MOVE Supporter's Defense Of Child Abuse

(Pic of the children of MOVE holding signs they can't read)

Recently, I posted an article from this blog at the Philly IMC site. I don’t do this kind of thing nearly as much as I used to as I came to the realization that “radical” community has always and probably will always, have a general ambivalence towards MOVE.

The folks at the Philly IMC do allow me to post my work at their site, which as I mentioned before is a break in the trend of other IMC’s that find it necessary to censor my critiques of MOVE, no matter how painfully restrained I try to tailor them.

The post in question had to do with MOVE’s abuse of children, in particular whether human biology had given the sect a kind of pass with regards to their forcing barely pubescent children to become pregnant and “married”, the latter institution arguably being antithetical to human nature altogether, but that kind of talk is for another day.

Often enough, some anonymous individual will leave a comment on my IMC post with the usual kind of chicken-shit, squalid, genuine farce of a response that comes nowhere near being a real rebuttal or refutation of my work and which typically either begins or end with some kind of personal attack.

One would think that after four years of such ad-hominem viciousness failing to upend me from my position, that those who take up the banner of stupid personal attacks would come up with something better, but the whole lacking of thought is after all the problem in the first place.

Only somebody entrenched in a sick moral atmosphere would try and justify the rape of children or to try and deny the reality of the acts to which Ramona Africa has already conceded MOVE members carry out. There simply is no argument to be had whether girls entering puberty get pregnant and “married” while in MOVE. Ramona admitted as much and nobody in MOVE has ever stepped up to call me a liar. They know the truth about the matter more so than I do and they know that to many people in their midst already know about it, so they don’t even bother with the lies. There is no difference to be split, or a truth hidden between two opposing parties.

MOVE’s explicit policy, or religious dictums if you will, with regards to these girls and the slightly older boys who are in only a slightly less oppressive state is as unambiguous. The cult leaves the c“voiceless” children of MOVE, who can only mouth the lies of those around them and who must live in fear of their crimes of thought manifesting on their faces.

It is the deluded MOVE supporter who is left unable or unwilling to imagine their comrades taking little girls who can barely read or write, who if the words of children who have been able to get away from MOVE are correct, want nothing more to be like the “normal” kids around them. It is the apotheosis of the ostrich in the form of MOVE’s supporters, that allow for this kind thing to go on.

Can you imagine the fear of a 11 year old girl, who has no semblance of a real education in anything of substance, but who does have an un-healthy respect for the leaders of the cult which rapes them of their souls, their youth, their minds, and hope. You can’t say that their freedom has been taken because if they were raised in MOVE, they have never breathed the free air. They have been reared in an environment that is impossible for you to understand. Barely possible for me to understand and I was up in it for years. The deliberate, emotional crippling inflicted upon the children by the cult’s leaders is so very soul crushing and starts at such a young age, that from my view, the desired result is a person ready to be either cannon fodder just like MOVE did to it’s children in 1978 and 1985 . In 2002, when in a “confrontation” with John Gilbride, who dared to challenge MOVE’s leader, Alberta Africa, MOVE again quite literally had their children held aloft in front of the cameras like a prelude to some awful human sacrifice. The message to the City of Philadelphia was clear and chilling to the city’s leadership as it had to have been understood that if a “confrontation” went down, those girls, women, and children, would be placed in the line of fire, just as they had been in previous confrontations with the group. Human shields are needed in a martyrdom cult.

I include the comment that illicited this post for a couple of reasons. Note the evasiveness of the “anonymous” poster and the kind of arrogance and self-centeredness of the typical cult apologist.

There are also a couple of examples of sheer ignorance that scream for a response. The MOVE apologist opines that I am offering the “same article” written over and over again. According to them, “like 20 times or something”. That is a slight against me, but not in way it is intended. If I have only written 20 times about MOVE’s abuse of children since my departure from the group four years ago, than I am failing those kids. Their abuse should be exposed for what it is and should I be calling out this injustice alone in the wilderness, than that is the way it is. I would be wholly remiss should I fail to mention the nightmare that is the life of children in MOVE in each and every discussion of them. I owe them more than that, but I am one person, it is time for other people to raise their voice, say their names, and to say “enough is enough”. The children of MOVE are not really “children of MOVE”, nor are they members of MOVE, they are little kids, no more or no less than your children and mine. The vulgarity and crass ugliness that is MOVE, is not what these children are. They, very well could be something if they were freed from MOVE.

Moreover, a MOVE or Mumia supporter has cajones of cast iron steel to mark my advocacy on behalf of MOVE children to be some kind of “narrow obsession”. Check the Philly IMC and you will find article after article and feature after feature dedicated to the unquestionable cult of personality surrounding everybody’s favorite cop-killer. During my years with MOVE, nobody in that creepy world offered any complaints about my persistence. How quickly the self-pointed heroes of free speech will show their true colors when their heroes are challenged to defend their own actions. How quickly they scramble to quiet those who ask the hard questions. Free speech it seems for convicted murderers and their defenders and none for you if you disagree. Rank hypocrisy in it’s more odious of forms.

Am I “obsessed” with MOVE marriages? I do have a searing contempt towards adults who bad enough, sell themselves out to MOVE, but also readily sell out their own children to adults who impose their own twisted world-view and race around constructing walls of fear to keep these children insulated against the world.

It was my hatred of injustice that brought me into MOVE and which led me out. No personal failure or success spurns my work here. Thankfully, and in spite of what I probably deserve, I am successful in so many ways, and the ways I am not, I am working on without some deranged, John Afirca junkie, to monitor and comment upon and direct my life.

One thing that has been written about me and often is that I had a “failed marriage”. The reality is that I had a very successful marriage as it brought about the single most important entity in the world for me, the biggest motivator, and whose light is the one that shines through the fog of uncertainty. Also, my ex-wife is free of MOVE and has moved on. I still love her and always will, as the mother of my child and the woman whom I would stilIn leaving MOVE, I knew that there was a big chance my relationship would end. I had studied enough about cults and the processes of leaving them and had seen the grim statistics for post-sect relationships.

For many, the seed of discontent in the heart is planted as freedom takes center stage. There are a multitude of reasons why so many ex-cultists end up broken up and divorced, the desire to purge everything in your life relating to the group, the assertion of independence after years or repression and self-censorship. There is the desire to shake of the puritanical tendencies and chase down a chemical romance while you try to bring “romance” and other previously prohibited things people take for granted. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when your world gets turned upside down that things and people can sometimes break.

Marriage is hard enough, enter the issue of a former cult, a relationship that started young, that was being “directed” as much as possible by MOVE members. And than the realization she had to face that I had not confided my feelings about MOVE to her, but to a stranger. The loss of my marriage counts as my darkest time, that I am still reeling from, but what came of that marriage was hope.

That hope came in a tinny little person whose very existence caused me to re-evaluate my priorities, myself, and to, for the first time, really look the future square in the eye. I had a daughter, but she would and will never be relegated to the mind killing youth programs of MOVE.

The commentator offers the view that the very photo I included in my post somehow invalidated my position. Indeed, the picture is of a young couple. The “husband” of Pixie Africa, age 11 or 12 in the picture is to be sure, several years older than his bride, but they are both still kids in age, and certainly in the mind. And as much as MOVE’s leaders like to flaunt their “beliefs” in front of people who they feel comfortable with, they are not so naive as to advertise the fact that they are actively engaging in criminal activity. I guess Pam Africa’s daughter does perhaps look older than she is. MOVE members, despite protestations otherwise, do love their cosmetics, from Ramona Africa’s hair dye, to Pixie’s homage to Jon Benet Ramsey on her wedding day.

And as I wrote before, MOVE admits these things go on, so this photograph is just an example of what MOVE really is about. My “proof” of child-rape is born out of living with MOVE members, working with MOVE members, my understanding of MOVE’s belief as it was taught to me. Also, the words of Ramona Africa herself. For those of you reading about this for the first time, or as a reminder, here is the benign sounding defense of the rape of children as offered by “Mona” as she is known in MOVE.:

“Women in MOVE do marry and have babies at what this american society might now consider to be a young age but we follow the coordination of Mother Nature who coordinates it such that she determines when a woman is ready for marriage and babies”

With due respect to Ramona, for the record, “Mother Nature” has nothing at all to do with the forced impregnation of young girls in MOVE. The coupling in the group is not the result of hormones gone wild, nor is it the result of curiosity gone too far. MOVE’s leadership arrange marriages of the children in the group. Even adults in MOVE and close supporters can find themselves being goaded into relationships they don’t want. As ever with the group, what is perceived best for the group’s leaders, is ostensibly the best for the individuals. It is an explicitly authoritarian enterprise that masquerades as a viable alternative to “the system”, all the while maintaining something more akin to a modern day institution of slavery than one that fosters free thought and choice, neither of which are valued comodities in MOVE.

It is interesting to me the issue of my being banned from other IMC’s is brought up. After all, aren’t MOVE members and Mumia the vanguards of “free speech”? Yet they and their supporters continue to press for me to be silenced under the false pretext of my being a “right wing flamer” etc...I don’t know exactly why the Philly IMC has not banned my articles. But I will speculate that it has nothing at all to do with anybody being “threatened” by my articles. That said, over the years there have been numerous attempts to have my work censored, including attempts by MOVE supporters to have me banned from the Philly IMC. I know the lies of MOVE inside and out and they and their supporters know it.

I may rant and maybe I am “insane”, but what that does not negate the reality of what MOVE is, nor will I be compelled to silence by insults from cowards so unimaginative and weak that they cannot even come forward and be named and stand behind what they write. It is far easier to sit back and fling arrows from the shadows, but I doubt anyone will believe someone that doesn’t have it in them to muster the courage to stand up.

Finally, I don’t write this with the intent of making MOVE “look” like anything. Certainly, had that been the case, I would have came out talking about all the guns and bombs and foul plans set in motion by the cult, but that was not the reality and I came to tell the truth about MOVE, not to lie or make the group out to be something it isn’t.

I can’t “make” MOVE look like anything. They are what they are. And today, as I write these words, a girl/child is being prepped for her life of subjugation and the brutal reality sinking in that you own nothing in you are a child in MOVE, not your mind, and not your body.

In the 1960's and before, progressives, and revolutionaries banded together to try and shake off the yoke of a patriarchal society and ensure that basic rights of women in all strata of society be protected and enshrined in the law. Without a doubt, both men and women take these hard fought and sometimes, barely won, for granted. Also, some will fall thru the cracks, but all should be done to save them.

When it comes to MOVE, the feminist, the “freedom fighters” who rail against the stupid superstitions of the Church and their attempts to deny choice to women around the world have and are failing the children in MOVE. But they are not alone in this failure. The bureaucracy in Philadelphia, which maintains a un-spoken policy of accepting the criminality of MOVE has also failed these children by ignoring the situation and pretending that what is going on really isn’t.

This failure to protect vulnerable children from MOVE members is a failure in so many ways, but my faith in the inevitable force of change. Till the day that the children of MOVE members and supporters are free of their oppressors, I will continue to write, to speak out, and to never let those responsible for what is going on with these kids get away with what they do un-challenged.

Here is the comment from the Philly IMC that prompted this blog post.

"this seems like the same article written over and over and over, like 20 times something.... Got anything new beyond this narrow obsession you have? Does your obsession with MOVE marriages somehow take the place of your own failed marriage?
By the way, the couple in the wedding photo looks about the same age to me---- this is your proof of "child rape"?

It is interesting that the PhillyIMC is the only IMC that hasn't permanently banned you for being a right wing flamer and smear-artist.
That's probably because MOVE and their supporters in Philly don't feel the slightest bit threatened by your insane rants----if anything, you make MOVE look good!"