The 3-week-old baby she had named Life died later that day in her arms, according to The Guardian. Louise Africa said during the altercation officers knocked Janine Africa to the ground “crushing her baby’s skull.” “Cops were swinging their night sticks so hard on people that they broke them in half.” “Then when we got back, there was a big celebration and not too long after that we was moved on by a whole bunch of cops,” Mo Africa said in the documentary. MOVE members say the dispute between the group and police began on Maafter MOVE members went to pick up some of their fellow members from jail. The conflict escalated to a dispute between MOVE and the city that would ultimately end with deadly consequences. They also looked after stray dogs in the neighborhood.īut the group’s lifestyle - they used bull horns to loudly profess their beliefs and erected wood platforms and fences around their property in the urban neighborhood, according to “40 Years A Prisoner” - didn’t sit well with some of their neighbors. In the 1970s, group members lived together in a home in Powelton Village, collectively caring for their children. “Man-made laws are not really laws, because they don’t apply equally to everyone and they contain exceptions and loopholes.” “We believe in Natural Law, the government of self,” the group’s website states. The political and religious organization-often described as a “back-to-nature” movement-adopted principles that were anti-government, anti-technology, and anti-corporation. Members of the group-which still exists today-all take on the last name “Africa” to show they are a “unified” family and to pay reverence to their founder and their ancestral roots. Slavery never ended, it was just disguised.” We demonstrated against police brutality. We demonstrated against Three Mile Island and industrial pollution. “We demonstrated against puppy mills, zoos, circuses, any form of enslavement of animals. “We exposed the crimes of government officials on every level,” member Janine Africa told the outlet from prison in 2018. The group’s philosophies were an unusual mix of flower power-protesting against the enslavement of animals, eating raw food and adopting a communal living style-and Black power, The Guardian reports. John Africa, a veteran of the Korean war who had been born as Vincent Lopez Leaphart, started the group in the early 1970s. ![]() ![]() The MOVE organization describes itself as a “family of strong, serious, deeply committed revolutionaries founded by a wise, perceptive, strategically-minded Black man named John Africa,” according to the group’s website. The documentary “40 Years A Prisoner,” which debuted on HBO Tuesday, focuses on the first deadly altercation in 1978 and Mike Africa Jr.’s attempts to free his parents from prison decades after they were convicted of a murder they said they didn’t commit.īut the violence that erupted on Aug. 8, 1978 as local media and residents in the Powelton Village neighborhood of Philadelphia looked on was only a pre-cursor to the deadly altercation in 1985, which has been described by Philadelphia Council member Jamie Gauthier as “one of the worst acts that a government has committed against its own people,” according to The Philadelphia Tribune. It culminated nearly seven years later, in 1985, with in a city-sanctioned bombing that left 11 dead, including five children, and burned down 61 homes in another aggressive attempt by officials to evict the group from a new residence, according to Vox. The years long-battle between the group MOVE and authorities left one police officer dead and sent nine of the group’s members, known as the MOVE 9, to prison for third-degree murder after a 1978 attempt to evict the group from their Philadelphia home. ![]() Racial injustice has taken center stage in 2020-but a new HBO documentary highlights another raciallycharged battle between Philadelphia police and a Black revolutionary, back-to-nature group that began nearly 50 years ago.
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