One of the biggest stumbling blocks one runs into when criticizing MOVE is the absolute horror of May 13th, 1985. The atrocity of May 13th is so extreme that many feel uncomfortable criticizing MOVE for fear of appearing to side with the police and authorities. The thought of police dropping a bomb on a row home and murdering six adults and five children in a residential Philadelphia neighborhood while the whole world watched is unimaginably horrific. Add in the fact that this bomb was dropped in a Black neighborhood, on Black people, by a police department that is notoriously racist, brutal, and corrupt and the picture seems to become clearer.
The events leading up to that tragic day in May will require a lot more thinking and writing in order for me to fully reorient my understanding in light of what I’ve learned from survivors, like Whit Simms, who spent a great deal of time in the Osage Ave. house before the bombing. None of that new information, however, can change the fact that what happened on that day never should have happened, and that the city, state, and federal authorities are guilty of a number of crimes. The focus of this piece, however, is not on that specific day, and the days that led to it but on how May 13th has functioned within MOVE in the years since 1985.
Many, like John Gilbride, have been drawn into MOVE due to the mix of sadness, confusion, and outrage that often accompanies learning about the bombing. Ramona Africa has likely spoken in front of millions of people about being the sole adult survivor. When people hear about her experience they want to help, and often end up lending some sort of support to MOVE. This drawing in support for MOVE is one way that May 13th functions within MOVE. The civil suits that followed the bombing also paid out millions to Ramona and all of the parents (all were imprisoned) of the children who were killed. Alberta Africa took control of this trust by being named as a trustee (she was not a beneficiary) and manipulating imprisoned members into allowing her to have full access to the funds which she has, unsurprisingly used to her own benefit.
A less obvious function of May 13th is that it has provided the cult leaders who have run MOVE since the late ‘80s a mandate to get away with essentially anything they’ve wanted. To be clear, I don’t believe that the corruption and abuse within MOVE started after 1985. I believe that the patterns we’re currently highlighting and uncovering likely go back to MOVE’s inception. MOVE has always been a destructive cult that masquerades as a revolutionary group with a back-to-nature religious belief. Before 1985 the August 8th, 1978 confrontation or the victory of John Africa in the 1981 Federal trial functioned similarly, but 1985 was so much more extreme, so much more horrific, and Alberta Africa has been absolutely brilliant in making sure that a tragedy of that degree has not gone to waste.
There is nothing new about claims of child abuse within MOVE. The malnutrition of the children who were in the house during the 1978 confrontation is well documented, as is the fact that babies and toddlers were given almost no clothing and endured brutal Philadelphia winters with no heat or electricity. Philadelphia officials have always known that children in MOVE do not receive an education that even comes close to meeting minimum standards. However, MOVE’s willingness to go to war to the death to “protect their children from the imposition of the system” made the risk of confrontation with MOVE high enough that Child Protective Services, and every other authority that is supposed to intervene in situations like this, looked the other way. After May 13th this seems to have become an official policy for authorities dealing with MOVE.
In 2004 two longtime MOVE supporters publicly left and started this blog (which demonstrates how long this information has been publicly available, but without the survivors or other whistleblowers to come forward it was very difficult to get anyone to pay attention). When they left they reported the fact that Pixie Africa (now June Stokes) had been forced to get “married” and pregnant at the age of 12, and that the same thing had happened to many other teenage girls. This information should have started an investigation that would have uncovered a great deal more about what was happening inside 4504 and 4506 Kingsessing Ave., but instead there was nothing. There was no response from Child Protective Services or any other Philadelphia authority. Since 1985 the city of Philadelphia has been absolutely terrified of the possibility of conflict with MOVE and has done whatever they needed to do to avoid it, even if that meant turning a blind eye to dozens of children who deserved protection and basic rights like any other child.
The firm binaries that MOVE sets up between MOVE and The System allow anyone who is critical of MOVE to be lumped in with the same government who dropped a bomb on MOVE. Inside MOVE the children were controlled by May 13th because going to school was part of the system that dropped the bomb. A young adult MOVE member was kicked out of a MOVE house for registering to vote because voting was tacit support for the system responsible for May 13th. Questioning the Guidelines or John Africa meant you were becoming systematic and were one step closer to joining the cops who wanted to murder MOVE. By leaving MOVE and challenging Alberta Africa for custody John Gilbride instantly became an enemy, and Alberta claimed that the only reason John had married her and had a child is that he hated MOVE and wanted to cause another May 13th.
When John Gilbride left Alberta Africa in 1998 and filed for custody of their son, Zack, Alberta told John that he would never win because Philadelphia officials would never challenge MOVE. She told John’s parents the same thing. On August 8th, 2002, John was awarded unsupervised visits on weekends and holidays and it was only a matter of a few weeks before all of us were called down to the Kingsessing Ave. headquarters to start breaking wooden pallets apart. As the slats were being nailed to the windows Alberta knew exactly the message that she was sending to city officials. She knew that the fear of another confrontation with MOVE gave her an unimaginable power.
Once Alberta turned her fairly routine custody case (other than the fact that it involved a cult) into a MOVE issue there was no way that she could back down. However, when she ordered that the windows at MOVE headquarters be boarded up to prepare for a confrontation she knew that there was almost no chance that Philadelphia officials would attempt to enter the house to forcibly take Zack. In 2002 Alberta lived in Cherry Hill, NJ but moved into MOVE’s West Philly headquarters in order to force the issue into Philadelphia where she knew that officials would work diligently to ensure peace with MOVE. However, John didn’t back down, even after MOVE declared war. This meant that MOVE could continue to live as if confrontation was imminent forever, or they could find another way to bring the standoff to an end.
John Gilbride was shot multiple times in the head and chest at close range as he sat in his car in front of his Maple Shade, New Jersey apartment after a long shift at the Philadelphia airport. It was almost midnight on September 26th, 2002. It was pouring rain and John had a court-ordered unsupervised visit with Zack the next day, a visit that Alberta had assured him would never happen. The official response to John’s murder was unusual at best. In Philadelphia, Civil Affairs Captain Fisher remarked to journalists that he didn’t think MOVE was capable of murder and he offered a counter-theory that John was murdered as a result of gambling debts. The fact that a police officer, who was not even a detective and had nothing to do with the murder investigation, would publicly weigh in on MOVE’s behalf is very strange.
I was heavily involved in the public campaign against John Gilbride. It is one of the biggest regrets of my life. After John’s murder, I was approached by Burlington County detectives in the parking lot of my job at the end of a shift. I was working for a landscaping company with three MOVE members and another MOVE supporter. As the detectives “interviewed” us we “gave them MOVE Law,” which essentially means that we talked in rhetorical circles until the detectives were too confused, frustrated, or exhausted to continue. About a month later a detective showed up on my front steps and gave me his card. That was it. I know firsthand that all MOVE members and supporters were handled with kid gloves. MOVE members went in for questioning on a strictly voluntary basis, and from what I understand from talking to them they also handled their interviews in the same way that we did in the parking lot.
In the intervening years, I am not aware of any follow-up interviews. I was never reapproached. To be very blunt, I think that the murder of John Gilbride has always been solvable. I think that it still is. I believe that Philadelphia officials refused to cooperate with NJ authorities and that Burlington County, NJ was terrified to take on MOVE in their court system. There are very good reasons for that fear. I also believe that Philadelphia officials have been aware of the red flags which indicated likely abuse within MOVE the entire time. The leadership of MOVE has been using May 13th as their mandate for 36 years. They have cynically exploited the murder of MOVE children; Zanetta, Tomaso, Delicia, Katricia, and Phil, to shield their own child abuse, financial exploitation, and, possibly, murder. If this blog can be even a small part of destroying that mandate in the interest of justice for children born in MOVE, John Gilbride, and many others, then the two decades I spent in MOVE will have been worth it.
