MOVE

Delbert Africa Passes Mon., June 15, 2020

Delbert Africa & daughter, Yvonne Orr-El (Tribune Photo/Abdul R. Sulayman)

Delbert Africa passed away last night on Monday, June 15, 2020. He was at home with his family around him. Delbert Africa was an early counterpart 42 years before George Floyd. Besides his original, brutal attack by Philadelphia police, Delbert was deliberately killed, methodically assassinated, by officials at the State Correctional Institution – Dallas as part of the government’s plan to get rid of all MOVE men they could get their hands on.

Delbert was receiving care for cancer at the end of his prison sentence at the local hospital. There the doctors and nurses said the prison provided a lot of wrong treatments on Delbert and they couldn’t even understand why the prison did what the doctor and staff did. But, MOVE knows, and Delbert’s supporters know why–it’s murder by prison officials. The same fate that Phil Africa and Merle Africa suffered. The same fate that is occurring to Black men and women all over America by brutal, racist police, and the system they serve.

The MOVE Family
Long Live John Africa Forever!

MOVE member Delbert Africa speaks at a press conference after parole from prison.

Mumia Abu-Jamal Remembers Delbert Africa

MOVE Organization Press Conference on Murder of Delbert Africa

Delbert Africa, Warrior for the people!

By Betsey Piette posted on June 17, 2020, Workers World Newspaper

Special WURD Broadcast Weds., May 13, to Commemorate the 35th Anniversary of the MOVE Bombing.

MOVE members will speak.

WURD can be heard on 900AM, 96.1FM, or https://wurdradio.com. The day will be structured within a historical and chronological context, placing guests in the order in which they appear in the MOVE narrative. Read more.

10am – 11pm:
In the beginning, there was John Africa.

11am – 12pm:
DELBERT AFRICA
JANINE AFRICA
EDDIE AFRICA
JANET AFRICA

1pm – 2pm:
PAM AFRICA
CARLOS AFRICA

3pm – 4pm:
CONSUEWELLA AFRICA
RAMONA AFRICA

5pm – 7pm:
Interviews with a wide array of stakeholders who were directly involved. Archival audio, live interviews and video.

The day of programming is sponsored by Resolve Reporting Collaborative. Read more.

Chuck Sims Africa freed!

Final jailed Move 9 member released from prison

Welcome Home, Chuck, 60 Years Strong!
Birthday Celebration!
Sat., April 4, 2020
4 – 7 pm
Darby Recreation Center, 1020 Ridge Ave., Darby, PA 19023
See map/directions. More info. RSVP.

Reprinted from The Guardian, Philadelphia, Friday, February 7, 2020.
Article by Ed Pilkington

One of the great open wounds of the black liberation struggle of the 1970s has finally been healed with the release of the last member of the Move 9, the group of radicals rounded up in a Philadelphia police siege in 1978 and held behind bars for more than four decades.

Chuck Sims Africa, 59, walked free from the Fayette state correctional institution in La Belle, Pennsylvania, on Friday morning. The youngest of the incarcerated group, he has been in custody since shortly after he turned 18.

It takes a lot to rebuild a life that has been stolen since August 8th, 1978. We want to make this transition as smooth as possible, and ensure he has all the basic necessities to get established on the outside. Additionally, Chuck has been valiantly fighting cancer from within prison. Now that he is out, he can receive holistic care and some funds will go towards these expenses.

Chuck appreciates all the support we’ve given over the past four decades, and just needs a little more to kick start his new life! Please give him a warm welcome home and help him to get settled.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-chuck-africa-rebuild

His freedom marked his reunion with his family for the first time in almost 42 years. It was also historic, as it closed a chapter that had remained unfinished since the black power movement erupted in the late 1960s.

Alongside the Black Panthers, Philadelphia’s Move organization was central to the volatile and at times violent struggle for black equality that lasted until the 1980s.

Members of the organization regarded themselves – and still do to this day – as part of a family dedicated to race equality, with all members taking the last name “Africa.” Part Panthers and part eco-hippies, they also had a commitment to environmental justice that was ahead of its time.

Mike Africa Jr, the son of two of the Move 9, said Chuck’s release put an end to a long and grueling campaign. “We will never have to shout ‘Free the Move 9!’ ever again. It’s been 41 years, and now we’ll never have to say it.”

For Mike Africa, who is also Chuck’s nephew, the release was especially poignant. He was born in a cell five weeks after his mother, Debbie Sims Africa, Chuck’s sister, was rounded up in the 1978 siege and incarcerated – she gave birth to him unbeknown to the prison guards and kept him hidden with her in the cell for the first few days of his life.

The Guardian began investigating the prolonged imprisonment of the Move 9 in 2018 as part of an examination into black power behind bars. At that time all the surviving members of the group were still in custody in various Pennsylvania prisons.

Members of the group described in letters, emails and prison interviews how they had endured so many years inside while keeping their spirits high. Janine Phillips Africa said that she raised therapy dogs in her cell and grew vegetables in the prison yard, avoiding birthdays or holidays that reminded her of the passage of time.

“The years are not my focus,” she wrote in a letter to the Guardian. “I keep my mind on my health and the things I need to do day by day.”

Delbert Orr Africa said: “We’ve suffered the worst that this system can throw at us – decades of imprisonment, loss of loved ones. So we know we are strong.”

Soon after the Guardian began its investigation, the seven surviving members of the group began to be released on parole. First up was Debbie Sims Africa, set free in June 2018. “We are peaceful people,” she said as she stepped out of Cambridge Springs prison.

Then the other six began to emerge, one after the other like falling dominoes:

Mike Africa Sr, October 2018
Janine Phillips Africa and Janet Holloway Africa, May 2019
Eddie Goodman Africa, June 2019
Delbert Orr Africa, January 2020

Chuck Sims Africa completes the set.

The Move 9 were arrested following a massive police siege of their collective headquarters and home in Powelton Village, Philadelphia, on 8 August 1978. Hundreds of police officers in Swat teams armed with machine guns, teargas, bulldozers and water cannons surrounded the property following a long standoff with city authorities that saw the group as a threat to the community.

The siege culminated in a police shootout in which Move members allegedly returned fire though they denied doing so. A police officer, James Ramp, was killed in the crossfire.

Nine members were arrested and held jointly responsible for Ramp’s death despite forensic evidence showing he was killed with a single bullet. In 1980 the nine were convicted of third-degree murder and lesser offenses and each sentenced to 30 years to life.

Two of the nine – Merle and Phil Africa – died in prison. The remaining seven fought for many years to convince parole authorities that they were safe to be let out, pointing to clean discipline sheets in prison.

Over the past two years, there have been no security incidents relating to any of the paroled individuals.

Wilson Goode, former mayor of Philadelphia, wrote to the parole board to support Chuck Africa’s bid for freedom. He said: “His release will reunite a family after 40 years and I am convinced he will be a positive contributing voice to the Philadelphia community.”

Goode, the first black mayor of Philadelphia, was in that position on 13 May 1985 when the second disaster relating to Move occurred. Following another prolonged bout of acrimony between the organization and its neighbors and city authorities, the decision was taken forcibly to evict the group from its latest headquarters, then in Osage Avenue.

Another shootout broke out, and when that failed to flush them out police dropped incendiary bombs from a helicopter on to the roof of the building. A fire ensued which was allowed to spread, eventually razing to the ground 61 homes in the overwhelmingly African American neighborhood.

Eleven people in the Move house, including five children, died in the inferno. Chuck Africa’s cousin, Frank, was among the adults who were killed.

All the paroled members of the Move 9 are now preparing to mark the 35th anniversary of the tragedy. For the first time they will be able to commemorate the event and the relatives and peers they lost outside a prison cell.

A huge THANK YOU to The Guardian for their steadfast coverage of the MOVE 9. Original article.

MOVE: Over four decades of resistance

By Ted Kelly
July 30, 2018
Reprinted from International Action Center website

MOVE 9 40 Year Commemoration

Earlier this summer, Philadelphia was in a state of celebration when political prisoner Debbie Africa was released after nearly four decades in prison. In August, prison abolitionists, in Philadelphia and across the world, will observe an anniversary with more solemnity than rejoicing.

August 8, 2018, marks the 40th anniversary of the city’s first major assault on the MOVE family, an episode that ended in the death of one of the family’s infants and in the arrest and imprisonment of nine MOVE family members.

To commemorate this anniversary, a three-part event will be held on Aug. 5. At 10 a.m., there will be a 5k run and walk that starts in Fairmount Park and goes to the original MOVE house in the city’s Powelton Village neighborhood. Then, at 3 p.m., there will be a public forum at Mastery Shoemaker High School on what today’s movements should learn from MOVE’s struggle. Following that forum will be a live concert at 5 p.m. featuring local artists Seraiah Nicole, Mic Africa, Raw Life Crew and more.

Free the MOVE 9

Debbie Africa, with son Mike Africa Jr. with photo of still imprisoned husband/father Mike Africa Sr — Debbie Africa with son Mike Jr. and photo of still imprisoned husband/ father Mike Africa Sr. LBWPhoto

Michael Africa Sr., one of the MOVE 9, has a new parole hearing this September. Despite the fact that Janet and Janine Africa were also up for parole at the same time as Debbie, she remains the only member of the MOVE 9 to be released. Debbie was imprisoned in 1978 along with her partner Mike Sr., as well as Delbert, Phil, Janet, Janine, Eddie, Merle and Chuck Africa.

All nine were convicted of the murder of a Philadelphia police officer who died from being struck by one of his fellow officers’ bullets in the hail of gunfire the police blasted into the MOVE home. Despite forensic evidence and scores of eyewitnesses indicating the officer was slain by “friendly fire,” all nine of the arrested MOVE members were convicted of firing the single bullet that killed him.

Immediately after the police assault on the MOVE family, the city bulldozed and destroyed the house, annihilating any and all evidence that could have been used to help exonerate the MOVE 9. The demolition also erased all evidence of the police siege on the compound and the massive structural damage done to the house by police water cannons, chemical gas and thousands of rounds of ammunition fired into the home.

Despite all this, even the city had to acknowledge that of the few weapons that were recovered from the MOVE family home, none of them were operable. That is to say, the MOVE 9 had no way of shooting anyone. Yet each of the MOVE 9 were sentenced to 30 to 100 years in prison.

Judge Edwin Malmed, who handed down the bogus convictions, was asked by then reporter Mumia Abu-Jamal how it could be considered a just decision that nine people were convicted of firing a single bullet. Malmed replied that since the nine wanted to be tried as a family, he convicted them as a family.

A history of oppression — and resistance

The Philadelphia police assault on the MOVE family on Aug. 8, 1978, was a clear escalation of violence, brutality and injustice. But the war on the Philadelphia Black Liberation movement had been raging for at least a decade before. The generalissimo who prosecuted that war was Frank Rizzo, the white supremacist police commissioner turned mayor.

A major attack on Black Liberation began in August 1970 when police raided the Philadelphia Black Panther headquarters. Dozens of Panthers were publicly stripped naked on Columbia Avenue before their arrest. In that era of Cointelpro infiltration, intimidation and assassination, the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panthers was just one of many to go underground or be destroyed outright.

The MOVE Organization, led by the visionary John Africa, is what filled the vacuum left by the Panthers in Philadelphia. With an ideology that combined an uncompromising dedication to Black Liberation with an unprecedented commitment to environmental justice and animal rights, MOVE became a revolutionary force to be reckoned with.

In a recent interview in Workers World, Debbie Africa explained: “[My brothers] got involved in MOVE activities, in speaking engagements — at the time they were in full throttle speaking out against injustice. They loved it, taking care of the dogs and going to study sessions that MOVE founder John Africa held, educating people how to avoid violence in their communities and on police brutality — the things that made people’s lives miserable.”

She added: “John Africa’s teachings really lock you into the reality of what’s really going on. The rest is history.”

For years, the city attempted to lock up members of the MOVE Organization. But John, and later Ramona, Africa’s remarkable legal astuteness meant they often escaped serious charges. That changed in 1978 when weeks of a siege on the MOVE house culminated in the Aug. 8 assault and the imprisonment of the MOVE 9.

Three years later, Black Panther journalist and MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal was also framed for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. A key witness to that incident was found dead under mysterious circumstances on May 13, 1985 — the same night that Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on the new MOVE house on Osage Avenue, killing eleven people, including founder John Africa and five children.

In the years since the 1978 assault and the 1985 state murders, the MOVE family has flourished and grown, despite mainstream media accounts to the contrary. Still, the city’s oppression has taken its toll. Mumia Abu-Jamal and six of the MOVE 9 are still in prison after 40 years. Merle and Phil Africa were murdered by the prison system — they died under lock and key.

This fortieth anniversary must mark not just four decades of resistance, but also a new chapter in that struggle.

Free the MOVE 9! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Free ‘em all!

‘This is huge’: black liberationist speaks out after her 40 years in prison

Reprint from original
By Ed Pilkington in New York
The Guardian
June 18, 2018

Exclusive: Debbie Sims Africa, the first freed member of a radical Philadelphia group many say were unjustly imprisoned, talks about reuniting with her son and defends the Move members still locked up: ‘We are peaceful people’

Debbie Sims Africa, age 22 — Debbie Sims Africa was 22 when she was sentenced. Her release is seen as a major breakthrough for those imprisoned during the black liberation movement. Photograph: Courtesy of Michael Davis Africa Jr

The first member of a group of black radicals known as the Move Nine who have been incarcerated, they insist unjustly, for almost 40 years for killing a Philadelphia police officer has been released from prison.

Debbie Sims Africa, 61, walked free from Cambridge Springs prison in Pennsylvania on Saturday, June 16, 2018, having been granted parole. She was 22 when with her co-defendants she was arrested and sentenced to 30 to 100 years for the shooting death of officer James Ramp during a police siege of the group’s communal home on 8 August 1978.

She emerged from the correctional institution to be reunited with her son, Michael Davis Africa Jr, to whom she gave birth in a prison cell in September 1978, a month after her arrest.

“This is huge for us personally,” Sims Africa told the Guardian, speaking from her son’s home in a small town on the outskirts of Philadelphia where she will now live.

Davis Africa, 39, who was separated from his mother at less than a week old and has never spent time with her outside prison, said they were coming to terms with being reunited after almost four decades.

“Today I had breakfast with my mother for the first time,” he said. “There’s so much we haven’t done together.”

The release of Debbie Sims Africa is a major breakthrough regarding the ongoing incarceration of large numbers of individuals involved in the black liberation movement of the late 1960s and 1970s who are now growing old behind bars. At least 25 men and women belonging to Move or the former Black Panther party remain locked up, in some cases almost half a century after their arrests.

Michael Davis Africa Jr on reunited with his mother: ‘There’s so much we haven’t done together.’ Photograph: Ed Pilkington for the Guardian

Sims Africa’s release also addresses one of the most hotly contested criminal justice cases in Philadelphia history. The nine were prosecuted together following a police siege of their headquarters in Powelton Village at the orders of Philadelphia’s notoriously hardline mayor and former police commissioner, Frank Rizzo.

Move, which exists today, regarded itself as a revolutionary movement committed to a healthy life free from oppression or pollution. In the 1970s it was something of a cross between black liberationists and early environmental activists. Its members all take “Africa” as their last name, to signal that they see each other as family.

Hundreds of police officers, organized in Swat teams and armed with machine guns, water cannons, teargas and bulldozers, were involved in the siege, which came at the end of a long standoff with the group relating to complaints about conditions in its premises. Two water cannon and smoke bombs were unleashed. The Move residents took refuge in a basement.

I had to feel my way up the stairs to get out of the basement with my baby in my arms

Sims Africa was eight months pregnant and was carrying her two-year-old daughter, Michelle. “We were being battered with high-powered water and smoke was everywhere,” she said. “I couldn’t see my hands in front of my face and I was choking. I had to feel my way up the stairs to get out of the basement with my baby in my arms.”

Shooting broke out and Ramp was killed by a single bullet. Prosecutors alleged that Move members fired the fatal shot and charged Sims Africa and the other eight with collective responsibility for his death.

Eyewitnesses, however, gave accounts suggesting that the shot may have come from the opposite direction to the basement, raising the possibility that Ramp was accidentally felled, by police fire. After the raid was over, weapons were found within the property. None were in operative condition.

In 1985, Philadelphia authorities carried out an even more controversial and deadly action against the remaining members of Move. A police helicopter dropped an incendiary bomb on to the roof of its then HQ in west Philadelphia, killing six adults including the group’s leader, John Africa, and five of their children.

That incident continues to have the distinction of being the only aerial bombing by police carried out on US soil.

At Sims Africa’s trial, no evidence was presented that she or the three other women charged alongside her had brandished or handled firearms during the siege. Nor was there any attempt on the part of the prosecution to prove that they had had any role in firing the shot that killed Ramp.

Sims Africa has had an unblemished disciplinary record in prison for the past 25 years. The last claim of misconduct against her dates to 1992.

Her attorneys presented the parole board with a 13-page dossier outlining her work as a mentor to other prisoners and as a dog handler who trains puppies that assist people with physical and cognitive disabilities. The dossier includes testimony from the correctional expert Martin Horn, who reviewed her record and concluded it was “remarkable”.

1984 Philadelphia police and FBI bombing of Move members — Philadelphia burn after officials dropped a bomb on the Move house in 1985. Photograph: AP

Horn said Sims Africa had “chosen to be a rule-abiding individual with the ability to be a productive, law-abiding citizen if she is released. I see a record of growing maturity, improved judgment and the assumption of personal responsibility. I do not believe that Debbie Sims is today a threat to the community.”

Sims Africa’s lawyer, Brad Thomson, commended the parole board for “recognizing that she is of exceptional character and well-deserving of parole. This is a storied victory for Debbie and her family, and the Move organization, and we are hoping it will be the first step in getting all the Move Nine out of prison.”

The release of Sims Africa comes less than two months before the 40th anniversary of the siege. Commemorative events are being held in Philadelphia, organised by Move, on 5 and 11 August.

The release of Sims Africa is bittersweet, however. Two of the nine have died in prison – another female inmate, Merle Austin Africa, in March 1998, and Phil Africa in January 2015.

Having to leave them was hard. I was torn up inside because I want to come home but I want them to come with me

Also bittersweet is the fact that Sims Africa went up for parole at exactly the same time, and on exactly the same terms, as the other two remaining Move Nine women – Janine Phillips Africa and Janet Hollaway Africa. They were both denied parole and will have to wait until May 2019 to try again.

Thomson said the disparity in the parole board’s decision was “very surprising”, given that the Philadelphia district attorney’s office that carried out the original trial prosecution had written letters supporting parole for all three. The parole board gave what the lawyer said were “boilerplate justifications” for the denial of Phillips Africa and Hollaway Africa, saying they displayed “lack of remorse”.

Debbie Sims Africa’s husband also remains behind bars. Mike Davis Africa Sr is next up before the parole board, in September. The other Move Nine prisoners are Chuck Sims Africa, Delbert Orr Africa and Eddie Goodman Africa.

Michael Africa Jr and mother Debbie Sims Africa — Debbie Sims Africa with her son after her release from prison. Photograph: Courtesy of Michael Davis Africa Jr

Debbie Sims Africa told the Guardian the remaining prisoners were constantly in her mind and that she planned to devote much of her time campaigning for their release.

“Having to leave them was hard,” she said. “I was torn up inside because of course I want to come home but I want them to come with me. I was in shock when it didn’t happen that way.”

Asked if the two Move women with whom she had shared a cell in Cambridge Springs would be a threat to society if released, she said: “Absolutely not. They would not be a danger as I’m not.

“Nobody from the Move movement has been released from prison and ever committed a crime, going back to 1988. We are peaceful people.”

FRAMED IN AMERICA: THE MAKING OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

Sat., February 24, 2018,
The National Black Theatre,
2031 5th Avenue (corner 125th St.),
Harlem, NY 10035

Join:
Ramona Africa, Fred Hampton Jr., Pam Africa, Roger Wareham, Betty Davis, Ralph Poynter, Johanna Fernandez
As They Rally For Parole For Move Political Prisoners in 2018

Program: 5 – 8 pm
Dinner on sale: 4 pm
Vendors Village: 4 pm

For Program and Vending Reservations call (347) 641-2773 or go to OnaMove.com

Event live streaming at PictureTheStruggle.org

FREE THE MOVE 9!

For more info contact (215) 386-1165 and onamovellja@aol.com

MOVE bombing will be the subject of Philadelphia opera fest world premiere

David Patrick Stearns, Music Critic
Philadelphia Inquirer/Daily News/Philly.com

What started as a “hip h’opera” involving student poets in public schools has evolved into what will be perhaps the most daring show in Opera Philadelphia’s O17 festival this fall: We Shall Not be Moved, about modern-day displaced kids confronting the ghosts of the notorious 1985 MOVE bombing.

Details about the project have just been released in advance of the Sept. 16-24 performances at the Wilma Theater. The Philadelphia world premiere will be followed by runs at New York’s Apollo Theater and London’s Hackney Empire. The message from the creative team, most of whom are not from Philadelphia, is this: The opera doesn’t take a position or even dramatize the showdown between MOVE and local police that ended with the bombing that burned an extensive section of West Philadelphia.

“We’re not reopening the wound. The wound is present … and that’s true of so many things in American history,” said librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, 41. “It’s about how do we responsibly ask questions … in a past that’s never really lost.”

“First and foremost, this is … a musical theater experience with serious questions at its core,” said the much-honored director/choreographer Bill T. Jones, 65. “People are kind of nervous about it … and though we’ve watched many hours of documentary footage … the question is what is truth and reconciliation here.”

Those posing the questions are five teen runaways who take refuge in abandoned buildings on the original MOVE site (which was on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia). Each teen represents a particular aspect of modern urban life: one is transgender, another is white yet identifies as African American, and so on. All are haunted by the ghosts of children who died in the 1985 fire. Added to all that is a tough Latina police officer whose provocative lines include “The one with the gun has the moral high ground, no?” The operatic score is not likely to sound like Carmen. The eclectic composer is Haitian American Daniel Bernard Roumain, who has worked intensively with Jones in years past.

Modern parallels with police violence were almost accidental, said Joseph. The project began around 2013, when he was working with student poets, in conjunction with the City of Philadelphia and Art Sanctuary. He had a mandate from Opera Philadelphia: determine whether an operatic theater piece could be drawn from their work. What struck Joseph was the absence of active awareness of the past in a social-media generation that exists in the present amid a near-forgotten yesterday, not to mention a major historic event such as the MOVE bombing. He first drafted the libretto in 2014, and by the end of the year, he pitched the idea to Opera Philadelphia. Nobody flinched.

Those posing the questions are five teen runaways who take refuge in abandoned buildings on the original MOVE site (which was on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia). Each teen represents a particular aspect of modern urban life: one is transgender, another is white yet identifies as African American, and so on. All are haunted by the ghosts of children who died in the 1985 fire. Added to all that is a tough Latina police officer whose provocative lines include “The one with the gun has the moral high ground, no?” The operatic score is not likely to sound like Carmen. The eclectic composer is Haitian American Daniel Bernard Roumain, who has worked intensively with Jones in years past.

As much as the MOVE disaster has been examined, the librettist had some startling revelations from interviewing survivors. “There were white children who died in the fire,” he said. “MOVE is painted as a separatist group, which is probably right, but also segregated, which is totally wrong.” The libretto, in fact, wasn’t finished until March, which makes the final gestation of the piece incredibly fast by operatic standards. This process usually takes years.

Jones describes the project as being in “mid-stroke,” with creative-team members making their own lists of priorities. However, dance is likely to be prominent, if only because Jones is a choreographer, and he has hired Raphael Xavier, an alum of Philadelphia dance company Rennie Harris Puremovement, to supply more hip-hop elements. Joseph calls the approach “choreographic poetry … the idea that poetry can be spoken through the body.” Especially the ghosts.

Roumain wasn’t available for comment, but Jones pointed out that the term opera has been defined more loosely in recent years. The score is expected to have the gravity of opera but with surface elements of gospel, jazz, and African folklore. A video element is particularly in a state of artistic flux but may be used to set the historic context of the original MOVE tragedy.

Much will be decided after rehearsals begin in August, during which We Shall Not Be Moved will be in production along with four other productions: a Komische Oper Berlin production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute Sept. 15-24 at the Academy of Music, Kevin Puts’ Elizabeth Cree Sept. 14-23 at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater, a Monteverdi/Lembit Beecher double bill titled War Stories Sept. 16-23 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and David Hertzberg’s The Wake World Sept. 18-25 at the Barnes Foundation.

The We Shall Not Be Moved company has roughly a month to pull together a hybrid work for which few clear templates exist. Yet Jones is tentatively confident: “We don’t often work in such a complicated palette. But I’m committed to keeping things smiling,” he said. “They [the collaborators] are ambitious and talented, and I think it’s going to be all right. Sometimes I’m very stern. The [set building] shop is doing three or four productions. But they’re very organized and the spirit is in a good place right now.”

Note from Ramona:

ONA MOVE, family, and friends! You may be aware that an opera based on MOVE (We Shall Not Be Moved) has been produced and opens at The Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia on Saturday, September 16th. What you, our NYC area friends, may not know is that this same opera will be at The Apollo Theatre on Friday, October 6th and Saturday, October 7th. I understand that tickets are $28.50 and $53.50 but double check that. For our friends in and around London in the UK, this opera based on MOVE, will open at The Hackney Empire from October 14th through the 21st. Ticket prices depend on where you want to sit. Hope some of our friends in and around the London area will be able to attend one of the performances. Be well and lots of love—–Ramona

Children of the MOVE family remember MOVE 9 during dedication of new marker

During the dedication of the new marker on Saturday, June 24, 2017, children of the MOVE family stand silently with photos of MOVE members who have been incarcerated for 38 years. Photograph by Ed Hille, Staff Photographer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News.

A historical marker was unveiled during a ceremony this afternoon at Osage Avenue and Cobbs Creek Parkway, Philadelphia, where the Move activist community lived until they along with neighbors were bombed in 1985.

The marker is the result of two years’ worth of work by students at the Jubilee School.

Save the Date: MOVE Art Exhibit and Commemoration

Saturday, August 5, 2017,

2 – 4 pm: MOVE Art Exhibit – With The Art of Sophia Dawson
$20 – Fundraiser

5 – 8 pm: Program – 39 Years Too Long: Free The Move 9
Free
Featuring:
Ramona Africa (Move Org), Pam Africa (ICFFMAJ), Lawrence Hamm (POP), Suzanne Ross (Free Mumia Coalition), James McIntosh (CEMOTAP), Inez Barron (NYC Councilperson) & Charles Barron (NYS Assemblyperson), and more to be added

House of The Lord Church
415 Atlantic Avenue (bet. Bond & Nevins Sts.) – see map
Brooklyn, NY

For more info: (215) 386-1165 & onamovellja@aol.com

Get flyer

Students Campaign For Historical Marker Commemorating MOVE Bombing

June 9, 2017
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2017/06/09/students-campaign-for-historical-marker-commemorating-move-bombing/ (click link to see video)

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — The site of the 1985 “MOVE” bombing in Cobbs Creek will soon get a Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission marker.

Jubilee School Students Sucessfully Campaign For Historical Marker Commemorating MOVE Bombing — Photo still from the video. Click to go online to watch video on CBS.

It was May 13, 1985, when police bombed the Osage Avenue row home of a group of radical black activists known as MOVE.

The resulting fire destroyed 61 homes and killed 11 people, including five children.

“Children younger and older than us were killed by a bomb that was dropped by police and stuff, and they didn’t even know why,” said Jubilee School 6th grader Ella Adams.

Meet Ella, Hannah, Ishtar, Nigel and David.

“I don’t understand how Philadelphia could do that,” said David Bannister, a 7th grader.

These current and former students at the Jubilee School make up “Songs of the Children,” an anti-violence group.

After learning about MOVE last May, teacher Karen Falcon took the group to Osage Avenue.

“The houses look really worn down, it wasn’t rebuilt well,” said Ishtar El, a 6th grader.

What stood out was what was missing: a memorial telling what happened.

“We were like, ‘how about we make a historical marker?’” said Hannah Romer, a 6th grader.

They got 200 signatures and filled out an application for a historical marker; the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission gave approval in March.

The MOVE Bombing marker will be placed at the corner of Osage and Cobbs Creek Parkway. It will summarize the tragedy, including participation by the city, state police, and FBI.

“It’s really empowering, and it makes me feel happy that we could do something like this,” said Ishtar.

They launched a GoFundMe for the plaque for the June 24th dedication and for a documentary for their campaign. They also sold baked goods.

“I really want to show that this is out there, and this happened, and we cannot avoid it,” said Hannah.

And that kids, no matter their age, “we can do something about it, and we can make a difference,” said 7th grader Nigel Carter

By taking action, that makes change.

Cherri Gregg