Radical Spirituality: A Conversation with Ramona Africa from MOVE

Abstract

R amona Africa remains an active and vocal member of MOVE, a family of strong, serious, and deeply committed revolutionaries that was created and organized by John Africa in 1972. A predominantly African American interracial coalition of activists makes up MOVE’s constituents. As this interview demonstrates, MOVE was concerned not only with the black liberation struggle but also with animal and environmental rights, economic justice, and police brutality. MOVE centers their political and spiritual philosophy on “Life”—the force behind all living and sentient beings. In 1985, concerned with MOVE’s revolutionary activities, police bombed the communal house MOVE shared. One of the two survivors of the shooting and bombing, Ramona Africa, continues to advance the causes of the MOVE organization while also seeking freedom for the MOVE 9, members of MOVE imprisoned since 8 August 1978. In this interview, Morgan Shipley, Jack Taylor, and Ramona Africa discuss, among other things, the importance of life for MOVE’s political philosophy, the organization’s relationship with the broad counterculture of the 1960s (topics range from the Black Panther Party to the hippies), and their concern for animal and environmental justice. To quote from her essay “Long Live John Africa!”: “You can only be a revolutionary if you understand and believe in the principle of freedom, not in categories but the totality of the principle of freedom . . . JACK TAYLOR AND MORGAN SHIPLEY