
On the MOVE! I’m Janine Africa, Minister of Education for the MOVE Organization. I’ve been in MOVE since 1973. I’m one of the MOVE Nine. We all were sentenced to 30-100 years for a crime we didn’t commit. This system gave us these life sentences to try to stop MOVE. Since they didn’t kill us when they attacked us August 8th, 1978, they figured they could stop MOVE by putting us in prison for the rest of our lives. But just like this system’s guns, bombs, police, tear gas, deluge guns haven’t stopped MOVE people from being committed to our belief, to JOHN AFRICA’s Teaching, neither will this system’s prisons. If I have to be in prison for the rest of my life, I will still stay committed to JOHN AFRICA’s Teaching because of all JOHN AFRICA is doing for me.
I met MOVE people when I was 17 years old. They were having a demonstration and I just happened to be passing by. I stopped to see what was going on, I listened to them speak and what really caught my attention was the strength, confidence, and assertiveness of the MOVE women. They were everything I wasn’t and all I could think about was that I wanted to be like them. After the demonstration, I approached some of the MOVE women and asked who they were. They told me they were the MOVE Organization and explained to me what the organization’s belief is. They invited me to come to their weekly study sessions they held to teach people about JOHN AFRICA’s Teaching. I started going to these study sessions regularly and listening to the information from MOVE’s Guidelines and I could hear that what JOHN AFRICA teach is the truth, is right. JOHN AFRICA’s Teaching is what I’ve been looking for because I was just like everybody else in the system, unhappy, riddled with problems, and desperately looking elsewhere for the solution to these problems. My search stopped with JOHN AFRICA.

I had a baby and got married when I was very young. I didn’t know how to be a mother or a wife and trying to be both was driving me to a nervous breakdown. I developed a condition where my throat would close up on me and I couldn’t eat. I went from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital and none of them could do anything for me. I was at the end of my rope until I met MOVE. I joined MOVE and started living JOHN AFRICA’s Teaching. JOHN AFRICA cured the condition with my throat and made me a good loving mother and wife, and made me a loyal sister to my MOVE family. JOHN AFRICA gave me strength, health, security and confidence that I’ve never had! LONG LIVE JOHN AFRICA FOREVER!
I will never leave MOVE and give up all that JOHN AFRICA as given me, even if it means being in prison for 30-100 years!
LONG LIVE JOHN AFRICA’S REVOLUTION!
On the MOVE!
Janine Africa
Hear insightful audio essays by Janine Africa on Prison Radio
Janine’s Newborn Baby, Life Africa, Brutally Murdered by Police
After joining MOVE and living out their holistic and natural principles the condition with Janine’s throat was cured. She also felt more confident as a mother and wife.
Janine gave birth naturally at home to Life Africa on March 8, 1976. Three weeks later seven MOVE members were returning from a stint in jail. Officers in at least ten cars pulled up to the house claiming that MOVE was creating a disturbance. Chuck Africa told the officers to leave them alone and was then grabbed and beaten, setting off other officers to beat the other six MOVE men. Janine Africa was trying to protect her husband Phil Africa, when she was grabbed by a cop, thrown to the ground with 3-week-old Life Africa in arms, and stomped until she was nearly unconscious. The baby’s skull was crushed.

MOVE held a press conference the following day, explaining how the police had murdered Life and displayed a nightstick that was broken in two over Robert Africa’s head and an officer’s hat that was left at the house. Because Life did not have birth certificate, the city denied the claim and so MOVE had to prove that Life was murdered by inviting local politicians over to view the body.
Charges brought against the officers who murdered Life were immediately dismissed despite neighborhood witnesses. The city instead pursued charges against the six men who were beaten that night.
No officer was ever charged with any crime for this infanticide. The officer remains unidentified. MOVE’s column in the Philadelphia Tribune, which had documented the birth of Life Africa 3 weeks earlier, ran a series of pieces covering the March 28th attack. Interviews with several neighbors who had witnessed the incident were featured. Yet no charges were filed against the officers involved in the baby’s murder. Instead the District Attorney’s office pursued prosecution of the six MOVE members arrested that night! MOVE was prepared to present evidence of a long-standing Rizzo-directed campaign of harassment that culminated in the death of Life Africa.
But before all the testimony could be presented, Judge Merna Marshall dismissed the case, thereby thwarting the chance to prove a citywide conspiracy against MOVE in a court of law. Dismissing felony charges of aggravated assault on cops was virtually unheard of in Philadelphia.
Read more about calloused state treatment of Life Africa and here.
Janine Africa in her own words, Part 1
Janine Africa in her own words, Part 2
Letter from Janine Africa for the Sao Paulo Forum held July 4-6 2012 in Caracas, Venezuela
On the MOVE
This is Janine Africa, one of the MOVE 9 who were sentenced to 30-100 years for a crime we didn’t commit. We’ve been in prison since 1978 and have been denied parole 3 times so far because we refuse to lie and say we’re guilty.
My thoughts on ending the U.S. Blockade of Cuba is this… I feel the U.S. condemnation of the Cuban government is like the pot calling the kettle black! The u.s. government is doing the same things they’re punishing Cuba for. The u.s. prisons are full of political prisoners, people like the MOVE 9, who dared to tell the truth about this country’s corrupt practices. This government has innocent people in prison, have executed people that was proven to be innocent because they were a minority, money poor and seen as worthless. Police shooting people down, hand-cuffed and in the back and unarmed and getting away with it, just like other police states.
The economy is set to protect the rich. The majority in this country is struggling, living in cars, subways, alleys, eating out of trash cans. The conditions here are the same as the conditions in Cuba. Cuba is a poor country so the conditions of the majority are harsher. The u.s. blockade is only affecting the poor who are already suffering. This blockade isn’t out of concern for the peopleor to “protect democracy”. This is being done for political advantage, its an attempt to bend the Cuban government to the u.s. rules. The u.s. only gets involved in other countries affairs when its something in it for them. If the u.s. was truly against injustice, persecution, crime- it would show here in their own country. There is no equality, justice in America. The u.s. need to clean up its own backyard first before trying to control other countries.
On the MOVE Janine Africa