PYPM Move Forward; A Look at the Past

Project Description

Originally Published on August 12, 2013. BNV 2013 Prelims – Move!
Brave New Voices 2013 – PYPM poets Alex Santiago, Jasmine Johnson, Nayo Jones and Kendall Allen perform Move

You may have read or head the history before it was re-written. It was May 13, 1985 when a massive police operation, in Philadelphia killed a city. It began with a MOVE. MOVE was a Philadelphia-based radical movement that was dedicated to black liberation and a back-to-nature lifestyle. John Africa founded the group; all its members took on the surname Africa. Those who were part of the MOVE family had committed no crime. The only threat they posed was perceived. Surely a return to nature is not a reason for alarm. Nevertheless, on this Sunday, Mother’s Day, 1985, in the City of Brotherly Love the police “moved” in.

Suspicion culminated in the helicopter bombing of the headquarters of the MOVE families. The fire from the attack burned for more than an hour without attention from the city. Six adults and five children were killed and sixty-five homes were destroyed. Despite two grand jury investigations and a commission finding that top officials were grossly negligent, no one from city government was criminally charged.

On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the event Mumia Abu-Jamal and Ramona Africa, the only adult survivor of the bombing. Spoke of the history, a history rarely recounted, read, or heard. Today, only survivors and the young impacted by the death of the city remember the pain. Each feels it at present in their daily lives.

Currently, in too many American neighborhoods, our youth run scared. The young fear that their complexion alone will evoke accusations. Might police again presume to believe that being Black is a crime? It seems this is so. We hear the news daily. Prideful police stop adolescent Black men and Brown teens. Either or each is frisked and hauled off to jail without cause. We tell our children that they are beautiful. Then we shoot and kill them. Perhaps the past lives because we do not learn from it. We do not speak of it; that is until today.

The Philly Youth Poetry Movement