I remember what happened in 1978 as well as 1985. I was 17 yrs old in 1985. I was a poor semi-homeless teen, a poor white orphaned girl living with my older sister always one $10/mo rent increase away from eviction. I remember the MOVE bombing less than a mile away from where I lived. C-4, obtained illegally from the FBI, turned an entire area into Dante's Inferno.

I remember my sister sending two of her friends to come get me, telling me "Mayor Goode went nuts! He's blowing up the whole f*n' city!" I remember wondering if we had lost everything but the clothes on our backs

I remember cops on horseback, beating up and rousting the people in the poor neighborhoods. I remember huddling in the hallway of my old apartment building with other terrified poor kids (mostly black) who ran in and hid in our building in fear of vicious cops, and I remember how we were all terrorized and holding onto each other crying as the city was under siege of Rizzo's goons. Protect and serve my a$$. The all-white male Philly police force treated poor whites only marginally better than they treated poor blacks who dared to stand up to classism, racism and police brutality.

I remember my neighborhood outside of the area of the bombing and the fires being turned into a literal war zone and a police state unlike any other except for maybe, uhmm...Nazi Germany.

As a poor white "throw-away" child then, I was far more afraid of your rogue good ol' boy police force than I ever had reason to fear from my black neighbors, including MOVE (when they lived in North Philly near where I grew up!)

You, Jon Pisano,sir, are a liar. Worse: you're a liar with a cause.

I am no longer that poor homeless kid. I am a 43 year old married woman living across state, a university graduate, and an author. But I have never forgotten how the City of Philadelphia, particularly the police department, treated its poor and its marginalized. And I will make sure that no one else ever forgets, either.

Jacqueline S. Homan,
author: Classism For Dimwits
Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie
Nothing You Can Possess
Eyes of a Monster