Category Archives: Political Prisoners

Discussions about Political Prisoner cases and the overall issue of Political Prisoners.

Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign Holds Hearing at the Organization of American States on “Loss of Resources and Generational Mass Incarceration’s Impact on Black Women”

We decided to petition for this hearing today because we are an organization that works to get people out who have been in for 30, 40, 50, 60 or more years in prison. Our organization is made up of mostly women who are working to get their folks out of prison. Right now in the United States you have two and three generations of men and women, mothers and fathers from the same family, incarcerated. All of them are attached to generations of women. For us today, this is not simply a hearing, this is a trial. This is something for 400 years we’ve been waiting. What you see here is, we are the daughters of the plantation, daughters of Maroons, daughters of Abolitionists, daughters of Freedom Fighters, daughters of Garveyites, daughters of Revolutionaries, and we are versus the United States, and they have been found guilty. The crime is the war on the Afrikan woman’s womb. Anything that has come out of the Afrikan woman’s womb in the last 400 years has been attacked, assaulted, decimated, incarcerated, imprisoned, and this will no longer be tolerated. This is unacceptable. Walter Rodney, in his book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, talks about this underdevelopment. Thus, 400 years later, the Afrikan person that comes out of the Afrikan woman’s womb is still being underdeveloped by institutional racism and White Supremacy racism.

“So therefore, today, we sentence the US, and all the Western World that has benefited from our human resources, to 100 years of reparations that is to be paid in full. Reparative justice. In the next 10 to 20 years we want this abolition of prisons to commence. We want the extraction of our human resources from the human resource of the Afrikan woman’s womb to stop feeding the pipeline of institutional racism and generational incarceration. This will no longer be tolerated. We close the chapter today on the Department of Justice, the Prison Industrial Complex, any system entire that oppresses our bodies, our people, the Afrikan woman’s womb.

“Edward Baptist in his book, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, emphasizes this, that the extreme amounts of money that has been made from the human resources of Afrikan people, Dr. [Tasseli] McKay [has calculated] the price, so we say the [price] to be paid is 7.16 trillion dollars to the Black woman, only for the last four decades of incarceration, and we’re talking about one institution. Today’s verdict that has been passed is sealed. It cannot be undone. The seven testimonies and interventions that have occurred [here today and documented below are akin to the story of] the Walls of Jericho, and they will fall, tomorrow being the seventh day [November 7]. This verdict is sealed today by our ancestors, Alberta Williams King, Winnie Mandela, Maria Elena Moyano, Safiya Bukhari, Louise Little, La Mulatresse Solitude, and Fannie Lou Hamer. [The walls of Jericho] will fall today. I thank you.”

Thus the objective of this hearing, held at the offices of the Organization of American States (OAS) at 1889 F Street, NW in Downtown Washington, DC on Monday, November 6, was proclaimed by the organizer of this session, Ms. Tomiko Shine, cultural anthropologist, Founder and Director of Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC), an organization dedicated to securing the freedom of those who have been held in penitentiaries and prisons for upwards of 20 to 50 years. Many of these aging people in prison are what we often refer to as Political Prisoners, members of organizations such as the Black Panther Party (BPP), American Indian Movement (AIM), MOVE and other political-dissident groups who were targeted under the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Others were convicted in tainted trials on questionable evidence in spite of their lack of political activism, and still others were handed draconian sentences for relatively minor offenses and have been imprisoned for decades. Practically all of the prisoners and former prisoners represented by APP-HRC have grown old under incarceration, and have faced struggles not only in securing their release through parole or exoneration, but also in adjusting to “life on the outside” after being freed. In practically all of these cases, the burden of their imprisonment has been felt most acutely by their families, particularly by Black women.

This hearing was presided over by the OAS’s Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for its 188th Session. The Commissioners on the panel were Ms. Margarette May Macaulay (President), Ms. Roberta Clarke (Second Vice President), Ms. Julissa Mantilla Falcón, and Ms. Tania Reneaum Panszi (Executive Secretary).

Ms. Maccaulay, President of the IACHR, opened the session, welcomed the presenters and received their testimonies, after which she and the Commissioners present asked several follow-up questions and offered their words of support and encouragement, and a request to remain connected to the presenters so they can receive further updates and calls to action from them.

Introductory Presentations by the Expert Panel

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq., South Carolina-based human and civil rights attorney, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self Determination, founder and coordinator of WMXP Community Radio, chair of the US Human Rights Network’s Political Prisoners and State Repression Working Group, past co-chair of the National Jericho Movement for the release and freedom of all US-held political prisoners, was the first presenter:

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq.

“The United States is party to several human rights treaties and conventions, and the issue of mass incarceration has raised concerns about violations of these treaties in the context of the disproportionate impact on Black women. Some of the key treaties include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified in 1992, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified in 1994, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, ratified in 1994, and the Universal Periodic Review along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These treaties encompass fundamental human rights principles, including non-discrimination, the right to a fair trial, the prohibition of torture and cruel treatment, and economic and social rights. The impact of mass incarceration on Black women, including issues such as racial disparities in the criminal punishment system, access to education, health care, family separation, has led to concerns about these violations. Mass incarceration in the United States disproportionately affects Black women, and as a result they face various lifelong human rights challenges.

“My colleagues will detail the key human rights issues that Black women suffer as a result of these violations.

“The issues reflect systemic disparities in the criminal punishment system, a system which is grounded in the US history of slavery, apartheid, and racial violence. Viewed through a human rights lens, they are violations of fundamental human rights, particularly the right to equality, non-discrimination and dignity. Ongoing advocacy and reform efforts to address these human rights challenges and to promote a more just and equitable system are frustrated by the United States’ self-proclaimed exceptionalism, use of reservations, understandings and declarations when signing on to treaties, and a total lack of public and professional human rights knowledge, in the courts and the legislatures especially.

“Addressing mass incarceration and the associated human rights violations against Black women requires a multi-faceted approach. We suggest (1) Reparations. The US must create a commission to study the continuing impact of slavery, apartheid and centuries of White violence reflected in the criminal punishment system. It must devise and fund proposals for remediation and prevention of their perpetuation, including ensuring Black women full and complete access to legal representation and resources necessary to realize our full human potential. Legislative changes must occur at the federal and state levels to address laws and systemic issues contributing to mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal punishment system including data collection and transparency, racial bias training to raise public awareness about human rights, mass incarceration and the specific challenges that are faced by Black women.

“I thank you.”

Ms. Simone Harris read a letter from her son Rashid Harris, age 36, incarcerated since age 23 at James T. Vaughan Correctional Center, at Smyrna, Delaware with a sentence of life plus 527 years due to a habitual offender law, to his mother.

She concluded by saying, “My recommendations are to abolish the three-strike law, abolish life sentences, and to stop incarcerating juvenile minorities in their prime, which equates to genocide. Thank you.”

Ms. Krystal Young spoke about her experience, a struggle of several years against a bogus arrest and a threat of decades of imprisonment on a false charge. In 2015, she was arrested with her mother and twin brother for burglary and trespassing, was released after 9 days but was rearrested three months later on warrants based on false allegations stemming from a series of complaints of a neighbor. Her seven-year-old daughter began exhibiting psychological issues. She recounted the suffering of her grandmother, mother and daughter as she went through five different attorneys over the course of a two-year fight during which she was confronted with the possibility of facing 127 years in jail. Her case was finally dismissed, but the damage was done to her family. “It should be mandatory for any state government official to obtain any arrest history of police districts as some form of compensation for falsely accused victims. Thank you.”

Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson, president and co-founder of DC Project Connect, coming today as a support specialist, advocate, author and researcher, conducting studies in the United States and abroad, focused on several key recommendations for reforming the current carceral system (a prison, confinement and surveillance-based system of punishment):

Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson

“Today, I focus on four key areas and recommendations. First, Black women are largely incarcerated for crimes associated with survival and coping, in essence, criminalized mental health conditions, domestic violence, unaddressed substance use, has likely led to their incarceration. Recommendation number one: abolish prisons. When sanctions of a last resort are warranted, these women should be offered holistic care as a community-based alternative to restore health and well-being. Second, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 5 states in part: ‘No one should be subjected to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment’, yet alarming reports of physical and psychological violations occur in women’s prisons every day. In 2015 alone, there were 25,000 incidents and allegations of sexual abuse, extortion, rape, groping, or other sexual related abuses in prison. Recommendation number two: we demand reparative justice, holding carceral systems responsible for past harms, current harms and preventing future harms. All prisons and halfway houses should be converted to healing centers, with emphasis placed on mental and physical health care, funded by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Third, the United Nations recognizes the right to the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health, in particular Article 25. The denial of adequate mental health intervention and gender specific health care needs, and adequate menstrual products, in prison, result in women making dehumanizing tradeoffs between basic needs and hygiene. The use of medically unsafe trauma-inducing restraints and shackles on pregnant women should cease today. Recommendation number three: we demand that incarcerated women have access to adequate health care as a matter of human rights as a public imperative. Finally, and fourth, maternal incarceration has the greatest impact on children and intergenerational incarceration. According to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights Article 12, incarcerated persons have the right to family life, a protective factor that can mitigate the cycle of incarceration. The fourth recommendation: incarcerated women should not be arbitrarily separated from their families, and their right to family life must be respected and restored, with efforts made to ensure that contact is maintained between mothers and children, and vital family bonds preserved.

“Thank you for the opportunity to testify.”

“The total harm in under 50 years of mass incarceration comes to 7.16 trillion dollars. That’s more than half the value of the entire Black-White wealth gap. No other form of domestic state violence carried out in the United States since the beginning of the 20th century compares to the scope and scale of these effects. If we are ever going to move beyond mass captivity, beyond the mass exploitation of Black women’s bodies and labor on this continent, we need universal understanding in the US and around the world of the vast harms of mass incarceration.”
— Dr. Tasseli McKay

Attorney Maya Hylton-Garza, Esq. has worked with prisoners who have relatives who have been incarcerated, worked in cities like Baltimore, Oakland and Los Angeles. She spoke “about the primacy of the American criminal justice system from the perspective of someone who works inside it.

Attorney Maya Hylton-Garza, Esq.

“To put it plainly, it’s a mess. But calling it a mess is [insufficient]; what it truly is, is a horror show. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, being responsible for about a quarter of the world’s imprisoned people. Despite accounting for only about 13% of the US population, Black people comprise 38% of that incarcerated population. Along with incarcerating more people than any other country, the US also incarcerates more women than any other country. Racial bias permeates every facet of the system, reflecting the … lineage from the present-day system to the earliest days of slavery. At the onset, we had Slave Codes, a separate and more severe set of crimes and punishment for slaves. Following emancipation, the existence of this dual system did not disappear. While we may no longer explicitly have a separate set of crimes and punishments for Black people, evidence of racially disparate treatment can be seen throughout the system. While the United States has not yet consistently and accurately [shared] data on arrest, prosecution and incarceration trends, what we do know is that there is clear evidence pf racially disparate arrests, racially disparate sentencing, [with] more and longer sentences given to Black people and racially disparate administration of parole and probation. Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign is an abolitionist organization that [argues that] the process of emancipation for all Black people in the United States cannot conclude until the criminal justice system is abolished. The Supreme Court … very explicitly acknowledged the possibility of racial prejudice influencing a jury’s decision in any criminal case. When faced with actual statistical evidence of racial bias influencing a death penalty case, they found it as ‘not unacceptable’, allowing the death penalty to stand. With a Supreme Court so comfortable with allowing an ‘acceptable amount’ of racial discrimination to infect every Black person’s interaction with the criminal justice system, there is no reform that could occur that would be able to repair the corrupt White Supremacist heart of the current system. Aging People in Prison seeks the dismantling of the systems that support and reify such oppression, including the police, the judiciary and the carceral state. Nothing less will set us free.”

Dr. Tasseli McKay, a social scientist and record of policy scholar at Duke University, shared “new figures from my research on the economic impact of mass incarceration on Black women.

Dr. Tasseli McKay

“For all of this century in the US, the huge Black-White wealth gap that is the legacy of slavery was slowly narrowing. Those gains, small and slow, were very hard won. But in the 1970s, following great Civil Rights progress in the US, our criminal legal system began to be mobilized against Black Americans in an intensely violent and far-reaching way. As it did, the wealth gap also began to widen again, in a way it had not since the ferocious anti-Black mass political violence of the late 1800s. During the mass incarceration years, the wealth of the typical Black household has dropped 75%, while that of the typical White household has risen 14%. Mass incarceration has brought tremendous harm to Black women, families and communities, and social scientific evidence makes it possible to rigorously calculate its economic impact. I’ve written two academic books about this work, carefully reviewed by top economists and criminal legal system scholars, and so I have great confidence in what I’m about to tell you about these costs. The criminalization of Black children and youth, and their pipelining out of educational and supportive institutions has sapped 4.31 trillion dollars. The perpetual punishment of formerly incarcerated Black adults, particularly their long-term exclusion from the formal workforce, has sapped 1.07 trillion dollars. The burdens and harms shunted onto partners and mothers of incarcerated Black adults total 434 billion dollars. The lifelong repercussions for Black children of the incarcerated, particularly in lost educational opportunity, total 452 billion dollars. And the community and population-scale damages, particularly impacts on Black infant mortality and adult life expectancy, total 890 billion dollars. The total harm in under 50 years of mass incarceration comes to 7.16 trillion dollars. That’s more than half the value of the entire Black-White wealth gap. No other form of domestic state violence carried out in the United States since the beginning of the 20th century compares to the scope and scale of these effects. If we are ever going to move beyond mass captivity, beyond the mass exploitation of Black women’s bodies and labor on this continent, we need universal understanding in the US and around the world of the vast harms of mass incarceration. We need reconstruction of the abusive public institutions that did these harms. And we need at least 7.16 trillion dollars in reparations to Black women and communities for mass incarceration. Thank you so much.”

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq. made additional comments:

“I would simply add to the information and comments that have already been made in that when we talk about reparative justice, when we talk about reparations, we’re talking about full and complete reparations, and the full and complete reparations go far beyond the money that necessarily includes the rebuilding of the individual and of a people or peoples, like the abused adopted child. We long to know who and what we are, where we were kidnapped from, what were then our names, what would have been our language, what would have been our spiritual development system, what would have been our social and familial structure. There is no price that can be put on that; at the same time, every effort must be made to do so.”

Dr. Tasseli McKay added some historical context to the discussion of the harms caused to Black women and Black families, highlighting the intentional and official US policy nature of these harms, dating back to the Richard M. Nixon administration and even before that.

“I’d like to read a quote from John Ehrlichman, who was the domestic policy advisor to Richard Nixon, widely understood by people in my field as the forefather of mass incarceration. And I’m quoting him now:

‘The Nixon Campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies: the anti-war left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the people to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.’ [from an interview Ehrlichman gave to Dan Baum in 1994, published in the April 2016 issue of Harper’s Magazine — Editor.]

“I’d like to add that I think it’s important that we understand this as the domestic state violence that it is and has been, and that the impacts of that state violence on Black women in particular have been concealed of necessity, because the work that Black women have taken on in the face of this state violence has been to absorb, to cushion and to defend their families and communities against it, perpetually, and without their permission concealing the true magnitude of its effects. The costs of this system are so much greater than we have ever acknowledged and those costs have been borne by the most vulnerable among us, and because those costs could not come out of bank accounts, they have come out of bodies. Chris Wildeman’s research on the impacts of mass incarceration on population health in the United States shows that yes, mass incarceration has done definitive damage to our health as an entire population, and yes, those effects on life expectancy and infant mortality have been concentrated predominantly in Black communities. And yes, those effects on life, the years taken off of American lives by mass incarceration, have come off of Black women’s lives. When we look at the effects of rising Black male incarceration rates, beginning around 1978, on population health in the US, we see that the years of life lost came primarily from Black women. There’s so much that has happened, so much that has been concealed and so much strength that has been standing in resistance to this domestic state violence for many decades. Thank you so much for the time to speak to you.”

“I don’t understand why the American establishment doesn’t recognize this, and it doesn’t augur well for the reputation of the state, for this sort of thing to go on. And then I hear politicians on TV, in Congress and the Senate, Senators and Congressmen, talking about how America is not a racist country. That is the biggest, what I call ‘real politics’, because everybody looking around can recognize it, and yet they’re denying it, so how much trust can one have in the system?”
– IACHR President Margarette May Macaulay

The IACHR Commission members ask questions to the presenters.

The members of the Commission asked a number of follow-up questions. President Margarette May Macaulay added a comment and a question: “Thank you for the personal stories that show what these policies do to life and families. Thank you also for the empirical evidence that combines the information into research in action about these punitive policies that have been repeated from 1940 until today. You referred to identity reparations, and we would like to hear more about that. What are the triggers that cause the increasing harshness of the penalties?”

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq. offered some additional perspective on the Black reparations struggle.

Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq. makes a point.

“To talk about reparations, the (IACHR) President rounds it out in a simple word: personhood, that full and complete reparations required restoration of personhood. We have since the Civil War in the United States, made demands for reparations, and the visibility and the intensity of that struggle has risen and fallen depending upon political circumstances. At the moment it enjoys great visibility and global recognition, and we credit that to the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which was the opportunity to globalize the issue and to bring together the Afrikan community globally in formulating the consensus that the DDPA is [important], and even more importantly and recently is the struggle to protect and defend the DDPA against the onslaught of the former, well, the colonizers, because some of them are still in place, and enslavers attempting to distract us from the consensus that was reached with the DDPA, and most importantly its civilization and expression of self-determination, setting forth the crimes against humanity and the basis for global reparations, slavery, colonization, apartheid and genocide, and that we must not allow the creation and the mandate that was given to the Permanent Forum on People of Afrikan Descent or the Agenda 2030 SDG’s, Sustainable Development Goals, to become the shiny objects that take us away from the DDPA and the significance of that expression of self-determination, which of course also includes the Five Elements that define those guidelines as to what would constitute full and complete reparations. We look forward to submitting further information on that point, and consistent with the questions that you have asked here, suffice it to say that the greatest violations continue to occur in the South, what we call ‘the Black belt’, which is where the Afrodescendant population was enslaved in the largest numbers and continues to this day to live despite our apparent mobility and our escape from bondage. Finally I would add that the US Constitution provides for the continued enslavement of people generally and Afrikan people particularly. It was a concession that was made to the South wherein the 13th Amendment is thought to abolish slavery, however it does not. It only shifts the enslavement of persons from private hands to public hands, the hands of the government. It provides that a person cannot be held in involuntary servitude except in the case of a crime. And of course it is the enslavers who have defined what human behavior is criminal. And that invariably falls heaviest on people of Afrikan descent and Afrikan women in particular. Thank you.”

“We have since the Civil War in the United States, made demands for reparations, and the visibility and the intensity of that struggle has risen and fallen depending upon political circumstances. At the moment it enjoys great visibility and global recognition, and we credit that to the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which was the opportunity to globalize the issue and to bring together the Afrikan community globally … and even more importantly and recently is the struggle to protect and defend the DDPA against the onslaught of the former, well, the colonizers, because some of them are still in place, and enslavers attempting to distract us from the consensus that was reached with the DDPA …”
— Attorney Efia Nwangaza, Esq.

Attorney Maya Hylton-Garza, Esq. spoke about state-run versus private institutions, racialized arrest practices and released prisoners being saddled with heavy debts to the state that had imprisoned them.

“I want to speak to two things, the question of abuse in state-run versus private facilities and the question of racialized arrest practices. … The United States Congress mandated under the Prison Rape Elimination Act a comprehensive study of sexual assault and sexual abuse in United States correctional facilities. That study … included a representative sample, i think, of maybe 400 United States correctional facilities. That study used state of the art methods and it did document the very substantial prevalence of sexual assault around the country and it highlights not only in adult prison facilities but in detention facilities that house children, very widespread prevalence of sexual assault and abuse. And further, I’ll note that to my knowledge there is no established difference in rates of abuse in private-run versus state-run facilities, and that isn’t intended to be offered in defense of private facilities so much as I think it speaks to the extent to which our public institutions have been harnessed to abusive ends in a time of mass incarceration.

“With regard to the question about racialized arrest practices, in the contemporary United States, 49% of Black men can expect to be arrested by the time they reach age 23. We’ve seen in the work of … Vesla Weaver and colleagues, [which] demonstrates that in fact, over the decades of mass incarceration, we have seen what she calls a great uncoupling of arrest from criminalized behavior such that arrest is now so racially targeted that it is less and less correlated with engagement in any criminalized activity and more strongly correlated with perceived race, and that racial disproportionality of course, as you all know well, continues at every level of the system and its impacts are so devastating, even at the point of arrest and policing as your remarks highlighted, many jurisdictions have implemented what they euphemistically call ‘proactive policing strategies’: stop-and-frisk, hotspot policing, various forms of aggressive police engagement and implementation of these policies we know from several rigorous social scientific studies is strongly correlated with a drop in well-being across the Black population of those cities. So, for example, we see Black students’ educational achievement drop in New York City with the implementation of stop-and-frisk, and there are examples like that from social science research across the country.

“I also want to speak to this question, which is very well taken, of individuals released from incarceration with tremendous debt to the state. To my knowledge, that practice is much more the rule than it is the exception, and those debts have to do with everything from system fees, parole monitoring fees, court fees, victim restitution, and an enormous contributor to that debt is child support enforcement. Many families have enormous debt to the child support enforcement system after the incarceration of a loved one, and often a five-figure debt, in particular because, in most states, that continues to rack up those arrears during incarceration, even though earning enough funds to pay those commitments is a true impossibility during that time. And to the also quite well taken question of what happens when individuals are released with debts that are far beyond their capacity to pay, what happens to those debts, there is fairly strong indication that those debts are paid by the women family members of incarcerated and released individuals. They are not forgiven. They are shunted onto those who can least afford them.”

Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson made further comments on behalf of mothers of incarcerated persons and the impact on families.

“I’d like to address the question about what happens when the mother is incarcerated. The first thing I want to say is that, when you incarcerate the mother, it has the greatest impact on the children. Let me give you an example. In Washington DC, we don’t have a prison. So therefore, when mothers are separated from their children, they are sent across the United States to serve their sentences. That could be California, Texas, West Virginia, for example. We know that in Washington DC, the zip codes that have the highest incarceration rates also have 16% of the people living at or below the poverty level. So how do you stay connected? Let’s talk about what happens in the family system. Well, first of all, it’s recognized as a crisis. Children are often not told where their parents are because of the stigma and shame associated with it, or perhaps the adults who are raising the children at home don’t want to emotionally burden the children. We know that about 11% of the fathers are taking care of children. We know that 11% of the children are going to go into foster care. And the vast majority are going to stay with the grandmother or grandparents who may be on a fixed income. So when we start to think about what happens with the children and why is this thing about intergenerational incarceration showing up, well, the short story is, parental incarceration is an adverse childhood experience. Probably 60% of us in this room have gone through an adverse childhood experience. It could be a frequent change of caregivers, it could be abuse, neglect, it could be violence or conflict in the home, or parental incarceration. The thing is, when children are exposed to contiguous stressors, it actually changes their genetics. So, there’s this science called epigenetics, and so when children are living in these situations, incarceration is probably just one issue, there are many complex issues going on at the same time. When the body is exposed to contiguous stressors, over and over again, it stays in a state of hyper-vigilance, and the cortisol levels are bring produced, and those kids are always in fight-or-flight, even if it doesn’t look like it, they’re in fight-ir-flight, and so therefore, the genes in the body will adjust, and it will start to put all of this energy in the fight-or-flight, rather than fighting off infections.”

Attorney Maya Hylton-Garza, Esq. spoke about efforts at reforming the carceral system:

“I just wanted to speak briefly on some reforms that are occurring. In the state of California, the Racial Justice Act was passed, which specifically tries to address the effects of racially disparate sentencing and arrests, and allows for somebody who has been convicted to bring forward evidence of racially discriminatory behavior and then allow for some type of reduction in sentencing. The law is extraordinary in the fact that it is retroactive, and it covers all families and anybody who has picked up a juvenile case, so as far as we’re concerned that’s basically everybody in the state of California who has been arrested and experienced … confinement. The law has been passed. We don’t know yet how the judges are going to handle that responsibility. It’s the Racial Justice Act, 2021. Right after George Floyd, people were very inspired to suddenly realize discrimination existed. And so, we don’t know yet. It leaves a lot to the judges in terms of how they’re going to handle each of those cases. But it does allow [for evidence of] racially discriminatory behavior to be used as evidence to prove the case, and so that is one example of reform. There are two other states that have passed Racial Justice Acts. Neither one of those are effective in any way. One is so broad that no one can use it and the other one is so narrow that no one can use it. The first one was so broad that it was repealed, and the second one is so narrow that it’s useless. We don’t know yet how California is going to handle this, how California judges are going to handle this power. I’m going to stay optimistic, but what we’ve seen in the United States is that there is a fear of too much justice, that because everyone has experienced racial discrimination, Black and Brown and Native American people have experienced racial discrimination that has impacted the way in which they engage with the carceral state, that reform would require everyone to be helped, and the United States is simply unwilling to do that.”

Closing Remarks from the Chair

IACHR President Margarette May Macaulay

IACHR President Margarette May Macaulay offered some closing comments. She noted that quite a few people have been released because DNA evidence showed their convictions were false, evidence was flawed and the convictions and sentences were unlawful. She noted that in other countries, “such persons will be compensated by the state for their mistake”. In the news, we see that people who are released in the US have received “no compensation, despite the claims about America’s largesse. Where is that when they are at fault?” There are similar issues with social welfare, in which recipients who were determined to have received Social Security and health benefits by mistake were ordered to repay years later (usually with onerous amounts of interest) regardless of their ability to pay. This had been reported on the previous day on the CBS News program 60 Minutes.

President Macaulay asked what the presenters would want the Commission to do to assist them in this matter, and expressed the desire to collaborate with them. IACHR wants to hear about the issues and specific complaints people have that are related to this case. The Web site and phone number are available for submitting information and complaints, and there is training available in some cases for Non Governmental Organizations.

Ms. Macaulay closed with these comments: “This is long past due, long, long past due. And I don’t understand why the American establishment doesn’t recognize this, and it doesn’t augur well for the reputation of the state, for this sort of thing to go on. And then I hear politicians on TV, in Congress and the Senate, Senators and Congressmen, talking about how America is not a racist country. That is the biggest, what i call ‘real politics’, because everybody looking around can recognize it, and yet they’re denying it, so how much trust can one have in the system? So please, let’s collaborate. And thank you, thank you, thank you for coming to us.”

About the IACHR

IACHR’s mission statements explain that

The IACHR is a principal and autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (“OAS”) whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere. It is composed of seven independent members who serve in a personal capacity. Created by the OAS in 1959, the Commission has its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Together with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“the Court” or “the I/A Court H.R.), installed in 1979, the Commission is one of the institutions within the inter-American system for the protection of human rights (“IAHRS”).

The formal beginning of the IAHRS was approval of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man at the Ninth International Conference of American States held in Bogota in 1948. There the OAS Charter (hereinafter “the Charter”) was adopted, which declares that one of the principles upon which the Organization is founded is the “fundamental rights of the individual.”

Full respect for human rights appears in several sections of the Charter, underscoring the importance that the Member States attach to it. In the words of the Charter, “the true significance of American solidarity and good neighborliness can only mean the consolidation on this continent, within the framework of democratic institutions, of a system of individual liberty and social justice based on respect for the essential rights of man.” The Charter establishes the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) as one of the principal organs of the OAS whose function is to promote the observance and protection of human rights and to serve as a consultative organ of the Organization in these matters.

The work of the IACHR rests on three main pillars:

      • the individual petition system;
      • monitoring of the human rights situation in the Member States, and
      • the attention devoted to priority thematic areas.

Operating within this framework, the Commission considers that inasmuch as the rights of all persons subject to the jurisdiction of the Member States are to be protected, special attention must be devoted to those populations, communities and groups that have historically been the targets of discrimination. However, the Commission’s work is also informed by other principles, among them the following: the pro homine principle, whereby a law must be interpreted in the manner most advantageous to the human being; the necessity of access to justice, and the inclusion of the gender perspective in all Commission activities.

According to the American Convention on Human Rights, the Commission shall be composed of seven members, who shall be persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights, elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly from a list of candidates proposed by the governments of the Member States. Each of those governments may propose up to three candidates, who may be nationals of the State proposing them or of any other OAS Member State. When a slate of three is proposed, at least one of the candidates shall be a national of a State other than the one proposing the slate. The members of the Commission are elected for a four-year term and may be reelected only once.

For more information on IACHR and OAS, go to the Web site https://www.oas.org/en/IACHR/jsForm/?File=/en/iachr/mandate/composition.asp.

To View the Full Hearing Video

The full hearing in video form, ‘Loss of Resources and Impact of Intergenerational Incarceration on Black Women’, can be viewed at https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/sessions/?S=188 (scroll down to Monday’s hearings, APP-HRC is first hearing)

About Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC)

APP-HRC is an organization dedicated to securing the freedom of those who have been held in penitentiaries and prisons for upwards of 20 to 50 years. Many of these aging people in prison are what we often refer to as Political Prisoners, members of organizations such as the Black Panther Party (BPP), American Indian Movement (AIM), MOVE and other political-dissident groups who were targeted under the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Others were convicted in tainted trials on questionable evidence in spite of their lack of political activism, and still others were handed draconian sentences for relatively minor offenses and have been imprisoned for decades. Practically all of the prisoners and former prisoners represented by APP-HRC have grown old under incarceration, and have faced struggles not only in securing their release through parole or exoneration, but also in adjusting to “life on the outside” after being freed.

We ask you to support APP-HRC by making a donation to https://www.apphrc.com/Donate.php; Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (https://apphrc.com) so they can continue to do their human rights reparative justice work of breaking the systemic pipeline to mass/intergenerational incarceration.

 

“Black August: The Shakur Nation” on Africa 500, Wednesday, August 9, 2023

The Wednesday, August 9 edition of Africa 500 begins its celebration of Black August by taking a look at the legacy of the Shakur Family in “Black August: The Shakur Nation”. Show hosts Sis. Tomiko and Bro. Ty welcome special guests Mama Efia Nwangaza and Dr. Kokayi Patterson.

Mama Efia Nwangaza

Bio: South Carolina based Human Rights Attorney. Founder and Director of Malcolm X Center for Self Determination – WMXP Community Radio, a Co-founder of National N’COBRA and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, past co-chair of the National Jericho Movement to Free All Political Prisoners, member of the Black Belt Human Rights Coalition, member of Black Alliance for Peace, veteran of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and a proud daughter of Garveyites.

from the Web site https://www.wmxp955.org/staff-and-friends:

Efia Nwangaza, Founder

Efia Nwangaza is a lifelong civil/human rights activist and freedom fighter who first worked for the liberation of African/Black people as a child in her Garveyite parents’ apostolic faith church, in her birthplace of Norfolk, Virginia.

At age 13 years, she served as secretary of the Norfolk Branch of the NAACP Youth and College Chapter and, later in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania she fought police violence, worked in the successful NAACP led campaign to desegregate Girard College, “a school for poor white, male, orphans” which then sat in the heart of Black North Philadelphia.

Efia and her family helped raise money and collect clothes and food to send South for those evicted and persecuted for attempting and registering to vote.

She joined forces with returning SNCC volunteers to found the Northern Student Movement (NSM) Freedom Library Day School; featured in the Xerox sponsored Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed series.

Anxious to go into the heat of battle, Efia Nwangaza accepted a scholarship and attended Spelman College. She worked at the national SNCC office and took on campus organizing for the successful Julian Bond Special Election Campaign Committee/SNCC-Atlanta Project. The Atlanta Project, SNCC’s first attempt at urban organizing, began raising concerns of a maturing movement and demands of the day, self-determination and SNCC’s position on the US War in Vietnam (which it did before King and SCLC), Palestine, and the role of whites in the community and organization. Atlanta Project position papers became the theoretical underpinnings for SNCC programming, and advancement of the modern “black power” call popularized by Kwame Ture (FKA Stokely Carmichael).

Armed with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Visual Arts from Spelman College, Temple University’s first Master of Arts degree in Women’s History (African-African American), and Golden Gate University School of Law Juris Doctorate, she went to Greenville, South Carolina where she is known as a freedom fighter, legal precedent setter and the recipient of many awards.

Efia Nwangaza is the founder and Executive Director of the Afrikan-American Institute for Policy Studies and Planning and founding member and SC Coordinator for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement for Self-Determination. She is the founder/coordinator of the WMXP-LP community-based radio, and a board member of Pacifica National Foundation, the nation’s oldest progressive radio network.

Efia is the former co-chair of the Jericho Movement for US Political Prisoners, represented the U.S. Human Rights Network’s Political Prisoner Working Group in observing the U.S. first appearance for UN Universal Periodic Review, in Geneva. She represented the National Conference of Black Lawyers in Aristide era Haiti, lectured at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, NGO Forum, Beijing, China, and helped draft action plan for UN World Conference Against Racism.

She is an Amnesty International USA Human Rights Defender, and past member of the national Board of Directors for National Organization of Women (1990-1994) which launched the Every Woman NOW Campaign for President to force NOW to address internal white supremacy and elitism, African-American Institute for Research and Empowerment (1994-1996), South Carolina ACLU (1994-2000), and she was a 2004 Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in memoriam and education of voting rights/citizenship work and ethics of Fannie Lou Hammer, Mojeska Simpkins, and Septima Clark.

Taken from Invisible Giants: Coming Into View Volume II

Dr. Kokayi Patterson

from the LinkedIn page of Dr. Winston Kokayi Patterson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-winston-kokayi-patterson):

Dr. Winston Kokayi Patterson

Wholistic Health Practitioner, Co-Founder of The African Wholistic Health Association, Exec. Dir. of The Acudetox Specialist Collective

About

Prior to becoming an Acupuncture Detox Specialist in 1979, Kokayi Patterson was a Drug Counselor and Program Manager/Director specializing in Residential Treatment, Community Outreach, and Youth Counseling. For over 35 years, he witnessed acupuncture used since 1970 at a local Drug Center. He lectures in D.C., MD, VA, and nationally. At the Drug Center, he headed both staff & client orientation and training for 20 years.

The Legacy of the Shakur Family

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS: ‘An Amerikan Family’ traces the legacy of Tupac Shakur’s influential family, article by Tonya Mosley, Fresh Air, June 14, 2023:
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/14/1182123264/an-amerikan-family-traces-the-legacy-of-tupac-shakurs-influential-family

Article on the Web site of The New Republic by Keisha N. Blain, August 3, 2023: How the Shakurs Became One of America’s Most Influential Families; In a white supremacist society; the Black family offers a buffer and, at times, a space for resistance:
https://newrepublic.com/article/173319/shakurs-became-one-americas-influential-families

“Now all ancestors …. Looking at the lives of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Afeni Shakur, and Tupac Shakur will be an entryway into their life’s work of resistance, commitment, and sacrifice and how to collectively reproduce this in families and children of the African collective in America” – Sis. Tomiko

If you weren’t able to hear the show in its usual Wednesday 3 PM slot, Hand Radio will rebroadcast the show on Thursday, August 10 at 3 PM (Eastern Time, United States).  Or, listen to the recorded show below:

Africa 500 is broadcast every Wednesday at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time, United States) on Hand Radio (https://handradio.org). After the broadcast, the show is available in an update of this post and on the Audio-Visual Media Pages of KUUMBAReport (https://kuumbareport.com), KUUMBAEvents (https://kuumbaevents.com) and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (https://srdcinternational.org).


AFRICA500
Wednesdays @3pm EST.
https://handradio.org/
https://kuumbareport.com/
https://webuyblack.com
https://kweli.tv

Celebrating Black August

“The seed you plant in love, no matter how small, will grow into a mighty tree of refuge” – Afeni Shakur
“I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth” – Assata Shakur

Africa 500, Wednesday, March 15, 2023: Pan-Afrikan Activist Ancestor Winnie Mandela Speaks

The Wednesday, March 15 edition of Africa 500 brings us the words of Pan-Afrikan activist and onetime First Lady of South Africa, Ancestor Winnie Mandela.  She was the wife of Nelson Mandela during his time as a leader of the African National Congress, during his 27-year incarceration at Robben Island under the Apartheid regime of South Africa, and as he served as President of South Africa after his release from prison.

She carved her own niche in the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, wielding power and influence that made her a formidable force against the Apartheid regime as well as a feared opponent of South African collaborators and rivals in the revolutionary movement.

Show hosts Sis. Tomiko and Bro. Ty are bringing us strong Black Women’s voices as they observe and celebrate Pan Afrikan Herstory Month.

Africa 500 is broadcast every Wednesday at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time, United States) on Hand Radio (https://handradio.org).  After the show, it can be listened to on this post and on the Media Pages of KUUMBAReport (https://kuumbareport.com), KUUMBAEvents (https://kuumbaevents.com) and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (https://srdcinternational.org).

Listen to the March 15, 2023 show here:

The Ancestors’ Call: Marshall “Eddie” Conway

I first met Baba Marshall “Eddie” Conway in 1998. I had become familiarized with his case as a result in my membership in the Organization of All Afrikan Unity-Black Panther Cadre (OAAU-BPC) under the leadership of Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo from 1994. In that organization, much of the mystery of the Panthers was lifted from my up-to-then confused mind, and the plight of America’s Political Prisoners was gradually revealed to me. OAAU-BPC’s main contribution to the issue of Political Prisoners was their direct involvement in the campaign to win the exoneration and freedom of Marshall “Eddie” Conway, a US Army Veteran (as many Panthers were) and a leader in the Baltimore Chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Baba Eddie, as I had come to call him, had exposed the existence of police agents within the Baltimore organization, and had informed Panther leadership in New York and the Bay Area of the degree if infiltration of the Baltimore organization by the Baltimore City Police Red Squad and probably other intelligence operatives. For this, Baba Eddie was targeted. He was arrested at his job at the Main Post Office in Baltimore in April 1970 and accused of murdering a Baltimore City police officer and seriously injuring another. Despite Baba Eddie’s protestation of innocence and a lack of any physical evidence linking him to the case, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. It was in prison, at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup, Maryland, not-so-affectionately known as “The Cut”, that I met Baba Eddie. I had talked with him over the phone a couple of times, and I was at “The Cut” specifically to meet him and be introduced to the Writers’ Club, a group of inmates who used prose, poetry and other literary pursuits to help them heal their psyches and, for those who could look forward to release one day, prepare them to better cope with the world outside. I was impressed with the calm that Baba Eddie exuded, and I wrote about my encounter with him in the newsletter I was writing at the time (KUUMBAReport), along with an explanation of his case from Nana Njingha, also a member of the Baltimore Chapter, a testimonial by Baba Paul Coates, another member of that Chapter and now founder of Black Classic Press; commentaries by fellow Political Prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and The MOVE Organization; and a short commentary by Baba Eddie himself. I would begin to sign off on emails, letters and radio shows by wishing everyone “Peace and Power” in large part because of inspiration by Baba Eddie’s example.

KuumbaReport Newsletter Issue 6 June 1998

I would get to see him two more times, I think, before an incident at “The Cut” led to a lockdown and a stop to all visits for a while. Still, the effort to secure his exoneration and release continued. The Marshall Eddie Conway Support Committee had been formed under the guidance of his first wife, Nana Njingha, who continued to tirelessly champion his cause. This was a group of dedicated Pan-Afrikanists and Black Nationalists who were committed to seeing Baba Eddie go free. There was also the Friends of Eddie Conway, an integrated group that included several White “allies” who shared many of the revolutionary beliefs of the Black Panther Party and supported freedom for all Political Prisoners. These groups had a connection with the larger national organization known as Jericho, which advocated for the hundreds of Political Prisoners being held in penitentiaries, prisons and jails in the US, from Mumia Abu-Jamal and MOVE in Philadelphia, to Indigenous First Nations Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier and the American Indian Movement (AIM), to White Political Prisoners such as Thomas Manning and Marilyn Buck, to Panthers imprisoned across the country that included Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, Veronza Bowers, Hugo “Yogi” Pinnell, Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa and Ed Poindexter, to exiles such as Assata Shakur, and of course to Baba Eddie.

The following report, from the group Justice For Eddie Conway, was reprinted in the January-February 2001 issue of KUUMBAReport:

Justice for Marshall Eddie Conway January February 2001

I’m sure there were those of us who believed that Baba Eddie would never be released from prison. The opponents of Political Prisoners, despite the usual lack of conclusive evidence, the use of suspect jailhouse informants, the withheld exculpatory evidence, the manufactured evidence, the contradicted and often blatantly false testimony, the police and judicial misconduct and the denial of competent legal representation to the defendants, were many, were in places of political power, and were adamant that despite all the indications that the trials were unfair at best, that they had their man (and sometimes their woman), that justice had been served (at least to their satisfaction), and that these “criminals” should never see the light of day. Still, after much legal maneuvering and wrangling, Baba Eddie was finally released from prison on parole on March 4, 2014 after 43 years and 10 months of imprisonment.

His release had been prompted by several previous events. A few years earlier, Jack Johnson, who was also convicted in connection to the police officer’s murder, was released from prison on compassionate parole. Another domino dropped when a Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in the case Unger v. State in May 2012, which bolstered the argument that in Baba Eddie’s trial, the jury instructions had violated his Constitutional rights to due process, as reported in an article on the Web site of Truthout (https://truthout.org/articles/political-prisoner-marshall-eddie-conway-released-from-prison-after-44-years/):

Despite Eddie Conway’s insistence on his innocence, it took years for Conway and his attorneys to find a way to overturn his conviction. Finally, in May 2012, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in the case of Unger v. State that a Maryland jury, to comply with due process as stated in the US Constitution, must be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that someone charged with a crime is guilty before that jury can convict the defendant. What made this decision momentous for many people in prison, including Conway, is that it applied retroactively.

Robert Boyle and Phillip G. Dantes, attorneys for Conway, filed a motion on his behalf based on this ruling, arguing that the judge in Conway’s trial had not properly instructed the jury that this “beyond a reasonable doubt” proviso was mandatory for conviction. Based on this motion, they negotiated an agreement whereby Conway would be resentenced to time served and be released from prison. In exchange, Conway and his lawyers agreed not to litigate his case based on the Unger ruling.

Since his release, Baba Eddie lived a relatively quiet life compared to the revolutionary activism of his youth, but he continued to work on behalf of the rights of the people and the truth. He began working at The Real News in Baltimore (https://therealnews.com/), his most prolific work being on regular programs such as “Rattling The Bars”, which he hosted with fellow former Political Prisoner Mansa Musa to “put the voices of the people most harmed by our system of mass incarceration at the center of our reporting on the fight to end it.” In the meantime, he had an opportunity to enjoy those moments life still had for him with his second wife, Dominique, who also worked with him on several programs centered on prisoners and on youth, and with his extended family. 

I had one more chance to visit with Baba Eddie at his office at The Real News in Baltimore, where he showed me around the building, which was still expanding, and asked me about my continuing activist work since I had visited him in The Cut. I hope my answers to him about my activities in the intervening years were satisfactory to him.

I would see him in person two more times, at the intersection of North and Pennsylvania Avenues during the 2015 protests against the police murder of Freddie Gray, and later at an event about the community and the police at Ida B’s Table, an eatery and cultural meet spot that was named after legendary civil rights activist Ida B. Wells in The Real News Building that was still under construction when I was there before. I did not have an opportunity to speak at length with Baba Eddie at these events, but he seemed well and at peace with his long, tortuous journey through life as an activist and the personal price he was forced to pay for his commitment.

Over the last few months, I had heard that he was dealing with health issues, problems that he had been confronted by for years from the time of his imprisonment, but the quiet strength and dignity with which he had handled himself, at least outwardly, led me to believe that he would overcome these challenges and come out the other side swinging. It came as a shock to me to hear on Monday, February 13, that Baba Eddie had transitioned to the Honored Ancestors in Long Beach, California. At this point, the real toll of decades of political imprisonment hit home. Baba Eddie was robbed of over four decades of freedom, locked away in the infamous “Cut”, and in the end, this undoubtedly led to health problems that would end his life well before it should have happened.

In the end, our hearts ache that Baba Eddie is no longer with us on the physical plane.  We were gratified that he at least had almost nine years to breathe the free air before his transition.  Several of our Political Prisoners who were finally released had only a few months to enjoy their freedom, and some sadly died in prison.  The community at least had the opportunity to honor Baba Eddie and show our appreciation for his incredible work and sacrifice, allowing him to receive at least some of his flowers while he was still among us.  Baba Eddie leaves behind a number of family, friends, followers, associates and admirers, but he also leaves behind a great legacy of commitment, struggle and love of the people. May we all strive to approach the level of commitment Baba Eddie showed for truth, justice and righteousness.

Below are several links to just a few of the articles, videos and podcasts that have been produced to pay tribute to Baba Eddie:

Marshall “Eddie” Conway (1946-2023): A life committed to the people and revolutionary change, Liberation News, https://www.liberationnews.org/marshall-eddie-conway-1946-2023-a-life-committed-to-the-people-and-revolutionary-change/

Marshall Eddie Conway, former Black Panther imprisoned for 44 years, dies at 76, Radio Havana Cuba, https://www.radiohc.cu/en/noticias/internacionales/313730-marshall-eddie-conway-former-black-panther-imprisoned-for-44-years-dies-at-76

Marshall “Eddie” Conway, Former Black Panther Imprisoned for 44 Years, Dies at 76, DemocracyNow!, https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/14/headlines/marshall_eddie_conway_former_black_panther_imprisoned_for_44_years_dies_at_76

Tribute to Marshall “Eddie” Conway, Black Power Rewind, https://www.youtube.com/live/RIXRIIdZhq4?feature=share

 

Africa400 Call to Action for Imam Jamil Al-Amin, Wednesday, December 28, 2022

The Wednesday, December 28, 2022 edition of Africa400 discusses the case of Political Prisoner Imam Jamil Al-Amin and the actions that must be taken to secure his exoneration and freedom. Show Hosts Sis. Tomiko and Bro. Ty welcome the following powerful guests:

Bomani Shakur

Bomani Uhuru Jihad Shakur is the National Minister of Information of The Provisional Government of The Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA). He has been a Conscious New Afrikan Citizen since 2002. Serving in various capacities within the PG including Deputy Minister of Youth, Minister of Information, New Afrikan Nation Day Planning Committee and Co-Host of the Provisional Government of The Republic of New Afrika Radio Show. Locally he is the Minister of Information of the People’s Party for Independence (PPI) in the New Afrikan Population District of Baba Dr. John Henrik Clarke Town aka Columbus, Georgia. Brother Bomani is a local representative of IJAN (Imam Jamil Action Network). Minister Bomani is Vice Chancellor of George Jackson University (GJU), Host of George Jackson University Radio and Acting Spokesperson for George Jackson University. Bomani Uhuru Jihad Shakur is an active member of BAOC (Black August Organizing Committee). Bomani is a member of the Re-Build Newspaper Distribution Collective. Aside from his local activities and national kazi, he is a New Afrikan Propagandist, New Afrikan Ourstorian [“It’s Our Story not his story (history)”], Educator, Activist, Advocate of Captured New Afrikan Citizens (i.e. New Afrikan Political Prisoners), New Afrikan Prisoners of War as well as political prisoners of other movements such as the Black Liberation Movement. Comrade Bomani is committed to presenting ourstorical narrative via radio, literature, written correspondence and conversation.

Thomas Ruffin

Thomas Ruffin is a founding member of the International Association of Black Lawyers, a group of highly competent, radical Black lawyers who came together in 2017 for the liberation and uplift of Black people and the poor throughout the world. As a lawyer, Thomas Ruffin practices in the United States, principally in the District of Columbia and Maryland. As an activist, Thomas Ruffin fights against injustice anywhere. Indeed, Mr. Ruffin served as the public information lawyer in the campaign to free Troy Anthony Davis, a Black man wrongfully executed by the racist state of Georgia in September 2011. Thomas Ruffin also served as a member of the Jericho National Movement, a nonprofit organization that aimed to liberate political prisoners held captive in the United States.

Ajamu Baraka

A human rights defender whose experience spans four decades of domestic and international education and activism, Ajamu Baraka is a veteran grassroots organizer whose roots are in the Black Liberation Movement and anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity struggles.

Baraka is an internationally recognized leader of the emerging human rights movement in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of efforts to apply the international human rights framework to social justice advocacy in the U.S. for more than 25 years. As such, he has provided human rights trainings for grassroots activists across the country, briefings on human rights to the U.S. Congress, and appeared before and provided statements to various United Nations agencies, including the UN Human Rights Commission (precursor to the current UN Human Rights Council).

As a co-convener with Jaribu Hill of the Mississippi Worker Center for Human Rights, Baraka played an instrumental role in developing the series of bi-annual Southern Human Rights Organizers’ Conferences (SHROC) that began in 1996. These gatherings represented some of the first post-Cold War human rights training opportunities for grassroots activists in the country.

Baraka played an important role in bringing a human rights perspective to the preparatory meetings for the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) that took place in Geneva and in Santiago, Chile as part of the Latin American Preparatory process, as well as the actual conference that he attended as a delegate in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

Ajamu Baraka was the Founding Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network (USHRN) from July 2004 until June 2011. He is the Founder of Black Alliance for Peace (BAP). He is currently an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and a writer for Counterpunch.

Update on Imam Jamil Al Amin: The Atlanta Conviction Integrity Unit headed by Fani Willis has interviewed Otis Jackson, the man who admitted to the crime for which Imam Jamil has been unjustly imprisoned for 20+ years.

Also, check out the webpage https://uscmo.org/2021/08/05/imam-jamil-al-amin-is-serving-a-life-sentence-for-a-crime-he-did-not-commit/ for more information on his case.

For the December 28 edition of Africa400, listen here:

Africa400 broadcasts every Wednesday at 3:00 PM (Eastern Time, United States) on HANDRadio (https://handradio.org). After the show airs, it can later be listened to on the update of this post as well as on the Audio-Visual Media pages of the Web sites https://kuumbareport.com, https://kuumbaevents.com and https://srdcinternational.org.

AFRICA400
Wednesdays @3pm EST.
https://handradio.org
https://kuumbareport.com
https://webuyblack.com
https://kweli.tv

Starting in January 2023, Africa400 will be renamed Africa 500, to better reflect the more than 500 years if the Global Pan-Afrikan Struggle against the Ma’afa, the Great Disaster, the enslavement of our Ancestors in Arabia, the Americas and our own Ancestral Home.  In 2023, look for Africa 500 programs here and at https://handradio.org.

Africa400 Goes on Hiatus; Check Out Classic Shows on Our Media Page

Africa400, the weekly Pan-Afrikan radio show hosted by Mama Tomiko and Baba Ty, with Special Episodes guest-hosted by Grandmother Walks On Water (“Mothership”) and Baba Francois Ndengwe (“Fresh News From Africa”), is taking a break from broadcasting as they make plans for the coming year.

Africa400 has discussed issues of children’s education (with a variety of guests including Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu), women’s issues, political prisoners (especially Imam Jamil Al-Amin), Afrikan-centered business ventures, Afrikan and Afrikan-American history (significantly, with historian Dr. Gerald Horne), culture, music (most notably highlighting pioneering jazz bagpiper Ancestor Rufus Harley and singer-rapper-songwriter Sis. Maimouna Youssef), health and spirituality (with health and spiritual experts such as Mama Ayo Handy-Kendi), among other compelling topics and guests.

While we will not have live shows for the immediate future, we are certain our readers have not had the opportunity to listen to all the shows of Africa400.  To remedy that problem, you are invited to visit our Media Page, which features every Africa400 episode from the show’s inception on traditional radio (WFBR in Baltimore) and even the show’s predecessor that was briefly broadcast under the Little Africa title.  All of these shows are available, with written introductions to the shows’ topics and guests, on our Media Page.

And keep visiting this site for updates on when Africa400 will resume live broadcasts.

A Panel of Human Rights Defenders and Organizers on Africa400, Wednesday, September 15, 2021

The Wednesday, September 15 edition of Africa400 features a panel of guests representing several organizations working in defense of human rights and the empowerment of People of African Descent.  Show hosts Mama Tomiko and Baba Ty welcome members of several organizations to discuss their roles in the pursuit of human rights, restorative justice and raising the voice of the grassroots Pan-Afrikan Diaspora and marginalized communities.

To listen to the September 15 show, click below:

Below are descriptions of each of the organizations that appeared on the show:

US Human Rights Network (USHRN)

The US Human Rights Network (US Human Rights Network (ushrnetwork.org)) is a national network of organizations and individuals working to strengthen a human rights movement and culture within the United States led by the people most directly impacted by human rights violations. We work to secure dignity and justice for all.

We work to realize human rights by:

  • Engaging, connecting and mobilizing communities, Peoples, workers, and diverse sectors across issue areas, constituencies, and regions to uphold and defend human rights and hold government accountable;
  • Building the capacity and leadership of grassroots groups and individuals to effectively apply the human rights framework in developing strategy and making long-term structural shifts to achieve justice;
  • Raising the visibility of local human rights concerns and activism to shape the public discourse locally, nationally, and internationally; and
  • Facilitating effective collective action to secure the structural change needed to fully realize human rights.

 The US Human Rights Network is guided by these core principles:

  • Human rights are universal, interdependent, indivisible, and inalienable.
  • Human rights movements must be led by those most directly affected by human rights violations.
  • Human rights advocacy and organizing should prioritize the struggles of the poor and most marginalized groups in society.
  • Human rights movements must be inclusive and respect and reflect the diversity within communities.
  • Human rights encompass civil, political, economic, social, cultural, environmental, sexual, and development rights for individuals, Peoples, and groups.

Jericho Movement

Jericho is a movement with the defined goal of gaining recognition of the fact that political prisoners and prisoners of war exist inside of the United States, despite the United States’ government’s continued denial … and winning amnesty and freedom for these political prisoners.

The Jericho Movement (https://thejerichomovement.com/) addresses four principal issues:

  1. Building the Amnesty Campaign

A big part of this work is locating political prisoners, compiling dossiers on them, and building the case for amnesty.

  1. Continuing the Educational Campaign

About the Existence of Political Prisoners inside the U.S.

  1. The Jericho Legal Defense Fund

Providing supportive expenses for lawyers and law students etc. to provide legal defense for political prisoners.

  1. The Jericho Medical Project

Fighting for adequate and quality medical care for political prisoners.

George Jackson University (GJU)

AN OVERVIEW

In 2003, Abdul Olugbala Shakur, Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa, Hodari Kambon, Abasi Ganda, Yafeu I-yapo, Dr. Donald R. Evans, and Dr. Rashad Ali developed the concept of transforming the entire U.S. Prison Industrial Slave-Complex (P.I.S.C.) into the largest university in the country. The initial name for the project was University of the Mind, but under this title we received very minimum feedback, so by Summer of 2003 we decided to name our university The George Jackson University (GJU), https://www.georgejacksonuniversity.com/, within six (6) months we received over 20,000 applications for enrollment into our GJU from New Afrikan (Afrikan Amerikan) prisoners across the country, we even received applications from as far as Brazil, London, and Canada, brothas and sistas trying to connect.

HISTORY OF GJU

In the past five (5) years a growing number of people have inquired about the GJU, make no mistake about it, we were not discouraged from pursuing our objective, many of us have been extremely busy working on a number of other issues, and not to mention all documents related to the GJU were fraudulently confiscated, therefore we have to start all over again. Our first step towards revising the GJU is developing a strong and dedicated outside support network and faculty . We are re-instituting the concept of transforming the entire U.S. prison industrial slave complex into the largest progressive educational institution in the country with emphasis on Afro-centric and Pan-Afrikan studies and New Afrikan political education.

The Kent State Truth Tribunal

On May 4, 1970 a troop of Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on unarmed Kent State students protesting America’s invasion of Cambodia. Four students were shot dead and nine others wounded. Ten days later, also in a student protest against the Vietnam War, two Jackson State College students were killed and more than 11 wounded by the Mississippi police. 

The Kent State and Jackson State student killings seized headlines at a watershed moment in American history, bringing the war home and distressing a country already divided over the Vietnam War. In the days that followed the campus massacres, more than four million students rose up in dissent across 900 university campuses, generating the largest nationwide student protest in U.S. history. 

The Kent State massacre has never been thoroughly, impartially investigated and no person or group has been held accountable for wrongdoing. Through the courts, families of those who were killed or injured received paltry sums of compensation and a statement of regret.

Forty years after Kent State in 2010, new digital forensic evidence emerged in a tape recording of the Kent State commands-to-fire and gunfire. Still, the U.S. Dept. of Justice refused a credible inquiry into the new audio that contained the sounds of shooting and killing of students exercising their fundamental right to political expression. There has been no admission of responsibility on the part of the state.

The Truth Tribunal (https://www.truthtribunal.org/) is a direct response to this history of impunity for Kent State. On the 40th anniversary of the Kent State massacre, Allison’s sister Laurel decided to learn and record the truth at Kent State from the people who were there. For decades she had watched Kent State University and the U.S. government act with institutional power and unlimited funds as they repressed the truth at Kent State and buried all evidence of government complicity in committing the Kent State massacre. The Truth Tribunal archive will stand as an enduring record of the truth, as told by those who witnessed and survived that day. 

Just before his death, Boston University history professor and renowned advocate Dr. Howard Zinn sent Laurel this note:

Laurie,

You are right that trying to get “redress” via the judicial system is a dead end, or a maze, and that learning and spreading the truth is the most important thing you can do. That was the idea of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. 

Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC)

The Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (https://srdcinternational.org) was founded in 2006 in response to the African Union’s (AU) decision in 2003 to invite the African Diaspora “to participate fully as an important component in the building of the African Union.”  The AU initially coined the term “Sixth Region” to describe the Diaspora, which consisted of “people of African descent and heritage, living outside the Continent, irrespective of their country of citizenship, who are willing to contribute to the development of the African Continent and the building of the African Union.”  While the AU established the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC), an AU organ that was established to allow for the participation of Africa’s “non-state actors” or grassroots civil society in advising the General Assembly, as the means by which the Diaspora would begin our journey to full AU membership, as well as a set of criteria and procedures to establish that representation, the actual organization of the people of the Diaspora to accept this invitation was left up to us in the Diaspora ourselves.  Toward that end, SRDC has developed a plan to empower the people to choose our Diaspora representatives in ECOSOCC through a series of local, national and international elections (one cannot appoint themselves or others to be a representative), and to bring our many Pan-African organizations together in a cooperative effort to accomplish this task, so we can truthfully say that the result of our efforts is a delegation that truly speaks for the people of the Pan-African Diaspora.  Our work will  not stop there, however; our hope is to help establish representation for the Diaspora in the AU’s Pan African Parliament (which can actually create legislation), as well as fight for the recognition of the Diaspora by the United Nations and its numerous international human rights and geopolitical bodies.

This, of course, has turned out to be no easy task.  To maintain the trust of our grassroots communities, we need to consistently demonstrate that we are indeed dedicated to addressing the issues that afflict us as a people, which we continue to do by holding Community Town Hall Meetings where information and ideas are shared with and by the community, by planning or assisting with on-the-ground projects such as cultural events, educational events and capital projects, by inviting different organizations to participate with us, and by forming coalitions to help bring those organizations, as well as our communities, together on a more regular basis.  Still, rivalry and distrust continue to threaten the unity we are working toward, disinformation is spread by those who wish to prevent us from coming together in the first place, and even the African Union itself often allows its own bureaucracy to complicate our work and make our job that much harder.  These obstacles cause some activists to lose hope and abandon the struggle, but SRDC has continued to push forward despite all this.  Thus, while we continue to work to establish our voice in the African Union, we also participate in discussions and forums of the United Nations, coalitions of grassroots civil-society groups and of other international Pan-African organizations in hopes of building a standing global coalition that can more effectively pursue truth, justice, self-determination and prosperity for African people and the world as a whole.

SRDC is organizing in several areas of the US and Canada, and our organizational allies in Central America (Central American Black Organization, or CABO), Europe (African Union African Diaspora Sixth Region, AUADS), the Caribbean (Mouvement International pour Reparation in Guadeloupe), the Middle East (Middle East African Diaspora Unity Council in Dimona, Israel) and recently, the African Continent (Sehwah-Liberia and organizations in Tanzania) are doing similar work where they are.  Our plan for organizing the Diaspora includes sponsoring regular local community Town Hall Meetings, establishing Councils of Elders, holding an annual International Summit (This year’s Summit will be in Monrovia, Liberia) and building alliances and coalitions with other organizations.

To find our more, visit https://srdcinternational.org, or email info@srdcinternational.org or cliff@kuumbareport.com.

Spirit of Mandela Coalition

Created in 2018, In the Spirit of Mandela Coalition (https://spiritofmandela.org/) is a growing grouping of organizers, academics, clergy, attorneys, and organizations committed to working together against the systemic, historic, and ongoing human rights violations and abuses committed by the USA against Black, Brown, and Indigenous People. The Coalition recognizes and affirms the rich history of diverse and militant freedom fighters Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Graca Machel Mandela, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and many more. It is in their Spirit and affirming their legacy that we work. This October 22-25 2021,  In the Spirit of Mandela Coalition  will be organizing and hosting an International Tribunal which will be charging the United States government, its states, and specific agencies with human and civil rights violations against Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. The Tribunal will be charging human and civil rights violations for:

  1. Racist police killings of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.
  2. Hyper incarcerations of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.
  3. Political incarceration of Civil Rights/National Liberation era revolutionaries and activists, as well as present day activists.
  4. Environmental racism and its impact on Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.
  5. Public Health racism and disparities and its impact on Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.
  6. Genocide of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people as a result of the historic and systemic charges of all the above.

Black Alliance for Peace (BAP)

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), https://blackallianceforpeace.com/, seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement. Through educational activities, organizing and movement support, organizations and individuals in the Alliance will work to oppose both militarized domestic state repression, and the policies of de-stabilization, subversion and the permanent war agenda of the U.S. state globally.  

PRINCIPLES OF UNITY

RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE

BAP is not a pacifist movement. While committed to peace, we understand there can be no peace without justice, and we will stand in solidarity with all peoples (and nations) who strive to liberate themselves from oppression.

SELF-DETERMINATION

BAP supports people’s struggles for national liberation and self-determination, with a special focus on the struggles of Black peoples and nation-states in the “Americas.”

ANTI-IMPERIALISM

BAP takes a resolute anti-colonial, anti-imperialist position that links the international role of the U.S. empire to the domestic war against poor people and working-class Black people in the United States.

WORKING-CLASS FOUNDATION

BAP identifies the Black working class as the main social force of any reconstituted Black Liberation project.

INTERSECTIONALITY

“People(s)-centered human rights” as defined as emanating from bottom-up mass struggle and informed by a Black, revolutionary, feminist intersectional framework will be the basis for analysis and actions.

ANTI-PATRIARCHY

All members, on an organizational and individual level, must be committed to ending patriarchy and all forms of male domination in either internal organizational practice or external/public political positions.

DECOLONIZATION

Members of this Alliance see the U.S. state as the ongoing institutional expression of settler-colonialism and are committed to an authentic process of decolonization in every sense of that term.

PRISONER SUPPORT

BAP is committed to working against all forms of state and domestic repression, including the issues of political prisoners and prisoners of war in the United States.

BLACK UNITY

BAP sees itself as one aspect of the effort to revitalize the broader Black Liberation Movement.

SOUTHERN ROOTS

The South is the base of U.S. military infrastructure. It’s also where 55 percent of Black people happen to live. BAP identifies this region as a priority for collective learning, organizing, and mobilizing the power and influence of Black workers and the poor to oppose militarism, war and imperialism.

AFRICA400
Wednesdays 2-3pm EST.
https://handradio.org/
https://kuumbareport.com/
webuyblack.com
kweli.tv

  

 

 

 

“Free the Rap” Focuses on the Case of Imam Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) on Africa400, Wednesday, August 18, 2021

“I can find only three places for a righteous man in an evil society: on the battlefield fighting his enemy; in a cell imprisoned by the enemy; or in his grave free from his enemy. Outside this, I find only hypocrisy.”
— H. Rap Brown aka Imam Jamil Al Amin

The Wednesday, August 18, 2021 edition of Africa400 discusses the continuing struggle to obtain justice and freedom for Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown.  Show host Mama Tomiko leads an informative discussion of his case, the Press Conference and Protest held on Sunday, August 15 and the continuing effort to win his exoneration and freedom.

Africa400 will continue to dedicate shows to Imam Jamil Al Amin, aka H. Rap Brown, until he is released from prison.  Below is a reprint of an article written by last year’s Africa400 guest Dr. Maulana Karenga as he spoke to the need to ‘Free the Rap’.  The article can also be read at Achieving Justice for Imam Jamil: A Battleline For All of Us – Los Angeles Sentinel | Los Angeles Sentinel | Black News (lasentinel.net).

Achieving Justice for Imam Jamil: A Battleline For All of Us
By Dr. Maulana Karenga
Published April 25, 2019

He came into the consciousness of his people and in the cross-hairs of the oppressor on the blood-stained battlefields and battlelines of the Black Freedom Movement of the 1960s. The media called Imam Jamil Al-Amin, H. Rap Brown then, but we just called him Rap because of the hard hitting, defiant, rhythmic and righteous way he described and condemned our oppressor and oppression and praised our people and challenged them to stand up, step forward and continue the liberation struggle.

We had met briefly at the SNCC headquarters in Atlanta when Us and SNCC were exploring incorporating Watts as a freedom city separate from Los Angeles. But we had ample time to talk when he came to speak at a Free Huey Rally at the Los Angeles Sports Arena that Us had played a key role in organizing within the context of the Black Congress, a Black united front, including the major groups in the L.A. area. He and I spoke at the rally, along with a long list of Black leaders and activists, as well as Mexican leaders, Reies Tijerina and David Sanchez. Also we had stood together against taking Custer stands with the police at the event, and I had sent Tommy Jacquette-Halifu to provide security for him to the airport. Halifu was a man of the people and I had also sent him to the Bay area with Kwame Toure to speak at Hunter’s Point and elsewhere. He had built a strong relationship with both. May the work Halifu and Kwame did and the good they brought last forever and always be a lesson and inspiration to us all.

Rap was his battle name, and his words were, as we say of Kawaida philosophy, a shield and sword, a pillow of peace and a constant call to righteous and relentless struggle. Long before the art of rappin’ was redefined as only a young people’s music, it was a whole people’s way of talking, telling truth, making sense, doing word magic with sayings and songs or running down a love proposal or program in smooth, cool and powerfully persuasive ways, i.e., making a case for togetherness in both personal and collective ways. And Rap was a master rapper, skilled in the spoken word, speaking rhythmically without rhyme, but with compelling reason; speaking truth to the people and to power, calling for an increase and expansion of the righteous and relentless struggle we as a people were waging for our liberation and a higher level of human life.

Historian Vincent Harding, speaking at a support rally for Imam Jamil in March 2012, said that Imam Jamil had, even at an earlier age, recognized and accepted the responsibility of youth to make a better world. Moreover, he said, Imam Jamil knew that youth “must develop themselves and become leaders in the building of a just and fair society.” And that he has spent “his life working on the creation of something better, something just for all of us in this country and in the world.” Indeed, he did this during the Black Liberation Movement and continued with his work after the Movement as a respected and loved Imam waging jihad, righteous struggle, on the spiritual and social levels and contributing greatly to the advancement of Black and human freedom.

In the 60s when they tried to muzzle and mute his voice of struggle, and of teaching the unvarnished and victorious truth, he would not be cowered, cut off or calmed down. “Let Rap, rap” we shouted. “Teach, Rap. Go on and rap Rap” we called out as he lit fire to falsehood, exposed the hidden horrors of the oppressor and raised high the praise for the people and the urgent need to continue and intensify the struggle. And now they seek to muzzle and mute his voice again. In 2002, he was falsely convicted of murder of a police officer and wounding another and sentenced to life in prison. Imam Jamil has always asserted and maintained his innocence. And there were holes and inconsistencies in the prosecutor’s narrative of conviction: the eyes and height description of the shooter; the wounded officers’ statement of having wounded the assailant, but no wounds were on Imam Jamil; a blood trail, but no blood on or from Imam Jamil; what was seen as a planted gun at the scene of Imam’s arrest; reports of police pressuring of the witnesses; and a confession later of someone who said that he was the shooter.

Having locked Imam Jamil down in a Georgia State prison, the state and federal government secretly transferred him out of state to a supermax underground federal person in Florence, Colorado without the knowledge of his family or lawyer on August 1, 2007. This was strange and suspicious because Imam Jamil was not convicted of a federal crime, but a state crime and thus unless there was some problem of space or of special circumstances, he should have remained in the state of the conviction. But it was not for reasons of space and there was no justification of special circumstances, but rather an expression of the governmental desire to capture, isolate and break him as was their long-term intention and as further demonstrated, by their transferring him to another federal prison in Arizona. Therefore, the current righteous struggle to return Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin back to Georgia and bring him out of the brutalizing isolation in the federal prison in Arizona, to get for him the medical treatment he urgently needs, and to free him from wrongful imprisonment is a struggle for justice in a most compelling and comprehensive sense.

Clearly, his trial was grossly flawed and his conviction was deeply wrongful. His targeting and imprisonment was political. His transfer from a prison in Georgia for a state conviction to federal prisons in Colorado and Arizona and being placed in solidarity confinement for 8 years is vindictive, vicious and designed to isolate him from family, community and legal counsel, and punish and break him. The refusal to allow journalists and academics to see and interview him is to muzzle him and eliminate the regular monitoring and checking on their savage treatment of him. And the denial of adequate and appropriate treatment for him is inhumane, a violation of his human rights and creating conditions for his death. Thus, we must see and engage this as a moral obligation to resist and reverse these unjust and evil actions.

Imam Jamil tells us from the beginning that we must not expect justice to be given to us without struggle in the midst of an unjust and evil society. Therefore, he urges us to constantly struggle to bring into being the good world we all want and deserve. He says “I can find only three places for a righteous man in an evil society: on the battlefield fighting his enemy; in a cell imprisoned by the enemy; or in his grave free from his enemy. Outside this, I find only hypocrisy.” Immediately, this calls to mind Min. Malcolm’s teaching that “Wherever a Black man (woman) is, there is a battleline.” Indeed, Haji Malik continues saying, “We are living in a country that is a battleline for all of us.” So, as we said in the Sixties, even if you, yourself, are not at war, you are in a war, a war being waged against you, your people and against people and things righteous, revolutionary and resistant. And thus, it behooves us to come to the battlefront conscious, capable and committed. Also, as we said then and must know as true now, there can be no half-stepping and no compromised commitment, for the brutal nature of our oppression and the evil character of our oppressor will not permit it. Finally, Imam Jamil tells us that we must continue the struggle, not only to free him, but also ourselves and the world. He says, “We have to see ourselves as the authors of a new justice. And wherever we see injustice and tyranny, we must (stop) it.” Our task, he states, is “to make the world more humane.” Indeed, he concludes, “That has to be the role of any revolutionary or any person that considers himself (herself) revolutionary.” And we of Us say again and again of our righteous and relentless struggle to bring good in the world, “If not this, then what? And if we don’t do it, who will?”

********

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center(Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community andCulture and Introduction to Black Studies, 4th Edition, www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org www.MaulanaKarenga.org.

Africa400 is broadcast live every Wednesday at 2:00 PM (Eastern Time, United States) on HANDRadio (https://handradio.org) and over the HANDRadio App.  After the show airs, it can be listened to at the Media Pages of KUUMBAReport (https://kuumbareport.com), KUUMBAEvents (https://kuumbaevents.com) and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (https://srdcinternational.org).

To listen to the show, click here:

We Are the Mothers of the Revolution: Message to Black Women on International Women’s Rights Day

Mama Julia Wright, Pan-Afrikan human rights champion and daughter of legendary author Richard Wright, wrote the following Message to Black Women for the Million Woman March Movement on International Women’s Rights Day:

We, Black women, are mothers in more ways than one.

We are the mothers or mothers-to-be of our Black daughters and sons.

We nurture our warriors with the hope and the love that is at the root of all resistance.

We are the mothers of the lynched ones – and of all those who died in the struggle but still live in our hearts.

It is to us that their spirits return because there were so often no bodies, no graves, no mourning.

We are the mothers of the Revolution.

I remember a story told by my father, Richard Wright, in “Uncle Tom’s Children” where a Black mother goes to retrieve the body of the son the white supremacists are about to lynch. She meekly carries a sheet outwardly intended as a shroud but secretly hiding a pistol. She is able to shoot down one of her son’s torturers before being slain with her son.

I remember Maimie Till, the mother of Emmett Till, who moved mountains to have her 14 year old son’s lynched remains returned from the oblivion of an unmarked Mississippi grave to Chicago. There she decreed an open coffin for the whole world to see. The child’s innocence and his mother’s love gave birth to the civil rights movement.

I remember Sister Yuri Kochiyama, mother of six, cradling Malcolm X’s agony after he was shot down, ten years after Emmett Till’s lynching, in the Audubon Ballroom.

Yuri’s scribbled notes on the events that night already presciently pointed to Raymond Woods’ implication.

I will always recall going with Yuri and Pam Africa to visit Mumia.

The voice of Chairman Fred Hampton Jr is still scarred by the staccato tempo of the bullets he heard in his mother’s womb.

And how can we forget George Floyd placing himself in his mother’s hands as he takes his last breath.

Mumia’s 39-year long struggle for justice behind bars speaks to the mothers we are.

He is our brother, father, grandfather but most of all he is our revolutionary native son because time froze his freedom prematurely at the age of 27 when he was brutally framed and nearly killed by the most corrupt police force in the country.

What will we Black mothers do for our native son ?

We, Black women, are legion.

Training prosecutors in Pennsylvania were taught to exclude us from their juries because we are said to be prone to anger.

We are demonized, deleted, shunned, raped – so yes we are angry.

Our anger is rooted in our deep capacity to love.

We ,who love Mumia and all he stands for, we who are legion, will know how to seize the time and stand for him as COVID-19 and congestive heart failure put his life at serious risk again in carceral isolation.

As Sister Assata said : “It is too late for Malcolm but we can still save Mumia.”

Let’s bring Mumia Home!

The only treatment now is Freedom!

Let all our elders and political prisoners go!

Message from Julia Wright to the Million Woman March Movement for International Women’s Rights Day

March 6th 2021

The April 2000 Osage Avenue Interview

MOVE Bombing 1985i Remember the Osage Avenue VictimsEditor’s note: This interview was conducted on April 29, 2000 with five residents of the Osage Avenue neighborhood which had been the scene of the May 13, 1985 bombing of the MOVE Organization.  The interview has been edited for length, and the names of the interviewees were not recorded to ensure their privacy.  The text had been saved on an old computer hard drive and was only recently recovered.

I’ve had the last 16 years since the interview (and a couple of years before that) to meet and talk with members of MOVE, particularly Mama Ramona Africa and Mama Pam Africa, and to see the integrity of the members of the MOVE Family, as well as their compassion and affection for those who would go so far as to simply listen to them.  Over the years, MOVE may have “softened” their approach (not as many swear words, for example), but they have never wavered in their commitment to resisting this “rotten-ass system”.  I pretty much understood this even back then on April 29, 2000 when I sat down to interview the five gentlemen on Osage Avenue, but still, I wanted to be sure they had their say.  And the more they said, the more I saw that their concerns were not that different from those of MOVE, even though they disagreed with, and at times even condemned, MOVE’s methods.  I hope that understanding comes through as you read the interview below.

Interview at Osage Avenue
April 29, 2000

There are a number of articles on this website that describe the ongoing struggles of the MOVE Organization from the MOVE perspective, as well as links to the MOVE site.  While we at KUUMBAReport would not personally practice every tactic, strategy and philosophy of MOVE, we agree with them in general and remain committed to defending MOVE’s right to live their lives as their philosophy has determined to be in harmony with their beliefs and their convictions.  We call for justice for the six adults and five children who were victims of the 1985 MOVE bombing and for the hundreds of neighbors who lost their homes and faced a protracted struggle to make their lives while again.  We call for justice and full vindication for Mama Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor of the bombing, and the members of the MOVE Organization who were forced to endure the violent deaths of their family members that day.  We advocate for the immediate release of the imprisoned members of their family, the MOVE Nine (seven of whom still are alive in prison since the 1978 Powelton Village assault by Philadelphia police) and for the exoneration and liberation of their best-known defender, journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal.  But there was one perspective I had always wanted to hear, that those of us who support revolutionary struggle rarely have an opportunity to truly engage with – that of the “average citizen” who does not share the “revolutionary” philosophy and who might be strongly critical of it, but who might actually share more with us than we would expect.

On April 29, 2000, I visited the Osage Avenue neighborhood where the infamous MOVE bombing took place.  Fifteen years after an entire city block of 61 houses was burned down and eleven people – six adults and five children – were killed, the houses had been rebuilt, some of them several times over.  A friend of mine from my daytime employment had grown up in Philadelphia, and as we had debated the fear he had expressed of the MOVE Organization, I had been able to disabuse him of most of his misconceptions.  As a result, he had gotten me in touch with someone who lived in that Osage Avenue neighborhood and, through contacting this person, an interview with several people who had a rather unique perspective on the confrontation was arranged.

I did not record the names of the interviewees on the audiotape, in part to protect their identities in case any of their opinions were considered too controversial to ensure their privacy.  I have instead listed them as “Mr. A”, “Mr. B”, “Mr. C”, “Mr. D” and “Mr. E”.  These were five gentlemen who lived in the Osage Avenue MOVE Bombing 1985bneighborhood at the time of the MOVE bombing on May 13, 1985. Their opinions regarding MOVE were at least somewhat varied. Some were more sympathetic to MOVE than others.  They all agreed that their perspectives were different from that of MOVE, and thus they generally did not approve of MOVE’s methods of confrontation.  They also agreed, however, that what happened to MOVE, from the Osage Avenue bombing to the Powelton Village confrontation in 1978 to the years of abuse they had suffered at the hands of the Philadelphia Police Department, was undeserved and was the result of the actions of a corrupt, racist and repressive system.  They also made several allegations regarding the conduct of the 1978 and 1985 police actions and the subsequent investigations that some might consider shocking.

Interviewer – Bro. Cliff (KUUMBAReport)
Interviewees – Mr. A, Mr. B, Mr. C, Mr. D, Mr. E

KUUMBAReport: We’re here in the 6200 block of Osage Avenue and we’re talking about the history of the MOVE Organization in this neighborhood as it led up to the 1985 bombing, and even some issues that might have come out since then because I’m sure that wasn’t the last anyone heard of the MOVE Organization. What was the first time that people had heard in this neighborhood about MOVE, and what were the first impressions of people about them?

Mr. B: Well actually we had heard about MOVE prior to this experience that we had with them – back in Powelton Village. At the time, I just figured it was one of these radical groups, from what I’d seen in Powelton Village. … But I really didn’t pay that much attention to MOVE then, not until we had this experience. I don’t care what your religion might be or whatever. That’s yours. But don’t infringe it on me. If I don’t want to listen to your [political or religious agenda], then that’s my prerogative. They just seemed to have this thing where their people were in jail, but that didn’t have anything to do with holding us prisoner because their people were in jail, which we had nothing to do with. And we had a lot of elderly people around here, kids and whatever, and their lives were in jeopardy, they were in danger, and to me, I just lost all respect for them.

Mr. A: They told us, basically, “if you don’t help us, we’re going to irritate you so bad that the police are gonna come in,” but then what happened, we used to call the police, and the police used to say “we’re not coming in there. We can’t come in there. And you better not go in there messing with them. Just leave it alone.” A hands-off situation.

KR: Was this during Wilson Goode’s administration?

Mr. A: It was during Wilson Goode’s administration, when he got in office, because we had a meeting with him downtown one day and I remember, I said “Why don’t you do like [former mayor Frank] Rizzo did – just knock down the whole building?” He went off on me. He said “I’m not gonna do nothing.”

KR: Of course he wound up doing something even more extreme.

Mr. E: But what happened is, if you were following it very closely, he was pushed into it politically because who really pushed the button, and people don’t realize it, is Joan Spector. She pushed Wilson Goode to the point where he had to try to do something. She was a city councilperson; Arlen Spector’s wife. What happened was, Wilson Goode, before he turned it over to [police commissioner Gregore] Sambor, he kept putting it on the news, “Anybody with any peaceful solutions, please step forward and try to do something,” so people came through here and talked to them through the window and all of that kind of stuff, and so then, when he put it in the White man’s hands, that was it.

KR: So, once he turned it over to Sambor…

Mr. A: See, when a Black man says “I’m gonna kill you,” it doesn’t mean the same thing as when a White man says “I’m gonna kill you”; he literally is gonna kill you. We use that term all the time, “I’m gonna kill you.” It’s not the same.

KR: They’ll kill you for real.

Mr. A: That night just before the MOVE thing busted off, that was Sunday night, they were up there, MOVE people were saying that they were going to kill the White cops and all that. Getting into “The Dozens”.

KR: I understood that MOVE took the art of talking stuff to a new level.

MOVE 1Mr. A: That was a political thing to keep it hyped up. See, because they wanted a confrontation to try to get the people on their side. The whole issue, the whole thing boiled down to one thing – getting their people out of jail, and it’s still like that. That’s what it’s all about.

KR: Because their people are still in jail. The MOVE Nine are still in jail and one of them died [Merle Africa, 1998 – Editor].

Mr. E: That’s the whole issue. … But the deal is, if you go to war and you lose, hey, you’re fighting the system. You can fight the system like the NAACP, b.s.ing, or you can physically fight the system. And the NAACP is a good example because they spend a lot of money – they really don’t do that much, in my opinion anyway. What’s gonna happen, if you get back to the 60’s and all that stuff in my era, if you really checked it out, the people who really made the difference – they gave Martin Luther King the glory, because he was always talking about peaceful demonstrations … but the little communities … had the same agenda, “hey, I can’t work for these wages. I’m tired of these White people doing this to me.” Everybody was on the same accord. But … he was holding the Blacks back. Same thing in South Africa, Tutu, he was always “peaceful demonstrations”, they let Mandela out. [But] they’re worse off now with him being the president. Only thing he did was put a buffer on those Mau-Maus and the Zulus, they would have took over Africa. … And that’s what people don’t understand, these so-called Black leaders. And then after the civil rights thing in the 60’s, all these so-called preachers, “Oh, we’ll teach [you] how to be a carpenter, we’re going to go through all these programs and the money trickles down”; we don’t learn crap. The White people are still controlling, they’re still making all the money.

KR: It almost sounds like the philosophical argument between, say Booker T. – cast your bucket down where you are – and Garvey – the whole Pan-Afrikanist concept.

Mr. E: I was in church today, and this minister said something today that really blew my mind, and I said “Good, Blacks are finally coming out and saying the truth.” He was talking about Ethiopia and he was saying Jesus was a Black Ethiopian, he was a Black man. They don’t even teach that, the Bible was written about Black people basically, but Black people are never mentioned. So, everybody has an agenda, like MOVE has an agenda, but what makes a revolution is when everybody gets on the same accord, and they’re thinking the same way, “I ain’t taking this crap no more.” I don’t have to tell you, you don’t have to tell me, we just wake up one morning and you say “No, I’m not gonna do this no more,” and then that’s what the revolution is, the same thing is in everybody’s mind. But what the White man, the media does, he tries to pick the one that’s most peaceful; “hey man, let’s talk.” Just like Malcolm X; “let’s not do this, no.” The only way you get anything in the end is physical force, when you’re dealing with Whitey, you cannot make compromises, because he kills you every day. That’s the only way you can do it. That’s just my opinion.

“We were pawns in the game”

KR: I don’t know whether there’s any consensus around any of this or not, but, in looking at say, for instance, the way the MOVE Organization was dealing with whatever their grievances were, would you say that most of the Osage Ave. residents disagreed with the MOVE Organization itself, disagreed with its philosophy, or disagreed with its tactics?

Mr. B: Well, I think both the philosophy and tactics. …

Mr. A: Well, one thing I’ll never forget. It was Christmas Eve 1982. It was the first time we heard the bullhorns because everybody came to the door, and we were trying to figure out, What in the world was going on? All of a sudden we hear these voices and we’re sitting in there, getting ready for the holiday and everybody comes to the door, What was that? First thing they had was a speaker this big [about one foot tall], well that grew to a stadium-size speaker. And I remember, I used to talk to Conrad [Africa] all the time and one day Conrad came up the street, and we were standing out in front of my house, and I was complaining about what was going on, and he told me, right up front. He said, “All of what we’re doing, we’re not doing it because we have anything against you people as neighbors. But we need you to go to City Hall to get these people’s attention.” So we were used; he told me, point-blank. He said “We will use you to get to them.” We were pawns in the game.

KR: Had they ever approached you to ask you for your assistance?

Mr. A: They asked us. My answer to them was hey, I didn’t do it. I didn’t start it. I’m not in your organization. What can I do? You know, I didn’t start none of this.

KR: Did they try circulating petitions or anything like that?

Mr. A: I think they did do that one time.

Mr. E: I never got a clear-cut picture of what they really stand for. I still don’t know. Can you tell me what they stand for?

KR: Basically, what I understand about the MOVE Organization—this is primarily from what I’ve read in some books and some other things—is that essentially, they’ve been described often as a back-to-nature organization, and I don’t know that they necessarily describe themselves that way but that’s probably as close as you can get, at least with a cliché, in terms of what they were about. There were a number of things they did not believe in doing. Supposedly in Powelton Village this led to some difficulties smell-wise because they didn’t believe in the traditional way of, for instance, disposing of garbage. And that led to some difficulties with the Powelton Village neighbors but ultimately, I think, one of several mediators – and I want to ask you about whether any of these outside mediators came through either – I know they came through Powelton Village and they worked pretty extensively; I know Oscar Gaskins was a lawyer, Walter Palmer was a community activist.

What I also understood about them is that there were a number of other things that they didn’t believe in; for instance, one of the things Pam Africa talks about now is Ritalin. It’s being given to, apparently, a lot of children in a lot of public schools, apparently in Philadelphia, I know it’s in Baltimore, it’s in DC. And Ritalin is sort of like Prozac.

Mr. A: It’s to keep them calm?

KR: It’s supposed to deal with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, and that’s a major cause for her now, so she’s branched out a little bit now from just “Release Mumia, Release the MOVE nine…”

Mr. E: This is what fascinates me too, about this whole setup, you take the kid, you try to change the kid, when the kid comes. You stop it, you get it from the root. The parent is the root. That parent must be re-educated, because you go the malls and stuff. I was up at the Pathmark [grocery store] a couple of weeks ago and this man was talking to his daughter. He said “Look here, little b—-, if you don’t shut up, I’m gonna kick your ass.” I’m serious. This is a man, talking to a little kid, about 8 or 9 years old. That person needs to be re-educated, because people now don’t have any morals. Morals is out. The thing is, “Long as I don’t get caught.” It’s nothing to do with what’s right or wrong.

Mr. A: Well, you know what it is? The things that you are saying is symptomatic of what our society has come to. There doesn’t seem to be any civility out there anymore. It’s like people just don’t care. And you’re right—people need to be re-educated. They need it but they don’t want it. They seem to be satisfied with the status quo. But there’s many of us out there, just like you, that, we’re not satisfied with the status quo. [But] we’re not going to allow people like MOVE to just force their will on us. Everything that we did was within the law. We never stepped out of the boundaries of the law, even up to today.

Mr. E: There’s two laws; there’s man-made law, and there’s nature’s law; God’s law.

KR: Even that’s kind of close to a lot of things that I’ve heard come out in MOVE statements. There’s this one thing that I sometimes get a kick out of whenever this thought comes to my mind but it’s something that I’ve heard a lot, and it’s a quote: “Down with this rotten ass system.” And, basically, what they’re doing is they’re looking at a lot of the same things that we’re looking at, and their claim is that a lot of the things that are going on now in our community are the result of the influence on our minds by the prevailing system.

Mr. A: Can I ask you a question? They say “Down with the system” but did they ever come up with what they had to put in the place of the system that they want to take down? So you can’t take a system down, not unless you’ve got some idea as to replacing it. I’ll put it another way. We have a lot of radical groups in this country. They’re all out west and different places. They get their little cults … down in little villages. Just take your idea and move somewhere else with your little group, and leave me alone. I’m in the mainstream, I’m catching hell in the mainstream, right? But if I don’t really like it, I’ll go down south in the woods somewhere, okay? I’m not going to try to kill everybody off. My point is, if MOVE says “Down with this damn system”, what are you gonna put in its place?

Mr. E: But this system is corrupt and everything…

Mr. A: Well, we know that!

KR: I don’t think MOVE’s problem is even one of not having anything to replace it with, because, technically, if you were to ask any member of MOVE “What would

John Africa

John Africa

you replace the system with?”, they would say, “We have John Africa’s Guideline.” From what I understand, when John Africa first got a foothold in Powelton Village, he was walking neighbors’ dogs and then the Powelton Village people gave him a house in return for various handyman duties he was performing around the neighborhood, and then Donald Glassey, this White guy, comes in. He’s fascinated with the consistent way John Africa was living his life. And so they sit down, [John Africa] transcribes this Guideline, and it comes out to something like 800 pages long. Next thing you know, members of John Africa’s family are meeting in his house, some of his friends are coming along, and they’re having these study groups around the Guideline, and then that was basically the genesis of MOVE.

Mr. C: MOVE always said that Glassey, who I think was a student or something, was just – he just wrote down what John Africa told him. Glassey had no part in setting any guidelines, or establishing the concept or anything. He was just a viewer.

KR: I’ve also read he turned informant after a few years. Some people think he always was.

Mr. C: Well, I can believe that.

Mr. E: I used to see Glassey every day, I used to work at Temple, I used to go past there every day. And what really kicked off the thing with the MOVE people was they were going pretty good, walking the dogs and all, but when these White girls started hanging around there, that’s when the crap hit the fan.

KR: White girls became attracted to John Africa’s organization and all of a sudden….

Mr. E: Oh yeah, that’s when the crap hit the fan!

Mr. C: But what he’s talking about is a college community. We have our working-class White neighborhoods but …

Mr. E: What’s that campus? What’s that school down there?

Mr. C: Drexel.

Gentrification Looms Over Everything

KR: I think Drexel and Penn were buying up land in the Powelton Village area, so the residents had a beef – that was another thing, the residents of Powelton Village, even though there were a lot of White folks in that neighborhood, they had this major beef with Drexel and Penn gentrifying the neighborhood and they had a beef with Frank Rizzo, because they didn’t vote for Rizzo, they didn’t like Rizzo.

Mr. E: That’s political, same thing with Temple. The community was crying about that. Temple’s all into everything. They’re pushing everybody, they’re just pushing. Now you go down Diamond Street, they got all them White folks living there on Diamond Street. … White folks are gonna take over North Philly. They’re gonna actually take it over. People think you’re crazy when you say it but you watch what they’re doing. Now, [year 2000 Philadelphia Mayor John] Street, Wilson Goode and a couple other of the politicians and [prosecutor and future Pennsylvania governor Ed] Rendell, he went in with it, now they got these new homes they built down there, right off of Girard Avenue, around 15th… they got all these new homes around there. But see, they’re making these houses so high, the prices are gonna be so outrageous for Blacks, who’s gonna buy them?

Mr. C: Well, what do you think they’re trying to do around here?

Mr. E: Sure, it’s the same thing. All the White folks, they’re coming back into the city, because it’s too long a drive, they’re tired now.

KR: So the whole city’s basically being gentrified.

Mr. E: Sure, sure.

Mr. C: Yeah, it’s too high. … Except for this area right here. This area right here, that they call Cobbs Creek. This has 80% Black home ownership, and it’s the largest Black neighborhood in the city. It’s larger than Mount Airy, and all the rest of them. There’s no place else that you have a Black neighborhood where you have 80% Black home ownership. But the reason they can come into other neighborhoods is because of the lack of home ownership. Because a lot of times we are in places where we are renting, so we don’t have control over who comes in and takes over the properties. Here, they would like to come in here, but we’re not moving out, as a community. Because it’s a nice area, you’ve got the park, you’ve got transportation, you’ve got everything that anybody would want in a community.

Mr. A: Really it started coming back in the latter part of the 70’s. When I moved in, in 1976, that was the beginning, because I think that the interest rates were down to about 9 percent … and the interest rate I remember because a buddy of mine – I was saying “man, you better buy a house.” The interest rates went up to about 18, almost 20 percent.

Mr. E: Mine was about 5¾ when I bought mine.

Mr. C: There was a 6% interest rate back in around ‘70.

Mr. E: But I remember there were 4 houses over there, right?

Mr. A: In this general area there were about 8 houses that were empty, I remember. So, the whole area, there was a whole bunch. You can’t find one in this area now.

Mr. B: What it was back then, in the middle 60’s and early 70’s, you had the city, they wanted to come in here … and they wanted to run an expressway through here. So what they were doing, the city wanted to buy up all this land, all these houses around here … so what they were doing was trying to get the Black people so that they would move out of here. … Redlined this area. Couldn’t get a mortgage, couldn’t get a loan, couldn’t get anything. And, whatever came of it, I didn’t really follow it that much, but at that particular time they said they were trying to lay this expressway in here.

KR: Then you try to destabilize it, you funnel the drugs into this area of the city and then everyone’s gonna run.

Mr. C: And probably because there was so much home ownership, they couldn’t do it. Say, for example, there had been less home ownership, then they could have grabbed up all the houses that Blacks didn’t own, let ‘em go down so that the people that did own homes didn’t want to live next to this abandoned house – this is the way they’re doing it in north Philly – they just put everybody out, let the house go down, or let somebody live in there but the house is still going down. …

The Lack of Common Ground between Neighbors and MOVE

KR: The way it kind of looks to me, it looks like a lot of the things that we’re concerned with in general, are actually a lot of the same things MOVE were concerned with, but for whatever reason, they didn’t know how to make their point [to you].

Mr. A: The real problem we had with MOVE was they were selfish in what they wanted to do. The only concern they had was the concern for what was theirs, and what they needed to do. They weren’t concerned about our right to pursue happiness, our right for our families to be safe and secure. They had one agenda and that’s really what angered us. It wasn’t the fact that we didn’t want to help them. I feel as though if they had approached us in the right way, we may have been willing to assist them. But they forced themselves on us. They forced us into the middle of a conflict that we had nothing at all to do with. They forced us, and that’s the problem we really had with them … their back-to-nature situation, they forced this on us. They made us feel like we didn’t have a right to live. They had all the rights in the neighborhood and we weren’t going to allow that. So that’s where our problem really came in with the MOVE people.

KR: I guess part of the problem here is that, in order for agreements to come between MOVE and the neighbors of Powelton Village, you still had to have third-party intervention, so it wasn’t a situation where the two sides were going to see eye-to-eye just left to their own devices, because I’ve read about a number of the third-party interventions. I wrote some of the names down so I wouldn’t forget them – but it seems to me from here, and I don’t know how effective they were on Osage Avenue, but Walter Palmer and Oscar Gaskins seem to be the closest ones in Powelton Village to actually settling anything, because I think they had helped to broker a composting agreement with Powelton which basically had MOVE taking their garbage and cycling it in their backyard. The smell problem went down, the rat problem went down, MOVE got exercise, they sold compost to the neighbors. In other words it was something that the Powelton Village organizations and MOVE ultimately agreed on and that actually started to ease tensions in that area, but by then Rizzo had already instituted the blockade.

Mr. B: We didn’t have that here.

Mr. A: We had no intervention. We were left standing alone. We wanted the city, they didn’t want us. We wanted the politicians. They came in and they lied to us. So we were virtually left standing alone, fighting against something, we really didn’t know, from one moment to the next, what was gonna happen or what was gonna go on. But we knew one thing: we were gonna protect our families, at whatever cost it might take.

Mr. B: Not only that, when MOVE first entered the block, you would see maybe one or two of them. You didn’t pay them any attention. And as time went on and you started seeing more and more of them, moving into the house over there; this is, I would say, a pretty middle-class neighborhood here. Everybody tries to take care of their property. Then all of a sudden you turn around, you see boards being put all up on top of the houses, windows being boarded up, the driveway back there – this is a driveway for everybody that lives on that side of the street. Why is it that one family can say “this is mine, you can’t use it”? They didn’t take into consideration the other neighbors.

Mr. C: What Mr. B is talking about is, they blocked off the driveway from their property line on one side to their property line on the other side, because they were picking up all the stray dogs in the community. So they would start feeding them all kinds of raw meat and stuff, out in the driveway … but the stuff that wasn’t eaten, then the rodents came because you got the field mice and everything coming up, roaches and everything. … An exterminator could have bought an apartment on the block, if it was an apartment complex, and lived there and paid rent based on just going up and down. Because you would always have to keep going because there was nothing that they could do to stop the rodents from coming in because of the way they dealt with their feeding of these animals. Although they got out and they swept the fronts and they were clean in their own way, but then they were dirty in our way, because we’re not going to leave food and stuff out in the driveway because we know that that’s going to bring rodents.

KR: They were once quoted as saying, “As long as [the rodents] ate good, they didn’t bother us” in Powelton Village before the composting agreement. So it almost sounds as though, even though they had succeeded in coming to a composting agreement in Powelton, when they came here to Osage, they didn’t have that same practice when they got here automatically.

Mr. C: I think, here, it was different than down there. Down there, the city went to them, because that is like what we were talking about a little earlier. That’s rapidly being taken over by Drexel University. So that’s a Black area that the university and the city were trying to make White through expansion of the university. So the city wanted them out, so they would use whatever techniques available under the law such as health codes and this, that and the other.

KR: Did that make independent mediators more likely to try to get involved there too, because they had a concern over what Rizzo might do to them, or what Rizzo might do to the entire neighborhood?

Mr. C: I don’t know, but I think that that’s a good possibility because I think the Black community didn’t trust Rizzo because he had alienated himself from the Black community…

The Notorious Brutality of the Philadelphia Police Department

KR: Well, the regular police were called “Rizzo’s Thugs”. Amnesty International said they were the most brutal police force in the country, bar none.

The MOVE Nine after the 1978 assault.

The MOVE Nine after the 1978 assault.

Mr. C: I was on the police force myself, when Rizzo became commissioner. I was on there before he became commissioner, and I was on there when he became commissioner. And his philosophy was, shoot first, ask questions later. His philosophy was, a show of force, and if anybody had to use force he was going to back them up.

KR: So this started when Rizzo came into power?

Mr. C: Right, exactly. And so, the general feeling of the members of the police force is that they were above the law when it came to using deadly force because they thought that nobody on the police force was going to be disciplined. If you shoot someone unnecessarily and they die, it wasn’t going to be a problem. I’ve witnessed cases where unnecessary shootings were rewarded, so that the officers who did it were promoted.

KR: Well, you had something like that in Louisville last year, where an unarmed man was shot by police officers. The police chief, later that year had an awards banquet where he gave, among others – not just these two – but among other officers, he gave these officers medals, and the mayor turned around and fired the police chief for that, and then immediately after that, the rank-and-file police in Louisville started protesting, and they called it a “slowdown” where they stopped making as many arrests. The strange thing about it was that the number of arrests went down but the crime did not go up!

Mr. C: That proved the point that they were wrong from the beginning.

KR: And the community said “You’re not going to protect us!” And they said “Well, the slowdowns that we’re making in our arrests are, we’re not doing the kind of proactive policing that we were doing before.” So now it seems that the cliché has gone from “zero-tolerance” to “proactive policing” where if you’re reaching for your wallet, you may be reaching for a gun, let’s shoot you 19 times.

Mr. A: [Amadou] Diallo.

KR: Yeah, and Patrick Dorismond also. “You won’t tell me where the marijuana is?” Bang!

Mr. C: We had a guy around here, Dante Dawson, he was shot; remember that time, right when he’s sitting in his car. Very extreme – I mean, it’s not extreme by police standards, but it’s extreme by our standards because he was unarmed. He was asleep in his car, and when they approached him and he didn’t respond the way they ordered him to, although he was unarmed, then they opened fire on him.

KR: One of the things I read in some of these books is, actually, there was a difference between the regular police, who were the ones who have been accused of brutality, and George Fencl’s group, and they were considered a much more professional unit.

Mr. C: They were just an undercover unit. I worked undercover before. They’ll take, maybe, whoever they think might be good for undercover. They may take sharpshooters or something like that, put them in undercover, like narcotics or any kind of vices. They were like a vice squad. Gambling, prostitution, whatever. Fencl was the captain of an undercover unit, and they operated in a certain way. He got a lot of notoriety and a lot of acclaim for his results. Just an undercover operation that might have gotten a lot of publicity, but his people were taken from the general population of the police force. They weren’t like specially groomed for that. They just, maybe, had specific talents that could be utilized in something like that.

KR: So, was it maybe by virtue of the kinds of assignments they had or do you think it might have been by virtue of the kind of atmosphere they were working in that they didn’t get the same reputation as the regular police?

Mr. C: It was just because … the regular police weren’t on undercover, so they didn’t do, say maybe the large scale busts that Fencl’s group might do. They weren’t doing it on a regular basis like Fencl’s people. …

KR: But Philadelphia had gotten a pretty strong reputation for excessive force …

Mr. C: Brutality. Say for example, Rizzo, when I think he was commissioner, we had a situation where the schoolchildren felt like they were not being educated properly and they were protesting in front of the school administration building on Ben Frank Rizzo 1Franklin Parkway in center city. So Rizzo ordered the police to go in there with horses – it was the type of thing reminiscent of the protest marches in the South when they had the dogs and the horses and everything; I don’t think they had the water hoses but I think they had dogs and I know they had horses, and what they did was they beat up on school kids. So they treated the school kids, they didn’t treat them like they were school kids, they treated them like they were criminals. So I think that was one of the first instances of how bad our city police force could be when they would not understand how to handle school age children, when they would handle them the way they would handle hardened criminals. Rizzo had a reputation from when he was just a regular police officer as being a macho type of person. And so when he became police commissioner he just carried his reputation on and expanded it throughout the whole police force. And then you had those who had that mentality on the police force, adopted Rizzo’s tactics of brutality, especially when they knew that they weren’t going to be penalized. You had a whole lot of times when a guy had been arrested – he was stopped and they gave him a ticket, and maybe he was disorderly and so they arrested him. Then, a couple of hours later, he would be found hung in his cell. It was like more than a couple of occasions that that happened. They had a case where, down by the police administration building, a guy was arrested for stealing a car. And when they went to take him out of the police wagon to take him into the police administration building, he ran. Still handcuffed behind his back. So the police ran up on him, shot him in the head and killed him.

KR: We’ve had a number of cases like that in Maryland too. Archie Elliott III, handcuffed behind his back, strapped in the front seat of a police cruiser, and all of a sudden the two police officers claim that they saw him pointing a gun out of the window of the car. Now, how do you do that if you’re handcuffed behind your back, strapped in the front seat? You’ve got no gun because you’ve already been searched. You’re wearing a pair of cutoff shorts, some sneakers and no shirt. You’ve been searched and no gun has been found and yet somehow, you came up with a gun, pointed it out the window of the police cruiser with your hands cuffed behind your back. They shot him 12 times, through the door of the police cruiser and killed him. [Of course, by 2016 there have been countless more atrocities on Baltimore alone, most recently the murders of Tyrone West in 2014 and Freddie Gray in 2015, as well as police murders of unarmed Afrikan-American men and women across the country, and certainly many more will come to light as the year goes on – Editor.] 

Mr. C: That’s the type of thing that was happening. With the case that I just mentioned, it was found that the young fella owned the car. It was his car. He was just afraid. He was intimidated by the police. And rightfully so, because of what happened to him. He knew that this is how it was. So he didn’t want to be in the building with these police, not knowing what they were going to do to him, and tried to make a getaway. But the fact that they had to shoot him, with his hands handcuffed behind his back, tells you something. So that was the atmosphere during the Rizzo years.

KR: And in the middle of all of this, up pops MOVE.

Mr. C: Right. So MOVE didn’t care about Rizzo or none of his police, and they were back-to-nature, but they were also anti-government. And I think the main thing with MOVE, I think everybody, for the neighbors here, I think we all agreed that they had a right to their own opinion and a right to their own way of life, but we didn’t think they had a right to involve us in their plight, although they said it’s all of our plight, but we felt that we had a right to fight the official oppression the way we chose. We didn’t think it was right to force us to have to do it the way that John Africa dictated, because we didn’t all subscribe to John Africa. I don’t think there were any neighbors who subscribe to John Africa’s philosophy. They may have agreed with his identification of problems, but maybe his way of addressing it we didn’t agree with. I don’t think any of us would have brought our children into a place that we were having a standoff with the police in. So, we would say well, maybe we’ll take our kids somewhere else, leave them with somebody we would trust, family or whoever, rather than put them in harm’s way. I’ve heard the MOVE people say, “Well, we didn’t want them in the system, and if we didn’t have them with us they were going to be in the system and we’d feel like they were dead anyway.” We wouldn’t have taken that type of outlook on it. We would have said “Well, at least they’ll be alive to live another day,” and maybe they can figure a way to deal with the oppression rather than putting them in harm’s way and not giving them a decent chance to continue their lives. After all, they were children. They should have the right, we felt, to grow up and make their own decisions, once they were mature enough.

KR: You’re referring to their decision to keep everyone together in that house on Osage Avenue, even though they knew the assault was coming?

Mr. B: See, they used us as a shield, the neighbors as a shield, and the children as a shield. Before that confrontation, right before it, they set all the kids outside, on the steps, so I guess they more or less thought like, with the kids out there, the police would not try to initiate a confrontation…

KR: They probably figured that this government was far too civilized to bomb a house with children inside.

Mr. C: Right. They believed something that they preached against. They preached that the government was violent and they preached that you couldn’t trust them, but then they wound up trusting. They put their kids’ life on the line in trust of the same system that they said they didn’t trust. They contradicted themselves in that aspect.

KR: The wild thing about it is, when [official police] patience does run out [and they Move Nine Delbertchoose to attack] it seems to run out to the extreme. … And even here, you had the situation where they waited and they waited and they waited, Frank Rizzo barricaded them up for a year, tried to starve them out before he assaulted them back in 1978, but it was like, whenever the decision was made that, okay, we’re out of patience, we’re going to make a move, it’s always extreme violence and results in death. Here it was eleven people; in [the ATF assault on the Branch Davidians and David Koresh in] Waco, Texas it was 74; Ruby Ridge, Idaho – Randy Weaver was a racist, he admitted it, he was a White separatist, though it may be different from being a White supremacist – but they killed his 14-year-old son, killed his dog first, and they shot his wife in the face, when she was holding her infant in her arms. … She was shot from a distance of 200 yards.

Mr. B: We still don’t know what the circumstances might have been, the reason why. Like me, I spent 33 years in the military. We always plan our strategy, what we’re going to do and when we’re going to do it. So you sit down, you make your plans, you get your objectives and everything. And you keep doing it, and then you get to that point where you’re not getting any results. The final moment is coming, and you make your move. And I think this is to say that the city and everything with MOVE, Waco or whatever, after a while patience runs out and you’ll have no more sympathy.

KR: Well, looking at the Weaver situation, from what I’ve read so far, Weaver was acquitted on all the charges except one minor one leading up to the incident, and basically, he was also acquitted of all charges regarding the actions he took during the standoff. So they actually pretty much determined that he was shooting back in self-defense. In Waco, now there was a question as to whether or not the weapons that they had in Waco were really illegal weapons or not, there is some degree of question about the child abuse allegations that had been filed, so a lot of the charges that were leading up to a lot of these confrontations, upon further review, are being either revealed or being considered to possibly have been relatively minor and it makes you say “Well, why did we go through all of this stuff in the first place?” Randy Weaver is in an isolated cabin!

Mr. C: He wasn’t a threat to anybody, and that’s why he won his case – I don’t know if it was so many millions of dollars or so, but he won his case. But the same thing happened with Ramona. She was acquitted [of almost all of the charges against her], she represented herself in her case when she went to jail for inciting a riot. But every other charge they had against her was thrown out because they couldn’t substantiate it. And, the original arrest warrants that they had on the people were never substantiated as far as their validity. So, it was questionable whether Ed Rendell, the former mayor who was the DA at that time, had the proper evidence for Lynne Abraham who is the DA now and was a judge then …

KR: And she wants to see Mumia Abu-Jamal dead. There’s all kinds of connections here!

Political Connections and Cover-Ups?

Mr. C: You see, everybody who was connected with the MOVE case and with Mumia’s case, everybody with maybe the exception of the judge, everybody made progress in their careers. Like the DA who actually held that grand jury there, Ron Castille, he became a judge.

KR: He actually wound up being one of the people who decided that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would not hear Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeal, which a lot of people thought was very strange, when you have someone who was trying to convict him back in the 1980’s and now he’s sitting on the Supreme Court saying “We’re not going to review his case!” That’s like Sabo reviewing the appeal of his own conduct!

Mr. C: And that also happened [when] some of us from this block went to the Justice Department to get them to reopen the MOVE case.

Did the people die in the fire or were they shot?

KR: To reopen it?

Mr. C: Yeah, reopen the case, because it was found that there is a forensic pathologist who sent in a report to the MOVE grand jury that the deaths of those 11 people were homicides. There was another pathologist who was brought in to identify the sex and ages of the bodies. He also agreed that the deaths were homicides because they found bullets in several of the MOVE people. Also, they found that at least two heads were missing. From John Africa, I think Conrad Africa’s heads were missing. And saw marks on their necks. [In the] Temple University archives … we saw some of the pictures of the bodies that were fully clothed but were supposed to have burned up in the fire. But they were actually fully clothed. So that led us to believe that they were outside of the house when they were killed.

KR: Do you think they were killed by …?

Mr. C: The only people back there were police.

KR: Because Ramona did say when they tried to leave out of the back of the house they were shot at.

Mr. C: And so did the young boy. Birdie Africa said the same thing.

KR: Of course he turned on MOVE shortly after he got out.

Mr. C: He turned on MOVE but he never changed his story as to what happened that day. So he still says that – and he maybe had a personal problem with MOVE because he was a young man under the influence – but his testimony never changed and it still hasn’t changed today. [“Birdie Africa” would later change his name back to his given name, Michael Ward, and raise a family before dying on a cruise in 2014 – Editor.]

KR: That’s interesting because I don’t even know that the newspaper articles even talk about his testimony that you were just saying.

Mr. C: Well, they discounted his testimony because they said that he was too young.

KR: And he said they were fired upon?

Mr. C: He said they were fired upon. He even recounted what it sounded like. Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat, like a machine gun, automatic weapons fire. So they both corroborated each other. But what happened was, when the grand jury was convened, and this particular doctor who was sent here to Philadelphia to monitor, to evaluate the Medical Examiner’s office here – the Medical Examiner’s office lost their accreditation at that time because they didn’t handle the autopsies properly – this doctor submitted his information to the DA’s office and they conveniently did not use that information. … The grand jury never heard his report that said that they were homicides. And the only mention of homicide that the grand jury heard was a little excerpt from the doctor who was brought in to tell the sex and ages of the bodies. So, his primary reason for being there was to determine sex and ages. So his focus was not on whether it was homicide or not, but he did put in his report that the deaths were homicides.

KR: Oh, he stuck it in there?

Mr. C: He put it in there, and they said there was no corroboration but they withheld information that [there] was. So it was strange that they withheld this – we didn’t find out about the withheld homicide information until after statute of limitations had run out, which in federal, it’s a five year statute of limitations. Now local it’s not, but federal civil rights violations is five years. So anyway, we went down there and everything, but what we got out of it – they turned us down – but we found out that Richard Thornburgh, who was the attorney general at that time, he had been governor, so when you mention about conflict of interest with Castille maybe, or his motivations being suspect, we had the same situation because the bomb was dropped by a helicopter that was property of the state, and the state governor was Richard Thornburgh. Then he went right to become attorney general, so quite naturally, the people who investigated the civil rights violations here were under his thumb, so he investigated himself!

Mr. A: We were blocked at every turn!

Mr. C: He investigated himself, and like I was talking to one of his assistants in Washington, and he said, really, they got away, he said, with the evidence that came out, it doesn’t matter. He said even if somebody comes out and admit that they did it, statute of limitations has run, so they’re not going to do anything because statute of limitations allowed them to beat it. So the reports were withheld until after that. We went on the fifth anniversary and we didn’t find out until after the fifth anniversary that this information existed. So here you actually have proof of homicide but you know what? No politician, no big-time civil rights advocate, including Johnnie Cochran – because I was in touch with Johnnie Cochran’s office and they were afraid to deal with it, and they passed it off they couldn’t do this, that and the other, so many reasons, but the end result was they couldn’t do it – because this is a situation where, if you are able to put a charge on somebody, you’re talking about a charge of murder. And when you’re talking about a charge of murder, you’re talking about linking these big politicians, not only them, but you’re talking about linking the President of the United States, because the C-4 was released by the FBI, which was the active ingredient in the bomb. And the attorney general at that time was Ed Meese. And he publicly said – I saw it on TV, he said to MOVE Bombing 1985g Helicopter Bomb DropWilson Goode – “Job well done” after everything had happened. Now, I have enough sense to know that the attorney general doesn’t authorize the release of a military bomb to a local police department unless they have a strategy that the President approves of, because he could get fired like that [snaps his fingers] doing something dumb like that. So, I do know from being on the police force, and which I know any of you all who have been in the service [also know], the chain of command is held in strict adherence, and a lot can happen to anybody who violates the chain of command. So anybody who tackles this case would be bringing out the responsibility for these murders by all these big political figures, all the way up to the President. So nobody, at all, ever, no law firm – I talked to a lot of law firms, I talked to a lot of big-time law people in the city and outside the city, and none of them had the courage. I talked to the ACLU and I talked to a lot of people. …

KR: The ACLU wouldn’t touch it?

Mr. C: The ACLU said they didn’t have the manpower to put on the case for the type of time they would need. So, it’s a murder case here, 11 murders that were swept under the rug, there’s evidence. I even talked to the district attorney on a radio program, Lynne Abraham. And I posed the question about this withholding of evidence to her, and that the evidence existed that there was homicide by this forensic pathologist, and what she did, she assassinated this guy’s character. She said “Well, I wouldn’t believe anything he said because I think he was removed from his position as a medical examiner” in such-and-such a place which was over in Jersey, “and I think he’s such-and-such” so she was saying he was not credible.

KR: She didn’t hire him, he was an independent pathologist?

Mr. C: He was independent, but when I talked with him, he said first of all, he never was removed from any position he ever has held, and he said second of all, she has and was currently using him as an expert witness for the prosecution while she was DA. So if she felt he was not credible, how could she use him for her side? So it was one of those things where some of these people will blatantly lie because if she had accepted that what I said was accurate, that it was homicide, then she would have to explain what transpired. So to avoid that, she just called him a big nothing, you know. So there’s a lot to this case here that has not hit, and the thing about the evidence of homicide, and that the medical examiner didn’t use the proper procedures and all of that, so they could not find the accurate reason why the deaths occurred and they attributed all the deaths to accident, because the fire caused them to die, and the fire was meant to do one thing but, inadvertently, another thing happened.

KR: Meant to blow a hole through the fortified roof and instead burned down the houses.

Mr. C: The bomb meant to blow a hole. The fire meant to drive them out. But instead they’re saying, they stayed in there. They tried to come out, they ran back in, and they just all perished right inside the building.

KR: Whereas instead, they actually ran out and they were shot?

Mr. C: And there was a TV news conference with the mayor, Wilson Goode at that time, and the police commissioner, Sambor at that time, where Sambor actually said that “the MOVE people ran out the house, they were running toward the parkway which is at the corner, they got halfway between the MOVE house and the parkway we’re involved in a gun battle with them right now.” And he said, “I don’t know if anybody was killed so far, but right now we’re involved with a gun battle.” So then he came back later in the same news conference and said, “Uh, excuse me, the alleged gun battle” – and he had just said it was a gun battle – “the alleged gun battle did not occur, and there never was a gun battle between MOVE and the police department.” So now you have him coming up with that. Where did he get this information from in the first place? Then you find out that you have people who were in the house, supposedly found dead in the house, fully clothed, but the house burned down to the ground, the whole three blocks is burned down, and they were inside the house but they were fully clothed. Not even a singe on their clothing.

Mr. A: Tell him where they found all the bodies.

Mr. C: Well they claim they found all the bodies within the MOVE house boundaries, property lines of the MOVE house, but human nature is going to tell people that nobody is going to run into an inferno.

KR: Only a horse runs into a burning barn.

Mr. C: And we’re not horses! So you actually had proof of homicide, based on circumstantial evidence, and the testimony of forensic pathologists, more than once so they can corroborate, all this information was withheld from the grand jury, and no one wanted to reopen the case to bring out, to allow the facts and the other information to come out. So right now it still stands as accidental deaths.

“We will kill you down to a little baby”

Mr. C: Right here they notified the hospitals that they had, like when they took out Birdie Africa and Ramona Africa, sent them to the hospital, they notified them to be ready, they were going to send some more people to the hospital. But then, they said all the people were dead. See what I mean? So the other people never materialized in the first place. So this is symptomatic of the entire country, this type of police operation, and I think what it amounted to was, I think the whole thrust is that the government is trying to scare anybody who may disagree with the government, who wants to protest, scare them to the extent to say “We will kill you down to a little baby.”

KR: And they make an example out of a group like MOVE who, because of the in-your-face, extremely radical way that they communicated their point, they’d be able to turn off a lot of people simply by virtue of their methods….

Mr. C: Well that’s what happened. That’s what happened something like with Hitler and Germany. Some of the well-to-do Jews, my understanding is that they OK’d some of the means and methods of Hitler that were put on the so-called lower-class Jews, and never realizing that it could happen to them, and then when Hitler said, “Okay, instead of just those Jews, now all Jews …” But same thing with MOVE. When it happened here, a lot of people felt like, “Well, they were like, terrible people because of the way they acted,” so a lot of people didn’t have a lot of sympathy for MOVE. But as time unfolded, as time went on and other atrocities unfolded, they found that the police – see, at that time, so much had happened in Powelton Village, but by and large, a lot of people who maybe weren’t grass-roots people, still felt like the police, if they ever did anything to you, it was because you were wrong. So in later years, after the MOVE thing happened, you started having other atrocities happening, here in Philadelphia and around the country, so it evolved to the point that people now recognize that the police are not always right, and they’re not always fair.

KR: Maybe MOVE had a point with a couple of those incidents.

Mr. C: Maybe MOVE was more right than wrong, because a lot of people today feel like no matter what MOVE’s method of protest was, they weren’t killing anybody. They inflicted imposition on us, the neighborhood, residents, but they weren’t killing anybody, so they didn’t deserve to be killed for their actions. Maybe they deserved to go to jail for six months or something like that, or 90 days or something like that, okay? But they didn’t deserve to be gunned down, a bomb dropped on them, we residents didn’t deserve to have them to burn the whole area out.

KR: Sixty-one houses?

MOVE Bombing 1985cMr. A: Using the flames as a tactical weapon.

KR: And they let it burn for a while.

Mr. A: Absolutely! They let it burn. They used it as a tactical weapon.

Mr. C: They said that there was a bunker on top of the front of the house, and since the bomb didn’t blow the bunker off the roof, they wanted to let the fire burn enough to burn the bunker off.

KR: As skilled as these guys are at imploding a large building without touching any of the properties on either side of it, you’d think they’d be able to exercise something like that with a little more precision.

Mr. C: Right. See, that was their story but we don’t believe that was their goal. Their goal was extermination.

Mr. A: Their intention was to do exactly what they did. That’s what their intention was.

KR: But why would they want the whole neighborhood gone?

Mr. C: Because then the evidence gets lost in the shuffle.

Mr. A: Why? Why? Because we’re Black folk. This isn’t the first time they’ve used the bomb on us. They did it once before in Philadelphia!

Mr. B: But not only that, they knew that John Africa was in there and the majority of the MOVE people were there. So therefore they figured if they could exterminate them and let the fire burn, get rid of MOVE, that would be it. But it failed on them.

KR: Pam Africa was not in there!

Mr. B: Right. Not only that, Ramona and Birdie escaped. But they figured, knowing that he was in there, he was the root of it. If they killed the head…

KR: Of course, they martyred him. Now, was there any sense among the neighbors, as the conflict was going on – because one impression I got after reading about Powelton Village and reading about everything that went before, was that, in many ways, the things that MOVE was doing and the way they were acting was more because of all the stuff that had happened before, whereas earlier on they might have been a little bit purer in their political focus, but as time went on and as their people got beat and as their babies died and as people got thrown in jail for a hundred years, that after a while maybe it affected them psychologically, to the point where now they’re just fixated on their own political prisoners?

Mr. C: Well, they were fixated on their strategy when they were down in Powelton Village, but they became fixated on getting those people who were arrested in Powelton Village out of jail. That’s why they did what they did here on Osage Avenue. They were on a mission from Day One. Because I had talked with them when they were down in Powelton Village. We knew some of them; the mother of one of the members and the sister of the founder lived on the block. So some of us had talked with them and they were on a real mission, but here their primary focus was on getting their people out of jail. And they told us, “We’re going to use you, because if we go out into the wilderness, nobody’s going to listen to us.”

KR: I remember reading that quote. They said “No one’s going to listen to us, so….”

Mr. B: They didn’t have the protection.

Mr. C: So they just believed in something they really said they didn’t believe in, and that was the compassion of the city, the government.

KR: It almost sounds like the difference between the rhetoric and whether they really thought they would do it. They threw the rhetoric out there that these people are snakes, they’re cancerous, they don’t care what they have to do to whom, and yet they still gave them some small credit for being civilized enough to not kill them all.

Racial Politricks

Mr. C: I think that was attributed to the fact that we had a Black mayor. See, because this was our first Black mayor, and I think they really felt that a Black mayor would not allow it to happen. And they didn’t consider that maybe this Black mayor might be constrained by other government, and as we found out, the federal government was involved. So, maybe if they had analyzed it that way, then they wouldn’t have put so much trust in this Black mayor.

KR: Was there any sense here, among the neighbors in general, that MOVE, through their in-your-face actions, was showing up Wilson Goode? I know, for instance, in Baltimore City, I know that there were a number of people who were so much behind Kurt Schmoke, not necessarily because of his record, but because of the fact that he was the first elected Black mayor of Baltimore City, and they didn’t want to see him embarrassed. Was there any sentiment along the lines of, These folk up here are basically making a fool out of the first and maybe the only Black mayor in Philadelphia’s history?

Mr. B: No, I wouldn’t say that. I think what it was, Goode would show more sympathy because they were Black. But, here’s the thing also. If you remember, the police and the fire department, their contract was screwed up, and Goode did not give them what they were looking for in a contract, and it was brought out that the police department and the fire department – especially the police department – had a gripe with Goode. And so therefore, in order to show Goode up, to get even with him, this was Sambor – he was the police commissioner, and to me, he was one of the biggest racists around.

KR: So Sambor, if anyone, was the main person who was trying to show Goode up, to make him look like a fool.

Mr. B: So, this was to disgrace the mayor.

KR: Now, there was one other thing that I had read, that when Wilson Goode was the city manager…

Mr. C: Managing director.

KR: Yes, when he was the managing director. He had implemented a whole lot of things. He’d had a Crisis Intervention Network … supposedly in part as a result of the 1978 confrontation, so he puts this entire network of agencies that are supposed to deal with these kinds of situations, he puts that in place, but then as mayor, he doesn’t use it here.

Mr. C: Well my understanding is, I don’t know what he put in place…

MOVE Bombing 1985aKR: I even heard they de-funded it! I heard Bennie Swans was frustrated because they were getting ready to de-fund the whole thing because they thought they were too activistic in ‘78.

Mr. C: Well, I don’t know what Wilson Goode did as far as initiating crisis intervention or funding it or what have you, but I do know some of the people who were in that crisis intervention and who I saw out here, but at a certain point they were told to discontinue negotiations.

KR: Yeah, they were told to go away.

Mr. C: Right. So, in effect, the use of trained crisis negotiators was taken away. So they had no professional negotiators to attempt a resolution with MOVE after a certain point. Like, in the last days before they had this attack on MOVE, you had some political types to come out.

KR: I’m surprised they didn’t call up Walter Palmer on the Bat-Phone right away, because from what I’ve read, in Powelton Village, he came the closest to actually solving everything. They’d actually come up with an agreement on May 5, 1978. They had an agreement that had MOVE vacating the house, that had them finding another place to live, but supposedly a number of things happened. I think the farm had something to do with it, I think Delbert Africa was concerned that they were either going to be used as slave laborers on the farm or else the farm was surrounded on three sides by a marsh and it was a setup, to get them out of the public eye, to get them away from witnesses, so they could be exterminated. Which was the reason why Geronimo [jiJaga] Pratt, in 1970, fought off the police in L.A. for four hours because he said, “We’re not giving up until the press and the general public are here to see it, because if we surrender you’re going to do the same thing to us that you did to Fred Hampton, which is execute us. So there seemed to be at least some precedent – whether or not MOVE’s concern was rational I don’t know – there seemed to be some precedent for saying “We don’t want to be put in a position where we’re going to be isolated, there’ll be nobody there to see what happens to us.”

Mr. C: That could be also, and probably was, but their strategy said that they should be here because, in order to be heard, they had to be in an urban environment, because if they’re voicing their complaints and they’re out in the wilderness nobody’s going to hear them.

KR: If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

Mr. C: Here, they just disrupted our lives, which they told us that was their method, to make us mad enough to go to City Hall, and make City Hall mad enough to come out and try to resolve it. So, I think they had to have it in this type of environment in order to get the result that they wanted. But it just goes to show you that the government found another way to beat a murder rap, so they didn’t care if it was on TV, in an urban environment, right in a little row house block, surrounded by people. They didn’t care. They were still going to commit murder. But the way that they go about beating a case is controlling the evidence.

KR: Just like they bulldozed the Powelton Village house the day after the assault.

Common Oppression, but No Common Philosophy

Mr. B: There’s something. To have a confrontation with the city because you have members in jail and you want them out. You have your confrontation, and where are those members now?

KR: They’re still in jail. They did not succeed.

Mr. A: The best laid plans of mice and men.

Mr. B: They had a bad strategy. In other words, we are members of the same community as MOVE, so we share the same oppression that they share. They had their way to deal with it, we had our way to deal with it, they were different ways. But, no way is good when I’ve got to hurt somebody that I’m on the same side with to get to the person who I’m against. Why should I go against my own brother to try to get to somebody over this? That’s what they, in fact, did to us. They stepped on us to get to the city.

KR: Do you think a coalition could have been made…

Mr. C: No. Us and them?

KR: From the beginning, if, maybe, some of the things that had been done hadn’t been done?

Mr. C: No. Because they were fixated with John Africa’s strategy. And so we could never have compromised a direction … and come to agreement on a strategy that we could agree to because it was either their way or no way. You see what I mean? So, we didn’t have a choice because we couldn’t subscribe to what they were going to do, and they didn’t have a choice because they couldn’t subscribe to what we were going to do.

KR: So, it’s almost like a “lose-lose” situation, then?

Mr. C: Well, that’s what happened.

Mr. B: Like I said, it was a bad strategy, eleven lives lost, and the members are still in jail.

Mr. D: What I still can’t understand, is why they kept the kids in the house.

Mr. C: Because they felt like Wilson Goode had compassion and authority.

KR: Some people would say it was the same reason that Dr. King had children in the marches in Birmingham, Alabama. There were children in those marches. There were men, women and children who were marching peacefully through the streets, and they were getting hosed, and they were getting attacked by dogs.

Mr. A: And MOVE didn’t learn anything from that, because it didn’t work then and it wasn’t going to work for them. They got more than what they really bargained for. They never imagined, they never imagined. …

Was MOVE as “Dangerous” as the Hype?

KR: I’ve heard claims that MOVE’s weapons were inoperative. Was there anything behind that?

Mr. C: Well, they only had a couple of weapons in the first place. I think they had a revolver, a shotgun and a rifle or something like that. They only had two or three. And I don’t know if they were inoperable or not, but it was never proven – and this is what the whole thing was based on, the attack was based on this – the attack was based on that MOVE people shot at the police, and that the police retaliated.

KR: In Chicago, they tried to say the same thing about Fred Hampton. Never any evidence that bullets came out of Fred Hampton’s house.

Mr. B: I don’t know who fired first. My wife and I were sitting right there at 63rd and Spruce when the first rounds were fired, then the “pinging” and bullets flying across the parkway, and it scared me so, I’m sitting right there, I’m trying to start the car to get out of the way, the door flies open, I’m about to fall out of the car, you know what I mean? And the cops are running, and one thing that was happening…one police officer was down, they dragged him down Pine Street, they threw him into an emergency vehicle. We never heard anything else about it.

Mr. C: And see, they also brought somebody out of the park down here. And nobody ever heard anything about it. A lot of strange things that happened with this whole thing, because at one time it was thought that the MOVE people had dug and tied into the sewer system.

KR: And they supposedly planted explosives [a rumor that was never supported by any evidence] in the neighborhood too. Did anybody really buy into that?

Mr. C: Well, we weren’t sure. Because we know that they had gas cans up on the roof. And we know they were in a state of mind where we couldn’t be sure what they would do or what they wouldn’t do. So we felt like it was a possibility because we felt like, maybe, if the police came in and they got to a certain point where they might detonate something around here–we didn’t know–it was hard for us to know what they would do.

Mr. A: They moved a lot of dirt out of there. It was kind of deep. It was interesting watching them build the bunkers on the houses, and watching the police sit up there and watch them build the bunkers. …

Mr. C: Well I hope you got something for your report.

The MOVE Nine after the 1978 assault.

The MOVE Nine after the 1978 assault.

KR: I expected it to be a very positive and eye-opening thing for me, because, basically, the impression that was given by what I’ve read and what I’ve seen was that Powelton Village was an integrated community where they didn’t like Frank Rizzo, so they were kind of supportive of MOVE. Osage Avenue was a Black community they were supportive of Wilson Goode and they didn’t like the fact that Wilson Goode was being made a fool of by MOVE so Osage Avenue was nowhere near as tolerant of what was going on with MOVE as Powelton Village was. And I’m coming to see that that’s really a ridiculously simplistic analysis of the whole situation. I mean, there’s a whole lot more going on there than who the mayor was and what the racial makeup of the community was. It would seem to me, more than anything else, it was more the fact that by the time MOVE got here, their whole attitude had been ratcheted up several times. I mean, however freaked out they were in Powelton Village, I’m thinking that, if I’m freaked out in Powelton Village and the official response is to assault my house, convict nine people of shooting one bullet into one police officer [James Ramp] when they don’t even know what gun it came from, they don’t know what direction it came from, they don’t know if it was friendly fire or not….

Mr. C: But see, the thing is, they do know. They know the bullet came from behind…

KR: They know that?

Mr. C: That was a fact proved by the medical examiner.

KR: They know that the wound in the front of his neck was an exit wound?

Mr. C: Right.

KR: Did they know he was rushing the house at the time?

Mr. C: Well, I don’t know, I don’t know that. But I do know that the trajectory was inconsistent with where MOVE was located, so MOVE couldn’t have fired it.

KR: Okay. I’ve heard that contention, but only from MOVE. First time I’ve heard it from somebody other than MOVE.

Mr. C: Well that was a known fact, and that’s why MOVE was protesting so vehemently about it, because they said “There’s no way we could have killed him. We didn’t even fire any weapons.”

KR: And then nine people get nailed for one bullet.

Mr. C: But the law is that if you participate in an act that causes a death then you’re as guilty as the shooter.

KR: As a matter of fact, they were saying that in the case of the MOVE Nine, they were saying that the third degree murder conviction that they got nailed with was a compromise verdict and they could easily have been convicted of first degree. But, third degree murder as a compromise verdict and they’ve been in jail for how long?

Mr. A: A hundred and nine years they got!

KR: They’ve been in jail since 1978, Merle Africa has since died of ovarian cancer. So Merle Africa’s was a death sentence, because she died two years ago. [Of course, by now we have also lost Phil Africa, as of January 2015 – Editor.]

At this point, I said my final good-byes to my gracious hosts and spent a few minutes reflecting on the story that had unfolded here and the unexpectedly thoughtful perspectives they shared with me.  Today, sixteen years after our discussion and thirty-one years after the MOVE bombing, I remain thankful that these gentlemen allowed me to visit their once war-torn community and talk with them about this critical issue in their homes.  It was my hope, with this interview, to gain a better understanding of how the “average person” might have seen what was perhaps the most misunderstood military-style attack on a civilian population in modern American history.  I went in expecting to hear the opinions of “good citizens” who were fiercely critical of MOVE and their philosophy, and who would have little sympathy for their political struggle.  What I came away with instead was the knowledge that, while the “average person” may not understand the philosophies and methods of those who we refer to as “revolutionaries”, they do agree, at least on a basic level, with the idea of oppression and that, somehow, such repression must be resisted.  Perhaps that is a place to start.