The MOVE bombing (May 13th 1985) was where Philadelphia police in the US bombed the house of MOVE, a Black back-to-nature movement. Eleven people were killed. Five were children, ages 5 to 13. The police called the children “combatants”. The fire department stood right there and did nothing for an hour as the fire spread, destroying 61 houses in the mostly Black, West Philly neighbourhood.
No CVS pharmacy was damaged. The grand jury saw no crime. No one was ever sent to prison.
That was 30 years ago today. Mumia Abu-Jamal, who knows MOVE well, says that the military mindset and “violent contempt” shown by the police then has since spread across the nation and is now seen in Ferguson, Cleveland, Baltimore and elsewhere.
MOVE, formerly known as the Christian Movement for Life, was founded by John Africa in 1972. They wore dreadlocks, all had the last name of “Africa” and practised a natural lifestyle. They believed in animal rights and therefore were against zoos – and killing the rats that their compost pile attracted.
Nine were sent to prison for a hundred years each after they killed a police officer in a 1978 shoot-out. The police were carrying out a court order to kick them out of their house.
MOVE moved to 6221 Osage Avenue. Apparently fearing another shoot-out, they had a fortified bunker on top of the house. That in turn led the police to ask the FBI for military-grade bombs.
On May 13th 1985, the police tried to kick them out of their house again. The excuse was that neighbours complained about their “extremely unsanitary lifestyle” and their use of loudspeakers (demanding the freedom of the nine sent to prison). There were also charges of parole violations, contempt of court and illegal possession of firearms.
The fire department blasted the house with water. The police used tear gas and fired 10,000 bullets at the house for 90 minutes. After that everything went quiet. Without warning a police helicopter dropped two C-4 bombs on the house.
The house shook and caught on fire. Ramona Africa, who lived, never dreamed that the police would drop a bomb, so it took a while for her to understand what was going on.
The police shot on anyone who tried to leave the house. The grand jury said that MOVE stayed in the house because they wanted to commit suicide.
Besides Ramona Africa, only one other person lived, Birdie Africa, who was then still a boy.
This was when Wilson Goode was mayor, the city’s first Black mayor. But the person who made the on-the-ground decisions was Gregore Sambor, the (White) police commissioner. Goode had appointed Sambor police commissioner to fight police brutality. Sambor retired six months later to his beautiful stone house on a quiet, winding street.
The mayor appointed a commission to look into the bombing. They concluded that the bombing was “unconscionable”, that it violated the Fourth Amendment and that the deaths of the five children was not justifiable. But the commission had no power to do anything about it.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
518
Abagond 
SW philly, thats about 15 blocks from here
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[…] The MOVE bombing (May 13th 1985) was where Philadelphia police in the US bombed the house of MOVE, a Black back-to-nature movement. Eleven people were killed. Five were children, ages 5 to 13. The police called the children “combatants”. The fire department stood right there and did nothing for an hour as the fire spread, destroying 61 houses in the mostly Black, West Philly neighbourhood.Continue reading […]
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[…] Source: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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“Netflix” has a wonderful and incredibly sad documentary on this named “Let The Fire Burn”. All I could think of was, what did the people who complained about MOVE think of the city’s reaction to them?
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They believed in animal rights and therefore were against zoos – and killing the rats that their compost pile attracted.
When I moved to a working class neighborhood as a kid we had white neighbors like this. They were hippies and they made our house get roaches.
We never thought about killing them we just made in fun of their house stinking.
This is why America is a tyranny, even a small group of black people living like this, together in peace and harmony is enough of a threat that they need to be bombed from the air. I even noticed that in school and every time native black people live together and get along it always attracts attention and…fear and fear of other always makes people react violently. Many women are attacked for teaching each other skills like the PolyTechnique Massacre in Quebec which also took place in the 80’s.
That’s why on the one hand I get upset with people for caving to white approval and defending white interests but I think a lot of coonery is a “survival at any costs” instinct. Even if survival is as some kind of servant or slave.
People think black liberation was about violence but none of those liberation movements were. Just having a place of your own where you can live together as one and support each other, I find it hard to understand how non sexist/racist people would be threatened by that. And again their complaints are always trivial because they just want to monitor and control you. They’re overseering. racism and sexism
I don’t blame a lot black people for being competitive and undermining each other because they’re afraid of dying if they organize and support teach other.
Saying, “They can’t kill all of us.” just isn’t very motivating. Even the army, and civil militias like gangs psychologically breaks down and brainwashes people to get them to be infantry soildiers. I think the seventies and the eighties made a lot of people exhausted with fighting American empire.
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I think the Mayor at that time was named Wilson Goode or something of that nature and Louis Farrahkhan saying “Wilson Goode is no good”
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Most people are cowards in the face of death or torture anyway. And that’s nothing to be a shamed of it’s just that people never want to ADMIT that there’s anything to be scared of. They act as if white people are “basically good” and it’s “a few bad apples” who do things like this when its basically all of the middle and upper class whites. They either actively do this or support it or they do nothing to stop it. Even if they have black friends and lovers in many cases( Strom Thurmond).
Once this British White guy who wanted to mack on me told me about this dream of fighting in the Boer War, he was a big military fanatic, that’s why I didn’t like him, but we had interesting history conversations and games of risk. And I said nothing and just looked at him for a really long time until he finally said that he wanted to go just for “the uniforms and the battles” but he knew that he said something wrong. So many men love women of other races because they get sex slaves who will be subservient to them and that’s their ideal woman, they’re just more sexist than they are racist. He was OBSESSED with Africa too which is why I just looked at him when he said that he wanted to fight in the Boer War. They can kill just as easily as they f.ck us. IDK why people look at interracial relationships as proof of antiracism. I’ve known many racist people with mixed kids. Racism is about power and control so it actually makes sense that the MOST severely racist people would be in interracial relationships. The only difference between now and in the past is that they couldn’t marry or be open about it, at least in America but marriage is just another form of servitude at best, it’s slavery at worst. IDK why so many people feel privileged by it. It’s not an honor. A lot of the time it’s a business contract.
I know SO many first generation African girls who saw marrying white men or having their babies as a status symbol and so many of the marriages, especially to French and British men were/are miserable. Those two nation’s colonialism was arguably THE WORST. They don’t even show black people on television in France and yet literally every white man I met there stared at me or tried to get in it. And I’m conventionally pretty but I’m not Naomi Campbell. I knew they just saw a bed wench or easy sex. A woman but a cheap one who was worth less than other women.
The MOST racist guys push up on me the hardest because I’m not a person to them, that’s why they never take “No” or “I’m not interested” for an answer. It’s like my agency and free will just doesn’t exist to them. In NYC it’s racist a.s Dominicans/Puerto Ricans/Italian Americans/Polish men. In Europe it was British/French/Arabic Muslims/Punjabi East Indians. The East Indians I run into here push up on me mad hard too or they stare.
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Its really sickening but that they murdered children. Attica was like that too. They killed the guards and the prisoners and lied to families about it when the prisoners rebelled. They really didn’t care who they shot, they basically just wanted to set an example.
That’s why all those political dissidents, even students, were murdered in the seventies and eighties.
The nail that sticks up must be pounded down.
All those dictators that we fought our government studied and learned from so as not to repeat their mistakes.
When it comes down to it priveledge causes antisocial personality disorders. That’s privileged why people can do things like this and sleep at night. The system creates and maintains an environment for this kind of attitude grow in and then that attitude of unwarranted superiority blossoms into horrific violence.
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Abagond, you have written quite a few articles that have produced great motion in me. A deep sorrow and anger mixed with incredulity and incomprehension moved me to respond.
There are so many facets to this nightmarish tragedy that defies comprehension.
I myself am a vegan, anti-vivisectionist and am for animal rights.
That the people of MOVE were treated so abominably by the police, fire and justice departments points to the psychopathic need of white people to be the centre of universe.
Murder of children; teargas, 10 000 bullets in 90 minutes , bombs? On civilians?
Growing up in apartheid, I asked myself many times: “Why don’t they just kill us all? They certainly hate us enough to kill us all.”
I see so much convergence between apartheid South Africa and the USA.
There seems to be a vampirish need to extract the maximum suffering.
I don’t even think white people really hate us. I think they wish that we weren’t born in the first place.
I think Black suffering is essential nourishment for them. Independence autonomy and integrity and self love in a Black person(and all other people around the world who are not white) represents a full frontal attack to their sense of being. The Africas of MOVE were very dangerous.
When white people are in power, the police are the contract killers for the white community as a whole.
I had heard Mumia Abu Jamal’s speech read when I attended the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001 as a private delegate. What a Human Being. Just looking at him and listening to him in interviews his goodness and wisdom and profound sense of justice, radiate. There is absolutely no way this man is a murderer.
There were many Black American delegates raising awareness of Mumia and demanding his immediate release.Three Nobel prize winners were fighting for his release: Toni Morrison, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Tutu. Amnesty International and many international bodies are also against his solitary imprisonment sentence of 30 thirty years.It was also the same Conference where the USA refused to discuss reparations for slavery; racism against the Original Americans, and Zionism in Israel.
I hear Mumia Abu Jamal is very ill.
Thank you, Abagond ,for your selfless contribution to racial justice.
taotesan
Cape Town
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Correction: Emotion and NOT motion.
Please excuse any other typographical errors.
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They used the same picture:
http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/05/12/move-30-year-anniversary/#u1sRDeViKZqWEVtF.01
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“Why don’t they just kill us all? They certainly hate us enough to kill us all.”
I don’t think racist people hate us. Any more than sexist men who beat and abuse their wives or their kids hate them. I think they love us too much to ever let us live independently of them. Master and Slave relationships were inter dependencies. People forget that. The master needed his slaves more than they needed him because without the slaves he could support himself because being a master was all he knew how or wanted to do. Slaves had trade skills and work ethic most of the time. So do felons, modern day slaves. they actually have many skills that society needs that you won’t find in the general population. That’s why no one wants to employ them. Society wants them to never be able to earn an hones living so that they’ll reoffend and go back working for free. Even when they get out they’ll be under control of a probation officer or an overseer. That’s why the slaves who rebelled or ran away were killed and/or tortured.
I think that’s why American or European Settler racism was so violent and brutal but also emotionally manipulative and personally intimate. America is a BIG place, and if you wanted to retreat from society and live off the land somewhere you could for years and no one would be able to find you, even today. Back then it would have been even easier and that did happen. Masters had to view their slaves as property for monetary reasons but in practice they did not. And from what I’ve noticed, racist white people really hate to be ignored and not be the center of attention. It really upsets them. In the Caribbean, uprisings were both necessary and successful because there’s only so many places to run away and hide in a small enclosed space like an island. In the Americas particularly the deep south, slavery was were highly monitored and controlled to keep people from leaving. It’s exactly like how prison guards shoot prisoners for trying to escape. The labor that slaves provide makes them valuable enough that they’re worth more alive and in bondage than liberated and paying their own way. Thats how it will always be in this country because that’s how America and many resource rich countries built their wealth. Racism is culture and tradition. It’s all about money and power and control.
That’s why the Pennsylvania Police completely obliterated those people. To send a message to the rest of us to toe the line and bend the knee or else we’ll get the same treatment.Black people living together in organised stable healthy loving close community was too much of a threat to the racist power structure. If white people weren’t able to scapegoat and demonize us they might actually start looking at the upper classes as the true source of their problems and they can’t have that can they? Soooo many people died from 1960-1990. Not just from bio weapons like HIV, vaccines, crack cocaine and heroin but from civic unrest and wars. Besides opium, that’s the whole reason the Vietnam War was fought, to kill off all the young radicals who might join liberation groups like the Black Panthers.
Abusive people only attack and kill their spouses when they try to leave them or they feel like the relationship is threatened. The rest of the time they’re the most generous loving partner you could ask for, except for when they get unpredictably angry and use you as a punching bag. This is why I don’t like human trafficking: black people everywhere are just victims of human trafficking and our entire race has been raped and pimped out. I see how white countries have set up refugee quotas to favor women over men. They want women to join the ranks of their countries underclass, and they give them privileges that people in the native population don’t have, to make people resent them and keep those convention refugee women isolated from the main society and their racial/ethnic community. Then exploitative people and systems are given unfettered access to these populations of largely women and children. They get marginalized by they larger society at he same time that they are being molded by it.
I think Germany even had some plan to use the migrants for free labor, on a railroad or soemthing. And certain people in their government were trying to do that to suppress labor rights movements. The migrants who are caught in between will catch all the hell from both sides which is what they were brought to those countries to do in the first place: be servants of the powerful and/or be scapegoats of the poor.
It’s all such a well organised and oppressive system, only passionate devoted attention to details and attachment to black people could have made it that controlled, contained, oppressive and brutal. When people are passionate about the object of their obsession hey usually are violent stalkers.
If they can’t live with us, being subservient to them, they won’t allow us to live without them.
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If racism was just about money, there’s way more money to be made from us being equal and productive members of society. But it’s not abut money per se. It’s about power and control. Slavery was always a privilege that only the wealthy land owning classes could afford at the expense of the rest of society.
Even with prisons, they cost taxpayers so much money. So people that own factories that profit from prison labor will earn millions every year and not even have to pay to feed, house and clothe their laborers. For the wealthy, racism is good business. The middle classes are basically making themselves obsolete the more racist they become. That’s why all this killing is being done by local and state police who don’t seem to realize or care who pays their salary and it’s not the governors, mayors or senators: it’s the taxpayers. And low income people pay the most taxes. Wealthy people don’t need a public system, and they’re actively trying to make it obsolete and they basically control it now. The middle class doesn’t seem to understand that why it’s shrinking either. They don’t profit from racism at all and they’re basically throwing away their childrens hope of education and a decent job and benefits and safe place to live and a free society
But some people enjoy being manipulated and control. Increasingly it’s a lot of people. That’s why religions get people when they’re young, they indoctrinate people to be compliant and complacent to authority.That’s why the pharoahs in Eygpt called themselves Gods.
There is no point in appealing to a racists sense of humanity. You just leave them or refuse to take the abuse. It’s better to die free than live as a slave. Even at its most privileged, performer, singer, actor, dancer,athlete, being a servant is still degrading.
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Birdie Africa was estranged from his biological father by his mother and the MOVE organization. After the fire Birdie was reunited with his biological father, and took on the name Michael Ward. He was physically and developmentally disabled. Years of rehabilitation, tutoring, etc. He grew to an adult and worked for Merck. At age 41, he was on a cruise with his family, got very drunk one evening, sat in a hot tub, and died.
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It’s amazing how any black person would dare show allegiance to this country after everything that’s been done to them. Then again, it’s been touched on how blacks seem to have a more…forgiving nature when it comes to these transgressions.
But I feel Black America can’t afford to keep turning the other cheek for long. At this point, Black Americans have two choices: it can drown this nation in babies (demographics is destiny, after all) or it can start pulling up stakes. Mainstream America’s monopoly on sheer violence means that a Hezbollah/PLA-style campaign would only end in blood and tears.
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@fembott
All I could think of was, what did the people who complained about MOVE think of the city’s reaction to them?
That’s a good question. They probably pushed them out of their minds? I mean Russia bombed Grozny, one it’s own cities, to suppress a the Chechen Uprising….. you’d be surprised at the human capacity to be completely indifferent to the pain and suffering of others. Especially if they don’t have to see the impact and results of it.
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@fembott
I think that’s why after every genocide the coverup starts immediately because people can’t live with what they’ve done even if they move heaven and earth to do it. They don’t even want it to be seen or talked about because they know that it’s wrong.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grozny
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After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Grozny became the seat of a separatist governmentled by Dzhokhar Dudayev. According to some, many of the remaining Russian and other non-Chechen residents fled or were expelled by groups of militants, adding to a harassment and discrimination from the new authorities.[31]
The covert Russian attempts of overthrowing Dudayev by means of armed Chechen opposition forces resulted in repeated failed assaults on the city.
During the First Chechen War, Grozny was the site of an intense battle lasting from December 1994 to February 1995 and ultimately ending with the capture of the city by the Russian military. Intense fighting and carpet bombing carried out by the Russian Air Force destroyed much of the city. Thousands of combatants on both sides died in the fighting, alongside civilians, many of which were reportedly ethnic Russians; unclaimed bodies were later collected and buried in mass graves on the city outskirts.
Grozny was once again the epicenter of fighting after the outbreak of the Second Chechen War, which further caused thousands of fatalities. During the early phase of the Russian siege on Grozny on October 25, 1999, Russian forces launched five SS-21 ballistic missiles at the crowded central bazaar and a maternity ward, killing more than 140 people and injuring hundreds. During the massive shelling of the city that followed, most of the Russian artillery were directed toward the upper floors of the buildings; although this caused massive destruction of infrastructure, civilian casualties were much less than in the first battles.
The final seizure of the city was set in early February 2000, when the Russian military lured the besieged militants to a promised safe passage. Seeing no build-up of forces outside, the militants agreed. One day prior to the planned evacuation, the Russian Army mined the path between the city and the village of Alkhan-Kala and concentrated most firepower on that point. As a result, both the city mayor and military commander were killed; a number of other prominent separatist leaders were also killed or wounded, including Shamil Basayev and several hundred rank-and-file militants. Afterwards, the Russians slowly entered the empty city and on February 6 raised the Russian flag in the centre. Many buildings and even whole areas of the city were systematically dynamited. A month later, it was declared safe to allow the residents to return to their homes, although demolishing continued for some time. In 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on earth.[39
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The Russian Government did that to it’s own people. Because the Russians who decided to stay in Grozny with the Chechens were obliterated too. And the fact that they lured the people, who had surrendered at that point , into a minefield just proves that that was about using violence and murder to maintain their ethnic/racial hierarchy and authority on the part of the Russian Government because in Europe different ethnicities are basically considered different races.
That’s what will happen to us and any non black people who support us, I think. That’s why people need to understand that racism is about control and power. In so many of those population purges people who helped whatever targeted minority were killed also. Or they suffered the same fate.
That’s the thing about this , it’s not about hatred on the part of whites or anyone non black it’s a about fear and control. Stalin shot at his own infantry soldiers for running away and deserting the front. The whole reason WWI started was basically because the Royal Cousins wanted to play war games and they also wanted to suppress labor and social rights movements in their respective countries(England, Germany Russia). Kaiser Wilhelm killed sailors who mutinied against him, many of whom were just teenagers, and soldiers. The Nazi’s executed German studentslike Sophia Magdalena Scholl and Helmuth Günther Guddat Hübener( 16 YEARS OLD, he was the youngest person the Nazi’s executed):
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“German boys! Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny? Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it. They have intimidated you to such an extent that you don’t dare talk for fear of reprisals. Yes you are right; it is Germany — Hitler Germany! Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding.” — from one of Helmuth Hübener’s many pamphlets, subsequently also published in When Truth Was Treason: German Youth against Hitler, Editors Blair R. Holmes and Alan F. Keele.
“I know that God lives and He will be the Just Judge in this matter. I look forward to seeing you in a better world!” — from a letter written by Hübener (believed to be the only one extant)[8]
“Now I must die, even though I have committed no crime. So now it’s my turn, but your turn will come.” – statement made to the judges that sentenced him to death.
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Even teenage rebellion is such a threat to tyrannical governments that they will behead teenagers and kill babies. Helmuth was beheaded for distributing AntiNazi leaflets and listening to the BBC and for refusing to “confess” that he did anything wrong. A sixteen year old boy.
Europe at that time was under great terror. And the Nazi’s sexually abused many boys in the Hitler Youth, a woman I met there said they called it “Homo Youth” and the boys who spoke up about it were sent to concentration camps. Mussolini raped women, that’s why the Italians stoned him and his mistress.
Tyrannical governments don’t care who gets caught in the crossfire and in the case of Germany, none of the people were ever explicitly told that they would be killed if they didn’t commit genocide but they didn’t really need to be at that point, they saw killing of people who resisted the Nazi’s all around them, like the Night of Long Knives. The Nazis sent twelve year olds to Stalingrad and wouldn’t publish the names of soldiers who died on the front. Many people in the Holocaust, in all of Europe not just Germany, were afraid of being killed or sent to the concentration camps themselves, which DID happen it was a tool of terror. And a lot of people didn’t even know what happened in those places they just knew that people who got sent to them never came back or were seen again which was actually worse than watching them get shot. That was all by design. I mean it’s the wondering that would terrify a person more than watching a city get bombed and obliterated would. At least then you know what happened, however gruesome and grisly it might have been.
But when people are just marched away and disappeared and never heard from again that’s the kind of fear that paralyses you. Were they killed? Were they tortured before they were killed? And how, in either case? What will happen to me or my loved ones if I don’t agree to shoot these people?
Many Germans I met didn’t deny the Holocaust they just tried to explain that their role in it was a much more passive one than people usually assume. And the Nazi’s did drug and brainwash soldiers. I think they were the first ones to give soldiers ecstasy but they realized it made soldiers too happy to kill and mass shootings gave them PTSD so the higher ranking Nazi’s came up with the idea to gas people and to move them out of Germany first. To keep things orderly and not to cause a panic. And they kept up a huge deception to lull the victims into a false sense of security until the very last moment. Many soldiers who fought at that time were forced to do things they didn’t agree with but so many of them were young or brainwashed or sexual abuse victims and Germany was already a very militaristic society anyway. The higher ranking Nazi’s were lying through their teeth about “following orders and feeling as if they had no choice” but many of the German people were telling the truth. I think many of them probably suspected the true purpose of the camps but if you saw children being killed for speaking out against the government, would most people say anything themselves, or do anything to stop what was going on? Ask yourself if you would.
In America we’ve had SO many pograms and purges, they just disguise them as epidemics(caused by laboratory created viral agents), wars(started deliberately by our government to sell drugs and arms to milita groups around the world), and state sanctioned and approved racial and class violence and murder that’s carried out by local and state authorities. Against the American people by our own government. And I’ve watched documentaries and spoken with soldiers who had been torturing people at Guantanamo Bay or committed war crimes say the same thing,” I had no other choice. I was just following orders.” There were MANY Mai Lai massacres in Vietnam. There are extensive research papers written about them in the Library of Congress and many Soldiers tried to tell the Federal Government about what was going on and to get it stopped but they got no response because…those orders were coming from above. To meet kill quotas. Once you become a soldier or get clerance to work for the NSA or the FBI or something you basically give up all of your constitutional rights and protections and become property of the US government, That’s why Snowden fled the United States. Pyschotropics are just torture at best and chemical lobotomies at worst. You’re basically a living zombie. At least if you died, people could mourn you but being dead while alive is absolutely horrifying.
People point to Communist Governments as being tyrannical but Capitalist Governments are too, they just hide it well. If you compare the body counts they’re close or capitalism’s body count is higher.
And now it’s not just the police that are being militarized, it’s all of society. I think America always has been a military society that’s why we have this culture of make believe and constant never ending wars.
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(https://www.facebook.com/V8Driver/posts/10206476345855989)
it didn’t work, i guess privacy settings
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I remember this like it happened yesterday…I was horrified. The news footage of the burning buildings as the reporter droned on about how the dead men, women, and children were part of a “cult.” That was the first time I REALLY noticed how the media was selective in how they reported certain events, which is what sparked my interest in journalism.
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@sepulura13
I think after Gary Webb and the Dark Alliance series and also those reporters that broke the story about the Cancer causing hormones in meat and it milk, I can’t remember their names, were basically blacklisted, and I honestly think Gary Webb was assassinated. I think our government has more control of the press than people feel comfortable with or even admitting to themselves. There’s a lot of people like Anderson Cooper, who have past or current association with the Intelligence community who get jobs in media and government.
I think that explains the selective reporting, it’s not always corporate interests, or rather it is but most of the people serving in government have past association with or ties to certain industries so it’s still censorship. It’s just a kind of private censorship whereas communism/socialism has government/public censorship but that’s really not the only kind. I think the United States has some strange mixture of the two.
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I wonder does Wilson Goode regret today his decision of ordering the bombing of the Move group? I wonder if his conscious bothers him and the other people who were complicit in this action? How do they sleep at night?
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Can’t believe this was 30 years ago. How the time has flown by.
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I can still remember the moment I first heard about it.
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My family and I watched the MOVE documentary at the 2013 Pan-African Film Festival (at Rave Theatre in Baldwin Hills, CA). The scenes in the documentary were shocking, horrific, and touching. The two survivors told their stories very well. Romona Africa is a beautiful woman.
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I mentioned it before and I’ll mention it again – America has never been bombed from the air EXCEPT in the cases of the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 and the MOVE organization in 1985, which destroyed two city blocks of homes in West Philadelphia. Over a 1,000 people were left homeless in the Tulsa bombing and 250 people were left homeless in the West Philadelphia neighborhood bombing.
1921 bombing of a thriving Black community in Tulsa’s Greenwood district
1985 bombing of the MOVE organization in a West Philadelphia neighborhood
America didn’t air-bombed herself, Amerikka air-bombed Black people. Enough said!
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they don’t have to drop bombs anymore down here the houses are falling apart by themselves, there are more vacant houses on my block than occupied ones
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..Sad and well-written article about this recent (30 years ago is Not ancient history, for those naysayers) tragedy-yes, indeed the Only times this terrorism-lovin’ country were bombed was when they were destroying Black people. Man, there is not One thing I can think that those fukcerz haven’t put POC (especially) Black folks through! SMH!
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@ Michael Cooper & @AlitaRegina, Everything you said, YES!!!
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@AlitaRegina, very interesting read. Your comments are spot on. Schooled me a bit there 😉
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@femmebott
Lol I was thinking out loud. The reason I mentioned Germany is because I see a a lot of the same attitudes in Americans:they’re too afraid to question or disobey authority. Especially when it matters most. Because they see people, like Eric Garner being killed for speaking up and I hope people realize that those are racist acts of violence and murder but the purpose of those is to terrorize ALL of us into obeying things without question or disobedience by making us too afraid of what will happen if we don’t. I try to tell people to not accept it and to actively resist it. Because as soon as the masses stop disobeying tyrannical government that’s when all the trouble starts.
The people doing this just want us to be afraid, so that they can better control us using that fear and I don’t think these kinds of violent deadly acts are standalone or without purpose I think there’s very much a larger design to them because there always is.
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The only time societies act this way, government attacking it’s own citizens, is when they’re militarizing and people in Congress are talking about engaging Russia in War right now. The racism is important too because they’re already shooting black people for running away from the police offiers, I know if the US goverment does find an excuse to wage wage and institute another draft, which is still legal under the secret service contingency plan, that’s what they’ll be doing to soldiers who refuse to fight. Killing someone for desertion is still legal. It hasn’t happened in a while but its still legal for deserters to be shot and even if they don’t I actively believe a lot of people in the military believe they’ll be killed or tortured.
Even in Berlin when it was finally being seiged by the Russians, an older woman I met there talked about seeing a twelve year old who had been shot for running away from defending the city because Germany was loosing so badly at that point that the Nazi’s started using child soldiers, kids who had been brainwashed or trauma conditioned in the Hitler Youth. Whenever America goes to War there is always a collective push to terrorize the black community and low income community because they want round up our boys and men to ship them off to fight it. Whatever people think about the Nazi’s they tend to apply to the German people but I know many of the people were not towing the party line in regards to much of what Hitler an the Nazi’s did. Particularly sending children to the the front and not telling families that their menfolk had been killed but Germany had been so terrorized at that point that they just didn’t question a lot of things they did or allowed to be done. There’s many good books about the psychology of that time that you only find in Germany and that I read while I was there.
2nd Bush and Obama’s Adminstration has been and is actively trying to do secret things that public doesn’t know about, like sign trade deals that no one gets to read in advance or all of the things the NSA was doing.
I mean even though we aren’t at war, that’s what it feels like all this stuff is preparing us for or leading up to. I don’t think the state and local police are just doing this stuff for run of the mill racist reasons. I think they’re being directed to do it or being given clearance to do it. In all the democratic states there’s a BUNCH of unconstitutional laws being passed and implemented. The Patriot Act was VERY unconstitutional and the woman who leaked that the CIA had advance knowledge of 9/11 was recommended forced psychiatric treatment. Forced psychiatric treatment, or torture/confinement/isolation is being disguised as medical mental health treatment and it’s becoming a common tool of law enforcement, I experienced it myself, to control and suppress social unrest. Foster children, through AHA, as young as five years old are on five different psychotropic medications. And that’s completely unprecedented. But no one is talking about it. Because you get stigmatized as soon as you mention anything related to mental health or psychiatry.
It feels like we’re at war but who is our government fighting? Us? Nobody has shot at them but they keep shooting at us or lining up like they’re going to. Even when Ferguson was going on, the first thing the police did was institute a curfew,and I fully believe they did that to get people out of sight. They kept turning reporters camera’s away from the action or arresting journalists for doing their job(WTF?!) and anyone who tried to just WATCH what was happening thereINCLUDING MEMBERS OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT(?) and then the mainstream media was silent on it until people on Twitter made the story break.
The sequence of events of that particular protest….it was frightening because to my eyes it looked like there was a collaborative effortbetween the mainstream media and law enforcement officials made in advance to not only suppress dissent but to hide that it was being suppressed from the rest of the country and the world.
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Reblogged this on kamutef.
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Update: Added photo of how the neighbourhood looked after all the fires were out.
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The Philadelphia Health Chief resigned after it was discovered he cremated the bodies of victims of the tragedy, without notification to family members of victims. This is a abhorrent disregard of Black bodies, and being dismissive of the humanity of these Black people who perished. There are not enough adjectives to describe how disgusting and disrespectful this is.
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