The 1985 MOVE bombing, locally known by its date, May 13, 1985, was the aerial bombing and destruction of residential homes in the Cobbs Creek neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, by the Philadelphia Police Department during an armed standoff with MOVE, a black liberation organization. Philadelphia police were shot at as they attempted to evict MOVE members from a house. Philadelphia police aviators then dropped two explosive devices from a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter onto the roof of the occupied house. For 90 minutes, the Philadelphia Police Department allowed the resulting fire to burn out of control, destroying 61 previously evacuated neighboring homes over two city blocks and leaving 250 people homeless. Six adults and five children were killed in the attack, with one adult and one child surviving who were occupants of the home. A lawsuit in federal court found that the city used excessive force and violated constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
What did they build in the location after they evicted and/or killed all those people? What does it look like today?
After more than a year in temporary housing, residents returned to their rebuilt homes in the fall of 1986. That winter, the roofs started leaking.
Next came discoveries of defective plumbing and wiring, bad flooring, nails popping out of walls, burst pipes, flooded basements and backyards and broken appliances. Replacement trees have since uprooted parts of the sidewalk and are strangling pipes.
Today, after spending more than $43 million on redevelopment, the city has two blocks of boarded-up eyesores to show for its efforts. The homes built to replace those lost in the bomb-ignited inferno were so shoddy that officials stopped making repairs and offered buyouts.
“There’s nothing nice about this block anymore,” said Bostic, 89. “All the people are gone.”
That was in 2010, and if you go down the street on street view, there’s still a lot of boarded up houses there.
Holy shit - did not expect that. The whole story is wild.
I did. The system never changed.
Well, often they would replace black residential areas with stadiums, high rises, or whatever the fuck downtown DC is. I just didn’t expect them to bomb and burn it and then… Do nothing. But I guess the MOVE story is very particular.
The thing that gets me about this is the mayor at the time - Wilson Goode - was also black, and backed this treatment.
White supremacy is systemic; people working inside the system are often compelled to participate.
It’s why it’s so important to change the system.
Yup. There will always be “traitors”. Just because someone is from an oppressed group doesn’t mean they’ll act in the interests of that group. In fact to get power, you’re often incentivised to do the exact opposite.
This is why we have gay billionaires bankrolling homophobic fascsists, black mayors backing racist police and other policies, disabled congresspeople voting to cut disability payments for those too disabled to work…
The list goes on.
Token representation will never be enough.
Your comment reminds me of the end of this song by Lowkey featuring Noam Chomsky
You have to put yourself in the position of, say, Jamie Diamond, the CEO of the biggest bank, JP Morgan Chase. As CEO he has essentially two choices; one choice is, to do exactly what he’s doing. Invest, direct investments, to the most profitable outcome. Which happens to be the most dangerous fossil fuels, do that. But the other alternative he has is to resign,and be replaced by somebody else who will do the same thing. But this is an institutional problem, not an individual one.
Genuine question - did he sign off on the bombing, or just the eviction? Because the eviction was legitimate; the level of force used to do it was very much not.
It’s been a LOONNNGGGG time, and being much younger then I wasn’t so tuned in as to be certain. I think the implication was that it involved so many high ranking officials that it was hard to believe he didn’t at least know it was going to happen. I don’t know if it was ever established whether he “signed off” on it, but the Wikipedia article seems deliberately vague on that point so I’m going to guess no direct link was ever confirmed. I’m kinda in the “hard to believe he didn’t know” camp, however.
I think, ultimately, that the city cops were out of control enough under his administration to perform this atrocity is pretty damning regardless of whether he signed off on it, buck stops here and all that jazz; I was just morbidly curious as to how closely he was connected.
To be fair, he had just taken office the year before, and as the city’s first black mayor was probably dealing with extremely well-ingrained systemic racism - back then it was likely openly so in some cases, in fact. I can see that position leading to having to walk a fine line in how he handled keeping the rank and file in line who didn’t like having to answer to a black man. I don’t envy the challenges he likely faced, but I’m also willing to bet he made some choices he shouldn’t have in an attempt to maintain stability of city government under his leadership.
Rich and black.
Insane example of police brutality and excessive force. Policing in this country is fucked.
I was 14 and had not heard of this until this century. Imagine that.
Didn’t the police fire upon them as people were trying to escape as well?
From the wiki:
The only two MOVE survivors, Birdie Africa, who was 13 at the time, and Ramona Africa, both escaped the house. Police initially said that two men had also run out of the house at the same time and fired at them and that police had returned fire. Ramona Africa said that police fired at those trying to escape. Police said that MOVE members moved in and out of the house shooting at the police. The fire department declared the fire under control at 11:47 p.m.
I would note that police are notorious liars even today when they have body cams.
West coast, never heard of this event. Holy shit, 1985.
Yeah, makes me think of the Tulsa massacre back in the 20s
Excuse me, a what??? Am i too european to comprehend this?
The US has a long history of equipping our civilian police force with military hardware. This is the inevitable outcome of a right-wing white-supremicist paramilitary having access to lethal toys and minimal accountability.
here in the USA we had the KKK, a violent anonymous racist group. it’s suspected there’s a lot of membership overlap with american police forces.
I know about the MOVE bombing, but I never saw the aftermath. Jesus christ
