Nine Years After John's Murder

In America justice has evolved from a concept to be held aloft as an ideal enforced by the divine to a kind of mechanism to enforce laws and punish the guilty while protecting the innocent. It is by no means a complete or by a perfect evolution. It is a bureaucratic institution that is as prone to flaws and prejudices as are the people who grind the gears and make it happen. It bears the scars and fallibilities of all of us. A flawed monument to our collective desire for order, it is as has been pointed out before not the best there is, but is rather the best we have right now.

True to its mechanical nature it is in constant need of upkeep and oversight, but most of all what it needs is a kind of indignation of and revulsion towards violence, hatred, murder, and all of the things that create pain and disharmony in society.

But what happens when people stop caring? What happens when those who have been charged with task to protect and serve fail to do just that?

I can tell you. You have a case like that of John Gilbride. Of course, John Gilbride is not a “case”. He is or rather he was a man. The story of what happened to him has been exhaustively told on this blog and in other places. There is no point in my retelling the story again here. If you care to know you will find out what happened you will read this blog and do your own research. I encourage you to do it.

For me, what happened to John is not now so much a cautionary tale of what can happen to you when you involve yourself and your children in an authoritarian enterprise, but is instead something only slightly more tragic. It is a tale of what happens when people stop caring or more likely never cared in the first place.

When I heard the news on September 28th that John Gilbride had been murdered the night before there were two thoughts that screamed out loudly to me. The first of which was that MOVE was responsible. My friends and the people I cared about had murdered another human being. This terrible truth reverberated through my body left me momentarily stunned. The next thought was equally troubling to me. I knew that the police would be coming. I could see it now just as vividly as I could now. I saw the black clad SWAT officers pushing their way into MOVE houses with concussion grenades, armed to the teeth and ready for anything. It would be swift and it would be violent. Anyone who dared to get in their way would be dispatched without hesitation. I simply knew this was going to be the case. I knew this because I was certain that if I knew that MOVE was responsible for John’s death that the authorities knew it as well. I also knew that the first forty eight hours of any police investigation was the most crucial. If no arrest is made within that critical time period the chances of an arrest drop precipitously. Trails go cold quickly. They would come. They had to.

However, as nervous nights turned into fearful days I sat and held vigil with my MOVE comrades and to my complete shock nothing happened. The complete lack of any kind of response on the part of the police was more shocking to me than the murder had been. I had been feeding on a steady of diet of MOVE propaganda for the past several years of my life. And if there ever were a bogey man in the weird and convoluted world of MOVE it was the police officer. The cops were the main instrument of the “system’s” oppression apparatuses. Cops were unfeeling “motherfuckers” who did the bidding of their corporate masters. Jack booted thugs who were all too happy to kick babies out of mothers’ stomachs and drop bombs on people. That they were not kicking in all of our doors, kicking ass and taking names was absolutely unthinkable to those of us who supported MOVE.

There were a few people who seemed genuinely unafraid of a police assault and these were the people whom I would have thought would have been the most fearful. The leaders of MOVE did not seem to be that concerned at all about an imminent invasion. Of course they paid lip service to the fear and talked the talk of paranoid revolutionaries whose time had come. But the reality was slightly different. The barricades that they had erected to protect themselves were made from pine planks and not railroad ties. There were no weapons to be seen. No bull horned threats to kill any cops who would dare to try to force their way into the houses that John Africa had paid for in blood. There was none of that kind of talk to be found. Nothing that was really meaningful anyways. MOVE was always spouting off rhetoric, but I had been around long enough to know when they were serious and when they were on a media manipulation trip and when the cult was deadly serious.

To this day I can’t say for sure how it was that the leadership of MOVE knew not to be too worried. I could speculate, but I don’t think that will do anyone any good. There has been enough of that kind of thing to go around.

What I do know is that MOVE was right to not be particularly fearful of the police. To be sure, the police did come around asking questions. Slowly and cautiously they stumbled forth like a half of a drunk rousted out of a languorous stupor. They came with all kinds of imprecise talk and a complete lack of understanding about the criminal entity that was MOVE. MOVE members and supporters had been told what to say and how to roadblock the baffled cops. Based upon everything I heard the police interrogations went practically nowhere. In the interest of full disclosure I spent hours with the police doing the best I could do to help them. I offered leads and ideas and recounted in as much detail as I could muster my time in MOVE and the ruthless campaign that we waged against John prior to his murder. I did what I could. To this day I know that there are people who think I held back or didn’t give all that I could. They are wrong. I gave all that I could but I was going to no more lie against MOVE anymore than I would lie for them. The police did not turn me against MOVE. I had been turned by MOVE’s own actions. I had become disgusted and so disenchanted with MOVE’s murderous nature and child abusive tendencies that by the time I talked to the police I was willing to tell them all that I knew. I wanted those in MOVE who were responsible for John’s murder to be brought to justice. I really believed that this would happen. Sad to say, but I don’t know that this will ever occur.

I am writing these words not out of obligation, but rather out of a kind of fear. I am afraid that nine years after John’s murder nobody outside of his still grieving family cares about what happened. I want to be wrong and I want desperately for someone to prove me wrong. But I don’t see it happening.

If justice is more than a concept if it really is to be an apparatus and an instrument for good than it needs people of good intentions to work its gears and maintain a direction towards setting things right. But what history shows is that occasionally for some and more often than not for the poor the wheels of justice grind to a halt and along with it hope.

I do believe that there is more to justice than that of our temporal and materialistic conceptions. There is a more cosmic aspect to it. John Gilbrides suffering ended when his heart stopped beating. The suffering of his killers just began. They will hopefully be forever looking over their shoulders. I hope they quake with fear when unexpected visitors knock on their door or when police cars pull up behind them in traffic. I hope that their dreams are haunted by John’s un-avenged apparition. If John’s killer or killers are not complete sociopaths than I am sure they are suffering for what they have done. But for me I do not hold such faith in a cosmic order to completely surrender my desire for justice that is more tangible. Something we all can see and all can feel.

Most of all I want John’s son Zack to know what happened to his father. The truth of it. Not the lies that he has been told by his “mother” and the rest of her MOVE minions since he is old enough to remember. The boy who was lost to the cult is growing into a man needs to know the truth in order for him to be set free.

Osage Avenue: Still An Open Wound

Osage Ave: Still an open wound
By VALERIE RUSS
Philadelphia Daily News

russv@phillynews.com 215-854-5987

TWENTY-SIX YEARS ago today, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on what had once been a quiet leafy neighborhood on Osage Avenue, near Cobbs Creek Park.

But Milton Williams is tired of talking about the bomb that started a fire that killed 11 people in the MOVE house and destroyed 61 homes.

"I want to know what the city is going to do now," said Williams, 62. "What are they going to do with all of these empty houses?"

Williams' community is still home to people who once worked as teachers, nurses, clerical workers, carpenters, police officers, roofers and truck drivers.

They are aging now, many over 60, some in their 80s and 90s, and they say the city has them in limbo, living in a blighted neighborhood with houses they can't sell.

The MOVE bombing destroyed all 40 homes on both sides of the 6200 block of Osage Avenue and 21 homes on the south side of the 6200 block of Pine Street.

The homes were so shoddily reconstructed after the 1985 fire - nearly every house had leaky roofs, bad plumbing, sagging floors because beams had not been properly installed, cedar siding peeling off exteriors, and faulty electrical wiring - that the original contractors went to jail because money was misused.

The city offered families $150,000 to leave their homes, and all but 24 accepted.

The families who stayed went to court and won an injunction against the city.

But Gerald Renfrow, president of the Osage/Pine Community Association, said U.S. Judge John P. Fullam dismissed the suit even though only eight of the 24 plaintiffs signed agreements to settle.

Since the 2008 dismissal, nine more plaintiffs have accepted what later became a $190,000 settlement, saying they felt worn down.

Thirty-seven of the 61 brick twin homes now sit abandoned, with plywood in front windows and exposed, tattered insulation flapping in the wind.

It looks like a war zone.

"It looks like Berlin looked in 1945 during World War II," said Williams, who drove a UPS truck for 32 years.

Now, residents of 23 homes that remain occupied say they want answers from the city about what it intends to do to rebuild the neighborhood - once again.

Last week, about a dozen neighbors protested outside City Hall after they were denied permission to protest outside Mayor Nutter's office.

They came to ask Nutter if he is aware the lawsuit was dismissed in 2008 "with insufficient evidence that all 24 homeowners agreed to settle."

Renfrew pointed out the city's own legal documents - filed in a motion to delay paying Moody's legal fees - prove that 16 of the 24 homeowners had refused to settle the case.

"After the parties settled the case in the summer of 2008, we anticipated receiving twenty-four releases from Plaintiffs," said a legal memo filed Aug. 18, 2009.

"Instead, however, we only received releases from eight of the twenty-four plaintiffs at that time . . . "

As far as the city is concerned, mayoral spokesman Mark McDonald said, the suit has been dismissed by a federal judge.

"It is sorely in need of renewal," McDonald said of the area.

But he added that little can be done "until all this matter between those private landowners, their attorney and the court is resolved."

Adrian Moody, the attorney who filed the suit for the Osage/Pine residents, did not return several phone calls from the Daily News.





Renfrow said that Clarence Armbrister, Nutter's chief of staff, told them after a protest last year that the city may take their homes by eminent domain.

McDonald, however, denied that the city wants to seize the homes.

But Renfrow believes that all that stands between their homes and a wrecking ball is the seven homeowners who have continued to hold out.

And he said those who took the settlement are reluctant to fix their homes because they think the city will come and bulldoze them later.

Renfrow said the city wants to force them out because the area, close to a lush, green park, public transportation routes, and entertainment at the Tower Theater and the 69th Street shopping area, would be a boon for gentrification.

Residents are used to feeling that they are being pushed out.

Back in 2000, after Mayor John Street took office, residents said Street stopped repairs on their homes that had begun under the Rendell administration.

Street told them, " 'I don't want to throw bad money after good' " and talked of bringing in a wrecking ball to tear down the neighborhood, according to Connie Renfrow, 64, Gerald's wife.

"When one of the neighbors asked if we would get the first chance to buy the new homes, Street said, 'No, because you won't be able to afford them,' " said Connie Renfrow, who moved to the block in 1980.

They also said Street "scared" people into accepting the initial $150,000 buyout offer by telling them the homes had faulty heaters and posed a carbon-monoxide threat.

"You don't condemn a house because of a faulty heater," Williams said.

"This was a problem that could be taken care of for $800."

"I have no comment except to say that the Street administration made every effort to be more than fair," Street responded in an email this week.





For many residents, not only were their homes poorly rebuilt, but the city planted trees that are now breaking up sidewalks.

Hazel Taylor, 63, said her insurance company is threatening to drop her if she doesn't repair the sidewalk.

But Taylor and others said the Fairmount Park Commission told them the city had not checked to see which trees to plant.

Now many of trees have roots that have buckled the sidewalks and torn up underground water pipes.

"I'm 63 and on a fixed income, I can't pay to fix this sidewalk," Taylor said.

Elizabeth Bostic, 90, said she will continue to fight for her home.

"I refuse to die until they settle this mess," declared Bostic, raising her arm in defiance.

"It was a beautiful place," said Virginia Cox, 78, who still speaks with a lilting Trinidadian accent despite moving to the block in 1971.

"You could leave your children and say, 'I'll be right back,' " she said. "You could leave your doors open, everyone would pitch in and watch and see and live and love like a family.

"But they break us up. They break us."

What Did I Get Out Being With MOVE

(I haven't posted in a while, but somebody recently asked me what I got out of being in MOVE and I really thought about it for a while and thought I would share my response on here in the hopes that it may help somebody out there)

That is really a good question and one that deserves a thorough answer. I am glad you asked it because it really caused me to sit down and think about it.

What I came up with was that what I got out of MOVE was different at varying points of my involvement.

When I first became involved in MOVE I think it gave me a kind of purpose in life. I believe that it allowed me to make sense of a world that did not make sense. Although I would come to find out that this MOVE-inspired conception of the world was horribly skewed, it did give me a kind of relief to think that I understood the way that the world worked.

Later on, as my time in MOVE progressed, I came to the belief, again mistaken, that MOVE was my family. One cannot underestimate the power that this belief brings with it. The kind of hold that this can have on people. It is this sense of identity that can allow for people to think that committing murder and other atrocities is ok. The reality of course was that my MOVE "family" was only my "family" as long as I adhered to their belief system, their ideology, their dictates. The moment it became clear that I would no longer live under their tenets, my "family" turned into my nightmare and my biggest enemies.

Ultimately though what I got out of MOVE was the idea that it was ok to give up on thinking or living my own life. What I mean by that is instead of walking through life and learning I committed to MOVE which was the same as committing intellectual suicide. There was no need anymore for existential questions or critical thinking because that was all done for me. The problems I had in marriage and in life did not need to be worked out...MOVE would figure them out for me. I did not need to push myself to get a good job or a good education. Those things were looked down upon in MOVE. Basically, the group makes it ok to be a loser.

I don't mean a loser in the sense of someone who tries and is beat down by circumstances and who owns what happens in their life. I mean loser in the sense of always looking for someone or something to blame. For MOVE, that someone or something was and is "the system". It is the complete abdication of responsibility for the things that happened in my life. That is how the MOVE members can be in jail for 30+ years and still cannot take one iota of responsibility for the situation that they are in. They blame the cops, the lawyers, the "system", anything at all to deflect the responsibility from themselves.

The Mumia Saga Pro and Con

(From Philly.com)
By Stu Bykofsky
Philadelphia Daily News

Daily News Columnist

THE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL cause celebre is a porcupine with 1,000 sharp quills, each one ready to inflict pain on the unwary.

Two documentary-makers last week grabbed some quills - Tigre Hill with "The Barrel of a Gun" and Kouross Esmaeli with "Justice on Trial."

The dueling documentaries - sincere, low-key and basically honest - are molded by each filmmaker's vision. Hill focuses on the murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, Esmaeli on the trial of Mumia, and "Justice" slowly bleeds into an indictment of the entire criminal-justice system.

Antagonists on both sides complain they have been denied justice. Mumia's people want a new trial, Faulkner's people want Mumia dead, following the sentence of the court.

With better camera work, special effects and sound, "Barrel" is visually superior to the grainy and poorly lit "Justice," which makes its case in about half of "Barrel's" longish two hours. (Disclosure: I have a friendly relationship with Hill, and I appear fleetingly in his film.) Neither film will flip anyone with a closed mind, but each may influence someone not locked in.

Esmaeli engages in emotionalism in the closing segment, with family members and Mumia's most effective advocate, former Daily News reporter Linn Washington, crying that Mumia has never held his grandchildren. That is weak, with no bearing on his guilt, innocence or trial.

Hill's play to emotion comes from the heavy use of Faulkner's steadfast widow, Maureen. She belongs in the film, but she is not central to the case. Neither is Mumia's sister in "Justice," plus some unidentified voices and untitled speakers, who seem to be lawyers or academics.

Many questions still linger and may never be answered. I've rarely sat through a trial in which all questions were answered and in which all witnesses agree. Trials don't unspool like an episode of "Perry Mason," where you get virgin truth and unassailable verdicts in 60 minutes.

As an example of a lingering question: Hill's film has a cop saying he heard Mumia confess while in the emergency room, while Esmaeli has the emergency-room doctor saying he heard no confession. Are they both truthful? Lying? Mistaken? There are too many questions on both sides to recount here.

"Justice" makes a lot of a "contaminated" crime scene, showing a photo of a cop stupidly holding a gun in evidence in his bare hand. I trust the photo, but not the speaker who claims that the gun would have been automatically excluded as evidence. I didn't believe that, nor did the two defense lawyers (not connected with the case) I asked.

For its part, "Barrel" floats an unnecessary and unconvincing theory that Faulkner's murder was a planned assassination. Interestingly, "Justice" accuses no one else of being the killer.

Rational people can debate the even-handedness of the trial and of Judge Albert Sabo, but no rational person can convincingly argue that Mumia didn't shoot Faulkner. The MOVE people argue that, which proves my point.

In scenes guaranteed to bring Hill criticism, he accurately connects Mumia with the MOVE "urban revolutionaries" (as they are termed in "Justice") and with the Black Panthers. He then connects the Black Panthers with violence.

If this is guilt by association, is it warranted? Even "Justice" (courageously) concedes that the Panthers moved from civil disobedience to violence, adding that the Panthers' violence was fomented by police brutality.

Questions about the fairness of the trial - and I have a few - belong in the courts, where the case has ping-ponged for nearly 30 years. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has heard appeals five times, and the case has been sent to the U.S. Supreme Court five times, according to Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Hugh Burns.

A personal observation:

Ex-People Paper reporter Washington - and other supporters - spin an image of Mumia as sweet and grandfatherly. But a different portrait is drawn by another former Daily News reporter, now-retired Kitty Caparella, a tireless advocate for the underdog.

She found herself cornered in an otherwise empty courtroom with 18 MOVE members who surrounded her and started beating her, trying to grab her notebook.

"Get her! Get her! Get her!" shouted Mumia, who was there covering the trial for WHYY radio. He was fired soon after, with Hill's witnesses saying Mumia's adoration of MOVE made him snap.

Does that make him a murderer? No, but not a gentle Pop-Pop either.

Before long, another generation of college kids will be exposed to Mumia's story, and some will be drawn to the narrative of a brilliant, mellifluous, award-winning journalist who was framed in a cop-killing to become the world's No. 1 - with a bullet - death-row inmate.

And the people who can look them in the eye and say, "I know that's a lie because I was there," will all be dead.

E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854



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Remember John Gilbride...Murdered By MOVE Sept 27th 2002

It is saddening to me that it has been eight years since John Gilbride was murdered.

I am not going to revisit the circumstances of John’s death or yet again talk about who is responsible. I have done that on this site ad-nauseum.

Obviously, the person or persons responsible for John’s murder are still at large. They still are walking the streets. They could very easily do what they did to John to someone else. This to me is one of the most frustrating aspects of this case.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is in jail and is never going to get out. The same goes for the “MOVE 9”, who after years of raging against “the system” now have to beg, bitch, and moan in a desperate bid to breath the free air before they die of old age. Their fate lay in the hands of a parole board that has shown that it is in no mood or hurry to let MOVE members guilty of murdering a police officer out of their cage. I think it is pretty safe to say that those MOVE members will never be free.

The murderers of John Gilbride, however have managed to escape justice, but that does not mean that they have gotten away with their crime.

As I write these words there are efforts being undertaken that will help to blow the lid off the case and bring attention to bear on MOVE in a way that they have never had. For the first time MOVE’s leaders will have to endure the kind of scrutiny that they deserve and this may finally bring forth some answers to questions that have gone unanswered for the past eight years.

Much to the consternation of MOVE members and close supporters, John has not been forgotten.

There will be much more to say about this in time.

"The Barrel of a Gun" Premiers To A Sell out Crowd!

(From Philly.com)

By Amy S. Rosenberg and Stephen Jiwanmall

Inquirer Staff Writers

Nearly 29 years after Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was fatally shot at 13th and Locust Streets, echoes of the epic and polarizing case filled city streets Thursday as two movies premiered with emotional and clashing views of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.

At the Merriam Theater, where local filmmaker Tigre Hill was premiering his film The Barrel of a Gun, the officer's widow, Maureen Faulkner, arrived to a sidewalk filled with hundreds of police officers, their motorcycles lined up along Broad Street. The officers applauded her as she made her way into the theater.

"This movie will put people's minds at rest," she said. "There is no doubt that Mumia Abu-Jamal wanted to murder a police officer that night, and that person was my husband."

Earlier in the day, Abu-Jamal himself surprised and energized some of his most passionate supporters at the National Constitution Center when he called from prison to a panel discussion that followed the screening of the pro-Abu-Jamal Justice on Trial, a film by Johanna Fernandez and Kouross Esmaeli.

"Thank you all," Abu-Jamal said over the speaker phone, his call interrupted several times by a prison recording stating that the call was being monitored. "When I heard about this, I was frankly overjoyed."

Abu-Jamal cited a comment from the trial judge, Albert Sabo, that "justice was an emotional feeling," and said: "I remember being floored by those words." He described himself as being "surrounded by love" and dismissed Hill's film: "As soon as he took the dough, he was bought and paid for."

Sabo died in 2002. Members of his family watched the screening of The Barrel of a Gun. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled Nov. 9 to hear arguments on whether Abu-Jamal should have a new trial on the death-penalty phase of his case. That would not involve the actual conviction.

The two competing films brought out the raw emotions of the vexing, nearly three-decade-old case, with audiences in both theaters applauding and scoffing at various times.

Outside the Merriam Theater, retired and current officers, some of whom had been working the night of Dec. 9, 1981, greeted one another with hugs. "I think the story's finally going to be told," said Ed Fredericks, who was a pallbearer at Faulkner's funeral. Just two protesters stood across the street.

During the movie, there was laughter and applause when then-Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo appeared, warning Black Panther members coming to Philly that they "better have gas masks." "Fry Mumia," someone called out toward the film's end.

At a nighttime screening of Justice on Trial at the Ritz East, supporters bearing "Free Mumia" and anti-death-penalty shirts were still buzzing about hearing directly from Abu-Jamal and energized by the movie, which laid out the case for a new trial. "I had no idea how mistreated he was," said Acquanetta Davis, 60.

Each movie strove to place the case in a different historic context. The Barrel of a Gun puts Abu-Jamal squarely in the heart of the Black Panther movement, whose rhetoric included violence against police officers, and the radical group MOVE.

Justice on Trial examines the case in the context of police brutality and corruption in Philadelphia, trying to make the case that evidence was tampered with and/or suppressed. The location of the earlier screening at the Constitution Center was of special significance for Abu-Jamal's supporters, who believe his trial and sentencing violated his constitutional rights and represent injustices suffered by many others.

Pam Africa, one of the city's chief organizers of pro-Abu-Jamal activities, who appears in both films, said: "I think a major thing happened on this day when you wind up at the Constitution Center."

Esmaeli acknowledged that he sped up production of his film to screen it the same night as Hill's. "We had to do this to make sure his narrative isn't the only one out there," he said. He said he had set out to make a movie that looked at both sides, but "you either get access to one side or the other."

A group of students from the Philadelphia Boys Latin Charter School attended the screening and had plans to attend Barrel of a Gun in the evening, said teacher Nicholas Paschale. Several students said they were convinced of Abu-Jamal's innocence. "You can't call a man a monster who's able to speak that way," said Daniel Williams, 17, of Southwest Philadelphia. "I think the film was exactly on time. This is exactly what the entire city needs to see."




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Contact staff writer Amy S. Rosenberg at 215-854-2681 or arosenberg@phillynews.com.

Inquirer staff writer Annette John-Hall contributed to this article.

Review of Tigre's Mumia Film

(from Philly.com)

By Michael Smerconish - Inquirer

Inquirer Currents Columnist

Mention "Black Panthers" to a young person today and if the words have any resonance at all, they might bring to mind the two knuckleheads who made a scene outside a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008.
But there was a time when a powerful revolutionary movement of the same name - with infinitely more damaging consequences - actually did infiltrate urban America.

Tigre Hill's new movie, The Barrel of a Gun, which premieres Tuesday at the Merriam Theater, is a grim reminder of that era. The movie is a full-screen documentary about the murder of Daniel Faulkner by Mumia Abu-Jamal on Dec. 9, 1981.

What is left to explore about arguably the highest-profile death-penalty case in the world?

Context.

At a time when the only thing some may wish to hear about Abu-Jamal is news of his passing, Hill does a public service in Barrel by placing his actions in historical context and providing a compelling answer as to why Abu-Jamal pulled the trigger.

The movie chronicles the rise of the Black Panthers and the peak of their power in the late 1960s. The FBI defined the Panthers as a "black extremist organization" that "advocates the use of guns and guerrilla tactics to bring about the overthrow of the United States government." J. Edgar Hoover called them "the greatest danger to the internal security of the country."

The Panthers preached black militancy and the use of violence not only to achieve revolution, but also to enliven the consciousness of those behind it. In short, they wanted to overthrow the establishment, so they targeted its most visible representatives: police officers.

For the blueprint of this revolution, the film notes, Panthers cofounder Huey Newton looked past figures such as Karl Marx or the Soviet Union. Instead, Newton's Panthers drew inspiration from Mao Tse-tung. The Panthers' kinship with Chairman Mao was so pronounced that Newton and his foot soldiers handed out copies of the Little Red Book - essentially Mao's manifesto.

Abu-Jamal, still a teenager when he helped found the Panthers' Philadelphia chapter, was one of those distributing the book.

He was proselytizing for an organization whose rallying cry at the time was "Off the pigs." And indeed, in 1968, Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter after an altercation in which an Oakland police officer was killed. He was released two years later on a technicality - the appellate court concluded that the trial judge had given the jury improper deliberation instructions.

Of Newton, Abu-Jamal wrote in 2004: "It is beyond dispute that Huey P. Newton was a man of signal brilliance and truly remarkable courage. . . . He was a model that all Panthers aspired to." Of police officers, he wrote in 1970: "I for one feel like putting down my pen. Let's write epitaphs for pigs."

When the Panthers' influence waned in the 1970s, Abu-Jamal became infatuated with MOVE, itself a supposedly revolutionary "back-to-nature" organization with local origins.

By this time, Hill's film notes, Abu-Jamal was working as a radio journalist. And as MOVE's infamy in Philadelphia boiled over with the murder of Officer James Ramp in 1978 and the subsequent conviction of the MOVE 9, Abu-Jamal traded his objectivity for advocacy.

In interviews with Hill, observers and colleagues describe an increasingly confrontational Abu-Jamal injecting MOVE's agenda into every story he filed. They recall a man whose political leanings were so radicalized that peers felt uncomfortable engaging him. "A number of people had said he's going to snap," one observer says in the film. Eventually, Abu-Jamal had to become a taxi driver because the news organizations for which he worked no longer wanted to run his stories.

All of which makes a mockery of the way in which the murderer's supporters often describe him - as a "brilliant" or "award-winning" journalist taken down by a corrupt system. Far from it. When he ran across the street to execute Officer Faulkner, Mumia Abu-Jamal was nothing more than a cabby with a history of radicalism so pronounced that the FBI maintained a file on him.

Therein lies the real value of The Barrel of a Gun. The film's most notable accomplishment is placing Officer Faulkner's murder in historical context, while also reminding us of an era fraught with extremist domestic groups whose central focus was to perpetrate violence against the state.

Today, the term radical is trotted out - with little accuracy and even less reservation - to describe a political opponent. Or the president of the United States. And the most infamous deed of the New Black Panthers, who make a brief appearance in Barrel, consists of standing outside the old Richard Allen Homes with a billy-club on Election Day.

It all pales in comparison to the reality that men like Officers Faulkner and Ramp or Sgt. Frank Von Colln - executed in 1970 amid a fit of anti-police violence - encountered throughout their careers.

Hill's film succeeds because it reminds us, often in painstaking detail, of a not-too-distant period when nobody could mistake the real radicals. It's a case study of a movement fueled by violence - and how Danny Faulkner became a victim of it.



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