Word: move
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Fraternal Order of Police came to the funeral. In the meantime, there was outrage in the black community--not over the death of the white policeman, but over the vicious way the police handled the entire situation. Despite claims by Mayor Frank Rizzo and his political hacks that the MOVE organization was universally hated in Philadelphia, most of the black neighbors who lived near MOVE did not resent the group as much as the middle-class whites living on the other side of the city. Right after the shooting, 300 infuriated black neighbors gathered at the scene of the battle...
...MOVE sympathizers insisted that the entire tragedy resulted simply because the MOVE members were black and subscribed to an uncommon ideology. Pictures of police maliciously beating unarmed MOVE members after they had surrendered substantiated the accusations of racism and fueled racial antagonism. Once again, Philadelphia was split right down racial lines. The anger of the black community was matched only by the outrage of the whites, who felt a white police officer had died because of the recalcitrance of what they considered to be nothing but a bunch of lazy black hippies...
...CIRCUMSTANCES surrounding the MOVE shoot-out throw an interesting light on racial conflict in America's cities. They illustrate how what appears on the surface to be a racial conflict actually goes much deeper and ultimately rests on sharp class divisions in our society today. To understand this, one must know a little about MOVE's ideology. First and foremost, the group opposes technology. Its members reportedly eat only raw meat, rarely take baths, raise rats and dozens of dogs. MOVE members refuse to use modern plumbing. They hate cars, airplanes, consumer markets and anything else that is a product...
...course, the vast majority of middle-class whites vigorously rejected the validity of all the tenents of the MOVE ideology. The blacks, however, were much more receptive--that is why 300 of them hurled bricks at the police shortly after the shoot-out. The reasons, again, go deeper than simply skin color. Whites can hardly be expected to accept social criticism as readily as blacks, who have long borne the onus of American capitalism. It logically follows that whites would therefore disagree more fervently with a group such as MOVE when the group points an accusing finger at the laws...
...expansive suburbs. The media reflected the moral casuistry of its readership, failing to face the essential moral question that begged to be raised throughout the days surrounding the event: What is wrong with a society that causes alienated, frustrated groups of people such as the members of MOVE to arise? If our society is as perfect as the Philadelphia notables claim it to be, then what fed the dissatisfaction and anomie that led MOVE to face self-destruction rather than to surrender to the dominant forces of their age? This question never appeared in all the dozens of articles...