“Timestamp on our minds”: Philadelphia marked bombings in 1985, in which 11 | Philadelphia were killed

Philadelphia organizes an official day of memory on Tuesday when he brought a bomb on the headquarters of a black liberation organization 40 years earlier 40 years earlier and triggered an inferno that killed 11 people – including five children.

The police bombing of the home of the moving organization on May 13, 1985 was one of the worst atrocities, which were carried out in the period of the 1970s and 1980s of the black liberation struggle. This was followed by a long siege in which the notoriously brutal police in Philadelphia tried to drive the group out of their premises in the 6221 Osage Avenue.

The officials hit the house over a period of 90 minutes with more than 10,000 ammunition rounds, although it was known that children were inside. When the Move activists did not do this, the authorities ordered a police helicopter to fall on the roof of the house.

A fire was lit and let anger, killed all 11 people and turned to Cinder 61 houses in the mainly black neighborhood. About 250 people were homeless.

Five children between the ages of seven to 13 died in the inferno. They were called Tree, Netta, Deleisha, Little Phil and Tomasa.

Jamie Gauthier, a city council member in Philadelphia who represents the area in which the bombing took place, described the event as “the darkest day in the modern history of our city”. Her application for a 40 -year anniversary of the bomb attack, which was marked with an official day of memory, was passed by the council last week.

“The story about the bomb attack on the move is still written, it is up to us to make the end,” said Gauthier. “If we use the simple way out and make this tragedy faded out of memory, we did the future to fail in a future, in which those who come after us repeat the mistakes that Phillys leader made 40 years ago.”

She added: “We have to keep the shame of moving alive and fight for reconciliation and justice so that none of our voters hear the pipe of a bomb that is dropped back onto her house.”

Despite the devastation caused by the bombing, no civil servant of Philadelphia was ever pursued under criminal law. It took 35 years for the city to apologize for the violence that it had inflicted on its own citizens.

On the 35th anniversary of the bombing, Wilson Good, Philadelphia's first Black Mayor, who approved the attack, expressed his wish for a formal apology in an article in the Guardian and said: “Many in the city still feel the pain of this day – I know that I will always feel the pain.” “

On Tuesday, the events remembered the events on this day in the 6221 Osage Avenue – at 5:27 p.m., in the exact moment when the bomb was dropped. Mike Africa Jr., whose uncle and cousin both died in the bomb attack, has bought the house that has now been rebuilt and plans to convert it into a monument to the bomb attack.

He told the Guardian that the bomb attack, which took place at the age of six, was a “time stamp in our heads”. It never goes away – they think about it every day. It is urgent to know that her family has been killed in such a brutal, senseless way. “

Africa jr said that the bomb attack was a scar that would never heal. “The only thing we can do is go forward and try to prevent this again,” he said.