In my conversations over the last three weeks, many people have remarked that MOVE children were one of the main reasons they felt comfortable with the group. Some people have even remarked that they would have classified MOVE as a cult if not for the fact that the children seemed so happy and well-adjusted. That was certainly the case for me. Even in 2007, when I started to break from the group as a true-believer and had serious concerns about the murder of John Gilbride, I still thought that the kids were pretty happy, and I really enjoyed spending time with them.
MOVE has often publicly said that their children are the proof of their teachings. They claim that MOVE kids have not been imposed on by the system in the same ways as other children, and as a result, they are stronger, healthier, and more content. When I first encountered MOVE in 1997 I learned about the strength of MOVE kids in the copy of “20 Years on the Move” that I sent away for. A year later I began attending demonstrations in Philly and I was energized by seeing The Seeds of Wisdom perform. The Seeds of Wisdom was the MOVE youth hip-hop group fronted by Mike Africa Jr. and included many other teenagers who were born in MOVE. Their youngest member, Pixie (now June) was 9 at the time and she was fierce on the mic, though she now describes herself at that time as sounding like a squeaky rapping mouse.
As I got closer to MOVE I spent a lot more time around The Seeds of Wisdom and started to get to know a lot of the other kids born into MOVE as well. I was inspired by the strength and commitment of my peers in MOVE. Many of them seemed to possess a confidence that I felt I lacked, and they were incredibly competent and skilled with trades such as carpentry, electrical, and plumbing. I was interested in learning such useful skills and gained a great deal working with them. When I moved to Philly in 2001, I enjoyed playing tag with the younger kids at Clark Park, playing soccer, or playing hide and seek in the cemetery by Cobbs Creek. At that time, and in my early 20s, I thought that when I had kids I would like them to be raised as MOVE children. The seeming simplicity and communal aspects of their childhoods seemed very healthy.
After I had my intellectual break from the group in 2007, I viewed many of MOVE’s practices more critically, including much related to children, but generally, I still had a positive view of the way children were treated within MOVE. I knew that it was far from perfect, but I thought that I’d had friends growing up who suffered from difficulties comparable to that of some of the children. That’s the way that I felt until June (Pixie) reached out to my wife, Maiga, this past March, and we all started talking. One of the first things that June revealed was what her experience of her own childhood had been, and how different her experience was from what was perceived by outsiders, even very close supporters like my wife and me.
June explained that when she met supporters like me for the first time when we actually got close enough to MOVE to come over to MOVE headquarters on Kingsessing Ave., that she and the other kids would be told that we (supporters who were coming around) were either rapists or government agents and that we were not to be trusted. The kids were told that we were sent into MOVE to collect information, or destroy MOVE, but they had to set a good enough example to sway us and make us come MOVE’s way. Children as young as toddlers were told that people who were invited into their homes were incredibly dangerous and that it was their responsibility to make sure that these dangerous people were neutralized. I can remember times when I was first starting to come around MOVE headquarters when I was left alone in a room with kids for a few moments. What in the hell could these kids have been thinking? How scared were they of me?
This specific fear of outsiders (even close supporters) served dual purposes. First, it ensured that the kids would never tell an outsider what was actually happening in the house, after all, they wouldn’t want to give a government agent an excuse to arrest their parents. Second, it forced the kids to put on a show that would impress supporters. I now understand that so many of the happy memories I have in those early years with MOVE kids were actually pop-up Potemkin Villages. June has explained that if she was feeling sick, injured, or depressed that she and the other children would be severely punished if they exhibited any of that “weakness” in front of an outsider. Had she demonstrated any of those things she would not have been demonstrating the power and wisdom of John Africa.
As I spent more time in MOVE and became closer and more comfortable with people I was allowed to see how some of the fear of outsiders was cultivated. I saw that MOVE kids were taught to call everyone who was outside of MOVE (including those doing political support for the Organization) “googas,” which essentially means monsters. That term was coined by a MOVE child in the late 90s, but there were other terms as well. It was common to hear kids in MOVE refer to all outsiders as “perverts,” or “misfits.” Despite MOVE having a lot of appeal in many Black Nationalist and Afrocentric circles, MOVE kids are taught to refer to Afrocentric activists (especially people wearing African garb) as “hunga-bungas.” Oddly, this same term was also often used to refer to white, crust-punk anarchists. This fear of outsiders seemed a bit extreme to me, but I justified it all by doubling down on the official MOVE narrative of its own history. I thought that it only made sense that a group that had faced so much persecution might have an over-exaggerated fear of the outside world.
As I’ve spent more time talking to June, Josh, Whit, Sara, Salina, Maria, and others raised in MOVE about their experiences I’ve made a conscious effort to refer to them as “children born in MOVE,” rather than “MOVE children,” or “MOVE kids.” I’m making this effort for the same reason that I try to say “enslaved people” rather than “slaves.” This may seem like an extreme comparison until you hear Whit, Josh, June, and others refer to their time at MOVE headquarters as time in prison, or you understand that young girls in MOVE (June was 12, but 13 to 15 are common ages) have been forced to have children against their will and have been denied medical care even if they tearfully begged for it.
In speaking with Josh this line of comparison continued when he explained how deliberately he has been denied an education, being punished for even attempting to gain literacy as a child. The denial of literacy in MOVE serves much the same purpose that Frederick Douglass brilliantly explains in his biographies. The MOVE claim is that even a basic education only complicates a child and that reading is part of the system’s training and can’t be separated from any other aspect of the system. In MOVE, the degree to which a child is educated is also dependent on their skin tone. Lighter-skinned children, like Maria, are typically given more access to a homeschooled education (though it is still far below minimum standards) and are more frequently groomed to speak publicly on behalf of MOVE. Dark-skinned children, like Josh, are more typically denied an education altogether, are not made into public figures, and dark-skinned boys are more likely to be steered towards manual labor. The absolute brilliance of people like Josh, Whit, Salina, June, Maria, and Sara is a testament to their own tremendous effort to become educated, and to some of their parents who pushed back against MOVE leadership. Their brilliance is not an endorsement of MOVE, but they are wielding their brilliance now as an indictment against what they have been forced to endure.
MOVE kids were raised to be the vanguards in a revolution of which they had no choice. They were forced into a mold so confining it led many of them to the daily contemplation of suicide. We supporters were told that they were the proof of the validity of MOVE’s belief. The Seeds of Wisdom would bear fruit that would influence nations, and would eventually reverse the course of human history. In a beautiful twist of fate, the children born into MOVE are leading their own path of liberation. They’re doing the deep work of healing and truth-telling that is allowing their own children (if they have them) to have more agency in deciding their own destinies. They’re holding onto so much of the beauty that all of us saw in the potential we wished MOVE had been. Yet they are not superheroes. They’re struggling through their days in the way that most of us do. They are doing heroic, terribly difficult things, but they feel the pressure of it all. This is not easy. It’s traumatic, and it’s scary as hell. They’re trying to break a pattern that has reverberated throughout their families for nearly fifty years, and they need our support.
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