In today's episode of Murder at Ryan's Run, Episode 5 - Ryan's Run, I am interviewed about my involvement in one of the actions that was part of the fair gaming of John Gilbride. The flier that I've posted below was left in every mailbox of Ryan's Run apartment complex in Maple Shade, NJ by myself and a few others on September 20th, 2002. We were acting on the orders of Alberta and Ria Africa, and the stack of fliers was given to me directly by Ria. The last mailbox we left a flier in was 304 Ryan's Run, John Gilbride's apartment. John was murdered while sitting in his car in front of that same apartment six days later.
I've said many times that participating in the campaign of character assassination and harassment that preceded John's murder is one of the biggest regrets of my life. At the time I was 19 and a true believer in MOVE's cause. Though I don't believe any of this exonerates me for my involvement, all of us had been led to believe that we were protecting Alberta and her son Zack from an abusive man who was trying to destroy MOVE and hurt the Mumia movement. Looking back now it's hard for me to understand how I came to some of the conclusions that I did at that time, but I was fully convinced that I was serving a just cause. This was one of many similar events that I participated in with other MOVE supporters. The flier below is not even the cruelest, but the fact that it was left at the location that soon became the scene of a murder, and that the fliering was done during the same week as the murder, makes it notable.
Earlier that afternoon MOVE supporters had gathered in front of the Cherry Hill, NJ City Hall to protest the fact that John Gilbride had been granted unsupervised visitation with his son. Alberta Africa declared that her ex-husband would never be able to visit his son without her being present. In order to prevent this visit, she weaponized support for MOVE, the MOVE 9, and some contingent of Mumia supporters and used us in a war against John. When John was granted unsupervised visits with his son on August 8, 2002, Alberta responded by having the windows boarded up at MOVE headquarters and preparing for war. MOVE supporters were called on to demonstrate and flier at so many locations that it's hard to keep track of them. Supporters (myself included) were sent to John's parents' neighborhood, hundreds of miles from Philadelphia, and even crueler fliers were left in every mailbox in their neighborhood. We returned a few weeks later and demonstrated in front of their neighborhood. At Alberta's insistence, we told their neighbors terrible things about them that had no basis in reality. We called John's job at US Air and attempted to get him fired. It was brutal, and then he was murdered.
The flier below is one of many that I'll be posting and contextualizing in order to help people understand what MOVE does with its enemies. Unfortunately for Alberta I save and file everything. June (formerly Pixie) was told by Alberta many times that if she didn't watch out she would end up like John Gilbride. Many others were told the same thing. When I started to push back against MOVE's leadership in late 2007 I was told to be careful because I was "starting to go down the road John went down." I'm hoping that by posting these fliers and telling these stories we may shine enough light on this case to get it solved. I'm also hoping that we can humanize John so that people understand that he joined MOVE with the best of intentions and did everything he could to try to protect his son.
Though I know it will make his life significantly more difficult in the short term and is extremely psychologically taxing, I hope that John and Alberta's son Zack is reading and that these documents might help him understand what actually happened to his father. This situation; the survivors, John's murder, the emotional stress that this puts on innocent people like Zack, it couldn't be more complicated. Even in all of this, some truly amazing and beautiful things have happened. Many people who have longed to leave MOVE and assert their own independence have done so. More attention has been drawn to John's case and people are beginning to understand how all of this fits together. Through this difficulty, I hope that more truth will be revealed and that this will help those who have been harmed to heal.
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