TONIGHT: MOVE Documentary @ Stanford

[Guest guest]

TONIGHT FRIDAY 3/11 @ 7:00PM

Stanford Law School, Room 180

MOVE-- The Documentary

Part of the Inaugural Symposium of the Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and

Civil Liberties

http://sjcrcl.stanford.edu/Symposium.html

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

 

Hi everyone,

So sorry for the late notice, but I just found out about this screening.

" MOVE " is an incredible documentary about the Philadelphia MOVE activists

of the 70s and 80s.

 

While not technically an animal rights group per se, the MOVE activists were

very much conscious of the intersections between revolutionary politics and

animal liberation. And, given the current government repression of the SHAC

7 (www.shac7.com), this movie is quite timely.

 

See below for an article by Ramona Africa, one of the MOVE survivors,

describing the MOVE activists and their commitment to defending all

sentient beings, including animals.

 

Directions to Stanford Law School:

http://www.law.stanford.edu/about/dirmap/driving.html

 

I really hope you can make it tonight.

 

-Matthew

 

 

http://www.satyamag.com/apr97/move.html

On a Move!

By Ramona Africa

 

In May 1985, Philadelphia police bombed and destroyed the house and the

entire block where members of a radical, revolutionary group called MOVE

lived. Eleven people in the house were killed, including the founder of

MOVE, John Africa. The only surviving adult was Ramona Africa, who was

sentenced to, and served, seven years for conspiracy, riot and multiple

counts of simple and aggravated assault. Although a special commission was

established that heavily criticized the Philadelphia police for their

actions, no one was indicted. The following article is based on a talk

delivered at San Francisco State University in October 1994.

 

The Move organization started out 20 years ago in the early seventies,

founded by a wise, perceptive, sensitive, black man called John Africa.

John Africa taught us to respect and revere life. Based on that belief, we

had peaceful demonstrations at the zoo in Philadelphia and in the Bronx. We

demonstrated against unsafe boarding homes for the elderly; and the Ringling

Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus for their mistreatment of animals. We

went to symposiums and conferences on gang warfare. When we would go to the

zoos or to any type of demonstration around animal rights, we hit them hard.

We asked people what made them think that the mink coat looked better on

them than on the mink. I mean, these people are arrogant.

 

Do Something About the Rampage

 

It doesn't matter how small it may seem, or how magnanimous it may seem,

but do something. To commit yourselves to doing something to change the

system that we live in, to make this a better place for yourselves, your

family, your children, your sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, whatever.

Do something for yourself.

 

I'm saying that we have to do something about the rampage of injustice and

brutality that is rained down on us. Not on some people out there on Mars

but on us right here. We can stop it, and it doesn't take violence. It

doesn't take guns or bloodshed or any of that. All it takes is one thing --

unity.

 

The MOVE organization is a deeply religious organization, but we are a

revolutionary organization. And really what makes us revolutionary is the

injustice in the system. Revolutionary simply means change and if things

were not wrong, there would be no need for change. We are not masochists.

We are not pacifists. We believe in self-defense, and we are armed and

equipped with the wisdom, and the understanding given to us by John Africa

to know the difference between self-defense and violence and to understand

and explain that they are not synonymous.

 

MOVE people would not just sit back and accept injustice. When we saw it we

would confront it and expose it. John Africa explained to us that you are as

strong as you believe. So if your belief is righteous, if your belief is

strong, you cannot help but be strong and righteous as your belief, because

you reflect your belief. MOVE will work with any organization that is

talking about defeating this system, that is talking about putting things

right. We work with Native Americans, animal rights people,

environmentalists, socialists, communists, whatever they want to call

themselves. We don't care. I don't care if you're Muslim, Christian,

Democrat, Republican, if you are poor, if you are one of the oppressed: you

get beat with the same black jack, get thrown in the same cells, get the

same lethal injection, gas chamber, electric chair, or whatever. What I'm

saying is when people come together, we get things done. Unity is what this

system fears.

 

As hard as it may be to believe, this simple principle that cannot be

disputed is what has put us in conflict with this system. Because this

system doesn't give a damn about life -- whether it's man, woman, child,

black, white, or whatever. This system doesn't care. Those who run the

system don't care. All they care about is money, that almighty dollar, that

piece of paper with a dead man's picture on it. That's their god.

 

One Source, One Truth

 

Members of MOVE don't see ourselves as superior to any form of life because

we understand that all life comes from one source, is coordinated by one

source...whether you call it " Allah, " " Jehovah, " " Jesus, " or whatever. We

call that force nature, mother nature, mom. But whatever you call that

force, there is only one. And if we understand that, then how can anything

that comes from one source be superior or inferior.

 

This is what our founder John Africa had taught us. And because of that we

protect the air, we protect the water, we protect the soil, we protect

animals. We don't allow anybody to abuse animals around us. We don't allow

anybody to abuse babies around us, or the elderly. We confront industry

that poisons, pollutes our air, our water, puts toxic waste in our soil.

These are things that nobody is exempt from, no matter how much money or

status you have.

 

When we confront industrialists, they're going to get an attitude with us

because we say we want clean air to breathe and don't want to breathe

polluted air. How dare we! The information was so simple and so clear that

there was no defense against it because there is no defense against the

truth. Any number of lies can't stand up to one truth.

 

______

" Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves

exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only

the unanimity of the graveyard. "

-Justice Jackson, W. Va. State Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette (1943)