Couldn't figure out what those people did that was so bad.

It was the middle of West Philly, and they were living in their own garbage. They had reams of Sanitation Code violations, and then the child welfare services became concerned with the risk of disease to their children, and others in the neighborhood.

Over several months, the group refused to cooperate with police, the city, and their neighbors, and the situation escalated into an armed conflict.

Obviously, the solution by the Philadelphia police was more damaging than anything the MOVE protesters had done.

members of this group lived in a row house in the Powelton Village neighborhood in West Philly. I think there were like 13 people living in the household and they had constructed a wooden shanty structure on the roof where they had an amplified megaphone placed to make profanity-laced pronouncements all hours of the day and night. The folks on the block (and in these neighborhoods, there are 60 row homes per block - 30 on each side of the street) had had enough.

The problem here is that officials authorized the state police to gain entrance and somewhere along the line, that meant dropping C4 by helicopter onto the roof structure... And what made it worse was that once that roof caught on fire, the fire spread along the asphalt roofs of all the houses on that block. And due to the wind direction at the time, sparks jumped to the rear onto the roofs of the row houses on the other side of the shared back driveway, and from there it spread to another block. There were also reports that the firefighters had been ordered to stand down and let the fire burn - which in itself, was unconscionable. When all was said and done, some 60 houses on multiple streets, burned. This was what was left -



Meanwhile snipers were out there shooting at the house occupants as they tried to leave. There were only 2 survivors - Ramona Africa (who is still around) and a 13-year old boy (at the time) - "Birdie" Africa (who a few years ago died of a freak accident while on a cruise).

All of the houses were eventually rebuilt on the affected blocks except for the target address, which was purposefully and symbolically not replaced (although sadly, the new replacement houses that were built were done with shoddy construction that had to be repaired). In addition, the city had been ordered to pay out settlements to the 2 MOVE survivors. It was wall-to-wall coverage here in Philly at the time and yearly, becomes a stark and blunt reminder of the police state mentality.

As a sidenote - others mentioned Waco and Ruby Ridge but one could easily have added a more recent incident just 3 years ago next month - the-then recently fired black LA cop Christopher Dorner, who went on a shooting rampage after being fired, fled to the mountains, and got burned to a crisp for his troubles -



And the above happened after multiple innocent victims were targeted by police during the manhunt, including a Hispanic woman and her daughter out delivering papers who were treated to a hail of over 100 bullets fired into their truck because it "fit the description" of the suspect's car. Both were shot (one in the back and another in her hand).

These types of things need serious addressing.

the deaths. These assholes in Oregon are getting the kid gloves treatment. I'm wondering how it will all end. My hunch is not so well for them. Problem is, if they are excused like at the Bundy Ranch, to me, this will be the tip of the iceberg of many more shenanigans like this.

In Oregon right now.

disagree that only blacks get wiped out by the police/feds. What people are conceiving as being with kid gloves to me shows they have learned from their past mistakes.

backing down and/or looking the other way has never worked in the long term, to quell
or defuse a situation being provoked by a bunch of armed-to-the-teeth white assholes her-bent
on seditiously challenging the Federal guvmint to do this or that, whatever it is.

The fact that these same perps pulled a stunt like this not so long ago, and totally got away with it,
more than proves my point.

The white privilege is so stinking obvious!

If this was a Black or Hispanic armed group, they would be full of lead eons ago and everyone freaking knows it!

I can still remember as a kid following the Koresh drama. When that Branch Davidian compound went up in a blaze, it created a lot of anti-government sentiment. That was the end of storming into a place merely because someone was breaking the law. The Clinton admin botched that one badly. Might as well have stormed into a Buddhist temple and killed all the monks, as far as the public was concerned.

If these had been blurbs in the newspaper, popular opinion might never have changed.

The 85 one was ridiculous. Would never fly today.

Swapp and Singer families, holed up in Marion, Utah. Didn't end well.

that whole situation was a huge clusterfuck dating back many years before the bombing, including shooting at cops. I'll never forget looking toward W Philadelphia and seeing the horizon on fire or the pictures of Birdie Africa when he escaped the inferno....so tragic in so many ways.

or I dreamed it. But yeah, I guess it did.

different. Also, Philadelphia was found by federal courts to have deprived MOVE members of Constitutional rights and to have used excessive force. $1.5 million was paid to survivors as part of the settlement.
And of course Ruby Ridge and Waco sort of come in the same set of events.

was very interesting. They were animal rights activists long before there was a PETA and environmentalists before it became today's corporate "green" movement. The larger issue was that they were mostly a Black group who were very militant and they came along during the times immediately following the FBI's war on Black militancy had killed many of the movement's most prominent figures. The state resorted to outright extrajudicial assassination when it came to the Black Liberation movement, and MOVE should be seen in that context.

A young journalist named Mumia abu-Jamal was influenced by MOVE and did reporting on their story - we know what happened in his case.

Jamal killed a cop and was found guilty. I have seen nothing that shows him to be innocent. Your comparison is disturbing.

and him being found guilty by jury made up of people who weren't his peers and a hostile judge with ties to the FOP indicates that he was railroaded. The charges against many of those involved in the Black Liberation movement of the 60's and 70's pretty much had the same scenario: Cop pulls over Black suspect, gunfight ensues, cop is dead (this happened with Assata Shakur as well).

With all of the scheming of the FBI and COINTELPRO and their hatred of the Black Liberation movement, my instinct is that they were more than willing to sacrifice the lives of police officers in order to murder or jail Black activists. Mumia is alive today because people who've investigated the case and fought for his innocence have prevailed and have shown that his death row sentence was purely political and its intent was to silence him.

Waco, Ruby Ridge, and The Alamo.

They expect to die and probably want to die.

They will probably have no ammo on them just for effect. They will goad the police with empty weapons.

Their goals is to become martyred and start widespread violence.

The solution is (as unsatisfying as it is) to ignore them and let them fade away, their deaths at the hands of the Evil Black President to be denied.

He'd make Arpaio look like a boy scout.

First black mayor of Philadelphia was in office at the time of the MOVE debacle. I'm thankful that the various governmental agencies have not employed violence as their first resort in Burns. So long as the wheels of justice grind, I am OK if they grind slowly. These bozos (no offense to clowns) will, I believe, be dealt with.

Hopefully, we won't see a repeat.

Lets hope we don't make the same mistake again

Some police forces learned patience from the MOVE debacle, and some did not. The federal government had its own problems with Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidians, so they now prefer to wait it out instead of going in with guns blazing. The difference in the Oregon situation is that the occupiers are white, which means we have no demands from right wingers in Congress for the president to "do something." You can bet, if the occupiers were black, Fox News would be filled with members of Congress talking about how our weak-kneed president was allowing terrorists to take over the country.

in Oregon are still free to come and go.

WTH?

White privilege looms large with that.

I agree with waiting their asses out but for God's sake set up a perimeter where no one gets in, and certainly don't get out without being taken into custody and charged with sedition, trespassing and whatever other crimes they've obviously committed.

Anybody who wants to leave may do so. Nobody may enter. Seems simple enough to me.

That they did, and killed a bunch of kids and burned down a city block.
Then with massive corruption they rebuilt the block.
The rebuilt homes are still boarded up to this day

That was a screwed up mess that just would not end, for years

Bombing American citizens is never gonna be OK.

:grrr:

or does anyone else feel there been a lot of replies who have analogized the MOVE bombing, where cops murdered innocent American citizens, with a whole slew of instances where right wingers ended up dead after THEY started an armed conflict? When child molesting mass murderers like David Koresh who order their followers to fire on federal agents become your martyrs, chances are you really need to stop and think.

Its the history that's not taught in school.

Being old, I actually remember a lot of these events, and do agree you have a point, although much less so in the post Branch-Davidian days (although that was a mixed race group).

To give a counter example we could use the Yale Black Student Union take over of the ROTC lounge. If I recall correctly, they wanted it renamed "Malcolm X Lounge" and made black-only (or something; it's been ~45 years, Nixon was president I think). Anyway, some of them were armed, although most were not armed with anything other than blankets for a sleep in and a lot of marijuana.

I think they got the name, but not the black-only status. It was opened to the entire student body vs. just the ROTC.

One of the persons involved in the "siege" was one Eric Holder who I remember because he was connected to a Democratic campaign and we didn't want him to make an ass out of himself (he did not and was not one of the more hostile persons).

So, there you go. It's a counterexample of an armed siege by blacks that went along peacefully.

Of course, this was Yale and not the back woods of Oregon.