Returning to the Anti-MOVE Blog

"…to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife…"
-George Orwell, 1984

There are plenty of reasons why I have returned to this blog.

My posthumous friend John Gilbride still cries for justice to be done.

The children of MOVE are still in a literal state of slavery, deprived of education, destined for nothing but a life of emptiness.

There are plenty of reasons to come back to this humble endeavor. Perhaps most important to me at this moment is to say why I stopped writing this blog in the first place.

I needed to get things in my life straightened out. I needed to delve into the deepest regions of my soul. I needed to understand why it was that I had ended up in the situation that I was in. How did I go from an eighteen year old suburbanite in Virginia Beach to joining up with Philadelphia’s most notorious and violent cult? I needed to find out and more importantly I needed to ensure that it was a place that I would not return.

Basically I needed to grow up and I needed to grow up fast. Because if I didn’t all could be lost.

When you leave a life-ruling cult such as MOVE you leave a world of certitude. You learn the meaning of the world of angst. At one moment you have the world figured out, things are black and white, shades of grey are few, and you are different and special. But when you leave, you leave all of that behind and the world becomes a very different place for you.

You are no longer in a tribe apart from the world, you are in a state of disconnect. You know that you can’t go back, but you are partially afraid of going away from what you know, even if what you know is fraught with danger and an abiding sense of evil.

Certitude, as I have found out, is not a matter of the intellect, it is a matter of psychology.

You can leave a cult and fall apart. Or you can leave and be overwhelmed, and against all sense run back to yet another authoritarian entity to seek fulfillment. The trend of leaving one sect for yet another is more common than one might think. Call it “cult addiction” if you will. I call it insidious.

Or you can chose to embrace the freedom that you have found and you can succeed.

Having seen the face of evil and been nearly beaten down by it, I choose to live against it.

There is so much to be had away from MOVE and groups like it. To not live a life of plagiarized emotion and slavish devotion to a mythology is to awaken one’s true spirit

To not live to put a polish on the vanity of leaders whose existence amounts to cynical manipulation and the destruction of the individual is worth a few lonely nights and days of uncertainty.

Without MOVE I am free to be me. There is no pressure external or internal to wear a mask of devotion and unquestioning stupification. For in MOVE, those supporters who are most revered are the most dogmatic, the most obedient, the biggest emotional cripples. To seemingly not be able to live without MOVE is to be the most embraced by it. The subordination of the will that leads to the destruction of the soul.

My mistakes are my own. My words are my own. My successes are my own and I can proudly look my little girl in the face and know that she comes before all else. I don’t know if there is a God or a heaven, but I know that she is here and that is enough for me.

I care not to claim allegiances to a faux movement that seeks to obscure truth rather than bring it forth.

Everyday away from MOVE is a day of discovery. I am free to explore the worlds of Dostoevsky, or Proust or to be truly frivolous if that is what I so desire to do. I don’t have to pretend to be anything. I don’t have to mouth the lies of those around me to earn love that I deserve. I don’t have to pretend that I am pure and untainted by the world. My history and my present is not obscured by a veil of self-doubt.

MOVE is no family. It is the antithesis of family. Their supposed love for you is predicated upon your willingness to submit. Your willingness to give and give and give until you have nothing at all left and there is no more you, only them. A real family cares not for your political or social affinities or failings. Walk away from MOVE and you will feel their embrace...and while you leave you will see the true face of your so-called "MOVE family".

I had to go away for a while. I had to see those who did not make it. I had to look at my own mistakes and find out why I made them. I had to step away to learn to live, to find out who I am and where my heart truly lies. I had to feel the pain of loss and realize the promise of a future uncertain.

I lay no claim to absolution. There is no need. I am only certain that no one else can lay claim to it either. I have learned to say “I don’t know”. You don’t have to have all of the answers or to try and feel the imagined hand of providence pushing you forward. You can do it on your own. Try it for a while, you might just like it

So now I am back. Battered but certainly not broken. I am not living to discredit MOVE. They are doing a damn fine job on their own. So much of what the group does and says is self-evidently absurd that it needs no commentary from me or anyone else. Just look at the crumbled “Mumia” movement to see just how good MOVE is at running things squarely into the dirt. But every once in a while I will pop up here on this blog to set some things straight and settle some old scores. And I will always make sure that no one in MOVE’s orbit will be able to forget the name of John Gilbride and the cruel fate that befell him because he dared to take a stand for freedom and against a cult of death and nihilism.

Till tomorrow.