Anti-MOVE Blog Now Accepting Donations!

Let me get right to the point. The more resources we have at our disposable the better. Resources cost money and despite MOVE's allegation that I am on some kind of government payroll, the fact is that my income is limited and I recieve no government check.

Actually, if you want to get right down to it, the only people I know who routinely get checks from the government are MOVE members who are scheming the welfare system. How is that for irony?

Anyhow, if you like what we do here and want to see our efforts expand and press forward, drop a few pennies in the bucket.

Thanks,
Tony Allen

Four Years And The Demand For Justice Remains

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

-- Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

I never had the opportunity to meet John Gilbride.

But there are a few things that believe that I can say about the man without reaching too far into the realm of speculation. As best I can tell, he was a man who was ordinary and exemplary normal and admirable, courageous and yet fearful.

I don’t believe that the man I consider to be a posthumous friend had any quiet desire to become a martyr or a “cause”. His aim was far more pure than that. He wanted to see his son, to be a part of his child’s life, to participate in life as a parent, the kind of things that many of us take for granted.

But for MOVE’s leadership, these were things that could not be.

So far though, those responsible for John’s death have escaped the justice that is overdue in coming to them. But even when the law catches up with the assassins of a clearly innocent man, what will remain will still be a tragedy.

The philosopher Aristotle advanced the idea that tragedy results in a catharsis of healing for the people who witness it via their experience and emotions in response to the suffering those to whom tragedy has been wrought.

In a way I suppose there is more than a little truth in that. From getting to know a few members of John’s family I have found that I know not only understand John better, but also have learned much about myself. It is relatively clear to me that I would not have this sense of self-awareness had I just chosen to leave MOVE and walk away into obscurity.

But as much as my soul has been uplifted by aspects of this experience, what remains are cold and brutal facts that are not abstractions.

When in MOVE as a “true believer” and even after I knew better, I participated in MOVE’s vicious and often outrageously deceitful campaign against John and his family. I look back in anger and shame and disgust at the things I did. Granted, I was prodded and provoked into doing these things, but that is no excuse. I did these things and at the end of the day I am responsible for the things I did.

However, unlike most of my former comrades in MOVE I have chosen to accept the wrong that I have done and am trying my best to make it right. Of course it goes without saying that no amount of altruism or good intentions can bring back John, but I can work to preserve his memory and I can work to see that justice for John Gilbride becomes a reality, and I can hope that his son will have a future free of the terror of MOVE.

What I can also hope to do is shine a light upon the darkness that exists at the heart of MOVE.

Currently that place of darkness is inhabited by John’s ex-wife and the mother of his son, Alberta Africa.. I realize of course, that it is somewhat out of fashion to describe people as being evil, the idea of subjectivism being the order of the day. But I have seen evil. Evil has a name, it has a face. An evil person is one who is pathologically self-serving, someone who lacks a conscience, and who either by design or conditioning has no capacity for empathy. Such a person feels no remorse for the harm they do to others and who keeps close by them a set of rationalizations for the cruelty to which they so readily met out upon those who are there victims.

Evil is Alberta and her close comrades within MOVE. It is this evil which works persistently to keep justice at bay, to keep John Gilbride far from the minds of MOVE’s current crop of supporters and members and also to keep it out of the public conscience.

So now, here we are four years down the road. John is dead. His mother is dead. John’s son lives under the tyranny of his mother.

But I am still here, even if I have to stand alone in this struggle.

We all know that the killer of Daniel Faulkner resides on death row where he will likely spend the rest of his life. The same goes for the killers of James Ramp. Chances are, that these killers will not ever breath the free air. But the killers of John are still free to walk the street. And until the day that this is no longer the case, I will continue to remain vigilant.

John Gilbride's Father Speaks Out in Philadelphia Inquirer

(Photo of the late John Gilbride)

From Philly.com


Father grieves as cold case simmers

By Monica Yant Kinney
Inquirer Columnist

September is a cruel month for Jack Gilbride. Within 30 short days, he mourns a murdered son and a wife whose death two years later was hastened by her own pounding grief.

The ambush killing of former MOVE member John Gilbride is not the only unsolved homicide in Burlington County. But given all the publicity before and after the shooting, it's the hottest cold case for miles.

Last week, Prosecutor Robert Bernardi declined my request to talk about the mystery of a suburban dad killed amid a custody fight with an urban cult, MOVE.

Jack Gilbride, John's father, has long struggled with whether to hold back to respect the legal process, or speak out in the hope it sparks a tip to give his family closure.

Yesterday, on the eve of another anniversary with no news - in spite of a $20,000 reward - he turned up the volume ever so slightly.

Gilbride says he speaks to investigators every two weeks. From those talks, he believes they have long ago ruled out the theories that John was killed because of drinking, gambling or another woman. Ditto for the far-out suggestions he was the target of a government rubout or mob hit.

As for the victim's well-documented disputes with MOVE? That cannot be dismissed.

"The investigators know where the responsibility for John's murder lies," Jack Gilbride asserts. They just don't know with whom it lies.

A murder mystery

Skip this summary if you followed the case closely or happen to be the killer. You know the story.

John Gilbride was found dead at 12:08 a.m. Sept. 27, 2002, in his car in the parking lot of the Ryan's Run apartment complex in Maple Shade.

The 34-year-old US Airways baggage supervisor had just returned home from work. The car radio was still on, the engine still running.

Gilbride was in the midst of a vicious, four-year custody battle, but his ex was no ordinary scorned woman. The woman he left was Alberta Wicker Africa, the widow of MOVE's spiritual founder, John Africa, and matriarch of the volatile Philadelphia cult.

Leaving MOVE was one thing. Trying to take a MOVE child from the family was a declaration of war.

"John knows that my belief would never allow me to just hand him over my son like that," Africa testified in a Philadelphia Family Court hearing 17 days before the murder - the very same hearing in which Gilbride testified that a MOVE supporter had threatened to kill him.

In the two weeks before Gilbride's murder, MOVE fortified its West Philadelphia house, demonstrated in South Jersey, accused him of being a child abuser, vowed to defy the court order granting him time alone with his boy and - perhaps prophetically - posted a Sept. 17, 2002, Internet alert warning of "dangerous developments" in the custody case and urging supporters to do "whatever it is their power to do to avert this government assault."

In the end, MOVE got its wish to keep Gilbride at bay: He was killed mere hours before he was to have his first unsupervised visit with his son.

Timing is everything

Early on, Bernardi said the custody fight was one of several leads investigators would explore. Later, he acknowledged interviews with MOVE members provided no real insight.

"There is still this problem with the timing of this homicide given what was pending in the custody dispute," the prosecutor said in 2003. "Is that a coincidence, or is there something more to it?"

For the father, timing is everything.

"I'm very sure this wasn't a random killing," Jack Gilbride told me. "Someone had to know he'd be that place, at that time."

Just like now, Jack Gilbride is easy to find sitting in church pews every September at two Masses said for his fallen family: one for the son who died fighting for his boy, and one for the sorrowful mother who followed hers.

Contact Monica Yant Kinney at 856-779-3914 or myant@phillynews.com. To read past coverage of MOVE, go to http://go.philly.com/move.

Have information about John Gilbride's murder? Contact the Citizen's Crime Commission of Delaware Valley, which has offered a $20,000 reward. Call 215-546-TIPS (8477).

MOVE's 1978 Victims Remembered

TWENTY-EIGHT years isn't too long to wait, is it?

by Stu Bykofsky

(Pic of Consuella Africa who was convicted for her participation in the 1978 confrontation and now free, schooling MOVE children in the art of screaming into a bullhorn)

from Philly.com

In 1978, Frank Rizzo was mayor, Jimmy Carter was president, Poland's Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, "Laverne & Shirley" was TV's biggest hit, "The Deer Hunter" was the best picture, and Philadelphia police carrying out a judge's order on Aug. 8 were fired upon by MOVE "revolutionaries."

Stakeout Officer James Ramp died, several other cops and firefighters were wounded and other cops risked their lives on that humid August morning. Their bravery was never recognized by their city or even by their department.

That changed last week when nine officers were honored during Police Department commendation ceremonies at Fraternal Order of Police headquarters. The nine are Police Officers James Ramp, Lawrence D'Ulisse, Thomas Hesson, Charles Stewart, Joseph Zagame, Harry Mackel, James Farry and Albert Crane, and Lt. William Krause.

The meeting hall was packed with friends and family of the Nine, plus the families of dozens of other cops recognized for outstanding police work in recent months. The Nine each received the Valor Award, the department's highest, given for bravery under fire.

The Big Question was why it took 28 years to recognize the Nine.

The Big Answer was not forthcoming.

No one wanted to venture an opinion - not former stakeout officer Hesson, shot in the chest that day; not former lieutenant Krause, shot in the stomach and right arm; not current Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, who was in homicide in 1978 and remembers being stunned by the police radio call about a ferocious gun battle in Powelton Village.

"They should have done it a long time ago when I had people alive who would appreciate it, my family and all," said Hesson, who still carries bullet fragments in his chest. He was gunned down as he ran across the street to aid the mortally wounded Ramp, who had not even drawn his gun.

"I've been trying to get them to do it for a long time, but for some reason they wouldn't do it," he said.

Krause was "surprised" to get the recognition, but not surprised it took 28 years.

"I understand why," he said darkly.

I asked him to explain.

He paused. "I don't want to get involved."

Retired stakeout cop D'Ulisse wondered if the delay "was political or whatever."

I think "whatever," but I can't be sure, so I brought the question to Commissioner Johnson, who carefully distinguished between the 1985 Osage Avenue battle with MOVE and the Aug. 8, 1978, shootout.

"When a lot of people talk about MOVE, they talk about 1985," Johnson said. "In 1978, it was totally, completely different. I apologize to them for taking so long" for the recognition.

Did some sort of politics play a role?

"I try to stay away from politics as much as I can. I just try to do the right thing and the right thing is to honor them," Johnson said.

I looked back at the clips from 1978 and saw a traumatized city. Were the honors denied the cops because Philly felt shame or guilt for allowing the MOVE siuation to fester for 15 months? Was it fear of lawsuits? Worry about fanning racial tumult? The city's teeth were on edge after the shootout.

I tried to get a few words out of James Ramp's son, who lost the most that day, but someone pulled him away, maybe someone with bad feelings about the press, I don't know.

I do know if there had been allegations of police misconduct that day it wouldn't have taken 28 years to put the cops on trial.

But it took 28 years to honor them.

Documentarian Takes On Mumia

(Photo of Filmaker Tigre Hill)

(From Philly.com)

By Michael Klein

Wynnefield's Tigre Hill set off all kinds of political blasts with his documentary The Shame of a City, which recapped the mayoral campaign of Sam Katz and how it imploded under the City Hall bug scandal.

Passions surely will run higher over his next project:

A doc about Mumia Abu Jamal, convicted in the 1981 slaying of Philly Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

Hill has landed the help of conspiracy-debunking author Gerald Posner, whose JFK-assassination book, Case Closed, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and whose book Killing the Dream claims only a low-level plot behind the slaying of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Hill's working title is 13th and Locust - the intersection where a marker indicates the spot where Faulkner fell. Abu Jamal is on death row, claiming he didn't get a fair trial.

Hill won't offer his take on Abu Jamal's guilt or innocence. He plans to start writing after doing some leg work, but added he had no plans to interview Abu Jamal, who never bothered to testify anyway.

The Vulgar Propaganda of "Bad Sis" Walidah Imarisha

(Walidah and company)

A few of us who served in MOVE’s propaganda war against the late John Gilbride have attempted to make some kind of amends and go on with our lives. It goes without saying that none of us expected that he would be gunned down and murdered in the savage way that he was, but ignorance is no excuse.

Myself, and the other MOVE propagandists like Walidah Imarisha waged a vicious ad-hominem campaign of disinformation and character assassination against John Gilbrdie, in my view paving the way for his death. But Walidah did not just write MOVE propaganda, she participated in the MOVE “activities” set to destroy John’s life and ruthlessly slander him.

I have done what I have to right this wrong.

Those like Walidah, however have chosen to go another path. Walidah has a “live journal”, a kind of blog of sorts. You can read it if you have the intestinal fortitude at http://badsis.livejournal.com/.. Go ahead and leave a comment, she likes that kind of thing.

On this site, Walidah has amassed a veritable tribute to killers and murderers and other self-appointed “revolutionaries”. I have written before about the fetishization of Mumia, but Walidah takes it three steps backwards into the gutter of killer worship with bad poetry and the worst of identity politics. She proves that if you look hard enough, the lowest common denominator is easy enough to find.

The result is a website that is as creepy and backwards as any I have seen.
As if the excrement on her site were not enough to convince of my point I have brought some of the profound wisdom of this “sistah” to you, the ignorant Caucasoid masses or the Uncle Tom or otherwise “unauthentic” Negroes whom Walidah has come to detest..

Like I said before, Walidah and some of the rest of us were immersed in MOVE’s war on John Gilbride and offered not journalism, but instead crude repetitions of MOVE’s vile invective.

How much research did Walidah do in her articles? About the same amount as the rest of us I am sure.

But don’t let me get in the way of your enlightenment. I will let Walidah’s own words speak for themselves.

What follows comes from one of Walidah’s “articles” and it is almost entirely is a lie. It is just a series of non-sequiturs strung along by the narrowest of premises full of unsubstantiated allegations and libelous claims. This is, with a few changes in tense and alteration of adjectives almost a complete replica of a MOVE statement.

“Gilbride had been involved in a four year long custody battle with the radical naturalist organization MOVE over the child he had with MOVE member Alberta Africa. MOVE says the issues began when Gilbride deserted his family when Zachary was two, disappearing without warning for six months. When he resurfaced, he demanded custody, which Alberta denied him, claiming he had a history of abuse and instability. She offered supervised visits whenever he wanted, which Gilbride refused. A recent court ruling gave Gilbride partial custody, including unsupervised weekend visits with the child. His first scheduled visit was to begin Sept. 20, but he was in Las Vegas. “

Walidah would go onto to illuminate the world with her staggering insights.

“At a press release held the day Gilbride's body was discovered, the organization invited the press inside their barricaded home, into a comfortable living room, where Alberta Africa sat in a plush arm chair, obviously distraught.
“She stated that she and MOVE had nothing to do with Gilbride's death, and instead pointed the finger at the government, referencing the horrific history MOVE has with city administration which culminated in Philly police dropping a bomb on MOVE's house in May 13, 1985, killing 11 people including five children, and setting fire to an entire city block. "I've experienced a lot of pain at the hands of this government, and I believe this government is behind this," Alberta stated. She pointed to the professional nature of the murder, saying it sounded like government agents or military Special Forces. "That may sound far fetched to you people, but any government that would drop a bomb on babies is capable of anything."

It doesn’t sound far fetched, it sounds fucking stupid. I was at that “press conference” or rather the pathetic and disturbing “press performance” and can swear on the life of my child that I have never been a witness to such an obviously contrived and pre-packaged mish mash of shit.

According to Walidah:

“Far from wanting Gilbride's death, Alberta says they were beginning to mend their differences, and find peace. "I never wanted anything to happen to John because as long as he was alive, there was hope. We still loved each other very much," she said, then broke off, crying.”

Alberta wasn’t crying, she was burying her head in her arms making noises and rubbing her eyes on her sleeve in a crude way to make it look like she had been crying. It goes without saying that she wouldn’t get an award that night for her performance. Moreover, there was never any evidence produced giving credence to the notion that John and Alberta were on the way to “mend” their differences. In fact there is every bit of evidence indicating the contrary.


Walidah would go onto to write that:

"MOVE says Gilbride was murdered because if he and Alberta mended their relationship, the government would lose its excuse of the custody battle to persecute MOVE. "They knew that John Gilbride had the potential to come back to MOVE, which took away their justification to continue this court battle. So they upped the ante," said a statement by MOVE supporters. The press release ended by saying, "We as supporters are not going to sit by and allow this system to create another May 13, 1985. We are not going to allow this system to get away with murder."

So what really happened? John was killed, the slats barricading MOVE headquarters came down and people like Walidah went on making up bullshit about other things that suited her fancy. Idolizing and swooning over convicted and clearly guilty murderers seems to float her boat. And what did MOVE have to say to it’s supporters after John’s death? Just two months after John’s death a MOVE member had this to say in a letter to supporters;

“The situation concerning our sister, Alberta and Zack is resolved. We want to thank any and all of you who helped in the situation with Alberta and Zack....Y'all are the greatest”

Another MOVE member would go on to say:

“Well, anyways it all worked out (the custody case). The folks out there really didn't believe the city would attack. Later I saw the psychology behind what happened & how it was handled. The city just couldn't afford to be aggressive becuz of May 13th and people were too aware of what was going on then? Do you understand what I am saying? It was really unlikely that things would turn out like they did. But, I was so relieved that things worked out. I don't need no more of my family killed, hurt, or imprisoned, as well as my friends and supporters."

Things worked out huh? A man is dead, a son without a father, another tragedy has befallen a group ostensibly dedicated to protecting life yet is surrounded in blood. And Walidah and her ilk just move on to the next hip, revolutionary cause, without regard for the pain the words they inflict and no care for the carnage they have helped to unleash.

Sept 11th Revisited

On the day the planes crashed down five years ago, I had more in common with the terrorists at the controls than I did with the people murdered by them..

That is a hard thing to admit, to face, to come to grips with.

Just writing about it is troubling.

A true sense of fear and loathing, with more emphasis on the latter. I don’t want to write this and I don’t want to think about it, but I feel I owe it to myself to do so.

I cannot watch the documentaries about 9/11 nor can I bear to see Hollywood’s take on that day’s events, but do not begrudge anyone else for doing so.

On Sept 11th 2001, I was still “in” MOVE. My child would be born exactly four months later to the day. I had a steady job and a beautiful wife whom I adored with all of my being.

According to the ideology that I espoused, the “system” was evil and must be destroyed. But until Sept 11th I had only an abstract notion of the power of ideas, or just how such ideas could lead to horrific consequences.

We were told that Sept 11, 2001 “changed everything”. Others would tell us that it altered nothing. It was said by others that America was finally being forced to deal with what most of the world had to deal with on a daily basis. More still would go on to say that those who died that day had it coming, they were “little Eichmans”. America’s proverbial chickens coming home to roost.

For me however, Sept 11 did change a lot, but such a change could not come all at once. I was close geographically to all of the scenes of 9/11's destruction. The small town where Flight 93 plunged to the ground was a couple hours to the west. New York was an hour or so to the north and DC a couple of hours to the south. Still, the calamity that had unfolded in all of these places was surreal to me as I sat glued to CNN watching the terrible tragedy that was seemingly endless.

I knew that any sense of dismay at the events of that day would be regarded by my comrades in MOVE as a kind of disloyalty. While no MOVE members were foolish enough to be caught dancing in the streets, the group quietly celebrated. There were no grand speeches by the sect’s leaders, or statements, or anything formal like that. In actuality there was no need for that kind of thing. Nobody had to say anything at all.

We all just kind of knew. John Africa had long predicted that if MOVE “go down”, than so would America. In a letter sent to Mayor Goode just before the May 13th 1985 bombing, MOVE members wrote that if the cult was attacked that “knee joints” of America would “soon break” and that the country would fall.

From the view of MOVE’s true believers, Sept 11th could be seen only as the beginning of the end of “the system”, a prophecy being played out in reality.

This was not my opinion however. But what I thought really didn’t matter. Despite my quiet mourning of the Sept 11th victims, I was still pumping out MOVE propaganda and went on with things like a good little soldier. I kept following my orders, but I can say now without a doubt that I was not the same inside as I was before the planes smashed into the buildings.

In me began the stirs of a quiet contempt for the Islamic terrorists who perpetrated the attacks as well as those who would make apologies and excuses for them.

And so when the Taliban regime was swept from power by coalition forces I quietly celebrated.

So while I was beginning to understand the horrors of religiously inspired authoritarianism, I realized I could no longer ignore the fact that I was a part of a sect that was itself rooted in a nightmare of terror, and an ideology that was at least as backwards as that of the violent jihadists.

I knew then that I had to get out. But how?

On Sept 27th 2002 my extrication from MOVE became an absolute, albeit very quiet, priority. I remember getting the call at work that John Gilbride had been killed. I remember slumping down in my chair in disbelief. “They did it” I said to myself over and over. “They” being my MOVE family. Leaving MOVE became not an “if”, or “how”, but “when”. And it was not just for me that I had to get away from MOVE, but also for my wife and new child, the two most important people in the world to me.

Now, five years after Sept 11th and four years after the death of John Gilbride I look back.

I recall vividly how in 1999 I attended a “political prisoner” conference at a conference in New York City along with MOVE members. All of the usual suspects were there giving there usual platitude laden speeches. One speaker however stood out to me then and stands out now. He was a representative of an Islamic group whose name escapes me, although I think he had something to do with the so-called “blind sheik” who had helped to orchestrate the original attack on the World Trade Center. This speaker was clear that America would “soon” be made to pay for it’s transgressions against the Muslim world. His fiery oratory was met with the most rousing applause of the evening. Everyone was clapping voraciously...myself included.

I also can remember Alberta Africa’s seemingly out-of-the blue wedding to MOVE supporter Gary Wonderlin just a couple of months after her former husband John Gilbride had been murdered. She stood up there in her white dress and bragged about how MOVE had again “beat the system”. Again, everyone whooped it up. Everyone except for me. I knew what she meant.

Mayor Street Snubs French Mumia Delegation

(Pic Of Mayor Street)

According to cop-killer groupie, and alleged activist Walidah Imarisha, the French delegation for Jamal was snubbed by Philadelphia Mayor John Street. In a post on a website Imarisha writes:

“They had just come from an aborted meeting with Mayor John Street, who kept them waiting in a hallway for three hours, while his underlings pretended they had no idea that he was supposed to meet with these French delegates that day. It's such pompous arrogance, because in France, Braouezec holds a higher position than Street, because he's in charge of 12 cities, not just one. They raised hell though,”

It should say something to the bourgeois, mostly white, French delegates that the black Mayor of Philadelphia who came up as a true activist in the city would give them the cold shoulder. Street knows, just like the rest of Philadelphia outside of the Mumia cult that Jamal is a shameless killer.