Operation M.O.V.E.

[Erable]

So my coworker was telling me about meeting The Stza and that he had explained the story of Operation MOVE, the way he explained it made it sound like a huge civil rights injustice perpetrated against a group of poor victims. I looked up an article on it(http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Who_was_John_Africa.html) they made him sound like a psychopathic manipulator.
Anyways, what I'm here for, is to ask your opinions of it. I realise it's well past relevance at this point, but I want to hear what you guys have to say about it, I'd imagine LOC wouldn't talk about a cause as martyrs if they weren't in for a good cause.
The article really jumbles what they were all about "black liberation group"? Militia?

 

[DeuilEtoiles]

I'm brand new. I only joined to answer this four year old question that you probably will never read the answer to but...
I was there. The original M.O.V.E. family was a primitivist kinda movement with some vague back to Mother Africa rumblings. Definitely vegans, black nationalists... probably some more labels one could apply. Not racist or not overtly. In short, the MOVE 9 were arrested in, IIRC, '79 after a standoff with the notoriously brutal and corrupt PPD. One cop was killed, probably by friendly fire. The organization carried on, though I would say in a diminished fashion until '85 when the city dropped a bomb on the M.O.V.E. house, incinerating 11 people including 5 children. Two people survived, a child and Ramona Africa, whom I know. Police shot at both of them as they fled the inferno. I watched them do it. There is info all over the web about MOVE if any one wants to look it up. But what I've written here I know to be true as an eyewitness. Mumia Abu Jamal covered MOVE extensively as a journalist and supported the organization and has in turn been supported by Ramona Africa. For whatever that is worth.