“Black lives didn’t matter the day MOVE was bombed,” said a reporter who was on the scene in ’85.
—
While several speakers this morning stood in line taking turns at a microphone, airing frustrations and grievances about a system that, among many injustices, dropped a bomb on Black West Philadelphia family in 1985, one of the local journalists who was on the scene during the fatal bombing showed me the spots where he stood and watched several city blocks burn for hours without any intervention from officials.
A reporter at the time for The Philadelphia Daily News, Mr. Linn Washington stood on 63rd Street amidst a crowd of nearly 200 people, including Philadelphia Police Officers, and reflected on this date thirty years ago, sometimes pausing his remembrance for fear of becoming overwhelmed with anger.
The 1985 bombing that killed 11 people, including five children, and destroyed more than 60 nearby homes, was one of the worst acts of police brutality in America’s history, Mr. Washington said.
But for whatever reason, he noted, its not mentioned in casual conversations about police violence.
“10,000 bullets fired by police in a 90 minute time span,” said Mr. Washington, an Associate Journalism Professor at Temple University, comparing the MOVE bombing to the officer-involved shooting death of Amadou Dillo, a 22-year-old immigrant from Guinea who was fired upon with 41 bullets from guns held by NYPD officers in 1999.
That case, he said, has made many lists that rank the worst cases of police brutality. But the MOVE incident isn’t on any of them.
The reason for the lack of local and national visibility and prominence regarding the MOVE bombing puzzles Mr. Washington, and many others for that matter, as the ’85 bombing was unprecedented, and no incident involving police and black people has ever surpassed it in terms of mass casualties, destruction of property and protection of negligent officials.
On that day, Mr. Washington said, black lives didn’t matter to the system. And thirty years later, many among the 200 people in attendance to commemorate the anniversary of the MOVE bombing still question whether the system values the mere presence black life.
Watch and share the video above, which features an in-depth interview with Mr. Linn Washington.
*Tune into 900amWURD or 900amWURD.com every Friday evening during the 6 o’clock hour to hear me relieve #TheWeekThatWas*
Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™