Posted on Tue, Sep. 17, 2002 By Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. Inquirer Staff Writer

WILLIAM F. STEINMETZ / Inquirer MOVE leader Ramona Africa (right), with other members at their house in West Philadelphia. A judge has authorized visitation rights for the father of a boy whose mother is a MOVE member. Africa said the situation was 'critical.'

The radical group MOVE is fortifying its sprawling, stone twin home in West Philadelphia, apparently readying itself to defy a court order over a parent's visitation rights.

The dispute stems from an order issued this summer in Common Pleas Court authorizing new visitation rights for the father of 6-year-old Zachary Africa, whose mother, Alberta Africa, is a MOVE member. The court permitted the boy's father, John Gilbride, who lives in New Jersey, to have custody of Zachary on alternate weekends.

MOVE members contend that Gilbride - who could not be reached for comment - has been physically and mentally abusive to the boy.

"This government knows how we feel about our children," said Ramona Africa, a MOVE leader.

MOVE has a volatile history. It has been involved in two deadly standoffs with police in two other West Philadelphia neighborhoods. The tiny group adheres to an anarchistic, antitechnology, back-to-nature philosophy.

As she stood inside a chainlink fence at the 4504-06 Kingsessing Ave. property yesterday, Ramona Africa declared that "this situation now, it's very critical."

While she spoke, male MOVE members busily cut up a pile of pallets stacked on grass alongside the sidewalk in front of the three-story home to make boards for windows, while others carried in sacks of provisions. The first- and third-floor windows were covered by boards.

In the unboarded second-floor windows of the house fronting leafy Kingsessing Avenue, a block of big twins that dead-ends on spacious Clark Park, lace curtains swayed in the breeze through open shutters.

Asked why the home was being fortified, Ramona Africa replied: "That's our strategy. It's just MOVE's strategy. We've been letting people know there's a serious situation developing here."

She declined to say whether the fortifications were designed for a standoff. MOVE has been living in relative harmony with neighbors.

Police said MOVE members apparently began boarding up the property over the weekend after some members, including Alberta Africa, were unable to meet Thursday at City Hall with Mayor Street over the court order. The group instead was given an audience with two city officials, including Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson.

Capt. William Fisher, head of the police Civil Affairs unit, met with Ramona and Pam Africa over the fence at the house yesterday. "We're going to try and keep the lines of communication open on this," Fisher said.

MOVE's last fortified home, at 6221 Osage Ave., also in West Philadelphia, was the scene of a violent clash on May 13, 1985, that left 11 people, including five children, dead inside the house and destroyed 61 other homes.

An early-morning gunfight broke out after hundreds of police officers surrounded the rowhouse to serve arrest warrants on members of the group. That afternoon, Philadelphia police dropped a bomb from a state police helicopter onto the house's roof to destroy a rooftop bunker.

The bomb started a fire that went out of control. Only two people, Ramona Africa and a young boy, emerged alive from the burning house.

In a previous confrontation in 1978 at another fortified MOVE compound in Powelton, Philadelphia Police Officer James Ramp was shot and killed when police sought to evict the group from the house. Nine MOVE members were convicted of murder in the shooting.

Johnson said yesterday that he had spoken on the telephone to Pam Africa and had assured her that police would not initiate a confrontation.

"I promised them that the Philadelphia Police Department will not come to their home and have any sort of confrontation, especially over a matter that's still in the court," Johnson said. "Hopefully, we'll never have an incident like 1978 or 1985."

He said he had provided Pam Africa with his beeper and office numbers.

Judges involved in the custody case could not be reached for comment yesterday because of the Yom Kippur holiday.

Suzanne Ross, a clinical psychologist in New York City who was hired by Alberta Africa and began treating Zachary three years ago as divorce and custody problems between the Gilbrides were being ironed out, said that Family Court Judge Edward Rosenberg had charge of the case and "never saw fit to allow the father to see the child in an unsupervised setting."

However, when Rosenberg retired recently, a new judge was assigned: Common Pleas Court Judge Shelley Robins New, Ross said, who reversed Judge Rosenberg.

-- Anonymous, September 17, 2002