Dangerous developments in MOVE crisis

By Ona MOVE, Philly Friends MOVE, 23 September 2002

It is becoming more clear by the day that the government is bound and determined to violate their own laws, sacrifice their own constitution, and spill the blood of innocent MOVE men, women, babies, and animals. They are using the hatred of John Gilbride to fuel this insanity, to give sanction to the premeditated and remorseless killing, to give some kind of credibility to this violation. Well, the government, despite their lies and their so-called legality is no more justified or credible than they were when they killed MOVE babies on May 13th 1985 or when they tried to kill MOVE babies on August 8, 1978.

Today John Gilbride left a message on Alberta Africa’s answering machine that he was taking out a bench warrant on her to have her arrested so that he could take Alberta’s son from her. What should be understood is that MOVE will not allow Alberta to be taken from her family no sooner than they would allow for her child to be taken from her. John Gilbride has been escalating in his threats, today leaving no less than eight what can only be described as psychotic messages on Alberta’s answering machine. He is further demonstrating the fact that he has no regard for the life of his former wife or his six year old son.

In another crystallizing example of this system’s willingness to defile it’s own legal procedures we learned from the Cherry Hill Police department that the denial of Alberta’s motion to have a restraining order put on John Gilbride was an extreme deviation from the norm. MOVE people were told by their sources that when there is a case where there is demonstrable physical abuse coupled with a police report and eyewitness testimony that it is unheard of for a restraining order to be denied.

In Alberta’s situation there was a police report of the incident, there was a hospital report that stated that she suffered a contusion during the assault. There were five witnesses to the assault and all of them testified to the fact that John Gilbride assaulted Alberta. The judge denied Alberta’s motion because of what he claimed was inconsistencies in the testimonies of the five witnesses. This is a patently absurd and insulting notion due to the fact that while not all of the witnesses recounted what they saw in exactly the same way, they all said that John Gilbride assaulted Alberta. All of these witnesses saw the incident from widely divergent vantage points so it is a physical impossibility for them to have all seen it the exact same way. Putting witnesses aside for a moment Judge Milenky also saw fit to ignore the fact that Alberta had a report from the hospital in Cherry Hill where she was examined that showed clearly that she had been attacked.

All of this means nothing to the government because as the proceedings in Judge Milenky’s court took shape it became clear to all in attendance that this judge had his mind made up (or made up for him) before it all began.

It is this ongoing issue of one set of standards that is applied to MOVE and other freedom fighters and one to officials that should enrage people. When this government wanted to put Mumia on death row they ignored all kinds of backwards, confusing, disjointed testimony.

When they wanted to put away the MOVE 9 they disregarded all of the testimony from their own official people that MOVE did nothing but try to survive Rizzo’sshoot in of their headquarters. Inconsistent testimony did not stop the Federal Government from imprisoning Leonard Peltier for all of these years. The examples are endless and they all point to the diabolical nature of a system that has it’s own agenda at heart. So if the American judicial system can kill people behind testimony that does not fit together, how is it that they cannot impose a restraining order on a man that has clearly shown that he is dangerous, violent, sick, and has a potential to kidnap?

This situation could come to a head at any time and people need to do whatever it is in their power to do to avert this government assault.

Throughout the world people have reacted in revulsion to what the government did on May 13, 1985, and now it is on the brink of happening again. Don’t hallucinate about their intentions because they are making it known time and time again that they don’t care about law, justice, freedom, not to speak of the safety of a child. They want to destroy MOVE because MOVE will not bow to them and it is that simple.

LONG LIVE JOHN AFRICA FOREVER,