Due to increased interest in, and exposure of, the control tactics in Scientology more people have become aware of the practice of “fair game”. Though this term was coined within Scientology, it's a very common control tactic within many cults, including MOVE. Within Scientology, anyone who leaves the group, or does anything at all against the group becomes fair game for character assassination, harassment, illegitimate lawsuit, or worse. Scientologists attempt to get people fired from their jobs, start websites to spread misinformation about individuals, and stalk and harass targets. This is exactly what MOVE did to John Gilbride and the Gilbride family in the years before he was murdered.
In the coming months, I’ll be writing in much more depth about the harassment campaign against the Gilbrides. I’ll be posting original documents (I’m a meticulous filer and saved every flier I ever copied and every letter I received. After all, I thought everything I was doing was righteous and felt I was preserving an important historical record), including the fliers that were distributed in the neighborhoods of John and of the Gilbride family. Today I’ll be reflecting a bit on how John went from being a MOVE supporter who was beloved by MOVE children (listen to trailer #3 of the “Murder at Ryan’s Run” podcast) to being an acceptable target for character assassination, and eventually murder.
John took an interest in MOVE when he was 17. From his friend’s house in Delran, NJ he was horrified as he watched the news and saw images of a bomb being dropped on a row home in West Philadelphia, 20 miles away. He was devastated that something like that could happen in America and soon after he began writing letters to Ramona Africa who had just been imprisoned. John attended the demonstration on the first anniversary of the bombing on May 13th, 1986. He wrote many letters with the MOVE 9, and with Ramona, Sue (Ria), Alberta, and others were in prison at the time.
John came into MOVE in much the same way that I did a bit more than a decade later. He was young and idealistic and he wanted to help people. John did support work for MOVE prisoners; he attended demonstrations, wrote letters, copied fliers, and made phone calls. When he graduated from high school he went to Temple University where he was geographically much closer to the MOVE members who were out of prison. At that time there were only a few adult MOVE members who weren’t incarcerated, and they were caring for a house full of children (many of them were the children of incarcerated members). John frequently visited that house. He took the women shopping, he played with the kids, and he came to love and care about them.
John likely felt the same way I did when I moved to Philly in the summer of 2001; like he was being warmly welcomed into a family. Alberta was released from prison in 1988 and eventually, she married John, 20 years her junior. Typically the people who are pulled by Alberta’s gravity are kept at a remove from the rest of MOVE. Based on my experience and the experience of others I can surmise that once Alberta claimed John he was not at demonstrations as often, or driving other women to get groceries. He was almost certainly spending the majority of his time attending to the desires of Alberta.
I’ve already written in some depth about John leaving MOVE and the custody case that developed, and I will continue to fill in details in the future. In this piece my focus is on the image MOVE members painted of John when I became deeply involved in MOVE, and how that contributed to making him an acceptable target. I can’t remember the first time I heard the name John Gilbride, but I know it was before I was a full-fledged true believer in MOVE’s worldview. It was likely the spring or summer of 1999 as we diligently prepared for August 8th of 1999, when dozens of MOVE members were gracing our chapter of Friends of MOVE with their presence for a demonstration marking 21 years since the MOVE 9 had been imprisoned. I was fresh off the heels of attending the impressive “Millions4Mumia” demonstration in Philly on April 24th, 1999, and I was beyond inspired.
I remember hearing whispers of a custody case within MOVE that was some sort of government plot to destroy the Organization, and thus the movement for Mumia. I remember that it all seemed very strange and that this man named John Gilbride had been married to Alberta Africa, who had apparently been the wife of John Africa. I had never heard of Alberta before and I had already been studying MOVE for two years. As I entered a romantic relationship that brought me closer into MOVE I learned much more about the custody case. I was told that a young white man named John Gilbride had been sent into MOVE in order to have a child with Alberta and then start a custody dispute so that the government had an excuse to attack MOVE. The story wasn’t consistent and sometimes there were whispers that his father had been an intelligence agent.
When I moved up to Philly in 2001 the custody case had heated up quite a bit and was being discussed much more publicly. As I got closer with MOVE members I asked about John; “What had he been like before he left MOVE?”, and “Had he been a loyal MOVE supporter at one point?” I was trying to understand how a guy like the one they described had even ended up married to someone as important as Alberta seemed to be. What was strange was that to almost everyone I asked John was a ghost. He was a non-person. It was like he had never even existed in MOVE at all. Most people would say “I really didn’t know John very well”, or “He wasn’t really an activist, he never did MOVE support work”. This all seemed very strange. How on earth did John end up married to a woman that I was learning was such a powerful force within MOVE if he had never even been a MOVE supporter?
I now know and understand that John was a dedicated supporter and activist in exactly the same way I was. I know, based on talking to people who have left MOVE and based on photographs, that he went on prison visits, he played games with the kids, and he felt that he was loved. All that it took for him to go from being a beloved member of the family to a non-person was for him to challenge Alberta, and for her to designate him an enemy. After John left in 1998 no one talked about him anymore. Children were punished if they spoke about him in a positive way. I can only imagine that if someone were to become a MOVE supporter today that I would no longer exist. The thousands of miles I drove people to prisons will not have been driven. The days Maiga and I spent at the beach or the amusement park with MOVE families will never have occurred. If you ask anyone who is still a committed MOVE member anything about me they will likely tell you they didn’t know me very well, even if I used to sleepover at their house.
I will spend many pages documenting the campaign of character assassination against John. But first, it’s important to understand that before he could be turned into a CIA agent, or an abusive dad, or an opportunist, John had to be turned into a ghost. Any positive association within MOVE about John had to either be turned into a void or a criticism. That’s the state that John’s memory continued to reside in even after his murder. Sometimes he was murdered by the government, sometimes he faked his own death and is currently sipping margaritas on a Caribbean shore, but most of the time he never existed at all. His murder never happened because he had never existed in MOVE.
In my current anger at what has happened within MOVE, I’m trying not to do the same thing. I’m trying to remember how warm Theresia was to me when I went through a breakup, how she stayed up talking with me almost all night long. I remember how much fun Pam is on a road trip and what a great laugh she has. I remember hours and hours of fun and off-the-wall conversations with Mike Jr. while we were landscaping together. Conversations with Eddie are some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in my life. I love how obsessed Janet was with memorizing facts from the World Atlas that I used to mail to her at SCI-Cambridge Springs every year. I can even think of dozens and dozens of happy memories I have of spending time with Bert and Ria.
I’m trying to hold all of these things at the same time. MOVE members are unique individuals with tons of redeeming qualities. But cults have patterns of their own, and those patterns often supersede the personality traits of individual members. I understand that not everything about MOVE is bad. There is still so much that I love. I can hold onto all of the positive memories and feelings about the people I just named, but I still believe that some of them know exactly what happened to John Gilbride, in the pouring rain, in the middle of the night, in the parking lot of Ryan’s Run apartments on September 26th, 2002.
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