March 16–23, 2000

city beat

No MOVE-ing On

Zack’s house: Move members say this West Philadelphia house is where 3-year-old Zack Gilbride belongs. photo: Shoshanna Wiesner

by Noel Weyrich

A recent Internet posting from the MOVE organization claims that a repeat of the group’s deadly 1985 confrontation with police is possible if longtime MOVE member Alberta Africa loses custody of her son to her estranged husband in an ongoing Philadelphia court fight.

In three days of closed hearings last week in Family Court, an attorney for the father of 3-year-old Zack Gilbride argued that Alberta Africa’s involvement with MOVE has made her an unsuitable mother and that the boy’s father, John Gilbride, should be granted full custody. Gilbride is a former MOVE member who currently works for US Airways.

"This child cannot be raised as a MOVE child," says Gilbride’s lawyer, Sheryl Rentz. "Usually in a custody battle, you’re talking about a mother and a father and what’s in the best interest of the child. Here you have to talk about the community, the environment they’re living in, the pressure that they live in, the MOVE lifestyle." MOVE children often don’t attend school and Rentz claims, for instance, that during last week’s hearings, a 16-year-old boy raised by MOVE members "could hardly read from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which is written at what, a sixth-grade level?"

But Gilbride’s attempt to win custody of his son has earned him the bitter wrath of the entire MOVE group, according to a Feb. 19 posting by the "Jamal News Service" appearing on the "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal" Web site (http://afrikan.i-dentity.com/dcforum97n/forum2/468.html). Denouncing Gilbride as a "weak person," a "traitor" and a "pawn" in a government plot to destroy the organization, the unsigned release states that "Everybody… knows how MOVE people feel about our babies, we will fight and die if necessary for our babies.… For those of you who know that something wrong is getting ready to happen here and you don’t want to see another May 13, 1985, MOVE is appealin[g] to you to jump on this situation and stop it before it starts."

Alberta Africa’s previous husband, MOVE founder John Africa, died with six other adults and four children almost 15 years ago during a gun battle between the group and Philadelphia police at MOVE’s West Philadelphia house. On the night of May 13, 1985, a fire started by police explosives consumed the entire 6200 block of Osage Avenue, putting more than 60 families out of their homes. A previous gun battle between MOVE and police in 1978 left one police officer dead, resulting in homicide convictions for nine MOVE members.

In 1991, Alberta Africa purchased a new home for MOVE, a $265,000 three-story Victorian twin at 4506 Kingsessing Avenue, where MOVE members by all accounts have lived peacefully ever since. In 1992, Alberta Africa married John Gilbride and the couple continued to live at the MOVE house until 1998, when they moved to Cherry Hill, NJ, with their then-2-year-old son.

Soon after, says Rentz, Gilbride left the Cherry Hill house because he was fed up with the MOVE organization’s continuing influence on his family.

"He just couldn’t live in the environment anymore," she says, speaking for Gilbride, who was unavailable for comment. "He realized that he had to get out, and once he got out, then he was going to begin a fight to get his child back."

Rentz says she believes Alberta Africa spends most of her time with her son at the MOVE house now because "she can’t be alone. She lives a very communal lifestyle."

MOVE’s Internet missive claims, however, that Gilbride abandoned his son and now wants to "wrest the child away from his mother" even though "neither MOVE, nor the child’s mother have ever denied John Gilbride his son!… All this is being done despite the child vocally and repeatedly saying that he does not want to be separated from his mother at all!"

Angela Martinez, the attorney for Alberta Africa in the custody case, forwarded calls to a MOVE spokesperson who explained that the lawyer doesn’t want to comment. Mario Ramirez, another MOVE member whose e-mail address appears on the Internet posting, says that the judge has forbidden Alberta Africa and other MOVE members from discussing the case while it is pending.

"When MOVE is ready to speak," says Ramirez, "MOVE will speak."

An added twist to the case is that Zack Gilbride was artificially conceived using a donor egg because Alberta Africa couldn’t bear children naturally.

"In my eyes, the [in vitro fertilization] is very significant," says Rentz. "Not from the standpoint that she’s not his mom. She’s his mom. I’ll give you that. But I’ve spent three days listening to the preachings of John Africa. And this basically goes against everything John Africa stood for.… I heard stories that when they were all in Muncy prison, they used to get put in [solitary] because they wouldn’t give blood. But yet, she wanted a baby so bad that she of course had to give blood, and she had to constantly go for all types of blood tests so they could monitor her hormone levels. That’s why I feel it’s significant. When MOVE laws, when MOVE beliefs fit, they follow them. When they don’t fit, they do their own thing."

Like Gilbride, the woman who served as egg donor for the fertilization process was white, and Zack Gilbride, says Rentz, "looks Irish. He has blond hair, rosy cheeks. He’s adorable." But the child’s race has not been an issue in the hearings.

"MOVE is a multiracial organization," Rentz notes. "Where we believe in civilization and socialization, they believe in natural life. From what I understand, they don’t look at Zack as a white child, they look at Zack as a living child. And that’s really beautiful."

The hearing before Senior Judge Edward Rosenberg has been suspended until May 17 for a variety of reasons, including the need for psychological testing on Zack Gilbride, who will have turned 4 years old when the hearings resume. Rentz says that the delay will also permit Alberta Africa to have "two of the [MOVE members] that have been convicted of murdering a Philadelphia police officer come down to testify as to her character. I’m sorry, but it’s hard for me to say that with a straight face."

Should Rosenberg rule in favor of Gilbride’s custody claim, the problem of enforcement is one that MOVE has already taken note of.

"What this government is trying to do is to use a MOVE child in the same way in which they used bogus warrants in 1985 and bogus housing code violations in 1978, as an excuse, or a justification to come at MOVE in order to try to incite a confrontation with MOVE & take down the whole Organization.… The system knows MOVE will fight to the death if need be to protect MOVE children.…"

The note goes on to list phone numbers and addresses for Mayor Street, former Mayor Ed Rendell, US Airways and Sheryl Rentz, who says her office has fielded a number of angry calls about the case.