At the 24th anniversary of the May 13 massacre, MOVE organizes for 2009 Parole Hearings

By Hans Bennett

(Born Black Magazine, May 2009)

“Attention, MOVE: This Is America! You must abide by the laws of the United States!” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sambor declared through a loudspeaker, minutes before the May 13, 1985 police assault on the revolutionary MOVE organization’s home. This assault killed 5 children and 6 adults, including MOVE founder John Africa. That morning police shot over 10,000 rounds of bullets into their West Philadelphia home, and detonated explosives on the front, and both sides of their house. Following an afternoon standstill, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb, illegally supplied by the FBI, on MOVE’s roof. The bomb started a fire that eventually destroyed 60 homes: the entire block of a middle-class black neighborhood. 13-year old Birdie Africa and 30-year old Ramona Africa were the only survivors, after they dodged police gunfire and escaped from the fire with permanent burn scars. (watch video)

Check it out: A pamphlet on the crisis by Midnight Notes and Friends

After five hundred years of existence, capitalists are once again announcing to us that their system is in crisis. They are urging everyone to make sacrifices to save its life. We are told that if we do not make these sacrifices, we together face the prospect of a mutual shipwreck. Such threats should be taken seriously. Already in every part of the planet, workers are paying the price of the crisis in retrenchment, mass unemployment, lost pensions, foreclosures, and death.

by Paul Walker

When Mayor Nutter organized the Town Hall Meetings in December of last year, the last thing he had on his mind was transparency in government, let alone input into the budgeting process. What he was really doing was laying it out plain to the people of Philadelphia: buck up, you lose. Boy did he get an earful. I’ll never forget the look on his face as hundreds of residents of Southwest Philly lined up to take a turn at the mic, letting him know just how pissed they were, while the crowds in the seats taunted and cajoled the Mayor, Library Director Siobhan Reardon and the panel of cronies they had brought along with them.

By Sean West and Scott Pinkelman

It would be an understatement to call the recent struggle against Mayor Michael Nutter’s proposed service cuts anything but amazing. Under the banner called the Coalition for Essential Services, a movement of neighborhood groups, most of the cities major unions, health care activists, students, clergy, block captains, seniors and many more essentially put such a fire under our Mayor’s rear that he was forced to abandon many of his plans to balance the budget by cutting services to working people and poor neighborhoods. After witnessing many lively protests of The Coalition to Save the Libraries such as the “People’s Indictment of Mayor Nutter” and a “People’s Contempt of Court Citation”, it was surreal to see the movement’s slogans co-opted by Nutter as he announced his FY 2010 budget on March 19th in City Hall chambers as “The People’s Budget.”

By Hans Bennett

“My soul cries from all that I witnessed and endured. It does more than cry, it mourns continuously,” said Black Panther Robert Hillary King, following his release from the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 2001, after serving his last 29 years in continuous solitary confinement. King argues that slavery persists in Angola and other US prisons, citing the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which legalizes slavery in prisons as “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." King says: “You can be legally incarcerated but morally innocent.”

Since his release, King has fought tirelessly for the freedom of his imprisoned comrades Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who are the two co-founders of the Angola chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP)—the only official prison chapter of the BPP. They have now spent over 36 years in solitary confinement. Together, they are known as the Angola Three, a trio of BPP political prisoners whose supporters include Amnesty International, Desmond Tutu, Congressman John Conyers, and the ACLU. Kgalema Mothlante, the President of South Africa says their case “has the potential of laying bare, exposing the shortcomings, in the entire US system.” King, Woodfox, and Wallace’s federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that their time in solitary confinement is “cruel and unusual punishment,” will go to trial any month in Baton Rouge, at the U.S. Middle District Court.

In the meantime, while City Council attempted to bore dozens of us into comas as we waited patiently to be bored by Mayor Nutter's own boring lecture on the budget, most of us had wild hopes that something out of the ordinary might happen. Instead, we were reminded once again of some of the indignities that have come to be accepted as normal.

When the Frankford Chargers football team was being honored by City Council National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement activists brought attention to the team member who wasn't there, stating in clear calm words: "We remember Shareef Lee Jones, killed by Philadelphia police."