TONIGHT: The Roof, The Roof, The Roof Is On Fire

 

May 13, 1985. MOVE was an obnoxious cult of bullying pseudo-revolutionary fools (a back-to-nature group that sets up shop in the wilds of Powelton Village?) taking orders from a schockingly inept leadership hellbent on an apocalyptic confrontation with the Philadelphia Police Department, which was appallingly racist, beat-first-ask-questions-later brutal and taking orders from a shockingly inept leadership looking for some payback. Ten thousand rounds later, when it was over, 11 MOVE members, including five children, were incinerated in a holocaust ignited, and then allowed to burn out of control, by a satchel of C4 dropped on the roof of the MOVE house on Osage Avenue by helicopter (a tragically ill-conceived plan that was thought up less than 30 minutes before it was executed), that burned 65 surrounding homes to the ground, and earned Wilson Goode, the first black mayor of Philadelphia, the never-ending shame of being the duly elected leader of the only American city ever to drop a bomb on its own citizens. A day that will live in infamy.

Let It Burn, 10 PM tonight, WHHY Channel 12