.) Ramona crushed the myth that MOVE was insanely confrontational and had a siege mentality. The incessant and murderous attacks by police abundantly justified MOVE's defensive postures. She eradicated the misconception that MOVE lived in filth, filled their yard with garbage, and didn't teach their kids to read. To the contrary, MOVE members are perfectly clean and extremely healthy; they have discovered composting and teach the kids at home. (I've seen some of the MOVE kids. They're bright, happy-looking lively kids, who have wonderful dreadlocks.) Ramona also denounced the accusation that MOVE is a black-only, racist cult as totally false. While most members are African-Americans, there are very committed Hispanic and white members. MOVE's philosophy simply isn't racist. The surname Africa, adopted by all members, is a gesture of devotion to John Africa, MOVE's coordinator, and is not a fixation on Africa, the continent. @SUB HEAD LG = RESISTING REPRESSION The MOVE organization deserves all of the respect that anarchists can give it. If our movement were targeted for extermination by the government, how many of us would hold fast to our ideals so bravely and defiantly as Ramona and dozens of her comrades have held to theirs? Would YOU pass up parole, offered on the condition that you renounce anarchism and shun all of your anarchist friends? Ramona herself as well as Carlos, Alberta, Sue, Consuela, and Alfonso Africa all have resisted this powerful method of State coercion, sacrificing many years of liberty in doing so. I've been corresponding with Delbert Africa, who has been doing a thrity to one hundred year sentence since the August 1978 police attack at Dallas, PA. <%-2>The scenario of the attack went like this: a cop was killed, by one bullet, during a full-scale police assault upon MOVE's house. All evidence was either destroyed, created, or suppressed by the police, the DA, and the coroner. As a result, nine MOVE members got murder raps. Plenty of eyewitnesses say that the police officer was killed by friendly fire.<%0> @SUB HEAD LG = ON ANARCHISTS <%-3>Now some fourteen years have passed, and Delbert Africa sits in Dallas prison. He is familiar with anarchism, by way of anarchist inmates, and has read some of the movement's literature. <%-4>About the MOVE philosophy vis-a-vis anarchism, he writes: There shouldn't be any conflict per se, between any anarchist and MOVE, because we don't believe in any form of external government. . . . This system's foot is on all our necks, so all of us should work to get it off. <%0> <%2>I feel that the new world that we anarchists carry in our hearts ought to have plenty of room in it for the brave and committed militants of MOVE. Let's think of them as very much on our side. @END MARKER = @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @ _Love & Rage_ is a Revolutionary Anarchist newspaper produced @ by the Love and Rage Network. The Love and Rage Network is a @ continental network of groups and individuals in Canada, Mexico, @ and the United States. Subscriptions to the newspaper cost: @ $13 for first class (fast, envelope), $9 third class (slow, no @ envelope), $13 international (outside of United States), free for @ prisoners, GI's, published bimonthly. @ Please write to us at POB 3, NY, NY 10012 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@