MOVE: 30 Years Later, Part 1
By Pat Loeb
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- This week marks the 30th anniversary of the disastrous confrontation between the Philadelphia police and members of the group that called itself "MOVE." Eleven people died and three blocks of West Philadelphia were burned to the ground. It all started out with a plea for help from the group's neighbors.
Imagine you live on a quiet street where hard-working, close-knit neighbors own their homes and keep them meticulous. Until one day, a group moves in and boards up their house, stops paying utilities so waste collects, attracting vermin, and yells obscenities, night and day. That was the 6200 block of Osage Avenue. The few remaining neighbors are reluctant to talk about it now.
"They had this horn and the kids were running around," a neighbor recalls. "It was not a good neighborhood to be in at that particular time."
But for three years, they complained, loudly, demanding city officials find a way to get the group out. The city tried a few legal tactics, but then-Mayor Wilson Goode was reluctant to take stronger action, until, suddenly, on May 12th, 1985, he ordered the neighborhood evacuated.
"I don't know of any other way to resolve their being in that house but to ask them to leave that house," Goode said, "and if they don't leave to remove them from the house."
"We were evacuated on Mother's Day, May the 13th," says a neighbor. "I thought it was going to be for a short period of time."
Richard Maloney reported for KYW Newsradio that neighbors left calmly.
"It's the eye of the hurricane," he reported. "Maybe that's not the perfect analogy, but unless the MOVE people are listening to the radio, it's very possible they're not sure what's going on.
"We had the radio on that morning, on KYW," says Ramona Africa, the only remaining survivor from inside the MOVE house. She says they knew police were amassing, but weren't worried.
Perhaps it was not the eye of the hurricane -- but it was the calm before the storm.
