Abdul-Aliy Muhammad

On May 13, 1985 an incendiary device was dropped from a police helicopter onto a housing structure on 6200 Osage Avenue, in West Philadelphia. This, the fever pitch of a series of police atrocities that was hoisted on an organization that was pan-african and labeled radical and terroristic by government authorities. The Move organization, founded by John Africa in the early 1970s, would become a prolific monument against anti-Black violences in Philadelphia, exemplified by Frank Rizzo’s terror on Black and Brown communities.

11 black people lost their life that day, including 5 children and John himself. This would shape the racial politics of our time, in a city with 44.1% of its population being of African descent.  I remember being told about this moment early in childhood. I was almost two years old when the bombing took place. Through the years learning about the criminalization of the Move members known as the Move 9. The recent commodification of Osage Avenue–which includes the renaming of the block after Mayor Wilson Goode, Sr., who was one of the responsible parties for the terror on Osage–should raise flags and sound alarms.

Hard to swallow pill: ethical redevelopment is gentrification with a facelift.

Let me explain, a city that systematically reinforces the worst forms of anti-Blackness like Mummers–white and Black–dabbling in minstrelsy or the FOP President calling Black activists “a pack of rabid animals,” can’t also be ethically redeveloping neighborhoods. It’s the worst contradiction ever. Not seeing the full humanity of all who lives in one of the most impoverished cities and then claiming you are building structures for everyone, doesn’t add up. I guess it’s our collective version of newspeak?

In the case of the Move houses on 6200 Osage Ave. The redevelopment has dealt an additional blow to the traumatic events of 1985. Building inaccessible housing in an historically Black neighborhood that experienced a bombing is salt in wounds, to Move survivors, some still incarcerated.

AJR Endeavors were picked to rehab the homes on Osage Avenue, following a request for proposal from the city. According to a Curbed Philly article the homes are selling for between $175,000-$200,000, this in a zip code that according to a PEW report from 2011 has households with a median income of $30-$49,999. West Philadelphia has pockets of communities living in deep poverty and this development is likely to attract outsiders that can afford to purchase a home at this rate.  

There has been extensive research that points to the trauma residential displacement causes, this form of displacement typically follows increased and pointed investment in neighborhoods. Philadelphia’s neighborhoods are shifting and the consequences of ethically developing a neighborhood, doesn’t serve to benefit the most marginalized communities. This includes a proposed nature trail by Bartram Gardens to a community Starbucks near Parkside Avenue. Structures and public space possess cultural norms and within institutions that are built by in the context of a still segregated city, public space that isn’t explicitly welcoming to Black and Brown or poor communities are often dominated by people who can access space without hesitation.

Remembering MOVE and the displacement caused by an intentional fire, allows us to peak into the uncomfortable legacy of anti-Blackness that permeates every nook and cranny of life within a major US city. I urge people to learn more about this history and looking forward, challenge the overstated kindness of development in Philadelphia, that doesn’t seek community consensus or reparative investment but rather hinges on a capitalistic trope that assumes development is good for us all.

Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad was born and raised in West Philadelphia, where they currently organize with the Black and Brown Workers Co-op. Mx. Muhammad is also running for City Council At-Large as a write-in candidate in the upcoming Philadelphia municipal primary on May 21, 2019.

My mother began smoking crack in the summer of 1986. At that time, it was widely known as “crack rock.” I was 9 years old and I already had mastered the art of secrecy. I didn’t call it art or survival; it was just life under the “rock.” I learned many things that summer that would forever change me.

I learned to check the spoons for burn residue before using them. I taught my brothers to do the same. I learned to hide my single speaker radio before going to school. I taught my brothers to do the same. I learned to play in the dark when the electricity was cut off. I learned that people were more than comfortable calling my mother “crack head” in front of our young eyes and ears. I learned to grow numb and I taught my brothers to do the same.

The greatest lesson I learned was not to be ashamed of my mother. Trust me when I say that this was no easy task during a time when life was polarized by dichotomies of “clean” or “dirty,” “crack head” or human.

These lessons sustained our sanity. These lessons fortified me, along with millions of black and brown families in the 1980s and ‘90s, tried to survive life under the “rock.”

Being the oldest child, I was charged with ensuring that my brothers were fed and taken care of. While I resented the responsibility, it provided me a kind of access to my mother that my brothers didn’t have. After coming down from her high, she would wake me from my sleep to play board games with her at 2 a.m. She would tell me about how AIDS had stolen her friends and how bad she missed them. She would tell me that I was the “good” one and it was my responsibility to keep my younger brother Nicholas out of trouble. We talked about pretty much everything – except life under the “rock.”

It was difficult for anyone in my neighborhood to call someone else’s mother a “crack head” without quickly being reminded that their mother too was a “crack head.” So, the insults had to be more specific; hairs had to be split: “Well at least my mother didn’t sell the TV.” “Well at least we have food in the house.”

My brothers and I were lucky in this sense. Our mother had done neither and so we found solace in that. I believe that this alone helped us to survive with whatever dignity we had left as I watched the will to live disappear from the eyes of other kids living in and being surrounded by crack addiction.

As noted by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, more than one thousand stories about crack appeared in the press in 1986, with NBC reporting over 400 reports on the crack “epidemic” alone. The media coverage was instrumental in shaping the nation’s perception of those who struggled with and/or were directly impacted by crack addiction. This perception has since been inherited by a new generation of HIV advocates and activists, who only associate the Presidency of Ronald Reagan with his failed response to AIDS. But those who survived the Reagan years also associate that time with the government’s swift and violent response to crack that stole the lives and promise of many, deliberately destroying black and brown families.

Thirty years later, the conversation about addiction has shifted dramatically. The same government that demonized, dehumanized and then criminalized people like my mother now urges us all to remember that people struggling with addiction have a disease and require love, patience and treatment. This reminder comes just as the face of addiction is now that of white affluent youth struggling with heroin addiction. This compassion, while critical and necessary, was not made available to black and brown communities that struggled with the presence of crack. I will venture to say that this approach is still NOT available to individuals who still struggle in the shadows of a crack addiction.

Yes, it is important that we evolve as a society and it is equally important that we make amends with ourselves for allowing this to happen on our watch. Even more importantly, we cannot validate our evolution without a true account of what happened, who it happened to and why it happened in the first place.

I have come a long way from the small room I shared with my mother and brothers. I no longer have to check spoons for burn residue but I no longer have family to bear witness to the atrocities we survived.

My mother struggled with addiction until her death. My brother Nicholas was murdered in 2001. I sometimes struggle with survivor’s guilt. This is not uncommon for those who have survived war. Every day, I am learning to reconcile my survival with the sacrifices my mother and brother made for me to live life out from under the “rock.”

Atonement is often the last act of any complete apology. As a nation, how do we atone for the heinous behavior of the government during the Reagan years? It’s simple: We don’t ignore the heroes of my generation. Instead, we honor the legacies of my mother and every mother who provided light in darkest days of the war raged on our families. We memorialize them like we would the heroes who were lost in battle.

written by: louie a. ortiz-fonseca

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE…WITH HIV

Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad

Growing up, Little Shop of Horrors was my favorite musical and still is a contender for the greatest of all time. I was captured by the music and the narrative of the underdog winning. Here was soft-spoken Seymour, falling in love with Audrey and then the nightmare unfolds. The music, composed by Alan Menken, is  composed well. In my opinion. It involves a nerdy florist (Seymour) who discovers a plant that, we find out later, is from outer space and this plant survives off the blood of humans. This plant’s name is Audrey II.

Imagine a little shop of horrors: HIV positive bodies captured by something like Audrey II. The medical industrial complex–and its kissing cousin nonprofits–grow and grow and grow. “Feed me Seymour” they say, Seymour in this instance is the free market, the invisible hand of capitalism all too willing to see the demise of many for a prized golden ticket. Who are the bodies being fed? The fodder are Black and brown communities, made by the material conditions around us, i.e.; state-sanctioned violence, mass incarceration, wage slavery and state imposed homo antagonistic violence. This oppression falls under the umbrella of white supremacy. I contend that white supremacy is leading the way for HIV vulnerability in the world.

HIV is such a dense topic to uncover because it often betrays biomedical and theoretical frameworks. What I know, having worked in community health for almost a decade and living with HIV myself, is that you must embody it to really understand its intricacies.

A few years ago, I worked at a nonprofit in Philadelphia that at the time had a mostly white board of directors.  Most frontline or direct service staff reflected the demographics of both HIV and Philadelphia, mostly Black and Brown folks considered “at-risk.” This agency, like most seemed in a rut, testing people for HIV but not really helping to curb the tide of an epidemic. I remember team meetings where there was gloat and congratulatory satisfaction over “found positives” and this was alarming to me as someone who was newly diagnosed. Back then, before a more comprehensive understanding of “Community Viral Load” which is loosely the concept of the amount of virus embedded in geographical areas with racial, gender and sexuality markers as a way to take a look at the difference between sexual/social and drug sharing networks. This helps us to better understand how much HIV are in our communities.

Trevor Hoppe, author of “Punishing Disease: HIV and the criminalization of sickness,” quotes a former Indiana State House Representative in his introduction to the book, “AIDS carriers are a threat to society, and the state has a compelling interest in protecting the uninfected. I am weary of politicians who pander to perverts with an eye to the next election.” Dr. Don Boys’ statement was from 1988, he is no longer a representative but now dabbles in blogging in defense of blackface and asking “legitimate” questions of Muslim members of the US congress. It is easy to conclude from just a glance at his online presence, that Dr. Boys also has deep connection to a racialized worldview that is often the framework of thinking for white supremacist socio political formations. As Black and Latinx LGBTQ people, we can’t separate state repression of our sexual and gender identities from racism. They are interconnected.

There is no coincidence that Black HIV positive people are criminalized disproportionately for HIV nondisclosure and related statutes within most US States. This coupled with the anti-Blackness of nonprofits has created a situation where the movement to end an epidemic still dangerously centers narratives of white survivors and limits storytelling of Black HIV resistance struggles.

NPR recently published an article “Ending HIV in Mississippi” shares a story from a Black, gay,  HIV positive Mississipian, Shawn Esco, who resides in Jackson. The city of Jackson, Mississippi is one of the hardest hit by new AIDS diagnoses in the south. “Another friend took his own life after he got his diagnosis — out of fear his family would find out.”

This highlights that both HIV-related stigma and racism drives increased HIV vulnerability and that stigma is tied to the early venomous refrain of the likes of Boys, evangelical racists who were also homophobes. In the case of Esco’s friend, stigma drove them to suicide.

We know that our communities can’t be provided sanctuary and care from institutions that can’t see us as fully human. We are deliverables, we are the found positives tethered to a grant cycle. 

To disrupt this, the Black and Brown Workers Co-op, SOL Collective and ACT Up Philly are hosting a daylong conference in Philadelphia, PA. Please save the date: Saturday, June 8, 2019. Community Control of Health, A Black and Brown HIV+ led conference on HIV/AIDS. We have collective expertise to lead our own way forward.

We hope to see you there.

As the school dropout chorus sings in Little Shop of Horrors “They say the meek shall inherit and you know the book doesn’t lie.”

Abdul-Aliy is a Black poz non-binary jawn* from Philadelphia PA.They organize with the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative and also facilitates anti-oppression trainings with the co-op. A Flower Left To Wilt, their collection of poetry is out now.