On A MOVE (Part 1)

Destructive cult or Black liberation?

This is a long one! Part 1 of 2. Featuring Kevin Price.

In January 1999, 16,000 fans packed a New Jersey arena for a benefit concert organized by Rage Against the Machine to support Mumia Abu-Jamal, the famous death row inmate and former Black Panther. The crowd believed they were funding justice for a political prisoner, raising over $400,000 for his cause. What they didn't know was that their money was going to MOVE—what former members now describe as a destructive cult that had successfully infiltrated and manipulated leftist movements for decades.

MOVE began in 1970s Philadelphia as an anarcho-primitivist commune founded by Vincent Leaphart (later known as John Africa) and college professor Don Glassey. Behind their revolutionary rhetoric lay a bizarre anti-civilization ideology that opposed everything from literacy to cooking food, viewing consciousness itself as humanity's original sin. The group's confrontations with Frank Rizzo's brutal police force culminated in the 1978 standoff that sent nine members to prison and the catastrophic 1985 bombing that killed eleven people, including five children. These tragedies provided MOVE with the perfect victim narrative, allowing them to rebrand as martyrs of government oppression while concealing their true nature as a cult that controlled members through psychological abuse and isolated children from education and medical care.

For more information, check out Kevin Price's Leaving MOVE 2021 blog: https://leavingmove2021.blogspot.com/

Be sure to listen to the Murder at Ryan’s Run podcast: here.