Let the Fire Burn

On May 13, 1985 there was a long standoff between Philadelphia police and MOVE members, a group formed by a man who went by the name of John Africa. The standoff ended with the police dropping C4 onto the roof of their townhouse at 6221 Osage Ave. A fire resulted which killed eleven people, five of whom were children. That same fire would go unchecked and burn down sixty homes in total. There were two survivors: twelve-year-old Michael Moses Ward and Ramona Africa. It was a sad day for the city of Philadelphia no matter how you view it: urban warfare, eleven lives lost, three city blocks burned to the ground. That's nothing to be proud of.

"Let the Fire Burn" is a documentary covering the standoff between MOVE and the police. It's also a statement made by the mayor at the time, Mayor Wilson Goode, when he said, "There was a decision to let the fire burn."

MOVE had had a standoff before in 1978 when a police officer was killed. They were a small cult/organization that attracted attention more with their behavior than their beliefs. By pretty much being bad neighbors they had the police called on them time and time again. May 13th was the actions of the city after many neighborhood complaints.

The question is, were the police too aggressive, reckless, and negligent in trying to extract the MOVE members? I think we can say yes to that. We saw a similar scenario play out in Waco, Texas about eight years later. The documentary mostly covers the testimonies of police, fire, neighbors, and surviving MOVE members. In there as well is news footage from the May 12th - 13th siege as well as the 1978 raid. Whether this was a case of mistakes being made or a group hell bent on a police showdown it's hard to say. What's not hard to say is that a lot of innocent people lost their homes as a result, and that my be the real tragedy.

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This 95 minute documentary traces the history of the black liberation group MOVE through the two attempts of the philadelphia police to destroy them in 1978 and 1985, during which they put an explosive on the roof of their community house and took the decision to let the fire burn, which later in the day destroyed an entire city block. Most of the footage are taken from the public hearings surrounding the aftermath of the crisis as well as live TV footage of the two assaults, in order to document the terrorist attacks conducted by the philadelphia police. As of last week, the documentary was streaming for free, to remember the day of May 13th, 1985 when the second attack happened.

Let the Fire Burn is a documentary about an almost forgotten series of incidents that were in many ways like the later Waco fiasco. Sadly, it seems that government officials hadn't learned from this earlier experience in Philadelphia.

Back in the 1970s, an odd group was created in Philadelphia that called itself 'MOVE'. They were rather cult-like by outward appearances and their members lived communally. They apparently raised their children naked and fed them raw foods—insisting on a back to nature approach to life. Their exact beliefs and practices were a bit vague when I watched Let the Fire Burn, but the organization fell afoul of society for two obvious reasons—they lived within a large city and could not go unnoticed living this way and they were also very anti-police. Whether they became anti-police as a result of police persecution or they began that way is difficult to know based on what I saw in the film. Regardless, they and the police disliked and distrusted each other.

After years of antagonism and some incidents of violence, MOVE set up headquarters in a neighborhood row house and appeared to be trying to provoke some sort of action or compromise. They began blasting messaged laced with profanities on loudspeakers and built some bunkers on the roof of this row house to resist the police. Naturally the neighbors hated this and wanted some action—and it couldn't remain that way for long. However, the degree to which the police responded took people by surprise. They surrounded the place and pumped thousands of bullets into the row house. Then, after some time passed, they had a helicopter fly over and drop a large bomb on the place. After the explosion, the police and fire departments did nothing—they just let the fire burn— claiming it was too dangerous to allow fire crews near the blaze. Not surprisingly, most of the people inside were killed and about half of them were children. Because the fires were not put out, pretty much the whole neighborhood ending up being gutted. According to the film, the cheap housing put up to replace these homes was later condemned. Obviously this was NOT Philadelphia's finest hour!

As a retired history teacher, my thought is always on what we can learn from the incident. As I mentioned above, about a decade later the federal government had a somewhat similar situation with the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. Claiming to be concerned about child abuse, the rescue mission ended up killing everyone inside this complex! Obviously, we did not learn from the MOVE tragedy.

But what other lessons can we learn from the firebombing in Philadelphia? The filmmakers really don't take an obvious opinion, as there is no narration—just archival footage. The film leaves many, many questions unanswered. It's inferred that the filmmakers felt the police overreacted and mentioned that later civil cases awarded damages to the survivors—but beyond that, it's difficult to say. What might have made this much clearer would have been to include new interviews in order to see how the participants and survivors see the incident today. This is problematic, however, as the lone teen survivor recently drowned on a cruise ship. As for the other survivor, Ramona Africa (who also survived and was jailed following the incident), the film indicated that she is alive and fighting the system BUT didn't have any recent interviews with her. Additionally, while some archival footage was shown of a couple MOVE members who were not in the home during the firebombing, oddly they were not interviewed either by the filmmakers. Even then, SOME of the police, news reporters and government officials could have been interviewed. Because it lacks any sort of attempt to try to make sense of all this almost 30 years later, the film loses a bit of its punch. However, it still packs quite a strong emotional appeal without this and is very well made. It leaves the viewer numb and, in my case, vaguely angry that the situation was handled in such a heavy- handed fashion.

Growing up on the East Coast near Philadelphia, I became used to the local news reports of the latest problems with a group call MOVE – a "back to nature", almost survivalist group. What I knew about them came from those local newscasts, which were usually about a police confrontation of one sort or another. What also stood out about them to me was that all the members had the last name of "Africa", and that they occupied a townhouse smack dab in the middle of a blue collar, working class neighborhood. When one thought of communes at the time, one thought of encampments out in a remote forest. Well this commune shared walls with working class homes and families, and their rejection of technology led to no electricity, boarded up windows, and mounds of trash on the sidewalks. I left the area in 1982 and headed for California.

Imagine my surprise three years later to turn on CNN and find them covering the mass destruction of an entire city block in Philadelphia, and that MOVE was at the center of the inferno. After a failed attempt at eviction and after shots had been fired, the decision was made to drop an incendiary device on the roof of the house to destroy a fortified bunker. Things quickly got out hand. The result – eleven people dead, including five children, and 60 other homes burned to the ground. How did this happen? Filmmaker Jason Osder's "Let the Fire Burn" uses archival news footage, depositions and the filmed record of an investigative commission to retell the story of the MOVE clash. Big news at the time, but mostly forgotten today (overshadowed, no doubt by the Waco/Branch Davidian siege) Osder recaptures the feel and mood of the time and allows the protagonists to speak for themselves. His film is not a polemic on government abuse or the evils of racism (the mayor of Philadelphia at the time and the majority of the citizens affected were African-American). "Let the Fire Burn" is simply the filmed record of an event, masterfully edited in a way that, while knowing full well what the outcome is going to be, keeps you engrossed from start to painful finish.

At a time when civility seems to be rapidly diminishing in what passes for political discourse these days, it is good to be reminded of what the real result of extreme action, of any kind or on any side, can be. Just ask the residents of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.

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This documentary is insanely, incredibly affecting - and I'm someone who is often critical of overly biased documentary features. This one is a triumph of editing; I hope more documentaries attempt what the filmmakers pulled off here, in terms of not having a narrator or talking heads and focusing exclusively on archival footage - including, most notably, footage from an investigative commission that was held in the wake of the 1985 standoff.

This is one of those stories that not enough people know about; it seems to have weirdly dissolved into history, despite the fact that three city blocks were completely firebombed in Philly, by its own police force. The fact that the documentary does not talk down to the viewer, or cake itself in sanctimony, is practically revelatory. This film is cold and hard. It tells the truth. It offers no easy answers about how to move forward. It'll probably ruin the rest of your day. But it really must be seen.