Give It Away #10 Remebering the Martyrs They believed in the old ways, they practiced a religion that was different than that of the majority. They refrained from eating some of the foods that their neighbors ate, and their clothes looked a little bit different. They were poor people, but they were very happy. They were a close-knit family that loved one another very much. And they had committed no criminal act. But the authorities hated them because they wouldn't assimilate or leave the land. Let them go back to wherever rock they had crawled out from! Their very existence posed a problem for the people in power; their rejection of the officially state-sanctioned way of life poked holes in their propaganda. For if people were allowed to live differently, then maybe the masses would start to get their own ideas? They were of a different race, a hated race. They were dirty, and they had too many babies. And they were starting to get uppity. Who did these people think they were? When they walked down the street, they didn't play their submissive position and acknowledge the superiority of the lords of the land. This fearless family would have to be taught a lesson, made an example of, to send a message to others of their ilk: you will never be better than second-class citizens. So one day at dawn, the military moved in with 500 soldiers. They cleared the streets and unleashed a furious assault: 10,000 rounds of bullets and incendiary bombs. After 90 minutes of massacre, 6 adults and 5 children had been murdered. The building was engulfed in flames, and soon the whole ghetto was being burned to the ground. If someone reading this article is more of a Jewish Nationalist, then they might think that the first two paragraphs of this article are about a Jewish family in Europe during the Russian Pogroms or the Nazi Holocaust. If the person reading this article is more of a Jewish Internationalist, then they may come to the conclusion that I've been talking about a Palestinian family in East Jerusalem or the West Bank. In truth, I have been describing neither. What you just finished reading is an authentic account of the sequence of events that occurred in Philadelphia, PA exactly 25 years ago to this day. On May 13, 1985, American paramilitary police stormed the home of a Black family called the MOVE Organization, and dropped C-4 explosives from a helicopter overhead, killing almost everyone inside. Almost all of the media attention that the MOVE Organization receives focusses intensely on the police attacks. And it is very important to talk about these evil attacks. Why did they happen? According to some press reports, the members of MOVE were so assertive that they bordered on being abrasive. Because they were so ideologically different from the surrounding society, they may have been social justice snobs, activists who look down upon apathetic passivists. In other words, if you weren't doing whatever you could to make the world a better place, you may have found them to be more than annoying. But being annoying is a constitutionally-protected human right. If it weren't, Glenn Beck would be serving consecutive life sentences in solitary. Being annoying was the excuse used by the Philadephia Police Commissioner to slaughter a dozen men, women and children in cold blood, then cover up all of the evidence. But their true crime? They were health-conscious hippies, and they were Black. They let their hair grow into long dreadlocks. They wouldn't eat animals, and they took in stray dogs, to save them from being poached by the pound. They refused to use petrochemical products on their bodies, and they composted their food and human waste. They didn't do drugs or alcohol, and they home-schooled their children. Today, every single one of these tenet is embraced by environmentalists as the very paragon of a healthy lifestyle, for people and for the planet. But back then, they were so much vermin to be exterminated. Last year I traveled to Philadelphia to interview the only adult to walk out of that building alive, Ramona Africa. Far from a foaming-at-the-mouth fundamentalist, she warmly welcomed me into her home and told me the story of the Africa family. They weren't a menace to society. They were just born 25 years before their time. And if they had been white people, then the state wouldn't have paid them any mind, and just let them be. But back in the day, to unabashedly proclaim that all of the oppressions are connected, and that we must reject the unlimited-growth model economy before it depletes the planet was considered to be treasonous to industrialism, blasphemous to capitalism. And to prevent these ideas from spreading among the African-American population, they were viciously squashed. When white Teabaggers reject the state system, they are treated like heroes. When black people do the same, they are incinerated. An American court of law later admitted that MOVE had done nothing to deserve what had happened to them, and awarded Ramona financial compensation, forcing the City of Philadelphia to fork over $1.5 million. That money will never bring back all of her brothers and sisters that were cut down in the prime of their lives. And the fear that had been instilled in the hearts and minds of progressive people all over America set the ecojustice movement back a quarter-century or more. But today, when every mainstream eco-organization finally admits that we need to rewrite the rules and create a complete culture shift, it is correct to remember that we stand upon the shoulders of giants: people who had the courage to tell the truth against all odds. They may have talked and talked and talked the talk and talked people's heads right off. But they walked the walk before anybody else did. May we merit to march in their footsteps.