Not yet 17, I disobeyed my parents and drove to the police barricades at the far end of Osage Avenue after nightfall, as close as I could get to the bombing – I needed to see it with my own two eyes. The overwhelming memory I carried away with me, though, was olfactory, and not visual: I promise you that nobody within a five-mile radius of West Philadelphia that night will ever quite be able to get the smell of that murder out of their nostrils. It’s 38 years gone by and it feels like yesterday.
@adamgreenfield I will never forget that day. Even though the media was trying to portray them as a dangerous cult, all I could think was: they BOMBED their own city? Their own people?
@adamgreenfield good lord I have no memory of this 😔
He was six when police attacked Philadelphia’s Black liberation group – now he’s making a memorial

As a child, Mike Africa Jr was a regular at a gathering place for Move. As the property’s new owner, he’s fulfiling his great-aunt’s dying wish

The Guardian

@adamgreenfield

It doesn't feel like it but we are living only milliseconds beyond the edge of history.

MOVE homepage.
These humans are talking.
Can we listen?

http://onamove.com/

On a Move – Website of the MOVE Organization

The MOVE Organization is a family of strong, serious, deeply committed revolutionaries founded by a wise, perceptive, strategically minded Black man named JOHN AFRICA. The principle of our belief is explained in a collection of writings we call “The Guidelines,” authored by JOHN AFRICA. To honor our beloved Founder, and acknowledge the wisdom and strength He has given us, we say “LONG LIVE JOHN AFRICA!” The MOVE 9 are innocent men and women who have been in prison since August 8, 1978, following a massive police attack on us at our home in the Powelton Village neighborhood of Philadelphia. This was seven years before the government dropped a bomb on MOVE, killing 11 people, including 5 babies. Join the international movement to get our innocent members out of prison--their frame up continues for the 39th outrageous year.

@adamgreenfield

If I ever heard of it then it certainly was not in those terms.

@adamgreenfield great Newton and all his pencils! I never heard of this, I had to read about it just now.

@adamgreenfield Thank you for sharing. I first came to Philly in the summer of '85, as a teenager for an art program and this forever changed my life & wordview.

Fuck Frank Rizzo & Wilson Goode. May they rot in hell.

@adamgreenfield
Thank you for sharing this.
Pretty sure city of Philadelphia would prefer this stay hidden.
Those cops should be charged.
Waste of resource & unethical af
@adamgreenfield And don’t forget how they took the bones of those children and put them on display in anthropology courses, without the parents’ permission. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/22/move-bombing-black-children-bones-philadelphia-princeton-pennsylvania
Bones of Black children killed in police bombing used in Ivy League anthropology course

Remains of those killed in 1985 Move bombing in Philadelphia serve as ‘case study’ in Princeton-backed course

The Guardian

@stopthatgirl7 @adamgreenfield

Adventures in forensic anthropology course… Reality bleaker than anything you could imagine.

While there are numerous exceptions - there is something about elite universities that seems to bring out academics inner asshole.

@adamgreenfield

I remember.
I had recently (1984) moved from Bensalem to Carlisle.
It was surreal.

@adamgreenfield thank you for sharing this story I had never heard about.
@adamgreenfield I first read about this in some fringe anarchist publication, and assumed they'd invented it. This happened in 1980s America? Surely not.

But it did happen. Utterly sickening.
@adamgreenfield I was 14 when I remember seeing this on local news in total disbelief. I’m sure that olfactory memory you have is similar to those of us who were in the vicinity of 9/11. Peace be with you friend.
@adamgreenfield American cops eh! Hilter? Sort of?