Nine, l’histoire de la communauté Move

Chapter 1

The Move organization

The MOVE Organization surfaced in Philadelphia during the early 1970's. Characterized by dreadlock hair, the adopted surname "Africa," a principled unity, and an uncompromising commitment to their belief, members practiced the teachings of MOVE founder JOHN AFRICA.
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Chapter 2

The Context

Throughout the 1970's, Frank Rizzo was the premier figure in Philadelphia government. He started as a street cop and rose through the ranks, eventually serving as Police Commissioner from 1967-71.

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Chapter 3

August 8, 1978

On Tuesday, August 8th, hundreds of cops in flak jackets and riot helmets surrounded the 33rd Street location at dawn and ordered MOVE to surrender.

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Chapter 4

Mumia Abu Jamal

One of the few media people to accurately report on MOVE and make a serious effort to understand the organization was Mumia Abu-Jamal, a highly regarded Philadelphia journalist and president of the local chapter of the Association of Black Journalists.
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Chapter 5

May 13, 1985

Between 6:00 and 7:30 am, police flooded the area with tear gas and fired over 10,000 rounds of ammunition at the house knowing there were women and children inside.
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Chapter 6

On A Move !

As several MOVE members became eligible for parole, the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole issued a special stipulation that any potential MOVE parolee agree not to associate with other MOVE members as a condition of being released.
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Chapitre-4-Mumia-Abu-Jamal

- Mumia Abu Jamal – Part 2 -

After he was transferred to a prison far from Philadelphia in 1983 and his regu-lar appeals were denied, Mumia was written off by the mainstream and largely forgotten by the general public.

MOVE however, stood by Mumia through thick and thin. In reporting on the August 8, 1978 confrontation and resulting trials, Mumia had taken a bold stand for truth and justice. He had also bucked the status quo and thrown away a chance to be a network news anchor. The payback took many years and extracted enormous personal sacrifice, but eventually Mumia's career as a journalist came full circle in an unprecedented way, and MOVE played an instrumental role.

While confined to the bleak isolation of death row, Mumia never lost his jour-nalist's instincts and continued to write about what he saw, heard and felt. By 1990, some of his articles had appeared in The Yale Law Journal, The Nation, and other publications. In 1991, the MOVE Organization, through the coordination of JOHN AFRICA consolidated local support for Mumia by forming The Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, headed by Pam Africa. The committee set about lobbying, educating, and fund-raising, and through years of dedicated hard work grew from a small community group to an international collective. Renowned defense attorney Leonard Weinglass was enlisted to re-investigate the case.

Starting in 1993, The International Concerned Family and Friends began publishing The Jamal Journal, Mumia's own newspaper. In 1994, National Public Radio agreed to air a series of audio recordings of Mumia reading his commentar-ies, but under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police the plans for broadcast were canceled.

In January of 1995, Tom Ridge became governor of Pennsylvania. Unlike his predecessor, Ridge was an avid proponent of capital punishment, and the first execution in Pennsylvania since 1962 was soon carried out. In early May, Live From Death Row, a 215-page hardback collection of Mumia's writings was published and became available in bookstores nationwide. Ridge's June 1995 signing of Mumia's death warrant brought a storm of international protest.