I started writing this piece by attempting to write about what MOVE’s beliefs actually are, because what you find out after a decade as a close supporter is miles away from what MOVE tells the general public. However, while writing I was amazed that I’d ever come to believe many of these things in the first place. My energy shifted into exploring the process that led me from being a 14-year-old high school freshman, anarchist, atheist, punk rock teenager to being a twenty-year-old who believed that John Africa was God. Before I go into detail about what MOVE actually believes, which I plan to do soon, I’ll explore the events that led me to become a true believer. I think this is important because this is part of the same pattern that leads people into cults and other authoritarian groups every day.
I first encountered MOVE through the writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal. I was fourteen and picked up a copy of “Live from Death Row” at a pamphlet table at a punk show. The way that Mumia wrote about MOVE greatly appealed to me. Their holistic worldview united my concerns around environmentalism, racial justice, animal rights, police brutality, and class issues. Within a few weeks, I sent money to the MOVE PO Box in Philadelphia and a few weeks later I had a copy of “25 Years on a MOVE”, a “Free the MOVE 9” button, and a “Welcome to Philadelphia” t-shirt.
My hometown happened to have a very active chapter of MOVE supporters and it didn’t take long for me to become involved with them. In the beginning, MOVE was just one of many groups I supported. I volunteered with animal rights groups, did support work for the Zapatistas, served the homeless with Food Not Bombs, and did MOVE and Mumia support work. Soon I came to see MOVE as encompassing all of those other causes and therefore working for MOVE was primary as I viewed doing MOVE support work as the union of all of those struggles.
In the beginning, I was uncomfortable with some aspects of MOVE, but there seemed to be so many redeeming qualities that I was willing to push past those feelings. I can specifically remember a moment thinking “this kinda feels like a cult” but I ignored the thought because the causes we were working on seemed too important. In the beginning, most of my support for MOVE was political. I was working to free the MOVE 9, but I had not adopted MOVE’s belief system. However, the more I was around close supporters of MOVE the more I started to feel comfortable with some of the beliefs.
As a rebellious teenager, I was looking for alternatives to a mainstream suburban lifestyle. I was open to a lot of experimental ideas and the idea of a predominantly Black group of people living a communal Thoreauvian lifestyle held a great deal of sway. Some of MOVE’s practices felt fairly easy to adopt. I was already a vegetarian so beginning to incorporate large quantities of raw fruits and vegetables into my diet didn’t feel like a big stretch. As I adopted some of MOVE’s ways I received a great deal of encouragement which led me to continue moving in this direction. Soon, by the time I was 15, a great deal of my diet was made up of the raw sweet potatoes, spinach, raw garlic, and other raw foods that encompass the diet that MOVE advertises (this is not actually how most MOVE members really eat, but that’s a topic for another blog post).
Another element of MOVE that was fairly easy to adopt was vigorous physical exercise. I was already a runner and the intense physical feats that MOVE reported their members accomplishing were appealing to me. I began to dramatically increase my physical workouts and received a great deal of positive feedback for doing so. On their own both of these things, vigorous exercise and eating lots of raw vegetables, have tremendous benefits, and MOVE certainly isn’t the only group who advocates these activities. However, as I came closer into the circle of MOVE’s orbit these practices began to take on a new function. If this had not happened I would likely have simply benefitted from my contact with MOVE without getting too close.
That’s one reason that writing about this can be tricky; 99% of the people who encounter MOVE never get pulled in so close that they begin to see the other side of MOVE, and as a result, they generally eventually move on, but with positive memories and associations. However, when I was 16 I ended up in a romantic relationship with a close MOVE supporter six years my senior who had much closer personal relationships with MOVE’s leadership. Entering into that relationship put me in regular contact with this leadership. It wasn’t long before I was calling MOVE headquarters to talk to Sue Africa (the real leaders of MOVE are Sue and Alberta Africa) once or twice a week and to get advice on nearly every aspect of my life.
If you do not know that Alberta Africa is the leader of MOVE and you do not refer to Sue as Ria, then you were never truly close to the real MOVE. Like all cults, there are intentional layers in order to contain information and access to the inner workings of MOVE. Because I was very close to MOVE I was taught to call Sue, Ria, and to call Alberta, Bert. It was immediately clear that they gave firm instructions to everyone else in the group, including Pam and Ramona, and that their directions were beyond questioning. Sue/Ria and Bert were to be consulted about everything. At the time that I began receiving counsel from Sue/Ria, I was 16 and she was 47 (two years older than my mom). Ria intentionally took on a maternal role in my life that was designed to replace the relationship I had with my own mother (this did not work, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on her part).
As one passes from the outside to the inside of a cult it’s common to be pulled in with the tactic of love bombing. My first year of conversations with Ria were filled with her praising and encouraging me in over-the-top ways that made me feel as though I was special and had a potential that other MOVE supporters didn’t have. As a teenager who was struggling to find purpose and a counterculture to belong to this was intoxicating. Based on the way that MOVE had been portrayed to me they had become my revolutionary heroes and feeling so accepted by them was important to me.
A great deal of the love-bombing that I received was focused on the organizing I was doing around the cases of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the MOVE 9, the raw food diet I was adopting, and my intense exercise regimen. As these practices became more extreme I was given more encouragement from MOVE but also felt more alienated from my peers. Many cults use extreme exercise as a recruitment tactic. This can be a bit tricky to talk about because obviously, it’s healthy to exercise. However, the function that intense physical exercise serves within cults is to dramatically elevate endorphin levels so that the new recruit is essentially high from their extreme routine. The tactics cults use to shape recruits are very similar to tactics used by the military in boot camp and for much the same purpose. Another common tactic is an encouragement of sleep deprivation (which is also used as a control mechanism deeper within MOVE and in the military) or the encouragement of ritualized drug use.
By my senior year of high school I was often running 2.5 miles to school in the morning, running home in the afternoon, and going on another 5-mile run (sometimes a 10-mile run) that same afternoon. I was consistently doing 500 push-ups, 50 pull-ups, and 250 sit-ups a day. I was in the best shape of my life and I felt great. I was also completely single-focused. With this single focus and the encouragement, I was receiving from the group I began to associate what I was accomplishing with the group itself. I was told, “you were weak when we first met you two years ago, and look how strong you are now.” I was certainly accomplishing things physically that I couldn’t do before and this felt like a credit to the belief system of MOVE.
As my involvement with MOVE intensified so did this feedback loop. I increasingly identified with the belief system of the group as it already seemed to be working to improve my life. The advice that I was receiving from Ria, and other MOVE members, was no longer simply pertaining to physical health and politics, but now extended to psychology and every other domain of daily life. Much of MOVE’s belief is circular and slowly builds a series of thought-stopping platitudes into the consciousness of the initiate. In the next few days, I’ll spend many pages explaining what these actual thought-stopping beliefs are but for the sake of digestibility, I’m going to keep this post focused on how they function.
As you move farther into MOVE you hear a lot about “doing your work” and “trusting John Africa '', or “trusting Momma” (Momma is the way that MOVE refers to Mother Nature). All of these phrases are saying the same thing, which is that you should stop thinking for yourself and fully trust in MOVE’s belief system. The major problem is that you are also told that you are so distorted from “being raised in the system” (the system from MOVE’s perspective is anything outside of MOVE. The Black Panther Party is just as much a part of the system as the Republican Party) that you cannot properly understand MOVE’s belief. This creates a double bind where the only choice is to trust what you are being told by MOVE’s leadership, or leave the group. At that point, I was in too deep and had invested way too much of my own emotional energy into the group to just leave.
Once you’ve accepted that you can’t trust your own thought process as a result of “systematic training” then you’re ripe to be manipulated in numerous ways. One thing that’s tricky about this phase is that there are some immediate positive-feeling results that come from this submission of personal autonomy. Most religious traditions have practices aimed at stopping or stilling thought in order to be receptive to the divine. Hinduism has the Advaita Vedanta tradition, and Zen Buddhism and many other types of Buddhism have similar practices. Christianity even has apophatic traditions that are well described by mystics such as Meister Eckhart. However, these religious traditions also have other practices which are designed to ground the practitioner and to keep them on a balanced path.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t any abuse within these faiths, but because they’ve been tested for thousands of years they tend to produce more stable results than cults such as MOVE. Within MOVE, members and close supporters are taught that all of their thoughts come from “the system” and therefore they need to look to John Africa for guidance. MOVE teaches that John Africa is the only person who is without systematic training and is, therefore, the only person who knows the truth. However, John Africa died in the fire on Osage Ave. on 5/13/1985. Ria and Alberta Africa were the closest to John Africa (at least according to them), so following their advice is the best option (again, according to them).
An interesting thing happens when you give up your own personal autonomy and submit your will to something that feels more powerful than yourself. In the beginning, you feel absolutely amazing. The effect of believing that you’re part of a small group that has a directive to save the world is intoxicating. This belief also results in placebo-like effects. As I went through this process I gained confidence and was braver and more disciplined than I’d ever been. My life felt so filled with purpose that I was motivated and full of energy all the time. This placebo effect doesn’t last forever though, and as the cognitive dissonance builds it gets harder to pretend that things are okay.
As I was pulled further into MOVE the love-bombing started to slow down and eventually MOVE’s leadership said far more to make me question myself than to build me up. This change occurs slowly and when it happened to me I worked even harder to try to regain their approval. As an initiate, my potential and strength were emphasized, but after some years around MOVE, most of the feedback I received was critical. Around the time that the love bombing stops (other than when they need to pull you back in) another jarring thing happens; they begin to speak disparagingly about physical exercise.
It’s not as though they tell you that exercise is bad, but they always state that it’s not as important as “the mental work”. There is a constant insinuation that those in MOVE who are just exercising, eating raw food, and doing political organizing are not doing the real work and should be looked down upon. The real work, according to Sue and Alberta, is the mental work, which is essentially to submit your entire mind to John Africa. This is confusing for many reasons, not least of which is that it’s difficult to submit your mind to a dead man. However, in MOVE’s belief, John Africa is not just the man who founded MOVE but is also the force of the natural world itself. In MOVE’s view, John Africa and God are one and the same.
MOVE teaches that the mental work is primary, and if people are doing their mental work then everything else falls into place. They believe that the mental work will protect them from illness or any other problems, even if they’re doing nothing else to stay healthy. As a result of this teaching MOVE’s leader, Alberta Africa, has eaten a diet for decades that is less healthy than a standard American diet, barely exercises, and wonders why she has so many health problems. Despite poor results after decades of practicing “the mental work,” Ria and Alberta continue to teach that it is the only way.
As MOVE recruits get closer to the inner circle they typically stop most of the vigorous exercise they were so motivated to do as they were recruited in. Now, instead of being applauded an initiate is discouraged from exercising because they aren’t doing the real work. As a result, they no longer receive the positive psychological effects of exercise, and on top of that, the love-bombing stops. At that point, which for me took four or five years to reach, MOVE provides diminishing returns. The problem is that by the time most people reach that point they’re already hooked on the emotional roller coaster and the thrill-seeking chaos of life inside MOVE. Their ability to reason has already been compromised. The sunk cost fallacy comes into play here because so much has been invested that many double down on their commitment so that it doesn’t seem like the work that’s already put in has been pointless. At this point, I had also formed close personal relationships with MOVE members that I could not imagine leaving behind. I had invested my entire world into MOVE and it took me many years to disentangle my mind, and many years after that to disentangle other aspects of my life.