Life as Eutopia: MOVE's Natural Revolution as a Response to America's Dystopian Reality

Drawing from a 2015 interview with Ramona Africa, one of only two surviving members of the MOVE Organization following its 1985 bombing by the Philadelphia police department, this article critically explores the spiritual teachings of John Africa, specifically as they relate to black liberation and a back-to-nature religiosity that sought, in the midst of urban chaos, eutopia through a praxis of absolute responsibility. By focusing on the movement and not a single (albeit tragic) event, such an approach situates the significance of a social justice mentality that sought a middle way between the 1960s Black Power movement and hippie counterculture. More than the dystopian critique highlighted in historical literature, MOVE should be seen as a dialectical and spiritual by-product of the violence associated with modern America, the divisiveness of countercultural activism it inspired, and the need for a utopian vision more respective of and more responsive to the earth and each other.