The barbaric police bombing of MOVE: May 13th at 30
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://sfbayview.com/2015/05/the-barbaric-police-bombing-of-move-may-13th-at-30/
Why should we care what happened on May 13th, 1985? I mean, seriously, that was 30 years ago, a long time ago, way back when, know what I mean?
Most people won’t say that – but they think it.
A crowd gathers to watch the conflagration, which had consumed the entire 6200 block of Osage Avenue in a Black middle-class neighborhood by the time the firefighters were told to aim their hoses at it.I’ll tell you why: because what happened then is a harbinger of what’s happening now – all across America.
I don’t mean bombing people – not yet, that is. I mean the visceral hatred and violent contempt once held for MOVE is now visited upon average people – not just radicals and revolutionaries, like MOVE.
In May 1985, officials justified the vicious attacks on MOVE children by saying they, too, were “combatants.” In Ferguson, Missouri, as police and National Guard confronted “citizens” with weapons of warfare, guess how cops described them in their own files? “Enemies.”
“Enemy combatants,” anyone?
Then look at 12-year-old Tamir Rice, of Cleveland. A boy, treated as if he were a man.
Boys. Men. Girls. Women. It doesn’t matter.
What happened then is a harbinger of what’s happening now – all across America.
When many people stood in silence, or worse, in bitter acquiescence to the bombing, shooting and carnage of May 13, 1985, upon MOVE, they opened the door to the ugliness of today’s police terrorism from coast to coast. There is a direct line from then to now.
May 13, 1985 led to the eerie Robocop present. If it had been justly and widely condemned then, there would be no now; no Ferguson, no South Carolina, no Los Angeles – no Baltimore.
The barbaric police bombing of May 13, 1985, and the whitewash of the murders of 11 MOVE men, women and children opened a door that still has not been closed. We are today still living with those consequences.
© Copyright 2015 Mumia Abu-Jamal. Keep updated at www.freemumia.com. His new book is “Writing on the Wall,” edited by Joanna Hernandez, to be released April 21. For Mumia’s commentaries, visit www.prisonradio.org. Encourage the media to publish and broadcast Mumia’s commentaries and interviews. Send our brotha some love and light: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335, SCI-Mahanoy, 301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932. This is the first written commentary from Brother Mumia since the medical attempt on his life!