Since the beginning of time, there has been a constant struggle between people who want to be free and those who seek to control them. It is an unending war that that rages just beneath the surface of “civilized” society, waiting to reach a boiling point where violence can erupt on the streets between police and citizens—or the oppressor and the oppressed.
Since our history is passed down by those who seek to control us, this struggle is framed in a way where the oppressors are always the innocent victims, and the oppressed the senseless terrorists when in reality, the opposite is usually true.
Nowhere is this situation more obvious than in the media coverage and cultural myths surrounding the American Civil Rights movement. Police would regularly raid the offices and homes of civil rights leaders, shooting first and asking questions later. In fact, many civil rights leaders did not make it through the 60s and 70s alive, and most of the original Black Panthers were either killed by police or imprisoned for life. Yet this aspect of the situation was entirely absent from the media reports of the day and is even rarely discussed in modern times.
One of the worst acts of police terrorism against the Civil Rights movement occurred on May 13, 1985, when the Philadelphia Police Department bombed the homes of a black liberation group called MOVE, killing 11 people, five of whom were children.
MOVE was a Philadelphia-based organization formed by Civil Rights leader John Africa in 1972, with the goal of creating a radical change in society by creating communities that lived according to their own rules and values, instead of under the authority of the federal government. MOVE crowdfunded the purchase of multiple adjacent homes in the city to build their headquarters, where members of the group lived communally and planned protests. Unfortunately, it was not long before they caught the attention of local police, who were threatened by their philosophy and their presence in the community.
Hellbound and Down 