March 22–29, 2001

city beat

Moving on MOVE?

House call: The West Philly headquarters of MOVE.

Was police activity near the group’s home a routine check or an attempt to intimidate?

by Walidah Imarisha

The tension created by a two-and-a-half-year custody battle between the MOVE organization and the father of one of the back-to-nature group’s youngest members was ratcheted up last week when police arrived at MOVE’s West Philadelphia house.

Police say they were at the MOVE property on a routine investigation that had nothing to do with the group. Police officials say that officers were checking out broken windows at an abandoned home next door to MOVE’s 4504-6 Kingsessing Avenue home. MOVE organizers dispute that, saying they were being targeted.

MOVE member Ramona Africa says it was more than a coincidence that police were hanging over her fence on March 13, the day before a critical hearing on the custody case was to be heard concerning psychology testing for 5-year-old Zack Gilbride, who is at the center of a custody battle between his mother Alberta Africa and his father John Gilbride, a former MOVE supporter.

Ramona Africa, the spokesperson for MOVE, says that when group members told police they were at MOVE’s house, the police "took a very offensive, provoking stance" and said "they knew we were the MOVE organization and ‘didn’t give a damn.’"

Captain Bill Fisher, head of the Police Department’s Civil Affairs unit, says that while police were going past MOVE’s back fence, it was only in pursuit of a criminal.

"Behind Miss Africa’s residence, you have an alleyway," Fisher says. "We’ve had this exact same situation happen before where people commit crimes on 45th Street and use the alleyway as the exit and police come in pursuit of the people."

Fisher says the police merely asked if anyone had heard glass breaking. He adds that this incident and the custody case are completely separate matters and while there has been a history between MOVE and the Philadelphia police force that the police are "sensitive" to, the Civil Affairs Department has a good rapport with Ramona and other members.

"We have kept the lines of communication open and respect each other’s rights." Fisher says.

Ramona Africa, the only adult survivor of the May 13, 1985, police firebombing of MOVE’s Osage house, where 11 people were killed, including four children, and 250 neighbors were left homeless when the entire block burned, has a very different perspective than Fisher on the March 13 incident. She says that because the custody case has dragged on so long, MOVE is being subjected to police harassment.

"I don’t know if they were rogue cops or if they were sent out by the city, by [Police Commissioner John] Timoney or John Street. The point is if the custody case had been resolved long ago, this stuff wouldn’t be going on, because it is most certainly tied to the custody case."

The case involves Alberta Africa, who was previously married to John Africa, the founder of MOVE who was killed in the 1985 bombing. She later remarried John Gilbride, who was a MOVE supporter at the time, and had a son with him, Zachary. Gilbride, according to his attorney, could not handle the communal family lifestyle of MOVE, and relocated his family to Cherry Hill. Alberta left Gilbride shortly thereafter and returned to the Kingsessing house with Zack (a house she bought for the organization with the money she received from a settlement as John Africa’s widow).

Ramona says that Gilbride abandoned the family, and they didn’t hear from him for six months.

Sheryl Rentz, Gilbride’s lawyer, claims that senior Family Court Judge Edward Rosenberg has forbidden both sides of the custody battle from making public statements about the case. However, she told City Paper last year that Gilbride left the Cherry Hill house because he was fed up with MOVE’s continuing influence over his family. "He just couldn’t live in the environment anymore. 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."

Ramona says that Alberta and the courts have given Gilbride numerous opportunities to visit with his son, and that he did not take advantage of them.

"It’s MOVE’s position that this issue is clear," she says. "This man walked away and abandoned his son and wife, he does not financially support this child and has not since he walked away. If you were to ask him he wouldn’t even know what the child’s favorite food is."

At the heart of this matter is the reason that Gilbride wanted court-supervised psychological testing of the child, to see if MOVE is a good environment for Zack.

Rentz told the City Paper last year that "This child cannot be raised as a MOVE child. 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."

Rentz stated that MOVE children don’t attend school, adding that during a custody hearing testimony, a 16-year-old MOVE boy "could hardly read from the Philadelphia Inquirer, which is written at what, a sixth grade level?"

Ramona says that it is up to Gilbride and his lawyer to prove that MOVE is an unhealthy environment for a child, which she contends they will not be able to do. "There are no criminals in MOVE, they don’t go into schools and shoot them up, they don’t rape young babies or young girls in school stairwells. The examples I just ran down are examples that happen not in MOVE, but outside of MOVE in the system."

Ramona says that there will be three more court dates in April, and two in May, ending May 4. They expect Judge Rosenberg to make his decision shortly thereafter.

The question becomes how far will MOVE go for this child, and how far will the state push them? An open letter issued by MOVE last week via e-mail said "Everybody knows how MOVE people feel about our babies, we will fight and die if necessary for our babies," and it is with the specter of May 13 in the air that Ramona says, "MOVE has never offended or been on the offensive with this system. We’ve always defended ourselves against the offensiveness of this system…. Supporters across the country and around the world have called and told the city that the world is watching, and they are not going to sit by and let another May 13 go down."