Philly leaders should step up and apologize for MOVE bombing, 35 years later | Solomon Jones

I was a senior in high school when the City of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on the MOVE compound.

I lived in North Philly, and Osage Avenue was West Philadelphia. It might as well have been the other side of the world. I knew that 11 lives were lost. I knew some of them were children, but I was a teenager — so caught up in my own life that I couldn’t spare the mental space to think deeply about someone else’s.

Back then I was less than a month from graduating Northeast High School, and I didn’t grasp the gravity of the moment. Now, 35 years later, the City of Philadelphia is reckoning with the possibility of apologizing for bombing a home, killing 11 people, and destroying 61 houses. And I am struggling with the fact that it has taken them this long to arrive at this point.

Philadelphia owes an apology to its people — and not just for dropping a bomb that killed 11 people on May 13, 1985. Philadelphia also owes an apology to its citizens for allowing years of bitterness and anger to boil over into an action that put the lives of Philadelphians in the crosshairs of a law enforcement system hellbent on revenge.

The events of May 13, 1985, didn’t start that day. They started in 1978, when bullets flew during a violent confrontation between MOVE and police officers after MOVE refused the city’s order to vacate a compound at 33rd and Pearl Streets.

When the smoke cleared, Police Officer James Ramp lay dead in the street. Sixteen other police and firefighters were injured. When MOVE member Delbert Africa emerged from the house, police beat him mercilessly. When the group moved to Osage Avenue, where neighbors complained about constant noise and other issues, the city moved in once more to remove them, and the city came with military force.

Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr., the city’s first black mayor, sent the police and fire department to handle the removal of MOVE members from their Osage Avenue compound, but rather than using battering rams, police dropped a bomb, firefighters allowed the resultant fire to burn, and 11 people lost their lives.

Goode has since apologized for his role in that tragedy. Now Goode, along with activists and others, is calling for the city to apologize, as well.

Eric Grimes, an activist and talk show host at Philadelphia’s WURD radio, initiated the process that brought Goode and others to this point. Grimes believes it’s about much more than an apology. He believes it is primarily about justice.

“I don’t think there has been resolution and justice around what happened in Philadelphia on May 13, 1985, and the other issues before that,” Grimes told me. “Part of the thing that limits our ability to pursue justice is our sole focus on Mayor Goode. And I believe Mayor Goode has a lot to be accountable for and to atone for. But we have to understand that that day was bigger than him. It was a local, state, and federal action that we need to understand happened on that day. The apology is a start and an initiation to ignite a city to reexamine itself based on that event that day.”

“The city has to acknowledge that as a system, their intention was wrong because they intended to kill people on that day,” he told me.

Believing that there were those in the police and fire departments who wanted to kill Philadelphians is a hard pill to swallow, but I think Grimes is right.

That’s why the city must apologize. City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the West Philadelphia district where the incident took place, has been working with a group of activists to make the apology happen.

They include Grimes, Ulysses Slaughter, Mike Africa Jr., Gabriel Bryant, and Pauline Thompson. The group drafted an apology that Gauthier will introduce as a resolution after the coronavirus lockdown ends.

For now, she plans to issue a public statement as a prelude to the legislation.

“Our city dropped a bomb on a house and killed people, including children,” Gauthier told me. “That’s a horrible, horrible thing. And I think we all have that realization. I don’t think anybody you talk to would say we didn’t commit a great wrong.”

“It’s been a black mark on our city for years and years and years,” she continued. “This is a great opportunity to admit accountability and offer the genuine citywide apology that should have been given a long time ago and, hopefully, to move toward greater healing.”