Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Murdered By The MOVE Organization


(pic of John Gilbride)

As the summer season ends and as fall begins, John Gilbride should be busy enjoying the love of life with the son that bears his name.

John ought to be going to his son’s school orientation and absorbing the fact that his little boy isn’t so little anymore and is another year smarter and stronger. Father and son should have already started the debate over what the latter should be for Halloween. And as football season kicks in, the two should be hollering at the TV during Sunday NFL games.

An ordinary life was what John demanded for his son. It was a demand un-heeded, a demand responded too with threats, a campaign of terror and disinformation, and one that ultimately ended in John’s murder. An unsolved killing to be sure, but one that all know who bears responsibility for.

All of the things we who are parents take for granted was all that John Gilbride wanted for his little boy. His dreams for his little boy are not unlike the dreams that any parent has for their son. Freedom, an education, hope...all the things that are held to be inalienable rights were all of the things John wanted for his little boy.

John also wanted to love his son without the overbearing cruelty and yoke of absolute, cultish, control that John had come to loathe in MOVE. He wanted to care for and love his son without having to lay prostrate at the throne of MOVE’s resident little Cesar, Alberta Africa. MOVE’s leader, Alberta, was also John’s ex-wife who hated him, his desire to be with his son, and most importantly, hated the fact that John had moved out of the yoke of her oppression and was thriving without her and without MOVE.

She killed him with her hate. She may have not pulled the trigger, but make no mistake, she killed him with hatred as sure as the bullets that tore through his body killed him. Without her abiding contempt for him those cowards who stalked him and gunned him down would have never received their killing orders. Make no mistake about that.

It has been six years since John was murdered. I predicted that his killers would be behind bars by now, but I have been proven wrong. Those responsible for John walk the streets as free men with shackled souls. I hope, if nothing else, that the un-avenged apparition of John haunt their nights and twist their days into a mixture of tension and fear that the hammer may fall at any moment. I hope they live with the reality that justice may come from either the authorities or from MOVE itself, fearful that a traitor will be made and that the truth may set someone free, the cult of death may just kill again.

Six years have gone by and all of MOVE’s bullshit theories about John have been thoroughly repudiated and cast into the dustbin where they belong. All of the cult’s vapid and self-serving attempts at post-mortem, character assassination, attempts have long since passed the point of diminishing returns and similarly have been discarded.

What MOVE wants most right now is for John Gilbride’s name to not pass anyone’s lips. They want people to forget that the little boy he fought and died to protect and free from MOVE remains imprisoned by the cult. The little, white, genetically engineered messiah, is a commodity for MOVE and not a child with independent worth and a free mind. He is a slave to the whims of a bloated, wannabee Caligula with blood soaked hands. A hypocrite who lives in complete defiance of the very moral code she claims to be the representative of. She keeps John’s son close to her, like a coveted spoil of war, not the innocent child that he is. I don’t consider her a parent, because a parent cares for a child. Alberta is programming a child.

In the memory of John Gilbride I struggle onward.

(For more about John Gilbride's murder go to themoveorganization.com)

Monday, September 22, 2008

Justice For Some



When I worked in Philadelphia I would frequently find literature from “Tony Alamo Christian Ministries” on the windshield of my car. I honestly never really read the propaganda, aside from a couple of paragraphs, but I did get that there was something kind of creepy about the whole thing.

So, when I found out that the group’s headquarters was raided this past Saturday I wasn’t really surprised.

The group’s Arkansas complex was searched and several children have now been removed from the clutches of the group as a result of a child pornography investigation by the FBI and State Police.

Tony Alamo, the founder of the “Ministry” preaches a gospel that includes apologies for polygamists as well as offering people a biblical excuse for child abuse. Back in April, while on a rhetorical rampage against the alleged “persecution” of
polygamist Warren Jeffs, Alamo proclaimed that the government had no right to take 10-year-old wives away from their rightful "husbands":

"What I'm doing is fighting for these people that they, the ungodly beast, is throwing into prison for marrying someone 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11-10, if they've reached puberty."

Sound familiar?

If not, let me direct you to the comments of MOVE’s “Minister of Communication”, Ramona Africa when she articulated MOVE’s stated policy of child rape:

“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, which is when a woman has her monthly period, then she is ready to have babies and be married. It's just that simple."
Indeed, it is that simple, it is abuse.

MOVE and the “Alamo Ministries” share more than just a penchant for child abuse, they both effectively run a criminal enterprise and work feverishly to silence their critics.

The difference right now is that after years of getting away with it the child abusers and con-men at “Tony Alamo Ministries” are getting what they deserve and MOVE continues it’s criminal endeavors.

How much longer before the children of MOVE are saved from the cycle of abuse that they had the misfortune of being born into?

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Daniel Faulkner Website Updated



The website for "Justice For Police Officer Daniel Faulkner" has been updated and will have some great new additions.

A blog that will keep people up-to-date on information and will feature posts from Maureen Faulkner as well as new additions to the online store.

Please visit the Faulkner site and show your support.

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Book Review: Stolen Innocence




I had been in The Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints Saints(FLDS) Church from the moment I was born. It was all I knew and the only way I could imagine living. From my teachings, I knew that the prophet's job was to dictate what was best for us and that the words he spoke came straight from God. I believed that my impending marriage was the will of God and therefore nothing could be done to stop it. But still, I had to try.

-Elissa Wall, “Stolen Innocence”

Elissa Wall’s testimony in September 2007 helped convict polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs on an array of charges.

Her courageous and detailed story of a life lived inside an oppressive cult that forced her to be married at 14 years old amidst a climate fear and self-loathing and her eventual escape is brought to life in a new book “Stolen Innocence”.

As I read Wall’s account, I was struck by my own inability to articulate the plight of the child-brides of MOVE, who are forced to become pregnant at 11-12 years old. And because none of these most extreme examples of MOVE’s abuse have yet to escape to freedom, they effectively have no voice. Finding a way to adequately express their plight has been a vexing affair for me as I have little in the way of understanding what it feels like for a girl with little or no education to be told at the onset of puberty that they will become pregnant and they will become married at once. I don’t know what that could be like, to know that your future is decided and that you have no voice in the matter, that it wouldn’t matter if you did because nobody would listen.

Reading Wall’s book has brought me that much closer to understanding what girls in MOVE go through. Wall’s honesty and candor especially considering the world she was raised in did not allow at all for either is remarkable.

Surprisingly, her story is not one of rage or a polemic. It is honest and therein lies it’s strength. Wall does not have to rage against her former captors with heavy rhetoric, her simple truths are enough. And while her story would not have suffered without her compassion, it is much better for it. For instead of giving into an understandable hatred of those who abused her and her own family members who not only stood by, but sanctioned it, she exudes love. That is not to say that she is averse to fighting for justice. On the contrary, it appears that her love for those still under the yoke of religious oppression has armored her against the fear of speaking out.

After freeing herself, Elissa Wall would do what would have been unthinkable in her former cult life and that is to go to the authorities with her story. She was entering a situation that she knew would lead to a showdown with the FLDS and it’s leader Warren Jeffs. Worse for Wall, she knew it would lead to her alienation from family members still in the FLDS and she also knew that the cult would not hesitate to hurt those same loved ones to get at her. But she did what was right in spite of her fears.

“Stolen Innocence” is as much a story about relentless abuse as it is about the power of the human spirit to endure and rise above such abuse. Wall is more than just a survivor, she is someone who despite it all is thriving. She now has a family of her own to take care of, but still apparently has time to aid those who wish to leave the FLDS cult that still must be a source of fear for her.

For me, this book has brought me new understanding of what it is for a girl and a young woman to suffer under the thumb of an abusive cult. I would urge anyone interested in cults or the abuse of children in MOVE, to check this book out.

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