A Terrorist By Any Other Name ...
Published: May 15th, 2008
By: Shelly Reuben

A terrorist by any other name ...

Twenty-three years ago, a violent anti-technology, anti-materialism, anti-government group that called itself MOVE embarked upon a campaign of terror that brought the city of Philadelphia to its knees. It was the second time that MOVE had done so. The first, in August 1978, ended in a shoot-out at the end of which four policemen and four firefighters were wounded and one police officer was dead.

Nine MOVE members were arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to prison for terms of 30 to 100 years each. After their convictions, MOVE relocated to Osage Avenue. Then it embarked upon a systematic program of harassing, intimidating, and terrorizing its neighbors in an effort to force the City of Philadelphia to release the killers. In effect, MOVE held the people who lived in the attached houses on that pleasant, tree-lined street as hostages.

Members of this radical, back-to-nature cult were armed and dangerous. They constructed a large military-style bunker on their rooftop and amassed caches of bombs, guns, and ammunition. They barricaded their windows and doors, sealed off the alleyway behind their house, hung raw meat to rot in their backyards, and screamed threats and obscenities though loudspeakers to obliterate the silence of the night.

All day. All night. MOVE shouted tirades through bullhorns at their long-suffering neighbors (in the excerpt that follows, *^%&$#! is a substitute for variations on a theme of the “F” word):

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The Evening Sun

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