I grew up in North Philadelphia and and and had just started high school during the first Move police attack in 1978. I was a young adult living within eye sight of the fire bombing by the Philadelphia police in 1985. Both events were horrific. One perpetrated by the racist, fascist Rizzo police. The second was presided over by Philly's first Black Mayor, Wilson Goode and the crazy and racist chief of police he appointed.
You are missing some context in describing Move as a Black Liberation Organization, which doesn't describe the reality of Move. They were a Black Nationalist back to nature group, who let their kids run around naked, which appalled the Black majority communities they were in and in the case of Osage Ave., they used a bullhorn to deliver rants to the community at all hours of the day and night. I'm not excusing either mayor, the cops, or anyone involved in the shootings in 1978 or the 1985 fire bombing. There were dozens of options to deal with the nuisance complaints, by the Move Family's Black neighbors, who just wanted the rants to stop and the trash and compost piles they created, to stop.
There seems to be another inaccuracy stating that museums have Move members remains on display. I believe as a result of the Move Commission (a joke of an investigation), The Medical Examiners Office asked anthropologists at Penn Museum to help identify the remains and it seems they were not careful over the years and didn't return all of them to the Africa Family but have pledged to make sure that any that continue to come to light will be returned. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that they were ever used for an exhibit so unless there's another museum, as you did use the plural of museum please name them.
When I heard about the bombing of Row Houses (?) in Philadelphia I was shocked. Who had authorized this mass killing? As I recall after the enitial news cycle there was not much said, but I do remember a magazine article about the bombing.
I remember watching it on the news. I was a kid and lived just outside of Philly. The mayor gave permission for them to drop the bomb. It was horrifying.
I would add, as you and others herein have, that the Trump administration and its supporters only wish to selfishly use extremist views of society based not on common aspirations but on suspicions and fears in order to politically de-legitimize those persons and those human choices which they fear and poorly understand [understand based on personal experience].
The harms we are witnessing by the governance authority that they now claim are expressions of their belief that they can remove public legitimacy of people and remove protections of law and human norms.
Our common task is, by choice and through cooperation, to bring common aspirations and common sense mutual respect and mutual effort to bear on informing the public space with the lawful protections that respect personal choice-making and personal accountability. Common sense is robustly informed by facts and lessons from history [through out it].
Working at this task cooperatively is the only tangible and share-able basis of contemporary experience which will present alternative paths in our society for achieving ordinary well-being and security and, in so doing, will diminish and dispel Trump et al in their selfish pursuits and in their attempt to use de-legitimization, force and human oppression.
Thank you, Qasim, for this rememberance and the very necessary assessment.
It is a personal and conscious choice to put effort into understanding history's lessons and divergent aspirations into other than distorting propaganda type of understandings of history and of the potential to choose a novel and better future together.
The MOVE bombing incident is an outrage, an expression of hatred based on exaggerated fears and misunderstandings. Those of us who chose to publicly condemn the bombing were silenced by being publicly ignored, publicly despised and mislabeled.
I believe that America's original, post Amer Revolution transition from federation of independent states to a nation of incorporated states within a framework of a self-governing, constitutional democracy, which was properly amended by the 14th Amendment and the other Construction era constitutional amendments, represents a conscious and shared aspirational effort. This aspirational aspect, and the fact of these public aspirations being informed by a very broad base of the people, constitute very significant conscious self-governance tools in a society expressing genuine democratic and self-governing, rule of law structures and procedures.
Aspiring is very different in character from fearing and coercing.
This democratic aspiring together is in marked contrast to an understanding of popular governing that is grounded in suspicions, fears, and in confidence in the use of coercion/domination/control and that permits political de-legitimization of some or many by those with resources and power to do so.
Living within a constitutional framework for democratic social aspiration and inclusive democratic participation means:
within a conscious environment informed by constitutional democratic self-governing, by design inclusive, with equal protections-responsibilities along with coauthored, co-inform-able due process framework for discussion and agreement;
aspiring by the people can be accompanied by some lack of success, but in this conscious environment, it - aspiring - is not an occasion for loosing legitimacy nor for loosing opportunity for further aspiring within society;
hence, the mandatory [not optional or 'waive-able' ] character and purpose of equal protection and due process;
the latter are examples of necessary understandings and tools, the legitimating civil social constitutional shared tools and shared political environmental resources; all are in, all may choose to make contributions, any contributions may be democratically incorporated, modified, or left unused, and the legitimacy of each and all is present, whole, un-compromised;
honest choice and action and voluntary, willful mutual respect and respect for the constitutional norms and procedures form and are part of foundation of self-understanding and social-self-understanding.
Aah my second home, Philadelphia. I love you, but you also break my heart. 😞💔 Temple University has teamed up with the Philadelphia Inquirer for an in-depth podcast series of the MOVE bombing.
Thank you for highlighting this moment in history. I did know about this, and am unsurprised many do not. Black anti-establishment group in a Black neighbourhood…
I was no longer living in the US and the Canadian media coverage seems to have been confused at best, possibly deliberately misconstrued. I remember the bombing as targeting the Black Panthers. Was Move affiliated, or was there another bombing of the Black Panthers. ?! I am fairly sure that the detail you provided was missing from initial reports. This is how black history is erased. The resurrection of these heinous events, with the clarity of hindsight is valuable history and useful explication for many current white supremacy attitudes and events. The white establishment quails at every revelation of its bloody violent past and goes into violent overdrive to bury the news once again.
Yakoke a nakfi (Thank u, my brother) x0x Yakoke for lifting up this history and honoring the memories of the loved ones who were lost in the MOVE bombing and the Tulsa Race Massacre. I really appreciate you shining a positive, respectful light on MOVE. They were so demonized and dehumanized by the white power structure in Philly. I still remember that day in 1985 vividly. I was a senior in high school on the South Side of Chicago, excited about graduation and summer -- and my college journey ahead in the fall. My heart shattered watching the footage of the bomb being dropped and the inferno that erupted in the neighborhood. I remember sobbing hard on the floor in front of my ishki (mom) with my head in her lap as she tried to console me while tears streamed down her own face. I'll never forget the long conversations we had that night about what she lived through during jim crow and the history she shared with me about the bombs that were dropped during the Tulsa Race Massacre. More brutal lessons on the deadly white nationalist framework of this country and the vitriolic, poisonous fruits of racism were seared into my soul that night. Be well a nakfi. Keep dropping the breadcrumbs for folks to follow and learn. This history is American history...and it belongs to ALL of us.
It was not the United States government. This was an Ariel bombing by the Philadelphia police department during an armed stand off with a black liberation party called MOVE. After the police were fired on from a house they dropped explosive devices onto the roof of a house. Yes they allowed it to burn out of control for 90 minutes leaving 250 homeless , 6 adults and 4 children died as a result.
I grew up in North Philadelphia and and and had just started high school during the first Move police attack in 1978. I was a young adult living within eye sight of the fire bombing by the Philadelphia police in 1985. Both events were horrific. One perpetrated by the racist, fascist Rizzo police. The second was presided over by Philly's first Black Mayor, Wilson Goode and the crazy and racist chief of police he appointed.
You are missing some context in describing Move as a Black Liberation Organization, which doesn't describe the reality of Move. They were a Black Nationalist back to nature group, who let their kids run around naked, which appalled the Black majority communities they were in and in the case of Osage Ave., they used a bullhorn to deliver rants to the community at all hours of the day and night. I'm not excusing either mayor, the cops, or anyone involved in the shootings in 1978 or the 1985 fire bombing. There were dozens of options to deal with the nuisance complaints, by the Move Family's Black neighbors, who just wanted the rants to stop and the trash and compost piles they created, to stop.
There seems to be another inaccuracy stating that museums have Move members remains on display. I believe as a result of the Move Commission (a joke of an investigation), The Medical Examiners Office asked anthropologists at Penn Museum to help identify the remains and it seems they were not careful over the years and didn't return all of them to the Africa Family but have pledged to make sure that any that continue to come to light will be returned. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that they were ever used for an exhibit so unless there's another museum, as you did use the plural of museum please name them.
When I heard about the bombing of Row Houses (?) in Philadelphia I was shocked. Who had authorized this mass killing? As I recall after the enitial news cycle there was not much said, but I do remember a magazine article about the bombing.
Mayor Wilson Goode
Horrific and chilling. And I never knew about this, not until today. Thank you, Qasim.
I remember watching it on the news. I was a kid and lived just outside of Philly. The mayor gave permission for them to drop the bomb. It was horrifying.
He gave the order to Sanbor, the Chief of Police at the time.
Thank you so much. I was an adult when this happened and I had no idea. What a sad state of affairs. So important that you wrote about this horror.
It continues to shock me that there are white people today who firmly believe that there is no racism in the United States.
I would add, as you and others herein have, that the Trump administration and its supporters only wish to selfishly use extremist views of society based not on common aspirations but on suspicions and fears in order to politically de-legitimize those persons and those human choices which they fear and poorly understand [understand based on personal experience].
The harms we are witnessing by the governance authority that they now claim are expressions of their belief that they can remove public legitimacy of people and remove protections of law and human norms.
Our common task is, by choice and through cooperation, to bring common aspirations and common sense mutual respect and mutual effort to bear on informing the public space with the lawful protections that respect personal choice-making and personal accountability. Common sense is robustly informed by facts and lessons from history [through out it].
Working at this task cooperatively is the only tangible and share-able basis of contemporary experience which will present alternative paths in our society for achieving ordinary well-being and security and, in so doing, will diminish and dispel Trump et al in their selfish pursuits and in their attempt to use de-legitimization, force and human oppression.
Thank you, Qasim, for this rememberance and the very necessary assessment.
It is a personal and conscious choice to put effort into understanding history's lessons and divergent aspirations into other than distorting propaganda type of understandings of history and of the potential to choose a novel and better future together.
The MOVE bombing incident is an outrage, an expression of hatred based on exaggerated fears and misunderstandings. Those of us who chose to publicly condemn the bombing were silenced by being publicly ignored, publicly despised and mislabeled.
I believe that America's original, post Amer Revolution transition from federation of independent states to a nation of incorporated states within a framework of a self-governing, constitutional democracy, which was properly amended by the 14th Amendment and the other Construction era constitutional amendments, represents a conscious and shared aspirational effort. This aspirational aspect, and the fact of these public aspirations being informed by a very broad base of the people, constitute very significant conscious self-governance tools in a society expressing genuine democratic and self-governing, rule of law structures and procedures.
Aspiring is very different in character from fearing and coercing.
This democratic aspiring together is in marked contrast to an understanding of popular governing that is grounded in suspicions, fears, and in confidence in the use of coercion/domination/control and that permits political de-legitimization of some or many by those with resources and power to do so.
Living within a constitutional framework for democratic social aspiration and inclusive democratic participation means:
within a conscious environment informed by constitutional democratic self-governing, by design inclusive, with equal protections-responsibilities along with coauthored, co-inform-able due process framework for discussion and agreement;
aspiring by the people can be accompanied by some lack of success, but in this conscious environment, it - aspiring - is not an occasion for loosing legitimacy nor for loosing opportunity for further aspiring within society;
hence, the mandatory [not optional or 'waive-able' ] character and purpose of equal protection and due process;
the latter are examples of necessary understandings and tools, the legitimating civil social constitutional shared tools and shared political environmental resources; all are in, all may choose to make contributions, any contributions may be democratically incorporated, modified, or left unused, and the legitimacy of each and all is present, whole, un-compromised;
honest choice and action and voluntary, willful mutual respect and respect for the constitutional norms and procedures form and are part of foundation of self-understanding and social-self-understanding.
The US government is guilty of so many, many horrible things that it is not necessary to make up fake history ,about things it had nothing to do with
I will have to scrutinize the posts by this individual more carefully, and not assume that they are factually correct
Aah my second home, Philadelphia. I love you, but you also break my heart. 😞💔 Temple University has teamed up with the Philadelphia Inquirer for an in-depth podcast series of the MOVE bombing.
https://news.temple.edu/news/2025-04-30/temple-partners-inquirer-podcast-series-move-bombing
Thank you for highlighting this moment in history. I did know about this, and am unsurprised many do not. Black anti-establishment group in a Black neighbourhood…
There was a good podcast about the MOVE bombing and MOVE itself on Code Switch that I highly recommend. https://open.spotify.com/episode/5YEHey9bf2Ymbu7vM9vpFq?si=kvoXJABiSqupKB1foPRnIg
I was no longer living in the US and the Canadian media coverage seems to have been confused at best, possibly deliberately misconstrued. I remember the bombing as targeting the Black Panthers. Was Move affiliated, or was there another bombing of the Black Panthers. ?! I am fairly sure that the detail you provided was missing from initial reports. This is how black history is erased. The resurrection of these heinous events, with the clarity of hindsight is valuable history and useful explication for many current white supremacy attitudes and events. The white establishment quails at every revelation of its bloody violent past and goes into violent overdrive to bury the news once again.
Yakoke a nakfi (Thank u, my brother) x0x Yakoke for lifting up this history and honoring the memories of the loved ones who were lost in the MOVE bombing and the Tulsa Race Massacre. I really appreciate you shining a positive, respectful light on MOVE. They were so demonized and dehumanized by the white power structure in Philly. I still remember that day in 1985 vividly. I was a senior in high school on the South Side of Chicago, excited about graduation and summer -- and my college journey ahead in the fall. My heart shattered watching the footage of the bomb being dropped and the inferno that erupted in the neighborhood. I remember sobbing hard on the floor in front of my ishki (mom) with my head in her lap as she tried to console me while tears streamed down her own face. I'll never forget the long conversations we had that night about what she lived through during jim crow and the history she shared with me about the bombs that were dropped during the Tulsa Race Massacre. More brutal lessons on the deadly white nationalist framework of this country and the vitriolic, poisonous fruits of racism were seared into my soul that night. Be well a nakfi. Keep dropping the breadcrumbs for folks to follow and learn. This history is American history...and it belongs to ALL of us.
Thank you so much, Qasim, for this brilliant and timely post. On point in every respect.
It was not the United States government. This was an Ariel bombing by the Philadelphia police department during an armed stand off with a black liberation party called MOVE. After the police were fired on from a house they dropped explosive devices onto the roof of a house. Yes they allowed it to burn out of control for 90 minutes leaving 250 homeless , 6 adults and 4 children died as a result.
I remember that.