The last 24 hours were certainly some of the most meaningful of the last 2
months. I spent them with members of the MOVE organization in
Philadelphia and its environs, interviewing them, spending social time
with them and their families, and then participating in a propaganda
action that resulted in 2 arrests. I've hung out with some movement
luminaries before, but never at the moment of confrontation.
A bit of background information for those not in the know: 30 years ago,
a group of mainly Black anti-civilization activists started up an urban
ecovillage in the heart of downtown Philadelphia. Both their politics and
their pigment drew the ire of the police, who invaded their home with the
firepower of a small army, killing many members and burning the whole
neighbourhood to the ground in the process. The surviving MOVE members
are still serving life sentences behind bars.
Much has been written about MOVE, but the one who wrote most is in jail
because of it. One of America's most important political prisoners,
journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, is on death row ostensibly for murdering a
police officer, although it is generally accepted as fact that he was
clumsily framed for killing the cop, targeted because of this
investigation into police corruption and the political persecution of
MOVE.
Protests for the release of Mumia and the other MOVE members occur around
the world, but the radical left frames the conflict only in racial terms,
which is only half of the story. The tale that remains untold is the fact
that they were animal-rights activists, raw food vegans, and deep ecology
environmentalists 30 years before it became cool, and 20 years before
nearly any one had even heard of half of this stuff.
Since then, the revolutionary left has been so traumatized that in
all of this time, no other above-ground group has challenged the
speciesist assumption of the state apparatus and technocratic society
head-on. The clandestine cells of the Earth Liberation Front have torched
multi-million dollar ski resorts, and the underground freedom fighters of
the Animal Liberation Front have set fire to torture chamber vivisection
labs. But MOVE lived in the middle of the city, rescuing cats and dogs,
composting their own waste, and openly calling out the capitalist system
for destroying the planet.
And they did all of this as a family, living together communally, sharing
their possessions and earthly wealth with one another. To cement their
relationships and reinforce their revolutionary zeal, they all took on the
surname Africa. Incidentally, there have always been MOVE members and
supporters that do not trace their ancestors to Africa by direct descent.
But all humans were originally from Africa -- MOVE is not a Black
nationalist movement; and it's not an anthropocentric internationalist
movement, either; it's an earth-first life movement.
The time we spent together was brief but intense, I was given intimate
access to some of the inner workings of the group. The only red flag that
came up for me at all was the constant mention of the founder of the
group, John Africa. His name was mentioned as a placeholder for higher
power, much in the same way that hardcore Christians pepper their
conversations with gratitude to Jesus.
I can understand the idea of channeling iconic energy to a Black John Doe,
though because of my Gaia-Goddess-worshiping ways, I would prefer to heap
praise on a Jane Africa. Admittedly, when they speak of deity, they talk
about Mama Earth; their references to John Africa are more similar to a
Muslim's secondary statement of faith, "Muhammed is the Messenger". But I
can't even conceive of giving any one entity, either human or suprahuman,
so much credit. Is this evidence of hated hierarchy?
I had made arrangements to interview the Minister of Information, but
after we got some good footage, she invited all the other MOVE members
present, including 2 young children, to tell their stories on tape; these
are not the actions of power-hungry people. Over the course of the day, I
saw how the whole extended family mobilized to support each other at a
moment's notice, physically and emotionally. They are a seriously
dedicated force for change, and unlike many urban activists, they are
openly affectionate and aren't too uptight to have a good laugh.
Because they are such a close-knit community and their views are so
divergent from the monocultural mainstream, they tend to resemble one
another in their speech patterns and turns of phrase. But they clearly
are not carbon copies of one another, in the way that some cult members
that I've met reiterate party platform word for word. Maybe I'm only
saying that because I agree with all of their ideas (or at least the
ones I'm familiar with). But all I see is a functional, fully-featured
tribe of green, red, and black activists that refuse to compromise in
defense of mother earth and in their opposition to the planetary prison
system.