Ramona

A few months ago,

I finally had an opportunity to, uh,

meet and speak with Ramona Africa.

We were at a panel

where the victims of police terrorism

were telling their very,

very, very emotional personal stories, uh,

about children they lost and friends

they lost, family they lost.

And afterward, you know, I f- I, I,

I finally w- was able to

approach Ramona because usually,

you know,

there's a lot of people around her.

They wanna talk to her and everything,

and I never really got a chance to do it

before even though I've seen her speak

many times.

And she was very gracious and, uh,

agreed to the interview.

And I, I, I really,

really think that you all will take a lot

from this interview because she shares so

much.

And her personal story is one that it's

just so incredibly, incredibly inspiring.

I mean,

it's hard to imagine seeing children die

around you,

burned alive,

seeing your friends die around you,

killed by the police, killed by the state.

Then after being the victim of such

brutality, being sent to prison, you

know, sent to prison for years.

And she was able to come back from that,

and

was able to hold onto her convictions

and hold onto

everything that kept her, I guess,

strong while she was incarcerated

and while she

was going through the grieving process.

We all have a lot to learn from

her and from her story,

so I'm very happy to bring you this

interview, and I hope

that you all will take something from it.

I know I, I certainly did.

And so here's Ramona Africa,

one of the only survivors of,

uh,

the police terrorism bombing here in

Philadelphia in 1986.

Okay.

So I think the first thing I wanna start

off

asking you about is,

is related to the roots of MOVE. Um,

I think a lot of people are

at least vaguely aware of,

you know, the violence

that the police had been using against the

MOVE organization

over the years.

But I think a lot of people aren't really

familiar with

John Africa and actually how MOVE

was interacting with the community

before all that stuff happened.

Mm-hmm.

So I, I was wondering, can you,

can you tell us a little bit about who

John Africa

was and what his, what the ideology is-

Sure

... and actually how, um, MOVE

and this id- ideology was,

uh, contributing to the community before,

you know, the police repression happened?

Absolutely. Um, what people don't

know about MOVE, basically, fundamentally,

is our belief. John Africa brought people

together from all different races,

nationalities, religions, you

know, socioeconomic backgrounds,

et cetera,

and gave us one common

belief, and that belief is very

simply in life, that life is the

priority. Not in an abstract sense,

but in a very real sense in terms of

nothing is more important than keeping the

air

that you must have to breathe

clear and pure, you know,

clear of pollution.

L- life is the water

that we must have to drink

despite

champagne or, you know-

Right

... any kind of expensive drinks.

You can't live without water,

you know?

Mm-hmm.

That's life. The sun that warms the

Earth so we can exist here, you know?

The Earth itself

that we're coordinated to walk upon

and, you know,

that pushes food up through the Earth

to feed all life. That force,

the force of life,

that is what's important. Human life,

animal life, plant life, anything that

is alive, that is the priority.

And giving MOVE that p- belief, John

Africa also gave us the understanding

that we

must seriously

oppose anything that goes against

life, meaning anything that poisons,

pollutes,

maims, you know, uh, destroys,

exploits, murders, maims any

form of life. So giving us that belief,

MOVE people didn't just talk our belief.

We demonstrated our belief by, you know,

confronting, uh, institutions of the

system that violated life, that went

and, and still go against life

by poisoning, maiming, killing, polluting,

exploiting, you know? Um, what that

means is that our very first

demonstrations

were at the zoo,

the circus,

at Farriers, and we demonstrated these

institutions to make the point that

every living being is coordinated by the

God of life, the mother of life

that we call

Mother Nature, our mama,

to be free. You know, all life

is coordinated to be

free. And to exploit

and enslave any living

being,

it's criminal.

Mm.

It's wrong. It's a violation of life, and

we don't tolerate it. We expose it,

you know, a-

and fight it, you know? So those

were the very first

Arrests that MOVE people sustained,

you know,

demonstrating these institutions.

We confronted furriers and demanded

that they explain

why they have the right to club baby

seals to death for their coats. Why they

feel like they have the right to slaughter

minks en masse, rabbits en masse, seals,

you know, all, all manner of animal life

just to rob them of their coats

and put them on humans' backs as if the f-

the seal's coat, the rabbit's coat,

the mink's

coat looks better on our back than it

does on the animal, the life that

Mama Nature, the God of life, put it on.

Hmm.

You know?

Right.

I mean, when, when Hitler existed

and he took the skin of Jews

and made lampshades out of it,

it was seen as a, a, an atrocity.

Right.

It was seen as horrifying, and it was.

But so is it to take another

being's life

and kill it just to skin it of its coat

to put it on our back,

you know?

Right.

And, um, we confronted zoos and circuses.

You know, we, we said,

"What do you think you're doing?

Why do you think you have the right

to imprison,

you know, these animals for life?"

When humans

are put in prison,

when you put humans in prison,

you say it's

because they're criminal,

because they committed a crime.

What crime did the bear, the leopard,

you know, the lion, the tiger, what crime

did they commit to be sentenced to life in

prison?

Right.

You know? And, uh, those

were our first demonstrations.

Uh, we demonstrated at the, uh,

against Dow

Chemical, DuPont Chemical, you know,

demanding that they stop poisoning

the earth, the air, the water. And

then to add insult to injury,

come back and

try to convince people

that they're environmentally friendly

and like, "Yeah. Well, you know,

our factories

do pollute the water,

but we've invented this water

filter that you can pay us

$49.99 for, and that'll take care of

the pollution.

That'll filter out the pollution

that we put in the

water." So they not only make millions,

billions of

dollars poisoning the earth, but turn

around and wanna make millions more by

selling people a bill of goods like,

"This is what...

This is the solution. This

is what you need to clean up the

water that we poison." It's insane,

you know?

Yeah. I, I think this

is really interesting because

I, I, I've noticed this and I think you,

of course, you noticed this also.

When the media,

when the media talks about MOVE, you know,

all we hear

about are the confrontations with the

police or the confrontations with people

in

the neighborhood

that don't agree with MOVE.

We, we never hear about this focus

that MOVE has-

That's true

... on protecting life

or trying to promote-

Uh-uh. No, they'll never focus on that.

Right.

Because

if they

can convince people that they come at

us and, and wanna kill us off and stop us

because we're these crazy people

that don't wash and

don't comb our hair, and all we do

is cuss people

out, and we're violent,

we just wanna kill cops and, you

know, uh, fight neighbors, et cetera.

If they can paint

that kind of picture of MOVE,

then when they move in for the kill,

people will accept it because they, they

have this picture painted for them, "Oh,

these people are crazy.

They need to be, you know, destroyed

or put in prison for, for

life. You know, I,

I know why the government gotta come at

them."

But if people would just stop

for a minute

and use their brain just for one second,

they would only have to ask themselves one

question.

One question.

Since when

did this government, this system

that we're living under,

care,

I mean, get so riled up about people

cursing, not bathing, not combing their

hair,

uh, fighting their neighbors? Since when

did the government care so much about

this?

Hmm.

I mean, this happens every... I mean,

you got millions of

homeless people out there that

are dirty and don't wash because they

don't have

access to facilities, you know, to wash.

You got people that walk around cussing

they self out and cussing

everybody out around them.

They don't drop bombs on them.

Right. I think we have to, for people...

I think a lot of people here in Philly,

you know, they're, they're familiar with

this story, but, uh, uh,

some people might be listening to this

from other cities

or even other countries.

And I wanna just give a, a, a history of,

of what we're talking about right now.

Um, or m- well, not me, but you will.

Uh, can you, can you tell us what

was going on

in the neighborhood where you

were living with MOVE, uh,

with the neighbors, with

the police-

Mm-hmm

...

and how that situation escalated to where

the bombing happened?

Mm-hmm.

This is back in 1985, I think, right?

'85. Yeah. Um,

what happened was, um-

We didn't have a sound system set up at

our house

initially. Initially,

what we would do is in the winter when it

snowed, we would shovel, you know,

around our entire block.

Shovel, you know, the snow so

that children,

you know,

wouldn't get hurt,

the elderly would have a path to

walk,

and we wouldn't take any money for it.

We did it out of concern

for people,

and we did it for the work,

you know? For the health of it,

to get the workout, you know?

Mm-hmm.

And, um, we also, including our

coordinator, John Africa, when he

was in town, we would build

wood-burning stoves for families whose,

you know, heat

got turned off, their gas got turned off,

uh, for

families that had a lot of children.

When we went food shopping,

'cause we bought our food in bulk,

like, um, cases of bananas, cases of

apples, you know, we bought cases of food,

and we would fix

boxes of vegetables, you know, spinach,

potatoes, onions, you know,

things like that,

some fruit,

uh, and give it [clears throat] to, like,

single

parents that had, you know, two, three,

four kids,

um,

to elderly people, you know. We did that,

and at my trial, as a matter of fact, uh,

a

woman that lived on the corner at Cobbs

Creek and

Osage, you know, the corner of our street,

she

testified.

She, she came to court

and she testified about what

we did for her, you know? Uh, this is what

we were doing for our neighbors,

and most of

them appreciated it and didn't have a

problem with MOVE, but there were a few,

there were

some people who just didn't

like MOVE, and they didn't like us because

this was a pretty much working to middle

class Black

neighborhood.

Right.

And these were people who were,

were and, and some

were trying to move on up

like the Jeffersons, you know?

Yeah.

Trying to be accepted by this system

and carry themselves

a certain way, and they did not want to

hear

what MOVE was saying about the system.

They didn't wanna hear it because they had

their

plans, they had their lives

and their children's lives mapped

out, and they didn't wanna hear about how

it's not working, wasn't working then,

and never

will work.

You're talking about a system that

is unworkable.

Uh, and we would talk about, you know,

the police brutality and

police murders,

all of the innocent people in prison

while these officials

were committing all this

crime and never do a day,

and how our family,

our innocent family members, you know, uh,

were and still are in prison

and the government knows

they're innocent,

and we would put out crystallized

examples, evidence of how our family

is innocent and

these people know it.

They didn't wanna face it,

you know? Because to face it

and accept what we are,

we are saying is for them to have to let

this system go.

Right. Yeah.

And they didn't wanna do that.

They weren't ready to do that.

So, you know,

some people did have a problem with

MOVE. And [clears throat] as the time

went on, when we

were going around informing

people about our family, um,

we sold watermelons. We, uh, got

watermelons from down South and, uh,

we had them transported up here,

and John Africa

himself built about six or seven carts,

wooden

carts for us, and some you

push, some you pull, you know.

And we would go

all over

Philadelphia selling these watermelons.

We would, uh,

write our phone number on them with a,

a marker

so that if people didn't want to eat them

right then, didn't

want us to plug them, you know,

take a piece out so they could

taste it right then,

we'd put our phone number on it so

if they weren't

satisfied with it, they could, you know,

call us and we would bring them another

one, you know? Uh, this is what we

were doing,

not just to sell watermelons to make

money,

but to be in contact with people,

be in the midst of people, putting out

information about who we are,

what we're doing, what we believe in,

and why

we're fighting the system,

what they have done not only to us,

but to all life.

You know? To all life. And people

were listening.

They were getting the message, you know,

and,

uh, confronting

politicians from their areas about what

was happening with MOVE,

why MOVE people were still in jail, and

about things like the destruction of our

home in

1978 during the first police attack on

MOVE under Rizzo. And the questions

that these

people were asking, the issues

that they were confronting

these officials with,

these officials couldn't explain

it.

Yeah.

They couldn't explain it. And so they

were feeling a lot

of pressure, you know? And what they

did was rather than do the right thing

and

release our family members from prison

under

whatever, you know, guise they wanted to,

whatever they felt like they needed to say

to let our

people go, we didn't care.

But rather than do that,

they decided that what they needed to do

was to

shut us up,

to get rid of MOVE people out here on the

street

that were stirring things up

and causing all of this, you know,

uh,

exposure on them. So that's what,

uh, May 13th was about. They misused

the few neighbors

that had a problem with us

and tried to stir it up and create the

impression that, you know, the whole

neighborhood was against MOVE,

and MOVE was causing a

big problem in the neighborhood,

and they had to

step in and resolve this conflict.

Since when

did this government

get involved in a neighborhood dispute

to the point where the, the local,

the state, the federal

government comes in to save this

neighborhood?

Since when?

Especially a Black neighborhood too,

I mean, come on.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly.

It's really weird.

They don't care about that neighborhood.

Right.

And it was crystallized after they came

in and bombed and murdered my family,

burnt down the Osage neighborhood.

The people

in the neighborhood

was left with egg on their face because

the

government royally screwed them.

Yeah.

Destroyed their homes

and everything in it.

And when they were seeking redress and

compensation,

the government gave them their ass to

kiss.

Right. Right. There's a, there's a,

a documentary I,

I just watched a few days ago.

It's called... Uh,

you might have seen this.

It's called The Bombing of Osage Avenue.

Um-

Is that the PBS one?

Yeah. Yeah. That... It's a little shady.

I mean, there's some parts of it

that try to make-

Of course. [laughs] Of course.

You know what I mean? [laughs]

But it's interesting.

Yeah, that's to be expected. [laughs]

It exposes so many things though,

and I just wanna focus-

Mm-hmm

...

on a few things from this documentary

because it's, it's really, really

interesting.

They had this guy on there who

was a block captain,

and-

Mm-hmm. Mill. Was it Mill? No, Bond.

Clifford Bond.

Yeah, brown-skinned guy. And he, he s- he,

he basically comes out and says,

"I shouldn't have called the cops because

I didn't know that they were gonna come

out and do all this."

Yeah. Well, he shoulda known,

'cause we told him.

Right. But-

Tried to tell him, "Don't think

that you can call

the cops,

call the government on us like they care

about you.

You better look at what happened in 1978.

They didn't just attack MOVE.

They attacked the whole

community."

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

You know?

They don't care about you any more than

they care about MOVE.

I mean, we tried to tell him.

But this is the thing, though,

that really got me.

Like,

when he was talking about the aftermath-

Mm

... he never said anything about, uh,

the MOVE people who were killed, the, the

children who were burned.

Oh, oh yeah. Uh-huh.

All he cared to talk about w-

were the houses that were burned down.

I know.

And the fact that people were, you know,

put out on the street.

He didn't have anything to say about MOVE.

I thought that was so...

Oh, it, it, it's something.

That's how people are. I mean, do you know

that, I think I said it at that program,

uh, where we met,

that after the bombing and after it was

clear that five babies, six adults

were murdered, literally burned alive,

that the ministers held a vigil

for Wilson Goode.

Ugh. Yeah.

You know?

I remember you mentioning that.

Not, not for the lives that were lost,

the babies,

you know?

Mm-hmm.

But

for Wilson Goode.

And he was reelected.

And when they interviewed people,

that's all they talked about,

all they lost.

Right. Right.

You know?

They didn't lose no family members.

Yeah,

a lot of them didn't mention MOVE at all,

and a lot of people forget this

too, that Wilson Goode was the... Okay,

he was the first Black mayor, you know,

of Philadelphia.

And was to be supported at all cost.

Right. And so he was reelected, you know-

Exactly

... even after, even after, uh,

sentencing this.

Yes, he was.

Reelected. And so when people are, uh,

you know, they're in these ecstasies over

Obama and thinking that Obama

is this great thing-

Mm

...

I try to remind them of what happened

here.

Yeah.

And the fact that just 'cause someone

looks like you in skin color doesn't mean

that they're on your same side, you know.

I'm sure you know that already, so,

[laughs] um-

And look,

they have always used people against

each other. They used, uh,

Indigenous people against

each other,

African slaves against each other.

You know, they've used Asians and, uh,

Latinos against each other. I mean,

that is a

historical tactic-

Yeah

... of the oppressor.

You know? I mean, it, it,

it shouldn't be a surprise to

people.

So-

Yeah

... I mean,

have you heard about this thing

that happened in, uh, Tulsa,

Oklahoma back in-

Yep. Yep

... 1921? I mean, how would you-

Black Wall Street.

Yeah. How would you compare

that to what happened with MOVE?

Can you tell people about that too,

who might not be aware about

that situation

either?

Right. It was a, um, community in Tulsa,

Oklahoma, a Black community that

was thriving.

You know,

it was known as Black Wall Street.

I mean, these were, uh, Black people

that were,

you know, as the system sees it,

making it and

standing, you know, toe-to-toe with, you

know, White people,

and

they could not have that.

Mm.

You know? That, that

was not to be allowed.

And what, what the government did was they

ended up dropping a bomb on

that community,

that whole community,

destroying this Black Wall

Street. And it was the first time

that the government

dropped a bomb on its own self, on its,

you know,

own soil, on people here

in this country. It was the first time.

It was like 1921, I think, or

'29.

Yeah, it was. It was '21.

That was in the '20s.

Yep, yep. Before the war, you know,

before the Second World War.

Mm-hmm.

And I think the whole... What spark-

what sparked that off were, were, uh,

this group of Black men with guns came to

the, uh,

the local jail

to try to, uh,

keep someone from getting lynched.

Like, these people

were trying to break into the jail

and just kill someone, and

they came, there were guns,

and basically saved this,

these people's lives.

I didn't know about that part. Okay.

And then the government called-

Okay.

And yeah, and that's,

that's what sparked it off.

And then after that, like you said,

the government used, uh, a plane

to drop TNT on the neighborhood.

Mm-hmm.

Killed people, put people in mass graves.

Um, then after that was over,

they actually just re...

They remade the whole city so

that way the com- the community couldn't

come back and reorganize itself.

They put a,

a railroad right through the Black

community so it couldn't actually come

back.

Um-

Mm

...

and we see this happening right here in

Philadelphia in the Black community.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, Drexel,

Penn, and other universities.

Take Temple even. I mean, you build, um,

you know,

what they see as a first-class school,

high-class

school in the middle,

smack in the middle of the

hood-

Mm-hmm

... the ghetto, North Philadelphia,

and then just

spread out from there.

Yeah.

Take,

take over the Black community from there,

just

spread out from there.

I graduated from Temple,

and I know what Temple looked like

when I went there in

the '70s.

It's like,

you know, four or five times larger now

than it was then. I mean, it,

it expanded in all directions.

Hmm.

You know? So, uh,

yeah.

You know, and I have,

I have a question for you, though,

about that.

I mean,

I'm sure you know about a lot of the

statistics,

the really negative statistics, uh,

about the Black community,

the different health problems people

are facing.

Uh, there's different epidemics going on.

There's different problems with the social

structure.

And then we see that people are living

on, uh, property that is coveted,

you know, by these universities, by

companies, by, uh,

people who wanna gentrify the community.

Do you think this is an accident

that Black people are literally dying off

and, uh,

being subjected to all of these different

traumas and horrors that

eventually will make them actually just

have to move, either move or die,

basically?

Mm-hmm.

What, I mean, what, what

is your view about that?

What do you think is really going on?

Well,

I do

believe, and I mean, uh,

all you gotta do is look around you,

that,

that areas,

you know, and the conditions that poor

people, even some poor whites, you know-

Mm-hmm

... are forced to live under,

I mean,

it's everything from the food that is

in these neighborhoods, you know, to

the water

that they drink-

Mm

... you know, to, uh,

the air they breathe.

I live in Southwest Philly, and when I

was growing up, I lived

in West Philadelphia,

and whenever we would drive

south and you drop,

drove toward the airport,

there was a, um, city dump out there, and

the oil refineries are out there.

Mm-hmm.

Now Penrose Park is basically built over

the dump,

you know, this gentrified area really.

And, um, the refineries are still there,

but what

they did was they developed some

chemical

that mask the smell

from those oil, oil refineries because,

I mean-

Oh, wow

... it was horrible when I was growing up.

I remember that smell when I was a kid.

But they developed some chemical

that just mask it. The...

It's still there.

Hmm.

And people in that area have high

risk of lung cancer,

emphysema. I mean, it's affecting people's

health. But because it doesn't smell like

it used to, you know,

they, they get away with it.

They got people hallucinating that, "Oh,

okay, they took care of

that problem." They didn't.

Hmm.

You know? Like I said, the food people...

It, it...

Just the way people live, you know?

I mean, it's,

it's terrible. It's terrible.

But the thing that

people need to understand

is that when you dig a grave for somebody

else,

you better be careful you don't fall in it

because-

Hmm

... the things that those

that run this system

have laid out for poor people,

mainly Black people

and people of color, poor whites even,

I mean, they're not immune.

They are not immune.

Yeah.

Because when you allow a

poison and injustice to

exist, you're not immune from it. I mean,

they call Black people violent,

vicious gangsters and all that. Was it a,

a Black

young kid, a, a 20-year-old Black man that

went into that school in New- Newtown?

Is it Newtown, Connecticut?

Yeah. Yeah.

Do you know? No. Was it a Black kid

or Black

kids at, uh, Littleton, Colorado?

Mm-hmm.

No.

Mm-hmm.

You know, at Columbine? No.

You know?

And the thing is,

you, you can't

dig a hole for somebody else

without it affecting you.

Right.

You know, you can't allow

injustice and wrong and poison to

exist without it affecting you, your

family, your children, your grandchildren.

Yeah.

I mean, it's impossible-

Yeah

... to contain it.

If you got cancer in your body

and you ignore it because you feel like,

"Oh, it, it's

only in, in my arm," you know,

"It's only on my skin,"

or whatever,

you can't contain it there.

Mm-hmm.

If it's not, if sickness

is not eliminated,

it's gonna spread.

It's gonna fester,

you know?

Right, right.

And that's how it is with everything.

I mean,

those running this system,

they did not care about poor Black

people being drug addicts, you know, and

years ago, decades ago, shooting heroin,

you know, all that

stuff. They didn't care. Or, you know,

acid and all kinds of stuff.

They didn't care.

But when the likes of celebrities and

their children

started taking it

and becoming drug addicts, "Oh, oh my God,

now we

got a drug problem."

Right. Right.

You know? [laughs]

Right. Yeah.

I mean, look,

these people may think they have a master

plan

and that they can, you know, uh, do

what they want with people they see

as beneath them,

but it doesn't work that way.

Doesn't work that way

because first of all,

they ain't even in control.

Mm-hmm.

They are not in control of anything, and

you cannot do wrong

without being victimized by wrong.

It just-

That is true, yeah.

And I'm glad you mentioned this thing-

It don't work that way

... I,

I'm glad you mentioned this thing

that happened in Connecticut because,

you know, a lot of people,

they do have this idea that, uh,

this empire that we're

living in, it's just indestructible

and that it's just, uh,

inevitable and it's gonna continue

forever.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that what we saw happen in,

um, in

Connecticut really brings home the point

that this, this

system, it's really falling apart.

And I was wondering-

Oh, yeah

... like, do, do you agree with that

or what do,

what are your thoughts about that?

Absolutely. And it's, it's driving

the point home because

almost all of the interviews I heard

or saw,

it was a resounding theme. "Oh my God, how

could this happen here? This is a

pristine area-"

Mm-hmm. Right

... "a Norman Rockwell area."

Right.

You know, "How could this happen here?"

You know? [laughs]

Right.

I mean, they're, like,

really messed up about that.

I mean,

"This doesn't happen here in our

community.

Not this kind of community."

Right. Right, right.

And, you know,

it's like they're seeing

that first of all,

they don't have no control,

that this kind of thing can happen.

I mean,

they were talking about how they had the

newest

up-to-date security system in the school.

They had the strongest gun control,

you know, in

Connecticut and, uh, uh,

the boy's mother was, you know,

well-liked and worked at

that school and all that. Yeah, well,

something wasn't right there.

Mm-hmm.

Something was not right there because he

killed her first.

He killed his mother first.

Yeah, that was so bizarre. I mean,

the stories were coming out about how she

used

to-

Oh, it ain't bizarre. Something

was happening-

Oh, yeah

... to that woman. These... Look,

you cannot fool children.

Hmm.

Cannot fool them,

and apparently that boy

didn't really have a mother. She

was not really

a mother to him, what a mother

is supposed to be,

and he couldn't take it. I'm telling you-

Something was wrong. Something was wrong

... it's something like

that because that's why he

killed her and then went to

that school that

she probably loved so much

and start killing up people there.

And, you know, it's, it's,

it's messed up because it's always,

it's always the

kids, you know, who suffer the most.

I mean, I, I remember, uh-

That's right

... the documentary I

was telling you about, they had, uh,

Birdie Africa on there,

and you could just see how,

just how messed up he was just after,

I guess it was just a year after the, the,

uh-

Mm-hmm

...

the attempted genocide of moves happened.

Um,

you could still see the burns on his neck

and his-

Mm-hmm

... you know, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And, you know, thinking at, you know,

the tragedy that happened in Connecticut,

w-

the first thing I thought of actually

was all of the children that this system

has killed,

not only here in the United States,

but overseas-

Yeah. Exactly

... in all these different wars.

But there's no-

Exactly

... there's no tears for them

And that's why Obama was so phony,

and a lot of these

other people were so phony You know,

Obama was up there on the news allegedly

wiping a

tear from his eye.

No, I don't buy it. I'm sorry. [laughs]

Please. I mean,

he's dropping bombs on kids in

Afghanistan.

Right. No tears.

You know?

Yeah.

I mean, come on.

He don't care about kids for real.

He don't care about kids for real,

neither do these other

officials that, you know, wanna, uh,

be all dramatic about this. I mean, it is

horrifying. I'm not saying that it's not.

But I'm saying that these people don't

really give a

damn about kids.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

They don't.

Yeah. So m-

my next question has to do with, uh,

how MOVE views the sort of society

that we're living in.

You know,

we're living in a very technological,

supposedly advanced society, and I,

I have heard some hu-

some sort of rumors that

MOVE is... Uh,

they have some sort of opinion about

technology.

I don't know if they're anti-technology

or what it is.

Oh, yeah.

I was wondering-

Yes, we are. You know, um, we will use

what we need to use to d- you know, get

our work done, to do our work and, and to,

you know, be in

contact with people

and spread information, et cetera.

Mm-hmm.

But we are under no illusions

about this system

and what technology does.

I mean, you got kids walking around today

like zombies-

Yeah

... because their heads are always in,

you know, these electronic games

or their phones

that they play all kinds of games on.

And I, I saw a phone

that has a woman, it's supposedly a

woman, named Serious or Siri or something,

that you ask questions and stuff,

and she talks back to you, you know,

to tell

you, to answer your questions.

And this is like a computer or s-

or something?

It's, it's a phone.

Oh, wow.

A phone. And not just that. I mean, they

got kids younger and younger on computers

in

schools, you know. Uh, I mean,

everything is technology.

Yeah.

And that's why kids

are walking around like zombies,

you know. I mean,

you look in their eyes and,

and they're vacant.

You see nothing.

Yeah.

You know? Also, they're so

unhealthy because when I was a kid,

it was punishment. You

were put on punishment about

not being able to go outside.

Now, it's punishment for kids

to be made to go outside.

Yeah, I mean,

that's an interesting point because we,

uh, you know, especially in

the Black community

and the Latino community,

like the obesity rates

are just through the roof, you know?

Oh, yeah.

And people are saying, "Why? Why? Why

is this happening?" But you know,

I don't see

ki-

kids playing outside like I used to

anymore, you know?

Nope. And look at the foods they eat.

And it's not

always just on the parents because in some

households you got one parent households

and, and the one

parent is working two jobs, you know,

sometimes three.

Yeah.

You know? And the kids are kind of left to

fend for themselves, you know,

and the parents leave money for

them to get pizza or Kentucky Fried

Chicken or

whatever, you know. And

that may not be what the parents really

want them to eat,

but they just can't do no better.

Yeah.

You know?

Right. They have no time to cook

or anything if they're working two jobs.

Yeah. You know?

Yeah.

And some of the ones that

are home [laughs] and maybe

cook don't do much better, you know.

But, um, it's... Yeah, it's,

it's the whole thing.

It's the whole thing.

Yeah. It's-

So

what would you say that we need to do?

I, I mean, not only as a Black community,

but as, in

general,

if we want to have people living a

healthier, more

natural lifestyle, like what,

what would your advice be?

What, what would MOVE's advice be?

It's only one thing, the one thing

that John Africa taught

us:

make life your priority. Life is the

priority.

And when you seriously understand that,

then you put your energy into that,

and all this superficial nonsense

created by this system,

it won't be important anymore.

And there will

be things that you just won't do,

you know. Um, you will put

a priority on yourself, your

health, your life,

and therefore you will put a priority on

your

children's health, on their life,

you know.

Right.

And start demanding things of

this government, you know,

that should,

should be automatic, you know. I mean,

this

government

took control of people's lives from them

and said that, you know, they

were gonna take over

everything. They

were gonna be responsible.

Well, damn it, then be responsible.

You know,

you saying you wanna run the show, well,

it better

work.

This is what we want. This

is what we need, and

we gonna have it or you're out of here.

And I don't mean from one party to

another.

I mean demanding what is right to

protect yourself and your family.

You know, to protect your health,

your safety,

your happiness, contentment, satisfaction.

To protect all of that. And

this government has proven

that it can't do it.

Mm-hmm.

That it can't do it.

So, you know, people are gonna have

to start doing it themselves and

demanding what's right and refusing to

accept anything less.

Yeah.

You know? That's, that's the main thing.

Make life your priority, because if your

health is important to you, you will not

tolerate

unhealthy food and unhealthy lifestyle,

unhealthy thoughts. I mean, you,

you just won't

tolerate it.

That's why MOVE confronts the system the

way we do. Nobody is gonna get in our face

and tell us or convince us that health

comes from a bottle, a bottle of medicine,

you know?

Mm-hmm.

Or that, um,

children's

righteousness and, uh, their growth and

development comes from a school.

That you have to turn your

children over to strangers,

you know, turn them over to this system in

order for them to be somebody,

to have what

they need. I mean,

what are they telling people?

That you're a fool, you

don't know what you're doing.

You gave birth to this baby, but y-

you don't

know how to raise this baby.

You don't know what this baby-

[laughs] Right. Right

...

you gotta give it to us to take care of.

That's basically what they're saying,

yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. They are. But people

are not trained

to see it that way. You know, to them, oh,

this is just how it

is. You know,

you have a baby in a hospital,

not on your own with the health and

strength of life, you know?

Mm-hmm.

Not that, but you need us, you need the

system

in order to even have a baby.

No other species of life

goes to a hospital to, to have babies.

[laughs] Right.

No other species of life does that.

Yeah.

Only humans.

That's real. I never thought of it

that way, but that's-

Superior being.

[laughs] That's true.

Well, I didn't think of it like

that either until John Africa-

Mm

... you know,

taught us to see these things.

It's so interesting how, like,

like you're s- like you're saying,

this system makes

us so dependent upon it for everything.

Like we just-

It retards us.

Yeah. Yeah.

It retards us.

Yeah.

And-

And, you know,

there's a lot of people out there though

who

unfortunately,

you know, for some reason or whatever,

they, they're just not trying to hear it.

They, they love the comforts

and the security

what supposedly-

But that's okay.

How, how do we-

That's okay

... how do you deal with these people,

you know?

Like when you're trying to do-

We don't.

Um.

We don't. If we

give information and examples to people

and

they wanna fight us on it

and hold onto the system, that's

fine.

We let them have it because this system

got something for them. Got, you know-

Yeah

... it's gonna show them-

Yeah

... its true colors. I mean,

them people in, in

Connecticut, they love this system.

They believe in it.

They, they,

you know, felt like it

was working for them. They were thriving.

Life was beautiful. Life was good.

Mm.

But they got a wake-up call, didn't they?

Yeah. Yeah.

They got a wake-up call,

and they gonna get a lot more of them.

That way

and things, uh, from nature,

from mama herself,

like tsunamis and hurricanes and stuff,

they

gonna be made to realize what's

really important

and what's not. They're gonna be made to

see what this system is doing to them.

Yeah, I agree with you,

and I think people kind of know this in

the back of their

mind.

I think that's where a lot of this 2012

hysteria is coming from.

Mm-hmm.

Like people are so obsessed with the end

of the world and things coming to an end

and things being destroyed.

That's the only.

What, I mean, what, what do you think of,

I mean, what are your thoughts on this,

uh, you know, end,

the end of the world/zombie apocalypse,

uh-

Life will never end.

Mm.

Life will never end.

You can't point to the

beginning of life, and you will never ever

experience the end of life.

This system, as we know it, yeah. I mean,

plenty

of civilizations have gone down.

Right.

I mean, look, look at history. Plenty of

civilizations have gone down, but life

is still here.

Right. So you,

you're pretty sure the world's not gonna

end tomorrow?

That life is not gonna end tomorrow.

Right. Right.

This system as we know it, you know, will

never last.

Yeah.

Will never last. It was created by

humans who are not perfect, who don't know

what the hell we're doing, and

if we refuse to

look to the source that does know

what it's doing, mama nature,

the coordinator of

life, then nothing that

we create, that man creates, is gonna

work. How can it?

We don't know what we're doing.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, mama gave us the

magnificence of the sun.

Man, in his arrogance,

created a light bulb.

Mm-hmm.

Now,

does the sun ever blow out?

Hmm. It's there every day.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly. But what about the light bulb?

[laughs] You gotta keep buying more.

Exactly.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah. I, I think, you know,

this has given me a,

a totally different perspective on

MOVE myself, because I,

I had never really heard these things,

so thank you for

that. And I think, um, you know,

we have a lot of people around today who

see being green or being, um,

environmentally friendly as this sort of

like trendy new thing.

But it seems like MOVE has always been

about that,

and that's what it's, you know,

founded on.

That-

We were composting back in the early '70s

and people went

crazy-

... talking about, "Oh my God,

they're throwing garbage in the

backyard. Ugh, it's nasty."

Yeah.

Yeah. They're a-

ahead of the curve on that one,

definitely, 'cause now everybody's

trying to do that. [laughs]

Yep.

So I, I know... Okay, I, I don't want to,

I don't want to use up too much more time

because, uh, you've been-

Yeah, I understand

... generous already. I have, uh,

just one last question I wanna ask you,

and this

is about the current situation with the

MOVE 9 and with Mumia-

Yeah

... and what's going on with them.

And can you, can you just tell people

if they

wanna get involved or help

or do something, uh,

what they can do with that?

Okay. Um, the MOVE 9

served 34 years in prison as of August

8th of this year.

They're now working on 35 years.

Their minimum sentence was,

I'm sorry, was 30 years. 30 to 100 years

they got in prison.

Their 30-year minimum was up in

2008.

Um,

the government refuses to parole them,

you know. Um, they said they,

they're denying them

parole because they won't take

responsibility

for the crime, the death of James Ramp.

And my family's been telling them for over

30, you

know, years, going on 35 years now,

that they didn't kill him.

And that was a police officer who was,

who was-

Yeah. That was the, uh,

cop that was killed on August 8th in 1978,

shot with

the bullet traveling downward

while MOVE people

were all in the basement of our home.

He was standing up on street level.

Hmm.

Now,

you explain to me how MOVE could have shot

him

and had the bullet travel on a downward

angle.

The man was above them, not,

not below them.

Yeah.

You know? So, um,

the parole board refuses to parole them

and, um, you know,

we're pushing the parole board

now, you know,

to

back off, you know,

because it's not legitimate what

they're doing.

Right.

It's not legitimate. It's not even legal.

I mean, how you gonna demand

that somebody say they're guilty,

even if they are, number one, but

certainly when they're not.

How you gonna demand that they say they're

guilty in order to be paroled? I mean,

first of

all, there are countless examples of

people that the government swore

was guilty and had

them in prison for decades-

Hmm

... like my family,

only to have DNA testing or, um,

new evidence come, come out, or

somebody actually come forward

and confess.

And they had to let the person, you know,

out of jail, had to

release them after decades in prison.

Had to release them because they

were not guilty.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

I mean, so how are you... With a,

with a track record like that

especially,

where do you get the arrogance,

the arrogance to demand that somebody

say they're guilty in order to be paroled?

Yeah,

they are definitely political prisoners

for sure.

Yeah,

they're being held there just because.

I mean,

how can nine people be responsible for,

for one shooting a- anyway, you

know? Uh,

it just doesn't make any sense

when you think about it.

Um,

what... And also, what about, uh, Mumia?

What's going on with him right now?

I know that he, he

was granted clemency from, from,

from the death penalty.

Well, they, they, um,

gave him life in prison without parole-

Hmm

... as a, uh, you know, than, um,

executing him, which I mean, they

were forced to back off of,

um, the death penalty. But

life in prison without parole

is not acceptable

either.

Right.

Our position has always been

that Mumia's innocent, don't belong

in prison anyway, you know.

Right.

So we're still fighting. You know,

there are still some

issues that, um, Mumia is

dealing with, uh, legally in court and,

um, you know, we, we're not backing up.

We are not backing up. We

are continuing the

fight for the MOVE 9 and for Mumia. And,

um,

if people wanna contact us for more

information,

um, they can contact us at

onamovellja@gmail.com.

That's

O-N-A-M-O-V-E-L-L-J-A

@gmail.com.

Uh, and they can call for MOVE at

215-386-1165.

For Mumia, um, they can call

267-760-7344,

and that's for my sister Pam Africa,

who coordinates the

International Concerned Family

and Friends for Mumia

Abu-Jamal.

And, um,

oh God,

I'm ashamed to say I cannot remember that

website. I... It's either .com or

.org. One of them is a police site.

Oh, gosh.

[laughs] Yeah. And the other one

is the site

that Mumia supporters put together.

I think it's mumia.com

that is our site.

Okay. I'll f- I'll find it

and I'll put it on the webpage-

Right

... so people can go to it.

Right.

And, uh, and Ramona,

I wanna thank you again for taking the

time, uh, to do this

interview.

Um, you're welcome.

It's so much good information.

[laughs] No problem.

I'm glad we finally connected,

'cause I was starting-

Yeah. [laughs]

... to say, "What is happening?" [laughs]

That,

that happens sometimes with the schedule.

Yeah.

It gets mixed up.

Yeah.

But I'm glad it happened, and I,

I'll definitely, uh,

be talking to you next time I

see you out and about.

I know you always be out there doing

stuff.

Yep. Yep.

Okay.

Okay. You take care.

Take care. On the move.

All right. On the move.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.