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MOVE Still Looking For Philadelphia Justice
by
Robert Zaller, The Triangle | 08.22.2008
Three major confrontations between MOVE or MOVE sympathizers and the city police involved fatalities: the city's shootout with MOVE members in the Powelton compound Aug. 8, 1978, which resulted in the death of police officer James Ramp; the encounter Dec. 9, 1981 involving Mumia Abu-Jamal and police officer Daniel Faulkner, which left Abu-Jamal wounded and Faulkner dead; and the infamous bombing of MOVE's Osage Avenue house May 13, 1985, which left 11 MOVE members dead, among them Africa. MOVE still looking for Philadelphia justiceBy: Robert ZallerPosted: 8/22/08The subject of MOVE is the third rail of Philadelphia politics. MOVE was, at its inception, nonviolent; its members got their livings in the wage-earning economy; it was drug-free. In the larger context of the 1960s and 1970s, it was one of many communal movements around the country that rejected a society regarded as poisoned by racism, imperialism and corporate-engendered consumerism. In Mayor Frank Rizzo's Philadelphia, MOVE's confrontational style were none too welcome. Had MOVE bought its property in some rural locale, its lifestyle - communal living, unisex uniforms with summer nudity, natural defecation by infants, composting of garbage, providing shelter for animal strays - might not have attracted immediate attention. But part of Africa's self-professed mission was to challenge the System, the era's shorthand term for a hegemonic authority that had corrupted human relations and polluted the planet. The problem in MOVE's case was that rotting garbage, unvaccinated strays and vermin infestation was a different issue in a crowded city than in an Appalachian retreat. When an unrelenting auditory barrage was added to this, MOVE soon appeared to be, in the words of one critic, "the neighbors from hell." Three major confrontations between MOVE or MOVE sympathizers and the city police involved fatalities: the city's shootout with MOVE members in the Powelton compound Aug. 8, 1978, which resulted in the death of police officer James Ramp; the encounter Dec. 9, 1981 involving Mumia Abu-Jamal and police officer Daniel Faulkner, which left Abu-Jamal wounded and Faulkner dead; and the infamous bombing of MOVE's Osage Avenue house May 13, 1985, which left 11 MOVE members dead, among them Africa. The first and last of these confrontations were the result of lengthy standoffs between MOVE and the city. From March 1978, when Rizzo ordered water and electricity to the MOVE house cut off, a state of siege existed, with checkpoints, sandbags and police snipers at the ready. Months of tense negotiation followed, including intercessions from the Carter administration. They ended with an attack by hundreds of police, including a 90-second exchange of gunfire in which Officer Ramp was killed. How and by whom Ramp was killed remains a matter of dispute. Nonetheless, nine of the 12 adults in the compound were convicted of third-degree murder and given sentences of 30 years to life. For two others, the charges were dismissed when they renounced MOVE, thus underscoring the arbitrary and essentially political nature of the indictment. Even if a MOVE bullet had killed Ramp, at least eight innocent persons had been sent to jail for life for his slaying. This judicial arithmetic contrasts with the consequences of the Osage Avenue bombing seven years later. For the death of one policeman in 1978, nine civilians were convicted. For the deaths of 11 civilians in the bombing, five of them children, no indictment was handed down against anyone except the sole survivor of the attack, Ramona Africa, who, scarred for life by fire, was convicted of riot and conspiracy and spent seven years in prison. A jury awarded her $500,000 in a 1996 civil suit against the city and two former commissioners. The case of Abu-Jamal is different. He was a MOVE sympathizer when he had his encounter with Faulkner, but not a declared member of the group until his trial, when he demanded that Africa serve as his counsel. He had, however, been publicly threatened by Rizzo while covering the Powelton shootout as a journalist and was clearly a marked man. You don't have to be persuaded of Mumia's factual innocence in the shooting of Faulkner-which occurred under murky circumstances at 4 a.m. while Faulkner was detaining Mumia's brother, Billy Cook-to recognize his trial as among the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in American history. A prisoner shot and bleeding, beaten on his way to the hospital, and left unattended on the floor; an arresting officer notorious for corruption in one of the most corrupt police forces in the country; a jury selected by racially biased methods later thrown out by the U. S. Supreme Court (and retroactively applied to overturn verdicts across the country in every case except Abu Jamal's); blatantly false, coerced and perjured testimony; the mysterious failure to conduct routine ballistics tests on the alleged murder weapon; the suppression of evidence by the prosecution, the intimidation of potential witnesses and the refusal to hear available defense testimony by the court; a presiding judge whose bias was so manifest that it was commented on by the prosecutor himself, and who allegedly expressed his personal determination to "fry the nigger": even Mississippi could not have outdone the City of Brotherly Love in the Commonwealth v. Mumia Abu-Jamal. Why does this matter now? Abu Jamal has now been on death row for more than a quarter century, even though his capital sentence was vacated by Federal Judge William H. Yohn Jr. in 2001, a ruling upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals this March. But the courts continue to deny him a new trial. A cynical observer might conclude that the appellate bench has decided that the political fallout of either retrying Abu Jamal or executing him would be too great, but that letting him live out his days in prison is the least negative option, being equally unsatisfying to all sides. The only problem is that Abu Jamal has never been fairly convicted of anything. Meanwhile, 30 years after the Powelton shootout, seven of the eight surviving MOVE members convicted in the death of Ramp (only one of whom, please remember, could have been even notionally guilty of it) came up for parole this spring. All petitions were fiercely opposed by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office and by the Fraternal Order of Police. All were denied. Philadelphia is in many ways a city in decline. It is poor, violent and drug-ridden. The heart of its decay, however, is as much moral as anything else. And no stain runs deeper than the continuing injustice of the MOVE story. This city will never mend, I think, while that injustice persists. --Robert Zaller is a professor of history. He can be reached at ed-op@thetriangle.org. |
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