Minor thread redirection, re: message from M.Ted: the mayor of Philadelphia at the time of the final MOVE confrontation in May '85, i.e. the one where the Phila police fire bombed MOVE headquarters and thereby burned out an entire West Phila neighborhood, took place during the mayoral tenure of Wilson Goode, not Frank Rizzo.

Rizzo certainly had it in for MOVE, and he and the group had many confrontations, but the final MOVE catastrophe wasn't on his watch.

At the time of the burning, many folks considered it ironic that an African American mayor, Goode, should have presided over this disaster. Many others found it even more ironic and naive that folks would assume that the racial identity of a mayor/politician should have protected anyone from abuses in the use of state power.