Four decades after MOVE, Philadelphia still struggles to learn lessons that led it to become the city that bombed itself | Editorial

William Faulkner famously wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

That certainly applies to the MOVE bombing, which still haunts Philadelphia 40 years after city leaders bungled a confrontation with a radical group that resulted in the deaths of 11 people, including five children, and destroyed 61 homes in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

Actions by the city before, during, and after that fateful day of May 13, 1985, still loom large. In fact, one could argue MOVE is a microcosm for many of Philly’s systemic ills, including the racism, poverty, police brutality, corruption, and incompetence that keep the city from truly reaching its full potential.

To be sure, the city has made major strides since the MOVE incident. But the progress has been too slow and too little for too many. (For example, Philadelphia remains the poorest big city in the country.)

Even more disappointing, the city’s business and political leaders often seem content with mediocrity — or worse. (See the human tragedy ignored for decades on the streets of Kensington.) All too often, a sense of urgency is lacking. (Just ask the generations of children lost in the Philadelphia public schools.)

If it’s true that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, then MOVE remains a perfect exemplar. While the MOVE bombing is seared in the memory for some, many have never heard of it.

The decades the city has had to learn from the mistakes of the MOVE confrontation have largely been a missed opportunity. In fact, the missteps after MOVE have prevented any sense of closure from taking hold.

History is stubborn, and this much is clear: MOVE remains one of the most heinous acts of government violence ever. As such, Philadelphia will forever be known as the city that bombed itself.

No doubt the radical MOVE members instigated the horrific series of events. The back-to-nature group founded in 1972 by Vincent Leaphart, a Korean War veteran who took the name John Africa, was anti-government, anti-capitalist, supported animal rights, embraced a raw food diet, natural home birth, homeschooling, and composting.

The rowhomes MOVE members occupied, first in Powelton Village and then on Osage Avenue, were filthy and housed wild animals. Their kids often went unbathed and unclothed. MOVE members yelled and cursed into a bullhorn at all hours of the day and night, ranting against war, racism, and police brutality.

Neighbors complained and lived in fear. There were attempts to broker a peace. But at every turn, the city failed to de-escalate the tension — a dereliction that gets repeated across the country in many police confrontations, including minor traffic stops that turn deadly.

The MOVE incident is an extreme example of police incompetence and abuse of power. City Hall officials compounded the problem with a mix of arrogance, apathy, and shortsighted solutions. (A similar lack of leadership allows many other civic problems to fester.)

The MOVE catastrophe was the culmination of a series of often overlooked but equally outrageous missteps that began nearly a decade earlier, as the powerful new podcast by two Temple journalism professors hosted by The Inquirer details.

In 1976, a baby of one of the MOVE members was killed in a confrontation with police who tried to claim there was no death. That led to another showdown in 1978, where a police officer was killed in a shootout and a MOVE member was dragged, beaten, and kicked by three white police officers.

Then came 1985. After a 12-hour standoff, city officials sent a police helicopter to drop an explosive device on the fortified MOVE headquarters on Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia — and then watched as the fire burned down homes across two city blocks.

Initially, then-Mayor W. Wilson Goode dodged responsibility for what went wrong. He eventually apologized, but no one from the city was held accountable for the deaths and destruction.

Even more disturbing, after the bombing, the city proceeded to compound its incompetence and callous disregard for human life.

First the city rushed to rebuild the homes. A corrupt and politically connected developer produced shoddy construction that required major repairs that dragged on for another 25 years and cost taxpayers tens of millions of extra dollars.

Even today, the MOVE tragedy remains in the news due to recent disclosures that the remains of the victims were mishandled and left in boxes in a museum on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.

It took 35 years, but City Council passed a resolution in 2020 formally apologizing for the MOVE bombing. But here we are decades later, and many of the intractable issues that fueled the MOVE confrontation remain.

Systemic racism reverberates across much of the city. While Philadelphia is very diverse, its neighborhoods and schools remain segregated.

The legacy of redlining still exists and contributes to the disparity of generational wealth between Black Philadelphians and their white counterparts. In fact, inequality is greater today than it was in 1960.

The police department is not as overtly racist as it used to be, but Black and brown people are still more likely to be stopped and charged.

Corruption and a lack of accountability continue to undermine the work of good officers — as seen by the sharp increase in police misconduct that cost taxpayers $60 million over a recent 18-month stretch.

Despite halting efforts at reform, the struggling public schools continue to get shortchanged and overlooked. In 2023, a judge found Pennsylvania’s funding system for schools to be unconstitutional.

Yet, lawmakers in Harrisburg continue to drag their feet in righting this wrong. While the school district has made some improvement, most students are not prepared for college or the workforce.

In fact, 65% of students cannot pass third-grade English assessments, while three out of every five eighth-grade students cannot pass state math assessments, according to a report by Children First.

Philadelphia remains one of the highest-taxed big cities in the country. That slows job growth while the tax burden disproportionately falls on the working poor.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker mapped out a plan to address some of the systemic changes by cleaning neighborhoods, investing in schools, trimming taxes, investing in affordable housing, and tackling the addiction and public health crisis playing out in Kensington.

But if what’s past is prologue, any progress will likely be incremental at best. The issues surrounding crime, schools, and taxes have plagued the city for decades. Often, what is missing is dynamic leadership.

So it remains to be seen, when the 50th anniversary of the MOVE bombing arrives, if the past is dead, or even past.