FILM SUMMARY

A story about the reunion and repair between Mike Africa Jr and his mother Debbie Davis — a formerly incarcerated political prisoner of the MOVE 9.

USING THIS GUIDE

This guide is an invitation to dialogue. It is based on a belief in the power of human connection and designed for people who want to use I’m Free, Now You Are Free to engage family, friends, classmates, colleagues, and communities. In contrast to initiatives that foster debates in which participants try to convince others that they are right, this resource envisions conversations undertaken in a spirit of openness in which people try to understand one another and expand their thinking by sharing viewpoints and actively listening to one another.

The discussion prompts are intentionally crafted to help a wide range of audiences think more deeply about the issues in the film. Rather than attempting to address them all, choose one or two that best meet your needs and interests. And be sure to leave time to consider taking action. Planning next steps can help people leave the room feeling energized and optimistic, even in instances when conversations have been difficult.

For more detailed event planning and facilitation tips, visit https://communitynetwork.amdoc.org/.

THE FILM: PARTICIPANTS + KEY ISSUES

Key Participants

Mike Africa Jr. –activist and son of former MOVE political prisoners, Debbie and Mike Davis Sr.

Mike and Debbie (formerly known as Mike and Debbie Africa) - Mike Davis Jr’s mother and father and former MOVE 9 political prisoners, incarcerated for forty years. Mike was released on parole in October 2018 and Debbie was released on parole in June 2018.

Ramona Africa – is a survivor of the 1985 bombing on MOVE’s headquarters in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia. During the bombing, six adults and five children were murdered by police and firefighters who bombed the home then let the fire burn. Ramona was incarcerated for seven years on charges of “riot” after surviving the deadly attack. She returned home from prison in 1992 and continued organizing for justice for the bombing victims and for the release of the MOVE 9. Ramona’s says the names of political prisoners and victims of state violence at the conclusion of the film.

Key Issues

I’m Free, Now You Are Free is an excellent tool for outreach and will be of special interest to people who want to explore the following topics:

• The MOVE Organization
• Incarceration/ Women in Prison/ Children of Incarcerated Parents
• Black Radicalism
• Policing
• Political Prisoners
• Family Memory
• Displacement
• Reentry Programs supporting people who experienced incarceration
• Advocates for Political Prisoners

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

A Brief History of MOVE

The MOVE Organization is a group mostly made up of Black naturalists who formed a collective in the Powelton Village section of West Philadelphia in 1972. MOVE’s founding philosophies were rooted in environmentalism and principles that center interdependence with – and respect for – all life forms, plant, human and animal alike. Some of their most notable practices were working toward raw whole food diets; maintaining physical fitness routines; aiming to live in harmony with animals and without the conveniences of modern technologies. Some members lived collectively, and many took the surname ‘Africa’ as an expression of chosen family bonds. Their respect for life also informed their deep commitments to challenging policing, prisons and other forms of racial and class oppression. As a result of political organizing and affronts to the social, political and environmental systems in the city, MOVE encountered regular police surveillance, brutality, and eventually large scale violent attacks at the hands of police that were sanctioned by city officials.

The film opens with Mike Africa Jr. standing at the site of the first large scale police attack on the organization. The building is the site of the August 8, 1978 police raid and razing of the first MOVE headquarters and home. Police responsible for the raid were said to be carrying out an eviction order. After the police raid, a group of MOVE adults known as the MOVE 9 were arrested. The MOVE 9 were a group of political prisoners in Pennsylvania incarcerated in the wake of their political activity with the organization, seven of whom served 40-42 year sentences after an armed confrontation with police. The violent raid was legitimated after MOVE was criminalized during a months long standoff with police wherein they refused to be displaced from their home; even in light of disputes with the city and some neighbors over their unorthodox lifestyle and protest practices. The raid also came in the wake of Drexel University continually displacing other Black residents in the area in order to build university housing and facilities. On August 8, 1978, hundreds of Philadelphia police staged an attack on members of the organization living communally in a Victorian-style home at 309 North Thirty-Third Street. Within a few hours of the predawn police raid, officers fired thousands of rounds of ammunition, dispensed tear gas, and destroyed the home with water deluge guns and cranes—all while MOVE adults and children were inside. Afterward, twelve MOVE adults were beaten and arrested after a single police officer was fatally shot in the exchange of fire. After the death of an officer, those adults known as the MOVE 9—Delbert, Janet, Eddie, Janine, Michael, Merle, Chuck, Debbie, and Phil Africa—each received sentences of thirty to one hundred years in prison. Though police initially denied brutalizing unarmed group members, Delbert Africa was brutally beaten by police upon surrendering and the incident was caught on tape by local media. Still no police officers were held accountable.

Later in the film, Mike Africa Jr. walks down Osage Avenue, the second and perhaps most memorable site of police violence against MOVE in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia. In 1985, the Philadelphia police and fire departments, under the mayoral leadership of Philadelphia’s first Black mayor, Wilson Goode, dropped a bomb on MOVE’s newly established headquarters and home at at the 6200 block of Osage Avenue. The attack came as MOVE’s confrontation with the city escalated following the 1978 attack and the political incarceration of MOVE members went unaddressed by elected officials. On May 13th police deployed ten thousand rounds of ammunition, tear gas, and water deluge guns directly targeting MOVE headquarters. The attack culminated when the city dropped a bomb on the home and police and firefighters actively chose to let the resulting fire burn out of control. During the fire, when MOVE members and children tried to escape the inferno, they were shot back inside by police. Eleven MOVE women, men, and children were murdered. Only two members escaped to survival— one adult, Ramona Africa, and one child, Birdie Africa. In the aftermath, the entire city block was burned down, and other Black families living on the block were displaced.

The city’s attack on MOVE was carried out on Mother’s Day and is sometimes referred to as the Mother’s Day Massacre. However, several mothers of the five MOVE children who perished were incarcerated at the time of their children’s murders. Because they were incarcerated at the time, their ability to mother their children was denied by virtue of their inability to protect or even memorialize their children. Postmortem, the city’s violence against the organization, and the mothers and children especially, was exacerbated. City officials and the medical examiner's office worked in concert with local institutions to desecrate the remains of MOVE children and show their disregard for the lives of MOVE members and Black people and children generally. The remains of two girl children killed on Osage Avenue were obtained and used by the University of Pennsylvania museum for research, without the consent of their then incarcerated parents.

Policing and Political Incarceration

The violence MOVE adults and children have suffered at the hands of city police, elected officials, and even local institutions, is part of a long history of policing in the city—rooted in deeply entrenched anti-Blackness and repression of Black resistance. Many of the MOVE 9 came of age in Philadelphia during the 1960s. During this time, Black residents and organizers alike were subject to intensified police surveillance, repression, and violence. These conditions were enabled by law and order discourses and policies that originated in the 1960s. So-called law and order policies strengthened and militarized police power through increased federal funds for police to obtain military grade hardware and surveillance technologies. These technologies were often used to quell urban uprising and resistance prevalent in U.S. cities during the Civil Rights and Black Power eras. Elite militaristic police forces like Special Weapons and Tactics Teams (SWAT) emerged from this period of investment in punitive policies, as did the practice of Stop and Frisk policing. Though the language of maintaining “order” seemed race neutral, the policies and practices systematically racialized punishment and legitimized state violence against Black people and dissidents especially.

Philadelphia was ripe with Black Power era resistance groups calling for self-determination. Many of them were met with police violence in the context of national law and order campaigns. Groups like the Black People’s Unity Movement (BPUM), the Philadelphia chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Black Panther Party called for Black economic, political and social power in ways that would dramatically challenge Philadelphia’s otherwise segregated and oppressive conditions. Not unlike MOVE, many of these groups threatened the social and racial hierarchies in the city, often upheld through policing, through their organizing and protest politics. Like MOVE, they were targeted and even obliterated as a result. Each organization met repression under then, notoriously “tough on crime” police commissioner Frank Rizzo’s police force and tactics such as surveillance, police raids, alleged bomb threats and claims of police assasination plots. Perhaps the most memorable raid was that of the Black Panther Party offices in August 1970— just years before the incarceration of the MOVE 9. Officers shot into the headquarters and later forced the Panthers to strip down to their underwear. Rather than addressing structural racism in the city, Philadelphia carried on the aim of “law and order” politics, quelling Black uprisings and radicalism in the 1960s and ’70s and using Black resistance to legitimate violence and incarceration.

Philadelphia still has a long list of Black freedom fighters turned prisoners who have been incarcerated for decades on politically motivated sentences related to how they challenged the city's racist conditions. Among the most famous of them is perhaps Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist, former Black Panther Party member, and honorary member of the MOVE Organization. Or former Black Panther, Russell Maroon Shoatz who was only recently released after 49 years in prison. Some prisoner’s sentences are political simply by virtue of the racialized nature of mass incarceration. For example, Avis Lee, a Black woman from Pittsburgh, PA was recently commuted after serving 41 years worth of a life without parole sentence (LWOP), which began when she was 18 years old. Black Pennsylvanias, like Lee, are 18 times more likely to be sentenced to LWOP and there are more people sentenced to LWOP in Philadelphia county than anywhere in the world. All of these prisoners’ experiences constitute political incarceration due to punitive laws that criminalize dissent and/or simply because the state punishes Black and poor communities disproportionately. Similar police repression of Black resistance and the racialization of criminality continues today with organizers in and beyond groups like Black Lives Matter Philly.

Mothers and Children in the Prison System

The devastating effects of policing and political incarceration are especially heightened for Black women and their children. When mothers and children are forced into the prison system they experience the loss of communal and familial bonds. The state often deems incarcerated Black mothers unfit to parent. These narratives of Black mothers as unfit or even unworthy are upheld through punitive prison and social service policies that revoke parental rights or coerce vulnerable mothers, who are Black and often low income, to relinquish visitation and parental rights. For example, in 1997, during Debbie’s incarceration, the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act was enacted and reduced the time in which incarcerated women’s parental rights could be terminated by the state. Based on the act, after fifteen months, child welfare agencies are required to file a petition to terminate parental rights for children under foster care or even living under the care of family. This policy and others like it disproportionately punish Black women and families —subjecting them to ongoing surveillance and interfaces with the legal system, continually displacing children while also hindering their abilities to reunite with their mothers.

These barriers to mothering are intensified by the costs, distance and travel time to the few women’s prison facilities housed in U.S. states. Most states only have one women’s facility and these are often housed in rural places, far distances from the mostly urban places where Black women are arrested and sentenced. Debbie and other MOVE 9 women were paroled from the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs, which is located more than 6 hours and 400 miles away from West Philadelphia where Mike Jr. grew up.

Debbie gave birth to Mike Jr. at the House of Correction in 1978, unassisted and among her MOVE sisters. She subverted the prison’s authority over her body and took care of Mike for several days before prison officials discovered he had been born. Mike was taken from her and placed into her mother’s care. Debbie fought to birth and care for her son for those first days of his life, in spite of the multiple challenges facing her as a political prisoner, MOVE member and mother.

DISCUSSION PROMPTS

PROMPT ONE: STARTING THE CONVERSATION

Immediately after the film, you may want to give people a few quiet moments to reflect on what they have seen. You could pose a question based on the options below. Some of these will require participants to engage by first doing written reflection. Be sure to provide pen and paper. Give people some time to themselves to jot down or think about their answers before opening the discussion. Alternatively, some prompts ask participants to share with a partner or in small groups to begin processing.

1. Free Write for 3 minutes. Write about one scene or idea from the film that resonated with you most. Why did you identify with this scene? Read what you wrote to a partner.
2. Process how you are feeling after viewing the film in any creative way that resonates with you. Consider words or memories that relate to this feeling. Process by writing a poem, drawing, etc. Share creative reflections in small groups

Policing and Prisons

This film is, in many ways, about policing but does not depict any police violence. What do you think about this choice on the part of the filmmakers? Is it necessary to depict, or show scenes of police brutality, that the violence MOVE members endured to understand? What, if any, effect does the decision to not include these types of representations have on you, the viewer?

What assumptions did you have about the role or affects of prisons before watching this film? How have those assumptions shifted or become more informed?

What does this film teach us about the longstanding effects of policing and prisons in the city of Philadelphia and more broadly? Had you considered the familial, emotional or even spiritual effects of these systems before now?

In this film we gain understanding of how incarceration impacts those who are not behind bars, and more specifically the family members who are waiting for their loved ones to regain their freedom. What does the title, “I’m Free, Now You are Free” suggest about the many ways incarceration impacts those who are waiting for their loved ones to be released?

Storytelling & Family Memory

What did you notice about the moments when Mike and Debbie shared their stories with one another? How did they sound, look or act? How were they captured by the camera? Why was their testimony conveyed in this way and what did it allow you to infer about their relationship?

Debbie, Mike and his daughter, Aliya, collect home video in the film, in addition to retelling their memories of living through Debbie’s incarceration. How did or does your family preserve family histories? Why is this important? What are some ways you can continue to pass down enjoyable and challenging family stories and memories?

Much of the film revolves around Mike and Debbie being interviewed. They give their own personal testimonies about their experiences during Debbie’s incarceration. In some of these moments they are on camera, and at other times they are omitted from the frame, with only their voices present. What do these cinematic choices convey about memory? What does it convey about the role of retelling and memory for families living through state violence? How does the state’s violence affect their ability to retell and recall their experiences? How has state violence affected your ability to remember or retell your own life experiences?

Reflect on being a child and/or parent. Write down one apology you wish you had heard and one you wish you had given to your parents or to your child? To your knowledge, what were some barriers to these? Write the apologies you need/needed to hear.

Where did you identify places of anger and hurt in this film? How did Debbie and Mike express hurt, but also make amends? What apologies do you need to give from family, friends or community? What serves as a barrier for you to give them?

What is the importance of familial play in this film and why? What playful or lighthearted moments or symbols were present? How were you impacted by Aliya’s presence in the film?

According to a 2021 Report from The Sentencing Project, “Black Americans are incarcerated at 5 times the rate of white Americans in the United States,” and over half of all women in US prisons and 80% of women in jails (including those who are awaiting trial behind bars because they can’t afford bail). What are some of the effects of incarcerating mothers that you can glean from the film? How did incarceration affect the level of intimacy and care we saw in the film? Imagine some alternatives to incarceration for mothers and/or pregnant women that can support their abilities to care for and protect their children and themselves?

Cities, Neighborhoods & Displacement

Reflect on the moments in the film when Mike Jr. is walking down former streets in West Philly. The first is the site of the Powelton Raid, the second the site of the MOVE bombing, and the third the street his mother grew up on. How do these parallel scenes tell us about those spaces and what MOVE members experienced there? What similarities or differences did you notice across the scenes?

How has your childhood home place changed over time? How have police and/or developers affected change in the place you consider or considered home, if at all? How are people in the community affected?

Today, the former sites of MOVE’s homes that Mike Jr. visited are home to university dorms (Powelton) and redeveloped homes (Osage). How do you see gentrification and displacement playing out in your neighborhood? How do you contribute to gentrification and displacement?

Optional: CLOSING QUESTION/ACTIVITY

At the end of your discussion, to help people synthesize what they’ve experienced and move the focus from dialogue to action steps, you may want to choose one of these questions:

1. What will you remember most about this discussion? How has it transformed your ideas about the issues of the film?
2. Present one question that the discussion brings up for you.
3. Fill in the blank. This discussion makes me want to take action by doing ____________________ !
4. What do you want to learn more about since viewing the film?
5. “I’m Free, Now You Are Free” Group Closing: This activity is about thinking through the meaning of freedom, not only as a personal endeavor but as something communal, familial and necessarily shared! Answer the following question on a notecard: What does freedom mean to you. Describe or envision it as best you can based on your own personal ideals. Post your card up in a central location with everyone else's in the group. Now read the responses of others. As a group, take turns discussing what resonates with you about someone else’sidea of freedom.

Optional: TAKING ACTION

If the group is having trouble generating their own ideas for next steps, these suggestions can help get things started:

Learn & Remember:

• Research more about MOVE history and about the release of Debbie and Mike Davis Sr. in 2018. You might start with other MOVE films like The Bombing of Osage Avenue(1985) or 40 Years A Prisoner(2020).
• Independently research more about Black political prisoners who are still incarcerated from the 1970s and 80s Black freedom struggles
• Interview a woman in your family about an experience they had with state violence or with unfreedom more generally. Record the interview and discuss it with them further. Continue to archive your family or community history with injustice especially.

Imagine Beyond Prisons & Police

• Write a supportive and encouraging letter to a political prisoner in Pennsylvania or in your area.
• Donate to the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, specifically the annual Black Mama’s Day Bailout fund that is prioritized leading up to Mother’s Day. Or find and support your local community bail fund.
• Imagine small scale alternatives to calling on police on your street or in your neighborhood. Organize a gathering with a collective of trusted and like minded people to brainstorm and build support neworks locally. Consult abolitionist resources and toolkits provided by Critical Resistance.
• Develop a fund for re-entering women or mothers in your local area. Or develop a community aid fund to support the re-entry of an incarcerated person in your community or area.
• Support an organization that helps incarcerated people in your area receive family visits and support services
• Host a Curb Fest for Political Prisoners in your area. Established in 2021 in Philadelphia, Curb Fest connects organizers with community members to raise awareness of political prisoners and share ways to get involved in the movement.

RESOURCES

On A MOVE Podcast w/ Mike Africa Jr.: Former political prisoner Debbie Davis joins Mike Africa Jr to discuss the events that led to her arrest, life in and out of prison, and the new film 40 Years A Prisoner.

Philadelphia Community Bail Fund: The mission of the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund is to end cash bail and pretrial detention in our city. Until that day, we post bail for our neighbors who cannot afford to pay. PCBF has an annual Mama’s Day Bail out that posts bail for Black mothers around mother’s day.

Dignity Act Now Collective: We are dedicated to using our collective voice to leverage our power and apply pressure to affect change in order to reach our highest potential by utilizing culture as a healing mechanism for communal power and healing. We envision for the future: Ending the school-to-prison pipeline; Re-entry services that reduce recidivism and ease the transition back into communities; Better diversionary programs that reduce the prison population; Basic rights to those currently incarcerated; Restorative justice practices; Abolishing cash bail, mandatory minimums, excessive sentencing, an end to solitary confinement; Decriminalizing addiction and sex work; Holding Correctional Officials accountable for their crimes against incarcerated womxn.

Womanist Working Cooperative: The Womanist Working Collective is a radical grassroots social action and support collective for Black folks of marginalized gender experience, specifically women (trans* and cis), femmes, and other gender expansive folx. While this language will never be enough to encapsulate all of the Black folx we center, we want to be clear that we affirm the full breadth of Black gender expansiveness and explicitly reject cissexism. Our Community of Practice unapologetically centers our Quality of Life and livelihoods through Community Organizing, Mutual Aid and Holistic Wellness.

People’s Paper Co-Op: is a women led, women focused, women powered art and advocacy project at the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia. The PPC looks to women in reentry as the leading criminal justice experts our society needs to hear from and uses art to amplify their stories, dreams, and visions for a more just and free world.

Curb Fest for Political Prisoners: The CurbFest for Political Prisoners connects organizers with community members to raise awareness of political prisoners and share ways to get involved in the movement. It features local DJs, Performers and Artists. Curb fest was established in Philadelphia and took place in Germantown on September 18, 2021 with9 curb locations near Germantown and Chelten Avenues. Organizers are invited to host a curb fest in their respective cities. Where will you host your Curbfest?

Prison Society:The mission of the Pennsylvania Prison Society is to advocate for humane prisons and a rational approach to criminal justice. They provide prison transports and other family services.

Bridging the Gap: a door to door family run van service that transports people in Pennsylvania to visit loved ones in prison.

Black Lives Matter Philly: BLM Philly, a local chapter of the BLM Global Network, is a Black organization that seeks to disrupt the [multiple/overlapping/layered, countless] violences against Black people and elevates the experiences and leadership of our most marginalized. We work to build local Black power and a healing, joyful, liberatory movement through grassroots organizing, political education, youth development, and coalition building. At BLM Philly, our vision is an inclusive, politically and economically self-sustaining and self-determining, healthy, and free Black community.

Human Rights Coalition: The Human Rights Coalition is a group of incarcerated people, formerly incarcerated people, and their family members and supporters who fight for prisoners' rights and lives. It was formed to support families in coping with the stress and hardships created by having a loved one incarcerated, as well as to challenge the punitive, retributive nature of the penal system and to work to transform that to a model of rehabilitation and successful reintegration to society.

Decarcerate PA: Decarcerate PA is a coalition of organizations and individuals seeking an end to mass incarceration and the harms it brings our communities. Decarcerate PA seeks mechanisms to build whole, healthy communities and believes that imprisonment exacerbates the problems we face.

Lets Get Free: The Women and Trans Prisoner Defense Committee is a group working to end Death by Incarceration (also known as life without parole sentencing), build a pathway out of the prisons back to our communities through commutation reform, support successful possibilities for people formerly and currently incarcerated, and shift to a culture of transformative justice. We prioritize working with women and trans prisoners, whose experiences are often left out in conversations about mass incarceration; we work to build relationships and community across prison walls; we are guided by people in prison; we use art as an organizing tool; we educate to shift cultural understandings around harm, healing, and justice. We are motivated by an ethos of reducing harm and violence, and we are committed to bringing people home. Let’s Get Free!

National Bailout: The National Bail Out Collective coordinates the Mama’s Day Bail Outs, where they bail out as many Black Mamas and caregivers possible so they can spend Mother’s Day with their families where they belong! The National Bail Out Collective also provides fellowship and employment opportunities for those we bail out in order to support their growth and create a national community of leaders who have experienced incarceration.They also work with groups across the country to support ongoing bail reform efforts and create resources for organizers and advocates interested in ending pretrial detention.

Critical Resistance: Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. We believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure. As such, our work is part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The success of the movement requires that it reflect communities most affected by the PIC. Because we seek to abolish the PIC, we cannot support any work that extends its life or scope. Critical Resistance’s site hosts a number of abolitionist teaching tools, resources and archives. There are chapters in New York, Oakland, Portland and Los Angeles.

CREDITS & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

About the Author

Tajah Ebram, Discussion Guide Writer
Tajah Ebram is a scholar of Black literature history and culture. Her work and teaching centers Black feminisms, carceral studies and environmental studies. Her article, “ 'Can’t Jail the Revolution”: Policing, Protest, and the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia’s Carceral Landscape," appeared in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biographyin 2019. Tajah lives, works and builds community in West Philadelphia where she is an organizer and grower with the Philly Peace Parks-- working toward food & plant access and land sovereignty in Black communities. She is also working with scholars and activists in the city to co-create an archive of MOVE history and community memory.

Discussion Guide Producer, POV:

Courtney B. Cook, PhD

Thanks to all who reviewed this guide:

Asad Muhammad | Vice President of Impact and Engagement Strategy, POV

This resource was created, in part, with the generous support of the Open Society Foundation.