The Wrong Move in West Philadelphia
LEITER, ROBERT
The Wrong Move in West Philadelphia Burning Down the House: MOVE and the Tragedy of Philadelphia By John Anderson and Hilary Hevenor Norton. 409 pp. $18.95. Reviewed by Robert...
...The authors show that once complaints began to mount in the area (MOVE treated its property and neighbors no differently here than in Powelton Village), Mayor Wilson Goode, a black man, tried to shift the problem to the Federal government and then to the Philadelphia district attorney...
...None of the important connections are made—between racism and police conduct, between the demands of the poor and the workings of the city bureaucracy...
...But once he had picked at his dinner and watched a bit more, he grew tired and said he wanted to turn in for the night...
...Although many MOVE members were tried and jailed, John Africa was acquitted...
...Indeed, the first skirmish with police was not long in coming...
...Since they chose to write their book now, rather than wait until all the evidence was in, Anderson and Hevenor cannot really answer such questions...
...I would venture that most Philadelphians remember where they were when they first heard a bomb had destroyed the headquarters of MOVE, a black revolutionary group based in West Philadelphia...
...For example, did MOVE members fleeing the burning house shoot at the police...
...In September 1976, reports indicated that John Africa had decided to abandon his course of relatively peaceful resistance...
...In the alley behind 6221 Osage Avenue the children began running out...
...MOVE's women were expected to give birth naturally, lick their babies clean, then bite off and eat the umbilical cord...
...One officer was slain...
...It further censured him for not taking an active role in the planning of what it called an excessive, reckless, hastily approved undertaking...
...It mattered little that many of MOVE'S adults ate Gino's fried chicken and tossed the bones wherever they wished...
...Whole words are dropped from sentences, "among" is used where "between" is called for—to cite merely two embarrassments...
...In financial terms that cost Philadelphia $17.7 million, mainly in the form of funds provided by the city's Redevelopment Authority...
...Because a grand jury had already started taking testimony at the time of their writing (and actually has not yet handed down any presentments or opinions), most of the major players refused interviews...
...No birth control was permitted...
...In Burning Down theHouse John Anderson, an assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and his wife Hilary Hevenor, a writer and artist, try to make sense of what happened on that sultry day in May 1985...
...On May 13, a State Police helicopter dropped a bomb containing perhaps three-and-a-half pounds of high-grade military explosives on the roof of 6221 Osage Avenue...
...MOVE members were encouraged to chew garlic for its medicinal properties, too...
...they asked...
...The residents were outraged...
...This ultimately makes no sense...
...Brooks and Police Commissioner Gregore J. Sambor were singled out for "grossly negligent" conduct in the conception and execution of Operation MOVE...
...That's the last time they'll call the [Police] Commissioner a mother...
...Meanwhile, neighbors had been complaining to city officials...
...Here come the kids...
...The deaths of five children, it said, "appeared to be unjustified homicides which should be investigated by a grand jury...
...Several years later, MOVE again attracted public attention when it purchased a row house at 6221 Osage Avenue, in a middle-class black neighborhood in West Philadelphia...
...John Africa's philosophy revolved around "getting back to nature" as a way of opposing the "system"—which was, of course, rotten to the core...
...Reviewed by Robert Leiter Contributor, New York "Times, " "New Republic, " "American Scholar" Most Americans know exactly where they were when they first heard John F. Kennedy had been shot...
...For months, Goode assured everyone that he was on top of the situation...
...A bunker sat atop each end of the roof, with holes drilled in their steel-plated walls to accommodate the barrels of rifles and shotguns...
...Propagation was the order of the day...
...Neighbors who dared to complain were loudly denounced...
...Brooks, a retired Army general, subsequently testified he passed on the order to the Police Commissioner...
...Every child was a tabula rasa to be inscribed with John Africa's philosophy...
...There is no change of pace in the narration, no pause for analysis...
...they shouted, following instructions the adults had given them—but gunfire forced them back inside or, according to Anderson and Hevenor, they "were shot down in the alley...
...The diet for youngsters consisted solely of raw fruits and vegetables, to spare them the "poisons" of meat and fish...
...Soon he directed his followers "to prepare for a showdown with police," and MOVE began stockpiling weapons and ammunition...
...Little is known about the origins of MOVE and its enigmatic leader, a young black named Vincent Leaphart whose political conversion included christening himself John Africa...
...The group's headquarters became a haven for unwanted animals, especially unvaccinated dogs, not to mention roaches, termites and every other sort of insect...
...Whatever the case, the book displays inexcusable editorial laziness, especially from such an estimable house...
...The authors quote extensively from the MOVE Commission findings, based on hearings held in October and November 1985...
...The message was clear: There would be no more arrests, no evictions, without violence...
...Human and animal waste was piling up in the backyard of the MOVE compound...
...My brother and I had left work and spent the afternoon and early evening with him...
...Children often went stark naked, even in the coldest weather...
...The authors note that "when asked what the name meant, MOVE people would shrug their shoulders and look unblinkingly at their interrogators and say, 'Means MOVE.'" Theorganization first settled at 309 North 33rd Street in Powelton Village, a hippie enclave adjacent to the University of Pennsylvania campus...
...Neither would take it off his hands...
...At one point Anderson and Hevenor comment on Mayor Goode's testimony in the ensuing trial of Ramona Africa, who was charged with "conspiracy to riot" and "disorderly conduct," by saying, "This should be enlightening, but in fact, proves highly confusing...
...The authors describe a demonstration where one of the women instructed a two-year-old boy to defecate in a driveway...
...Anderson and Hevenor did some detective work, but it does not contribute very much beyond what was reported in the newspapers...
...Or was it, in the fullest sense of the phrase, an American tragedy...
...Being miles away from the scene of the confrontation preoccupying the city, we couldn't imagine what was burning...
...Much remains to be sorted out about the West Philadelphia disaster...
...Drums of gasoline, clearly labeled and visible from the air, stood near the bunkers...
...the second is devoted to the trial of Ramona Africa, which lasted for less than two months...
...Was this all the Mayor planned to do about MOVE...
...The first part deals with the two police-MOVE confrontations and covers many years...
...He appears to have been one of those charismatic leaders so common to cult groups who elicit blind devotion from their followers...
...The imbalance is never addressed and adds to the text's general turgidness and confusion...
...At the time, my father was in the hospital, gravely ill...
...The group's most baffling activity, we are told, consisted of shouting continuously into a microphone or bullhorn, and punctuating each unintelligible phrase with an obscenity...
...Brushes with the police became commonplace...
...City health inspectors sent to investigate were refused admittance to the house...
...When the inevitable came, it was far more tragic than anyone had anticipated...
...As the bomb exploded and a bunker burst into flames, the authors report, some of the policemen laughed...
...Licenses and Inspection Department officials were threatened with death by MOVE members now brandishing sawed-off shotguns, rifles, pistols, and clubs...
...The same must be said of BurningDown the House...
...Numerous anecdotes relate how he cured people of drug addiction...
...The house had been heavily fortified: Windows were barred and covered with wooden slats...
...Controversy still surrounds the events in the alleyway, however...
...Anderson and Hevenor were therefore forced to patch together eyewitness accounts, police records, trial transcripts, andpressreports.The result is that their book reads like an interminable news story—nothing more than a string of undigested facts...
...Granted, the authors worked under severe limitations...
...Lengthy and frequently noisy trials followed—yet another of the group's strategies for bringing the "system" to its knees...
...Of the MOVE group only one woman, Ramona Johnson Africa, and one child, 13-year-old Birdie Africa, survived...
...On that May evening 13 people were inside the house, six of them children...
...Then we turned on the radio and heard the horrifying news: A bomb had been dropped on MOVE headquarters...
...Pressed to act, Goode informed neighbors the city would offer psychological counseling and recreational facilities to the local children...
...Bathing with soap was forbidden...
...He admitted he did not quite know what the next step might be, but he insisted he was working on it...
...They begin with the right questions: Was the tragedy in Philadelphia a consequence of conditions peculiar to that city...
...Perhaps Norton rushed to capitalize on a "hot topic...
...Members were arrested for loitering, obscenity and unlawful demonstration...
...Africa commanded both males and females to grow their hair in thick, unwashed dreadlocks like the West Indian Rastafarian sect...
...the interior was reinforced with movable, fortress-like structures made of railroad ties and mortar...
...MOVE originally called itself the American Christian Movement for Life, or simply the Christian Life Movement...
...I am inclined to implicate the publisher in this failure as well, for rarely have 1 seen a more sloppily edited book...
...Burning Down the House is divided into two almost equal parts...
...Too bad the authors did not take the time necessary to tell it fully, with all the dimensions that they themselves alluded to in their Introduction...
...But they fail to bridge the considerable gap between demonstrating an awareness of such problems and relating them in an insightful fashion to all that occurred...
...doors were barricaded...
...Driving down the exit ramp, we noticed that far in the distance, toward the west, black smoke was darkening the spring sky...
...The desperate maneuverings in West Philly had reached something of a standstill when we clicked off the TV shortly after 7 p.m., made sure dad had whatever he might need during the night close at hand, and headed for the hospital parking lot...
...Though in dire pain, he did not take his eyes from the television set all day as the story of the ongoing clash between MOVE and the police unfolded...
...A lifestyle based on this credo was quickly established...
...Eventually, the name was shortened to MOVE, with the letters always capitalized...
...There is a powerful tale here...
...He, in turn, conferred with the Fire Commissioner, and the two of them decided to let the bunker burn...
...By the time we got home the fire was raging out of control...
...The authors also realize the events they are examining touch on any number of important issues: terrorism, policy brutality, political chicanery, the meaning of being black, the effectiveness of "management decision-making" in municipal government...
...The fire spread, destroying 61 houses, killing 11 people, and leaving 253 homeless...
...He did as he was told...
...The Commission concluded that " police gunfire prevented some occupants of 6221 from escaping from the burning house to the rear alley...
...As for Mayor Goode, the Commission criticized his policy of "appeasement, nonconfrontation and avoidance" in dealing with the "authoritarian, violence-threatening cult...
...The Mayor ordered City Managing Director Leo Brooks to have the fire put out...
Vol. 70 • September 1987 • No. 13
