Michael Africa speaks on Political Prisoner's

[Nesayem]

The beating of young Delbert Africa during the Philly police invasion of the MOVE home on Aug. 8, 1978, was shown on television. Just after this photo was taken, police smashed his head with a rifle butt. Then his head is shown flapping back and forth as cops kick him from each side.

On political prisoners
by Michael Africa
On the move!

Solitary confinement is a position that most true activists experience regardless of their location. Whether on a cell block or a street block, the life of an activist is one of isolation.

Public officials want to isolate the activists in the community in an attempt to contain them. Old acquaintances distance themselves when they realize the activist is aggressively confronting the same system they have been taught all their lives to fear and avoid.

But as old friends distance themselves, new comrades emerge who also feel compelled to confront a system that has terrorized your power of purpose. These comrades, however, are always subject to be snatched away by the system.

Once these same activists are thrown in jail, the isolation tactic increases a thousandfold. All the tactics the system employed in an attempt to break the will and the spirit of the activist are applied non-stop, 24/ 7, to the political prisoner. The authorities then figure they have the prisoner exactly the way they want him or her: beaten and silenced – or so they figure.

In a further attempt to silence and contain political prisoners, officials keep some in the holes of the worst prisons in the country. And as demonstrated by the prison guards turned soldiers and sent to Iraq’s Abu Ghraib terror camp, the same tactics have been employed on prisoners in this country.

This torture is a continuous tool of the ghouls that run these slave camps. And the more political prisoners stand up to these cowards, the more they are targeted and isolated.

Political prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal and the Angola 3 have been isolated in these dungeons for a quarter of a century by people who find it intolerable that people stand up and speak the truth. MOVE people have been forced into the holes for five- and seven-year blocks at various times during the various rigged up sentences we have been given.

The torture and isolation for the political prisoners also extends to their families, as was demonstrated by Philadelphia officials when they targeted MOVE’s home on May 13, 1985. Dropping a bomb on the house, they massacred everyone inside: Four men, two women and five babies! Four of them were the children of the embattled MOVE women and men, in the holes from earlier confrontations with the same Philadelphia officials and terror cop brigades.

Being a political prisoner in isolation means enduring a multitude of gut wrenching experiences on a daily basis. It means watching guards – who will always find a way to further harass you – bring you your meals and your mail.

They come to get you for a shower, where you have to completely expose yourself by coming out of your cell wearing only a towel. It is painful watching these same guards harass your family and friends when they come to visit you, treating them like criminals as well, in an attempt to discourage them from supporting you.

Being a political prisoner in isolation is sometimes getting to see yourself in the mirror and not recognizing the changes in the reflection. Being a political prisoner is watching your parents grow old as they continue to visit, less frequently, until too many calendars prevent them from showing. It is being told of your loved ones’ passing by people who hate you and only use the news as another tool to dig at you.

Being a political prisoner is watching your siblings grow more unfamiliar to you with each passing year. Watching as they struggle to keep disturbing family news from you. Seeing them not realize that, after decades of this treatment, you no longer feel like the brother, the son, but a kind of guest in your own family.

Being a political prisoner makes you feel terrified of touching things that you keep locked up in the recesses of your mind. Like the first day your young children woke up without you anywhere near. How it must have been for them to only know you through an entire lifetime of brief visits under the ever-watchful eye of people they know hate you – and because they hate you, look upon them with much suspicion.

Being a political prisoner means watching your family struggle, locked into a lifetime of battles of support on your behalf. Defending you and then having to defend themselves from the corporations that exist only to try to exploit the families and friends of prisoners. The lawyers, the phone companies, the commissaries, the suppliers, all of whom jack up their prices when dealing with prisons.

Being a political prisoner is watching your sister, Merle Africa, one of the MOVE 9, die in a prison, having spent the last 20 years of her life in a goddamn dungeon for a crime that even the mayor of the city admitted he knew she was innocent of – and nevertheless would do nothing about – as she died in a prison where she was sent by his courts and terrorist cops.

Being a political prisoner means taking all of these things and using them as motivation to keep fighting, knowing that this is exactly the kind of injustice that compelled you to want to stand against and confront the system in the first place.

All political prisoners should be supported and freed! The system only gets away with this treatment of political prisoners because the people allow it.

The silent give their permission through their silence. It is past time that all political prisoners are freed and given the same kind of support that they have always shown to the people for whom they sacrificed their lives.

On the move! Long live MOVE! Long live the revolution! Long live John Africa!

[SheRose]

Nothing can be done about ANY of the atrocities we face in THIS country until we become a SEPARATE nation within a NATION. Then can we CHOOSE our own leaders to NEGOTIATE with this rascal of a nation. When you are living UNDER THE RULE of another, you can have NO DAMNED SAY SO about how he's running things, for he is saying in HIS MIND...get your own damned nation and then YOU can run it how you damned well please.

Black folks should forget about EVERYTHING now, in this MOMENT of earth time called TIME and transform their hearts and minds on NATION TIME and say to hell with the Caucasians and their ways, their laws. Their world has fallen already! Look around! They are fugitives and vagabonds in this NEW WORLD. Their MARK is all over them, everywhere they travel. While they are busy fluckin up the OLD WORLD even more, we should be building our TRUE NATION, as some of us are indeed doing. They are paying us little, if ANY, attention anymore, these last and final days anyway.

Yesssssss, we should be taking this time to be building. We should be into training of every kind needed for the survival of a nation within a nation.
One of the first steps i'd say is to get your fruits and vegetables out of their gardens. In other words, get your children from under their thumb and rule. GET THEM OUT OF THEIR SCHOOLS and SYSTEMS of THOUGHT. They get through to US by way of our children in their innocence. They corrupt them in their innocence, plant ideas against US through them. Snatch your children out NOW. But be ye also ready! For they are going to change the laws whenever they see more and more Black children disappearing from their clutches. So have a backup plan. Right now HOMESCHOOL is still legal and it will take a period to change the law because MORE caucasians home school than blacks, so, the PERIOD should be used for the planning of the backup system for when they DO and WILL change the law concerning the Home Schooling of children. And what should the "back up" plan be? The back up plan will be to build your own school. Recruiting our teachers from out of their systems. Doesn't matter how few we can get in the beginning. We'll need just enough to get the first school or schools started then branch out. NO whites will be allowed initially or eventually, because we are nation building. No uncle Toms or Tomasina's will be needed either, they have proven that they are just spies.

A nation CAN be built and it can be built with a few good men and women who know what they're doing, who are on a mission, who believe in themselves and the survival of their people, who have a sincere love for their people in their hearts but who recognizes their enemies on sight, whether they be Black or White.

Sherose

[Moorbey]

Our imprisioned P.O.W.s we must continue to write them and continue to let them know that they are alone or forgotten. And continue to fight on their behalf. Keep showing them the love cause they choose to stand and fight the injustice taking place in our communities.

[freepoet]

On a Bitter Cold Night,This last Mid week.In a Town with one Cab that was not at my disposal,my Body said Turn Back.But My Mind say Push on.As I walked the Full mile plus with some College Students, that Lived on the dorms.The cold Bitter air smelled of Burning wood and Evregreen.I wanted to warm my feet and The New books I was carrying to sell got heavier and Heavier.But as soon as I walked in the door of the Auditorium,I recived a BIG Warm Hug,By Pam Africa of The M.O.V.E Organization.A woman who I knew only as worked and Sacrificed with Time,energy,Blood,her Familys Blood to Heal The Community,and Tirelessly Fought for Brother Mumias Release From Death Row.I'd Never meet,and was Surprized That so Much History was in a Woman of Barely 5 foot and 110lbs.or so.The Event coupled with Colia Clark,Suzanne Ross who are activists in their own right spoke.You could hear a pin drop,in the Crowded Auditorium.Ms.Clark being a former teacher of C.U.N.Y Had the Auidence Mezmerized by Black History gems and story's of a barely 20 year old Dr.Martin Luther King.But when Pam Africa Spoke, The room Trembled with Intensity.''From a Sista from around tha way'' Vibe,Is Such a Pleasure and a Rarety now adays.It was inspiring,motivating,informative and an ever reminding shock,and Disgrace of how much Media Censorship we have in the U.S.Once I got Home from the Bitter Cold and the Fire Hot Event!I snuggled into my Warm bed.I appreciated and felt well deserved somehow. Knowing that the Truth is Perpetuating things getting better.And are ...''ON THE MOVE!'' authorsden.com/carolyncbaxter

[Sun Ship]

You can watch a documentary concerning the group MOVE online in it's entirety at the link below:

MOVE

here is a short commentary from the Brightcove web

Police bomb MOVE House On May 13, 1985, in a failed attempt to serve arrest warrants on four members of the group, Philadelphia police became engaged in a gun battle at MOVE's communal residence. The mayor had, in response to pressure from the neighborhood that included a threat to use "vigilante justice," turned over the situation to the police commissioner with the instructions to find a way to arrest the MOVE members. At this point it became a police matter and an entry plan was drawn up under the direction of Police Commissioner Sambor. The plan called for a mixture of civilian and military explosives to be dropped on the fortification that had been built by MOVE on top of the house in order to destroy it. The satchel of explosives, alternately characterized as a "bomb" and an "entry device," was to be dropped on MOVE's rooftop structure from a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter. The fortification was also described as either a "gun turret" or a purely defensive fortification. The structure was unoccupied at the time the bomb was dropped, although there were a number of people living in the house. The bomb did not significantly damage the rooftop structure, but did ignite several barrels of gasoline, clearly marked "fuel," starting a fire which destroyed the entire block and killed eleven people. City hoses, deployed as a part of the original entry plan, were not turned on until 45 minutes after the fire started burning. Ironically, the city's best firefighting equipment had been trained on the rooftop bunker all morning, but "the decision was made to let the fire burn" in the words of Sambor. Firefighters on the scene claimed that the extensive use of hydrant water prior to the bombing had reduced pressure in the system so low that equipment could not be deployed. Police also prevented firefighters from taking preventive measures such as chopping down the wooden connecting porch roofs by which the fire spread from building to adjacent building. Police stated that firefighters were kept back from the area out of concern for their safety but there is no evidence that house residents fired on any rescue workers after the bomb was dropped. About 10,000 rounds of ammunition were fired by the police in to the house. 62 houses burned to the ground; only Ramona Africa and Michael Ward (aka Birdie Africa) escaped alive. Six adults and five children in the MOVE house were killed. William H. Brown 3d, the lawyer who chaired the investigating commission in the aftermath, has been quoted as saying "I firmly believe that more people got out than Birdie and Ramona [and didn't survive] - that's one thing that still nags at me." Police initially said they had been fired upon first with automatic weapons, but only a small number of non-automatic weapons were found in the burned-out home. MOVE supporters have described the raid as a revenge attack for the 1978 shooting. In the aftermath of the catastrophe the city launched a special investigation which found, among other things, that "Dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable." The mayor was re-elected in the next election, and no police officer was fined, fired or suspended. Philadelphia has paid over $32 million to the victims, including $840,000 to Michael Ward, $1.5 million to Ramona Africa and the relatives of John and Frank Africa, and has been ordered to pay $29 million to residents of Osage Avenue and Pine Street whose homes were destroyed by the fire, and their replacement had to be torn down later. (The city of Philadelphia, now under former Philadelphia City Council President and now Mayor John F. Street, is appealing the latter award.) On December 1, 2005, U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam cut the original jury verdict of $12.8 million in more than half, to $6 million.