This post was written by Maiga Milbourne, a former MOVE supporter and also my wife. It's important to understand that the abuses she focuses on in this article, though extreme and damning enough on their own, are a very small percentage of the history of abuses that will be revealed as things proceed.
This past week has been layers of hell. I worry about June (Pixie), who I love. I worry about other survivors coming forward or those who are too scared. I worry about my own family. Not just our safety but how we get to life on the other side.
Kevin and I pass our toddler back and forth while taking calls, answering emails, writing, checking on people, talking to psychologists, wait on promised responses, wait for approval from all affected parties. Honestly, Kevin more. I listen from the other room as texts ping in hearing him on the phone with survivors, seeing his grim face as new abuse-- worse than we’d previously known-- is disclosed.
I heard my own anguish reflected back on the phone. An old friend called. Crying, voice choked, “Maiga, I owe Pixie an apology. I was there. I saw her so young with a little baby. I owe her an apology.”
My own tears well up again. “I know. I did too. I think the best we can do is hear her now and as a community, come together to make sure we never make these excuses again.”
We talk about what we were told: this is just MOVE’s belief. Or worse. Victim-blaming a 12-year-old. Slut-shaming.
I think about being 20 years old and fresh from a major in Critical Social Thought at Mount Holyoke. Multiple centers. Foucault. Respecting Indigenous traditions. Postmodern theory. All of that was played on as I accepted the adults around Pixie telling me, in so many words, that they were protecting a pregnant preteen. That somehow this was her doing and now they were keeping her safe.
I didn’t know Pixie at that time. I was just meeting her so we hadn’t established trust between us. I wasn’t yet at a point where I could directly ask her about her experience.
But none of it sat right.
Those who are PMing, emailing, calling. They’re saying the same. That wasn’t right. Everyone knew it wasn’t right.
So why didn’t anyone say anything?
We were a community of activists. We were fighting for the freedom of political prisoners, namely Mumia Abu Jamal and the MOVE 9. We talked constantly about freedom for all Life. We talked about women’s rights and protecting the vulnerable. How did we not see this?
I think that’s the question.
If we are a community, we need to make agreements. We need to understand what we include, permit, protect, and accept. We need to know how to make our members safe. We need to have the freedom to ask questions when something seems off. We need to have agreed upon recourse, places to turn when something has to be set to right.
How do we account for this? How do we repair?
Collectively, we owe Pixie, and all the MOVE survivors an apology. We enabled their abuse. We gaslit them. We talked about freedom while they were held prisoner. We talked about fighting for our own while they were left alone.
My understanding of meaningful repair is first acknowledging the harm.
I’ll start.
To the MOVE survivors: I’m so sorry. I saw red flags and I excused them away. I allowed my desire for MOVE to be what it said it was to make me blind to the realities that would creep in. I am so sorry that I wasn’t more present and that I didn’t see your suffering. You didn’t deserve any of that. You deserved to have a community that saw you, protected you, and honored you. I’ll do what I can to do that now.
To my community: I want your help. Help me learn what we do next time. Help me figure out how we prevent this from happening again. Let’s learn together about how to protect one another. How can we build a movement that honestly protects its own?
I also see community members trying to minimize this abuse, DMing to verify that it wasn’t abuse that was that bad or that they know an organization who can mediate or don’t we need to forgive? I want to remind the community, the full story of the abuse has not been publicly disclosed for many reasons. So we know we don’t fully know. Let me say that again: barely a fraction of the details of abuse have been released. But we know enough. A woman has left MOVE who was forced into marriage and pregnancy at age 12. That’s enough. So trying to make this abuse more palatable is for our comfort and it undermines the survivors brave enough to trust us with their stories.
We can’t offer solutions when we haven’t yet heard the full story. We need to make ourselves a safe space to receive that story. We need to examine where we’re invested in MOVE being something other than what survivors are reporting.
Survivors aren’t asking for mediation to repair a disagreement. They’re asking for safety and protection from abuse. Real harm. Survivors are asking for accountability. It’s not on us to tell them what they need. Our job is to listen. And govern ourselves so that we never permit this abuse in our midst again.
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