Move Bombing: When the Philadelphia Police Bombed a Black Community

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I just put up a piece on Facebook about the recent release of Move member Delbert Orr Africa who served 42 years in prison after the Philadelphia police dropped a bomb on the roof of their home that also set the neighborhood ablaze. I remember that event clearly.  Debbie Sims Africa was released in 2018.

The immediate result of the bombing that hit the roof of their home was the death of six adults including the group's leaders John Africa as well as five children. There was not one iota of consideration for the people in that neighborhood and what the dropping of the bomb might do to others. It's an early example of the US military's description of the civilians its activities kill during its pacification of weaker nations and peoples, collateral damage.

I recently met a couple of cops from another country. I asked them about their experiences here in the US as they said they had conducted joint work and training sessions with US police. Their impression was that the US cops were "all about domination". The object was to completely dominate and humiliate if necessary and they didn't feel that their US counterparts had the same training in dealing with people that they did. They said there was little if any sense of trying to communicate in a humane way with the subject.

It would be inconceivable for the number and amount of killing/murders that occur at the hands of the police here in the US to happen in many other countries, especially the inordinate amount of young people of color. Just recall that they left Michael Brown's body in the street for three hours there in Ferguson. What they did in Philadelphia that day in 1985 was drop an incendiary device on a home full of adults, children and their pets in a congested neighborhood. As the narrator says in the video, image if that had been a white neighborhood. all hell would break loose. No official has been punished or even apologized for this mass murder.

Here's a link to an earlier article about the release of Debbie Sims Africa