MOVE was shown on March 25 at Drexel's Earle Mack School of Law, to an audience consisting almost entirely of students and hosted by one of the school's faculty, Donald Tibbs. Instead the group relocated to a house at 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, which it fortified against future attack. A caption concludes his story: the cop’s locker was later scrawled with the epithet “n----r lover” and he left the police force, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In this context, the racist bonapartism of the Philadelphia police became even more pronounced as the cops were deployed to keep the lid on this pressure cooker of discontent. While MOVE could be eccentric and scary to some, the city largely ignored neighbors’ complaints. He spent more than ten years collecting clips from television news programs, police videos and other archival film footage that comprise the documentary. The demonstration was a travesty, with the emcee announcing that organizers “wanted it to be made very clear to the city administration and the City of Philadelphia that we are not marching today in support of MOVE” (Philadelphia Daily News, 31 May 1985). What filmgoers are forced to deal with are the visceral and shocking images of mass murder by the state that the capitalist rulers would prefer for people to forget. At 95 minutes, the movie progresses briskly as it goes from the surrealism of the Philadelphia Special Investigation Committee hearings to the hallucinatory news footage detailing the years, weeks and minutes that led to that dreadful day. Ramona Africa has testified that police snipers fired at adults and children alike who attempted to flee the burning building. When heavily armed police arrived to clear the premises, a gun battle ensued, allegedly on both sides, although the MOVE "weapons" recovered afterward were inoperable. Under his direction, police planted themselves on MOVE’s doorstep, hounding members and supporters every time they left their home. Kelly Conrad reviews. Ramona takes questions Another reaction by the ruling class to black discontent and rebellion in Philadelphia, as well as other cities across the country, was to install black mayors to contain the rage and frustration. Philadelphia became infamous as "the city that bombed itself," although it is a little more accurate to say that what it bombed was its black self. The recently released documentary Let the Fire Burn is a valuable tool for this very purpose, making it a must-see. Beginning in May 1977, the cops put MOVE under round-the-clock surveillance. This is America!” Indeed, the hideous crime that followed was a concentrated expression of the racist state terror meted out to black people every day in capitalist America. As we noted shortly after the 1985 massacre: “Our duty to combat the state vendetta against MOVE is part of our unremitting campaign against the government’s targeting of troublesome opponents as ‘terrorists’” (WV No. The operation to “evict” those inside MOVE’s Osage Avenue home, which resembled more the leveling of a Vietnamese village, began with the proclamation: “Attention, MOVE. Colorlines is a daily news site where race matters, featuring award-winning in-depth reporting, news analysis, opinion and curation. In Reagan’s America, to be black and a social nuisance was enough to be made a non-person and bombed to smithereens. The documentary “Let the Fire Burn” explores the lead-up, execution and aftermath of the brutal bombing that killed 11 people and left 250 people homeless. Of the 13 MOVE members in the house, 11, including five children, were killed. Going back before MOVE, Philadelphia was known for its killer cops. MOVE founder John Africa was among the dead as were five children under the age of 13. No case, at least since the military reoccupation of Newark and Detroit during the great urban riots of 1967, has been as egregious as the MOVE assaults. Sambor trumps Rizzo Toward the end of Let the Fire Burn, the film highlights the testimony before the commission by one cop who recalled leading Birdie Africa away after he emerged from the burning building. Goode, along with the rest of the city, watched the fire burn on his television set at City Hall. In 1978 MOVE was ordered to leave its compound. No policeman or any government official was ever charged in the massacre. None of the perpetrators ever faced charges, while Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor, was arrested and served every day of a seven-year prison sentence. Minimal narration (in the form of captions) is given to this footage in an effort by Osder to force his viewers to “interpret and deal with” the events of May 13. On 13 May 1985, black Democratic mayor Wilson Goode and his city administration, acting in collaboration with the Feds, firebombed the West Philadelphia home of the MOVE organization, a mostly black, back-to-nature commune.