Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Mary.
Speaker 2: It looks like you won the Man Alive on Mars
Speaker 2: or war Man on Mars Alive.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to West Love Supreme. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to refrain.
Speaker 3: I think I start every episode where I say, like
Speaker 3: a special episode of Quest Love Supreme, like it's a
Speaker 3: you know, a special, a special family.
Speaker 1: Times or whatever.
Speaker 3: This is definitely yes, this is probably a very this
Speaker 3: is a very personal episode, at least for me. It's
Speaker 3: a Philadelphia, and I think that you might claim you
Speaker 3: might want to claim your city for once, like.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, all day, especially when it.
Speaker 1: Comes this episode.
Speaker 4: Okay, good, especially when it comes to this topic.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, we are all Philadelphians now. Yeah. I know
Speaker 1: that Quest Love Supreme is normally our.
Speaker 3: Source for pop culture, Easter eggs and education edumentcation, But
Speaker 3: because of the times that we're living in right now,
Speaker 3: I felt it was only apropos for us to focus
Speaker 3: on a very powerful documentary that as a Philadelphia this
Speaker 3: is very near and dear to my heart. I'm speaking
Speaker 3: of the powerful story that is forty years a prisoner
Speaker 3: coming to well. Now at HBO, you can get on
Speaker 3: HBO Max as well. This is a tale, of course,
Speaker 3: the black lives of injustice, of police, brutality, of murder,
Speaker 3: of corrupt politicians, of an imbalanced system. A lot of
Speaker 3: questions and hardly answers that can't come fast enough. But
Speaker 3: you know this is also this isn't just uh torture porn.
Speaker 3: This is this is a story of determination uh and
Speaker 3: a story of hope, really a bond of a black
Speaker 3: family whose spirit cannot be broken no matter what opposition
Speaker 3: comes its way. And we have two key members of
Speaker 3: this very powerful documentary director of forty Years a Prisoner
Speaker 3: uh in Philadelphia, Tommy Oliver, and I guess I could
Speaker 3: say the star and the hero of forty Years a Prisoner,
Speaker 3: the very very patient Mike Africa Junior.
Speaker 1: Welcome, gentlemen, to Questlove Supreme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like Don Cornelis want to say that.
Speaker 5: You actually I've always wanted to be on soul train,
Speaker 5: so I'll take it.
Speaker 3: I'm actually, I'm actually proud that, you know what, I'm
Speaker 3: becoming more aware. I've been listening to a lot of
Speaker 3: old episodes and I Obama itis a lot of uh ah,
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to do less ah and gaps as
Speaker 3: I think in free time. So there's a lot to
Speaker 3: uncover here, gentlemen. I'll start by saying, how gut wrenching
Speaker 3: and amazing this documentary is. When mister Oliver first came
Speaker 3: into my radar about this project, the first thing he
Speaker 3: asked me was what do I know about Move? And
Speaker 3: instantly I thought, hell, yeah, I'm gonna be a talking
Speaker 3: head because I lived on O Sage Avenue and at
Speaker 3: that I considered like May thirteenth to be like one
Speaker 3: of the worst days of my high school life. Not
Speaker 3: even to make light of that day, but like you know,
Speaker 3: like just imagine like that morning my ninth grade girlfriend
Speaker 3: just dumped me in the most like embarrassing way in
Speaker 3: front of the class, and then like my sister got
Speaker 3: to go to the Cosby Show taping without me, and
Speaker 3: literally like I came on in puffing, and then exactly
Speaker 3: at like four pm like this, I lived on fifty
Speaker 3: second of No Sage, so I'm like eight blocks away
Speaker 3: from where this particular move incident happened, and you just
Speaker 3: heard this explosion and Tommy just stopped me instantly, he
Speaker 3: was like, this isn't about May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 3: So then I thought about Paleton Avenue and then I said, oh,
Speaker 3: I remember commissioner at the time, Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo
Speaker 3: lining up a bunch of African American males outside their
Speaker 3: home butt naked.
Speaker 1: And then he stopped me again. He's like, no, that
Speaker 1: was the Black Panthers.
Speaker 3: And I was like, wait a minute, Okay, I know
Speaker 3: about Mumia, I know about May of eighty five, and
Speaker 3: I thought I knew about move.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how many how many.
Speaker 3: Stories of the Philadelphia police system versus black people are there?
Speaker 3: And he just looked like, oh, you need to sit
Speaker 3: down and watch this, and he showed me this is
Speaker 3: so much to unpacked.
Speaker 1: I'll throw it out to you time before I get
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 3: Brother, Mike, why did you even think that this was
Speaker 3: the story unpacking?
Speaker 1: And I don't know, like, are we going to kind
Speaker 1: of give the ending away?
Speaker 5: Because for me that I did, Yeah, we did ending
Speaker 5: a way at this point. I mean because I don't
Speaker 5: know when this will come out, but it'll come out
Speaker 5: and then yeah, it's all good. We can we can
Speaker 5: definitely talk about it.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, the thing is is that going into it,
Speaker 1: you you know you're doing this in real time and
Speaker 1: you don't know what the outcome.
Speaker 5: Is, no idea whatsoever.
Speaker 3: And you wouldn't have told me in a bajillion years
Speaker 3: that what we concluded with was going to happen. So
Speaker 3: even then as I'm watching this, so watching when arms folded,
Speaker 3: like okay, more more torture, porn?
Speaker 1: You know, wait, let me let.
Speaker 6: Me just ask this job because he asked you what
Speaker 6: you know about Move? But Tommy, not to judge, but
Speaker 6: you obviously a little younger. First of all, what did
Speaker 6: you know about Move? And why? I'm just learning that
Speaker 6: there are multiple move attempted massacre stories, but why this
Speaker 6: particular story.
Speaker 1: More than the two that we know?
Speaker 2: Did?
Speaker 6: You just said no, I didn't even know because I
Speaker 6: was waiting for the bomb to drop. And I was like, wait,
Speaker 6: so can you explain that, Tommy.
Speaker 5: So I grew up and I sort of heard about Move,
Speaker 5: but not really. So I'm thirty six and I was
Speaker 5: one when eighty five happened, and wasn't alive when this
Speaker 5: event happened. But nobody really talked about moving any with
Speaker 5: any clarity.
Speaker 4: It was phi least tricky that way.
Speaker 5: Philly's really tricky that way, and so it's like move
Speaker 5: and there was this thing and there was a bomb
Speaker 5: and there was just you know those just what it was.
Speaker 5: And so I never really understood it. But I'm a
Speaker 5: complete research junkie, and at some point I just went
Speaker 5: down a rabbit hole and so I read every book
Speaker 5: that I could final Move, I've read every article I
Speaker 5: could find. I went down to the Urban Archive at
Speaker 5: Temple where there are seventy two boxes of content, and
Speaker 5: I threw so much of that stuff. But I realized
Speaker 5: that there was still more stuff that was missing. And
Speaker 5: so I had my buddy who used worked for the mayor,
Speaker 5: Maxwell Brown. He introduced me. So Max is the homie,
Speaker 5: is like, look, anybody anything that I meet and feel
Speaker 5: anybody I need to get to him? Like Maxwell was
Speaker 5: like can you? And so I'm like can you? Is
Speaker 5: like yeah, of course I got you.
Speaker 4: You're my guy.
Speaker 5: Done. And so he made an intro to to Mona,
Speaker 5: to Romona, Africa, and then she brought along Mike and
Speaker 5: I was like, who is this dude? It was like
Speaker 5: I was there to meet Ramona and Mike and I
Speaker 5: we just hit it off like very very quickly, and
Speaker 5: I learned so much at that point that I didn't know.
Speaker 5: So at that point two of the MOVE members who
Speaker 5: were in prison because of seventy eight had passed away
Speaker 5: in prison. Seven of them were still in prison. Two
Speaker 5: of those seven were his parents. And the fact that
Speaker 5: he was born in prison I had no idea about,
Speaker 5: and the fact that he was fighting to get them
Speaker 5: out and that's all he was doing with his life.
Speaker 5: That he was just a kid who wanted his parents
Speaker 5: home and despite all of what he went through, there
Speaker 5: wasn't a shred of bitterness about him was just incredible.
Speaker 5: And then to talk some top of that, the fact
Speaker 5: that to really understand that what MOVE was fighting against
Speaker 5: and seventy eight police brutality, wrong co incarceration, systemic racism,
Speaker 5: and piece of power, same shit we were fighting against
Speaker 5: at that point three years ago or so, and same
Speaker 5: shit we're fining against right now. And so for me,
Speaker 5: it was the idea of trying to just do whatever
Speaker 5: I could to be around him and sort of to
Speaker 5: just even just as a friend, because he was just
Speaker 5: doing something. He's wanted his parents home, and as somebody
Speaker 5: who grew up with a difficult childhood. My dad wasn't
Speaker 5: around all those things. I just wanted to see this
Speaker 5: guy get his parents home. And then, from a storytelling perspective,
Speaker 5: people knew about eighty five kind of nobody knew about
Speaker 5: seventy eight, but it was also specifically related to what
Speaker 5: his journey was into what was going on with his parents,
Speaker 5: And so that put me and the rest of my team,
Speaker 5: which is really three of us. It was me, my
Speaker 5: EP Slash Racibo producer Keith g Nutt, my co editor
Speaker 5: Joe Kiyo, the three of us just research the hell
Speaker 5: out of it because there was no definitive account of
Speaker 5: what happened in seventy eight, and so we just sort
Speaker 5: of went from there.
Speaker 3: I already know that this is going to be the
Speaker 3: Snoop Dogg Doggie style episode of Quest Left Supreme where
Speaker 3: the star of the episode doesn't even come in until
Speaker 3: the second song.
Speaker 1: So that's it. I'm like, we didn't even talk to
Speaker 1: Mike yet.
Speaker 4: I don't even know Mike we're talking.
Speaker 3: Just start three songs later, like everyone gets on Snoops
Speaker 3: record before Snoop does, and we're like eleven minutes into
Speaker 3: this episode. Just hit me that we left the train
Speaker 3: station without even talking to Mike. Mike, first of all,
Speaker 3: man I'm extremely honored that you're doing us this solid
Speaker 3: by giving us this interview. I guess for the non
Speaker 3: Philadelphians and the non connected people to your story, I
Speaker 3: would like to definitively ask you. Could you please tell
Speaker 3: us what does move mean?
Speaker 1: And what do they stand for?
Speaker 2: Oh? That's an easy one. Yeah, I mean, I know
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't really know what move means.
Speaker 2: They a lot of people think of it as an acronym.
Speaker 1: I thought it was an acronym.
Speaker 2: Right Listen. Growing up, I heard a lot of acronyms
Speaker 2: that people made up about us. Man, listen, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: were interesting ones. The best one that I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: It makes me laugh every time I hear it. Now
Speaker 2: they say it stands from monkey's own vines everywhere.
Speaker 1: What you gotta be kidding?
Speaker 2: But what?
Speaker 1: Wait?
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a question though? And this is
Speaker 3: going to pay me to ask because I know what
Speaker 3: the answer might be. Did you first hear that from
Speaker 3: a black person?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yo, we got to talk.
Speaker 3: I want you to answer that question first, and then
Speaker 3: I need to explain how move was explained to me,
Speaker 3: and then we can really uncover the dirty secret of
Speaker 3: Black America's conservatism, and.
Speaker 5: Then I'm going to explain so much of how much
Speaker 5: the media drove all of that in the seventies. You're misinformation.
Speaker 5: There was so much misrepresentation about who they were and
Speaker 5: there was no place else to go but to watch
Speaker 5: the news, and so we can dig into all that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So for starters, Mike, could you please explain to
Speaker 3: us what is MOVE and what does it stand for?
Speaker 2: The Move organization's name Move It came from the founder
Speaker 2: John Africa because he said that all life moves, and
Speaker 2: in order to be in harmony with life with nature,
Speaker 2: you have to move too. And we have a system
Speaker 2: in place that is stagnant and it causes people to
Speaker 2: stop or be stopped, and we are anti that establishment.
Speaker 7: So we are completely opposite. So that's why we are called.
Speaker 2: Move and our mission is to encourage people to protect life, people, animals,
Speaker 2: and the environment. That's it. The water moves, the trees move,
Speaker 2: the air flows and moves, the people move, the animals move,
Speaker 2: All life moves, and that's how we got the name
Speaker 2: pre epa.
Speaker 1: Yo.
Speaker 3: You know what saddens me about this whole thing is
Speaker 3: because okay, you know for us that for a lot
Speaker 3: of us.
Speaker 1: That are on social media, and.
Speaker 3: You know, you always see like you know, twenty twenty
Speaker 3: and a twenty twenty Bengo card, and surprises are abounding,
Speaker 3: and a lot of things are unfurling that you know,
Speaker 3: manages to shock you, even though I think nothing is
Speaker 3: shocking in twenty twenty. But the one revelation that came
Speaker 3: to be that really threw people for a gut punch
Speaker 3: was how conservative a sect of black America is, especially
Speaker 3: in the light of the election that has recently passed.
Speaker 3: And I say that because in nineteen eighty five, especially
Speaker 3: let's say, like five or six days before the Osage
Speaker 3: Avenue bombing.
Speaker 1: What what I'm saying is that.
Speaker 3: I grew up with uncles in the police force of
Speaker 3: the Rizzo era under under Frank Rizzo. For the for
Speaker 3: those that don't know, I was about to say, Frank
Speaker 3: Rizzo is not the character from the Jerky Boys.
Speaker 1: Frank Rizzo is.
Speaker 3: You know a lot of what's happening now in the
Speaker 3: Trump administration to a lot of Philadelphians, Uh, that is
Speaker 3: nothing shocking or knew. Frank Rizzo was probably one of
Speaker 3: the most vile UH politicians in the history of America.
Speaker 5: The dude once said that I'm going to make a
Speaker 5: till of the hunt look like a faggot. That is
Speaker 5: a direct quote from the person who was the mayor
Speaker 5: of at the time the fourth biggest city in the country. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he that is a direct.
Speaker 6: Also one of the issues that's even trying to pull down.
Speaker 5: And he was somebody who he started as b cop,
Speaker 5: made his way all the way up to police commissioner,
Speaker 5: two term city mayor, and he basically operated under the
Speaker 5: principle of you're gonna have safe streets or you can
Speaker 5: have civil liberties. Pick one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He again a lot of the code talk that or
Speaker 3: the you know, the the hidden he didn't even hide
Speaker 3: the code because I think at one point I remember
Speaker 3: my father being upset at that he I think he
Speaker 3: directly told white people to just rail against black people
Speaker 3: because they were taking your jobs. Like whatever the I
Speaker 3: think it was the garbage union or something like that,
Speaker 3: but like he just directly told white people, fight for yourself. So,
Speaker 3: I mean, everything that we're experiencing now with Trump, we
Speaker 3: had to deal with that. He's been mayor since I
Speaker 3: was born.
Speaker 1: I believe his time ran down seventy eight or seventy
Speaker 1: nine I'm not certain, but his.
Speaker 6: Mum was long though, right, because he was police commissioner first, Yeah,
Speaker 6: he was. And then his family is in the government
Speaker 6: as well, right, Like he had a brother.
Speaker 5: Brother who was in the fire department, who ran the
Speaker 5: fire department, and they were all over.
Speaker 7: His father was a fire department was in a fire
Speaker 7: department too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they were involved for a long time, and
Speaker 2: he ran the city like a mob boss exactly. You know.
Speaker 2: The thing of like like the racism in him, it
Speaker 2: wasn't even he didn't try to hide it.
Speaker 7: I mean, it was how he felt.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the examples I give about
Speaker 2: Frank Frizzo and his ways, like in the city of Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: where there's over two thousand statues or monuments in the
Speaker 2: city that is mostly black, there's only three that are
Speaker 2: of black people. One is Martin Luther King and is
Speaker 2: only eighteen inches high. One is Octavius That just we
Speaker 2: just got that statue outside of city Hall just a
Speaker 2: few years ago. There is no statue of Bernard Hopkins,
Speaker 2: who was a heavyweight champion at the age of fifty, however,
Speaker 2: but there's a statue of a fictional character named Rocky
Speaker 2: Velo right, so, and that's because of Rizzo Italian. He
Speaker 2: was pushing the whole Italian thing, and he wanted people
Speaker 2: in the city to be with this Italian thing, so
Speaker 2: he pushed it, and he, like you said, he said
Speaker 2: he wanted to urge white people to fight black people
Speaker 2: for better jobs and all that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 2: his and his racism spilled over on everyone, and Move
Speaker 2: got it really hard. A lot of it was because
Speaker 2: of Paltain Village and the gentrification of that community, a
Speaker 2: lot like what you're seeing now in a temple and
Speaker 2: pen and a lot of it had to do with
Speaker 2: the fact that Move was very much before our time.
Speaker 7: We didn't see dread locks in nineteen seventy whatever.
Speaker 2: And the first time I ever saw locks outside of
Speaker 2: my family was Whoopy gold Bird and that was in
Speaker 2: the eighties.
Speaker 4: And then they were demonized before they were celebrated, exactly.
Speaker 2: And so the raw food thing, we were long before
Speaker 2: the raw food restaurants that are popping up all over
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 1: Vegan in the wrong place. You were trying to be
Speaker 1: vegan in the city.
Speaker 7: The exercise, i mean, Move women having the babies at home.
Speaker 2: We were so before our time, and the you know
Speaker 2: it was it was we were demonized because of it,
Speaker 2: and people you know, discriminated against, and that was in large.
Speaker 7: Part what led to them accepting what happened to us.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The thing that perplexed me was that a lot of
Speaker 3: my I a lot of my thoughts on what move
Speaker 3: was came directly from black people, older black people. And
Speaker 3: that's when I realized that at the time, I think
Speaker 3: when the roots first started, and this is when we
Speaker 3: were like busking on the streets of like West Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: like we do something at Clark Park or whatever. We
Speaker 3: did this thing at Clark Park. Once I think of
Speaker 3: like ninety one and I met Ramona. There was on
Speaker 3: Baltimore Avenue, like a farmer's market or something like that,
Speaker 3: and she was.
Speaker 1: There and it was kind of like my us weekly.
Speaker 3: Oh she's just like us, Like, oh, she talks proper
Speaker 3: English and she's eating salad.
Speaker 1: I don't see her eating more. I'm telling you. I
Speaker 1: was told the worship about that.
Speaker 4: This is a dress, and this is addressed in a
Speaker 4: documentary day that.
Speaker 3: Y'all were heavens that it was like a cult that
Speaker 3: you know, like raw foods, And now I get what
Speaker 3: the raw means as in a vegan lifestyle. But when
Speaker 3: it's nineteen eighty five and people don't understand the contextualization
Speaker 3: of a cleaner, healthy living. I mean, this is stuff
Speaker 3: like Eric Abadu taught me in ninety seven. But you
Speaker 3: guys were just twenty years, not twenty thirty years ahead
Speaker 3: of the game. And you know, once I talked to her,
Speaker 3: I walked away. I was like, wait a minute, that's
Speaker 3: not what my uncles or my grandmam or like anyone
Speaker 3: that was older said, right, And it just that was
Speaker 3: the that was the moment where I realized, how you know,
Speaker 3: if you kind of go against I hate to say
Speaker 3: it like this, this conservative Christian.
Speaker 5: And black people.
Speaker 3: Go yeah, like it's it's against God. And what God
Speaker 3: do they worship? They don't worship my God and dah.
Speaker 1: Da da And.
Speaker 7: That's not even and that's not even necessarily accurate.
Speaker 2: The original A lot of people don't notice, but the
Speaker 2: original name for the move organization was the Christian Movement,
Speaker 2: the American Christian Movement for Life. That was their original name.
Speaker 2: The people black people were ashamed of us.
Speaker 7: They thought that even though.
Speaker 2: The message was cool, when we talked to them one
Speaker 2: on one, because we didn't come in a suit like
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King and delivered that message. They didn't want
Speaker 2: to accept it because we didn't come in a suit
Speaker 2: like Malcolm, you know, and these were the heroes that
Speaker 2: had just been honored and celebrated, so they thought of
Speaker 2: it as this is how you're supposed to look. If
Speaker 2: you're going to be a revolutionary or if you're going
Speaker 2: to be radical, then you need to look like the
Speaker 2: Black Panthers. So move come along with different than all
Speaker 2: of those groups, different than anyone has ever even seen before.
Speaker 2: And it just made people question it from the beginning.
Speaker 2: And it didn't help that the news media was saying
Speaker 2: things like we eat out of garbage cans, and we
Speaker 2: don't bathe, and we don't the children don't, the children
Speaker 2: are not schooled, and just they made it worse by
Speaker 2: just you know, inflaming people's minds and their passions with
Speaker 2: these lies. You know, they demonized us, and that just
Speaker 2: gave them like justification.
Speaker 3: Okay, So at the time, I mean, how aware were
Speaker 3: you of the osh Avenue incident and what effect did
Speaker 3: that have on your life? Like were you going by Mike?
Speaker 3: You were born as Mike Africa right.
Speaker 2: So you know, if you've researched move history, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of confrontations and incidents with the police that you'll find,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot that you will never find. One
Speaker 2: in particular that you it's a footnote within the history
Speaker 2: on paper, but it left a major impression on the
Speaker 2: children in the seventies. In the very early eighties, John
Speaker 2: Africa sent the children to our sister chapter in Richmond,
Speaker 2: Virginia was called the Seat of Wisdom. And I was
Speaker 2: one of the kids. After I was born in a jail,
Speaker 2: my grandmother took me to the Seat of Wisdom in
Speaker 2: Virginia too. Bertie was there. All of the kids that
Speaker 2: were in the house made thirteenth. They were all there.
Speaker 2: We were all together, and a bunch of other kids
Speaker 2: were there too. It was about fifteen of us. You know.
Speaker 2: It was like you never really got any peace. You
Speaker 2: could never really feel safe or secure. Every time you
Speaker 2: started to like feel that things were going to change,
Speaker 2: they just they didn't.
Speaker 7: I mean, I can remember times where neighbors black and
Speaker 7: white would walk up to us and just like pull
Speaker 7: as much mucus out of their chest and out of
Speaker 7: their throat and just spit on us. I remember, like
Speaker 7: like the police come by. They're not even doing anything.
Speaker 7: They're not coming by to raid our house or anything.
Speaker 2: They just walk in the beat and as they're walking
Speaker 2: they see, you know, one of us, and they just
Speaker 2: pick us up by our hair and throw us across
Speaker 2: the street. That that's the kind of stuff that happened
Speaker 2: throughout my childhood as children. Yeah, I mean, you know, three,
Speaker 2: four or five, seven, you know, and so like we
Speaker 2: always like stuck stuck together and like try to fight
Speaker 2: for each other. But you know, we were all kids.
Speaker 2: The oldest one was only eight or nine years old
Speaker 2: of the fifteen of us. And so like when we
Speaker 2: were in Virginia, there was this thing that happened where
Speaker 2: they pull the police raided our house and uh they
Speaker 2: said that there was some housing co violations. The children
Speaker 2: were said to be abused in all of this nonsense.
Speaker 2: So they put us in an orphanage. We were in
Speaker 2: the orphanage for eleven days. And while we were in
Speaker 2: the orphanage, we were like neglected, I mean totally abused.
Speaker 2: Like I mean, look I was I was I was
Speaker 2: almost three years old, and they didn't, you know, the caretakers,
Speaker 2: the nuns that was running the place. They didn't change
Speaker 2: my diaper for eleven days. I had a diaper rash
Speaker 2: that was near my knees and up to my neighbor.
Speaker 2: And when my when my family and I wasn't the
Speaker 2: only one, and I was not the youngest, and you know,
Speaker 2: I mean they they like my cousin. My cousin had
Speaker 2: locks down to his almost down to his shoulders, and
Speaker 2: like the nuns like were trying to comb his hair,
Speaker 2: and they combed his hair to the point where like
Speaker 2: his head was bleeding. He had went by the time
Speaker 2: they finished, by the time we were you know, by
Speaker 2: the time our family got us back, he had half
Speaker 2: of an afro and the other half of his head
Speaker 2: was still locks, you know, and he has sores all
Speaker 2: over his head. You know, they were they you know,
Speaker 2: when we didn't cooperate, they try to throw us.
Speaker 7: They actually threw some of the kids down basement steps.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: We would hide behind hot water tanks to try to
Speaker 2: try to get away from them. And we went through
Speaker 2: all of that for that eleven days. Our family rescues
Speaker 2: us and then they bring us back to Philadelphia, and
Speaker 2: you're thinking, wow, this okay, finally we're home. The worst.
Speaker 2: It can't get any worse than this. Right, it's over.
Speaker 2: The worst has to be over because we just survived
Speaker 2: something that we shouldn't have and then, you know, it
Speaker 2: just it never it didn't get better for them. You know,
Speaker 2: we were I remember hearing about the confrontation is gearing up.
Speaker 2: The cops were always around our houses, flying helicopters. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was terrified at the sound of any siren. It
Speaker 2: could have been an ambulance going to rescue somebody, but
Speaker 2: the sound was so terrifying, and when I would hear it,
Speaker 2: I would run home. It doesn't matter where I was
Speaker 2: or what I was doing. I would run home as
Speaker 2: fast as I could. And then one day I went
Speaker 2: outside the house and I turned I walked down the steps.
Speaker 2: I'm about four miles away from Osage Avenue on Reno
Speaker 2: Street in West Philly, and one of my friends he
Speaker 2: looked at me and said, they dropped the bomb or
Speaker 2: move And my first reaction was, no, they didn't. And
Speaker 2: he pointed up to the sky. And when I turned
Speaker 2: around and looked up, the entire sky was black and
Speaker 2: I didn't know what that meant. And I was six
Speaker 2: years old. I ran in the house, and I asked
Speaker 2: my grandmother, I said, and before I couldn't even ask
Speaker 2: her anything. Her and my aunts were huddled around the
Speaker 2: television with tears just pouring out of their faces. And
Speaker 2: you know, and I said, that looked like our house.
Speaker 2: And I looked at me and said it is. And
Speaker 2: I wonder. I didn't know if anyone had died. I
Speaker 2: didn't know who was in the house. I just knew
Speaker 2: that our house was on fire, and it didn't look
Speaker 2: like it was being put out.
Speaker 7: It took me a lot of years to find out
Speaker 7: who was actually in the house.
Speaker 2: I had no idea that all the children that I
Speaker 2: was in Richmond with was in the house. I would
Speaker 2: ask my grandmother where they are? And you know, how
Speaker 2: do you tell a six year old your family was
Speaker 2: just killed? Right, So with having the belief of life
Speaker 2: and believing that all life is one and connected and
Speaker 2: we all need each other, and we all depend on
Speaker 2: the same sources for life, and we don't believe in death, right,
Speaker 2: We believe that life is continuous. When an apple falls
Speaker 2: from a tree, it goes into the ground and it
Speaker 2: provides with more apples, more seeds, you know, So we
Speaker 2: just that's how we think about everything in life. So
Speaker 2: when I would ask my grandmother where the people were,
Speaker 2: where the kids, where's Tomaso at? She would say, look
Speaker 2: out the window, and you know, I might see a cardinal.
Speaker 2: At the time I asked her that question, I saw
Speaker 2: a cardinal land on the branch and she pointed to
Speaker 2: the cardinal and said, there he is. If you want
Speaker 2: to see your family, you want to see your brothers
Speaker 2: and sisters, look out the window and see the life
Speaker 2: you'll see them. And that's the way.
Speaker 7: It was for about eight years.
Speaker 2: And when I began to understand who was in the house,
Speaker 2: that came when Ramona came home and eineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: I asked my mom, who was at the prison with
Speaker 2: her before she came home. I said, I said, Mom,
Speaker 2: can you can you have Ramona come and get me
Speaker 2: when she come home? And Ramona the day she came home,
Speaker 2: she came and got me and we were Ramona went
Speaker 2: straight to like a speaking thing where she was on
Speaker 2: the radio or something, and I was with her and
Speaker 2: she was telling the story to the audience. And as
Speaker 2: she's telling the story, I'm learning what happened to my family.
Speaker 2: As she as the audience is learning it too, so
Speaker 2: there was a lot of catching up that I had
Speaker 2: to do. I didn't know who. I knew my parents
Speaker 2: were in prison, but I didn't know what they were
Speaker 2: in prison for. I didn't know that they had a
Speaker 2: hundred year sentence. I didn't know that they were in
Speaker 2: prison for killing a cop. I didn't know what was
Speaker 2: going on really, because again, how do you explain to
Speaker 2: a child that his family is in prison and he
Speaker 2: won't see them until he outside on the street.
Speaker 7: He won't see them until he's at least thirty years old.
Speaker 2: So you know a lot. I was just learning as
Speaker 2: audiences were learning. I traveled with Ramona throughout the country.
Speaker 2: We went on I mean, she went on tours, speaking
Speaker 2: tours all around the country, and I'm just soaking up
Speaker 2: as much information as I can from her and from Pam,
Speaker 2: and I listened to Mumia speak a lot.
Speaker 7: Mumia talked a lot about move.
Speaker 2: I listened to his recordings and his commentaries, read some
Speaker 2: of his writings. That's how I learned about May thirteenth
Speaker 2: and the and the depth that I that I was
Speaker 2: able to understand it in and about what happened on
Speaker 2: August Epe that sent our people to prison.
Speaker 6: I got to ask, is this from the after watching
Speaker 6: the documentary after you just listen to your speech just now,
Speaker 6: and I think that ameor mentioned this in your in
Speaker 6: the intro.
Speaker 4: Your patience is is.
Speaker 6: And you're just wherewithal to just push through is amazing,
Speaker 6: and knowing it is astounding, and knowing just a piece
Speaker 6: of the story makes you feel that way, but then
Speaker 6: knowing the totality, like not just about your parents, but
Speaker 6: just life outside of that and the.
Speaker 4: Things that you've seen.
Speaker 6: So I got to ask you as a man, like,
Speaker 6: as a black man, like.
Speaker 4: How do you maintain this?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 6: And I'm just pointing to mind because at such a
Speaker 6: beautiful level that it seems to exude from you.
Speaker 7: You know, I was asking this question earlier today. Oh damn,
Speaker 7: people ask me this.
Speaker 2: People ask me this, I mean, because.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like advice too.
Speaker 6: We want to know, we want to know if you
Speaker 6: can do it, we can go through anything we got
Speaker 6: going on.
Speaker 2: One of the I was doing an interview with a
Speaker 2: reporter from the Guardian newspaper. He asked me what was
Speaker 2: your what was the thing that you disliked about the
Speaker 2: film the most? And I said, I didn't dislike the
Speaker 2: film at all, I said, But there was a comment
Speaker 2: that was made by one of the officers, Bob Hurst.
Speaker 2: Bob Hurst made a comment that said he said something
Speaker 2: like they took move to jail, but they should have
Speaker 2: took him to the morgue. And that was probably more
Speaker 2: disappointing than it was angering, because how you know, if
Speaker 2: we're going to move forward and grow as a people, right,
Speaker 2: how do you still harbor the same hate in your
Speaker 2: heart that led to one of his fellow officers being killed.
Speaker 2: I mean, what happened on August eighth, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: when a cop where a cop was killed. That didn't
Speaker 2: happen because people were loving each other. That happened because
Speaker 2: people were fighting each other because of a system that
Speaker 2: one was trying to protect and the other side was
Speaker 2: trying to get rid of. Because of the danger. It
Speaker 2: calls for people, the animals, the environment, and everyone, including
Speaker 2: the cops. So you know, it's just I have enough
Speaker 2: understanding of the mission, and I'm clear enough to understand
Speaker 2: that we're not going to get in anywhere carrying hate
Speaker 2: in our hearts. We're not.
Speaker 7: It doesn't get us anywhere.
Speaker 2: You know where hate gets you, It gets warse, it
Speaker 2: gets violence, the hatred that you must have in you
Speaker 2: to shoot a brother down in his back in front
Speaker 2: of his mother, kneeling on his neck while he's calling
Speaker 2: for his mother, crying for his mother, pleading for his mother.
Speaker 2: That is what hate breathes. And I'm trying to get
Speaker 2: as far away from it from that type of activity
Speaker 2: as possible because it doesn't get us anywhere, it doesn't
Speaker 2: help us in any kind of way. And it is
Speaker 2: exactly what like like Trump Trump was saying that Trump
Speaker 2: made a statement about Frank Rizzo himself. He said, we
Speaker 2: need more mayors like him, you know, and we see
Speaker 2: the type of person he is and the type of
Speaker 2: the type of evil that is evoked by his mentality.
Speaker 2: You got people walking around shooting protesters because protesters are
Speaker 2: trying to make a better way, because they're just trying
Speaker 2: to say stop killing black people. And you got anti
Speaker 2: protesters protesting the protests because they want to continue to
Speaker 2: kill black people. So, you know, I do a lot.
Speaker 6: It ain't easy about That's why I'm asking you, like,
Speaker 6: do you meditate, like Guly, asking you, like.
Speaker 4: How the spirits?
Speaker 7: Yes, right.
Speaker 4: In the life you know.
Speaker 5: It means you.
Speaker 2: You know, I am. I had a lot of time
Speaker 2: to think. I just I've had a lot of time
Speaker 2: to process what happened. Tommy talked about he's a research junkie.
Speaker 2: I'm a research junk as well. I have files. I
Speaker 2: have boxes and crates and filing cabinets and storage bends.
Speaker 2: Tommy's been to my basement. He's seen the towers of
Speaker 2: storage bins. In fact, you can see it. You can
Speaker 2: see a portion of my archives in the film. I'm
Speaker 2: sitting in front of it. That is ten of the
Speaker 2: information that I have.
Speaker 3: Okay, so there's a part of the film that our
Speaker 3: mayor from eighty five W. Wilson Good, very transparently says
Speaker 3: that it's it's most likely that friendly fire was the
Speaker 3: cause of the death of the office. I forget the
Speaker 3: offers his name, James Grant, James Rand. Okay, sorry, now
Speaker 3: I do know that because of the bulldozing of the
Speaker 3: compound and whatnot, I assume that a might assume that
Speaker 3: the evidence that would have officially exonerated them was that
Speaker 3: in the rubble and the pile of mess like, because
Speaker 3: it's so obvious that it was friendly fire, and I
Speaker 3: know that you know forensics and you know the whatever
Speaker 3: the grass you know, magic bullet JFK theory thing couldn't
Speaker 3: be been proved proven because of the of the watch
Speaker 3: job of the Philly Police Department. But how I mean,
Speaker 3: how close were they to kind of reaching that conclusion?
Speaker 3: Like it was there was that ever introduced in court?
Speaker 1: That hey, it was.
Speaker 5: It was introduced in court and it was a mess.
Speaker 5: There were so many things that happened, from evidence disappearing
Speaker 5: to the official footsiographer not taking any photos in the basement,
Speaker 5: to him saying that when he was in the basement
Speaker 5: he saw no guns in the basement, to the there
Speaker 5: was a time where they changed the trajectory of the
Speaker 5: bullet in court and so they said that oh it
Speaker 5: was going this way. Oh no, I'm sorry, it's actually
Speaker 5: going this way in court on the official coroner's report
Speaker 5: they just said, oh no, no, sorry, it's supposed to be
Speaker 5: the other way. And the judge allowed it. And so
Speaker 5: there were so many things. I mean, if you just
Speaker 5: stopped to think about it for a second, why would
Speaker 5: anyone destroy a crime scene hours after Why Olkham's razor?
Speaker 5: Like why like why would somebody do that?
Speaker 6: Tommy, how did you not lose your shit during these interviews?
Speaker 6: Because I know that Mike is superhuman. However, I in
Speaker 6: these moments from the moment of the with Mike just
Speaker 6: reminded us of what the officer said to Yeah, Bob
Speaker 6: Hurst to buy her, to Rendell, to Wilson, good, to
Speaker 6: all of them coming back and now being like, well,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 4: Maybe they should be they shouldn't be in jail.
Speaker 6: You know, everybody forty years later, like how do you
Speaker 6: how did you keep your cool during the taping of
Speaker 6: these moments that were just like the fuck?
Speaker 5: What you mean?
Speaker 4: Like forty years ain't shit. I'm sorry, That's how I felt.
Speaker 5: I mean, so much of it came down to, like,
Speaker 5: I set out to tell a story that was open,
Speaker 5: honest and unbiased, and there are no frank In bites
Speaker 5: in this. I'm not misrepresenting what people say, I'm not
Speaker 5: taking it out of context, and in many ways it
Speaker 5: was giving people enough rope to hang themselves because.
Speaker 6: I'm surprised you got some of those people. I was
Speaker 6: surprised you got Rendell and married They're good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was Jesus Christ.
Speaker 7: How hard or easy was that?
Speaker 3: That was the last that watching Wilson Good speak on
Speaker 3: move Yd, So wait, can I can I can I
Speaker 3: assume that you had to assure them that this was
Speaker 3: not about nineteen eighty five and that he was only
Speaker 3: going to speak on nineteen seventy seven, that.
Speaker 5: He's soool that actually came through Mike, and so speaking
Speaker 5: of the idea, and I know it really came down to,
Speaker 5: in his case, the ends justifying the means and the
Speaker 5: only thing and not to put words in your mouth,
Speaker 5: you can speak for yourself. But he went in his
Speaker 5: parents home, and as such it was about whatever it
Speaker 5: took to do that, and the idea of sitting with
Speaker 5: the men who was significantly responsible for what happened to
Speaker 5: his family. Even the idea of that wasn't too much.
Speaker 4: Oh you were there, you were there, Mike was there.
Speaker 3: Let me put it in context for people that might
Speaker 3: not get it. W Wilson Good was mayor of Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: our first black mayor in nineteen eighty five, kind of
Speaker 3: a source of pride. Not Obama esque, but it was
Speaker 3: kind of like okay, you know, okay.
Speaker 4: If you wasn't no Marion Barry.
Speaker 3: Well, you didn't smoke crack at least no, it was
Speaker 3: it was. It was a quasi I mean, if you
Speaker 3: were into that sort of thing. I mean, I've never
Speaker 3: got the quote Obama, whatever the feeling. I guess the
Speaker 3: idea of something supersedes the actual reality. So yes, I
Speaker 3: would say that the idea of the first black mayor
Speaker 3: of Philadelphia was kind of a source of pride, especially
Speaker 3: for a city that was under the under the thumb
Speaker 3: of you know, Rizzo for so long, and then eight
Speaker 3: years later you have your first black mayor. But this
Speaker 3: incident May thirteenth, nineteen eighty five really tarnished his legacy.
Speaker 3: And I guess we need to also explain that that,
Speaker 3: you know, in addition to what happened in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: Has explained earlier.
Speaker 3: Nineteen eighty five, the city of Philadelphia flew a helicopters.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry it did it though, like you say, it Tarrens' legacy.
Speaker 5: Yet they he got re elected, and so he got
Speaker 5: re elected after that, and and so see, part of
Speaker 5: the problem is it's there's so much more to that
Speaker 5: where when you dehumanize a people, which is what the
Speaker 5: media did to move it makes it really easy to
Speaker 5: justify what's what happens to them insert whatever them you want,
Speaker 5: whether it's move or immigrants or natives or or whatever
Speaker 5: group you want to insert, because they've been dehumanized, and
Speaker 5: as such, it becomes easy to justify it, because how
Speaker 5: then do you not get confused by the idea of
Speaker 5: this man gets re elected the next year.
Speaker 3: But it's for me, there's always going to be an
Speaker 3: asterisk there, like or maybe you know, I'm just in
Speaker 3: the right mind of things. You know, of course, if
Speaker 3: you were to ask an older black person or a
Speaker 3: conservative person, I don't know. I just think that the
Speaker 3: stain of what happened to fifty two to the sixty
Speaker 3: two hundred block of Osage Avenue and the subsequent blocks
Speaker 3: that also got destroyed, that was way way too There's
Speaker 3: there's always going to be an asterisk on.
Speaker 1: His entire legacy that.
Speaker 3: Is not going to be there for Rendell or Nutter
Speaker 3: or any other mayor which and.
Speaker 1: What's what's even weirder is that Rizzo was way worse.
Speaker 3: And I yes, I think he's one of the worst
Speaker 3: politicians of all time, but I think generally in history,
Speaker 3: like there isn't a statue of Wilson Good up in Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: you know, there Now, if you were white, I'm certain
Speaker 3: that there would have been a lot of erasure and
Speaker 3: you know, a kind of.
Speaker 1: A revisionist history of his legacy.
Speaker 3: But you know, I mean, Wilson Good has actually been
Speaker 3: in I still consider in hiding. Like besides this interview,
Speaker 3: I can't recall ever seeing a Wilson Good SoundBite or
Speaker 3: an interview or anything in the last thirty five years.
Speaker 6: Now I'm interested to see about Mike and his relationship
Speaker 6: since he was the one that introduced him to the project.
Speaker 1: Because also, how did how did that? Well, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: shocked to hear this. How did that even? How was that? Broker?
Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't easy. How it started was Wilson Good
Speaker 2: was honored with the street sign called Wilson Good Way
Speaker 2: on his block where he lives. And when that happened,
Speaker 2: some members of the community who are also move and
Speaker 2: move me is some porters were enraged by it, and
Speaker 2: they talked about how they take their kids by that
Speaker 2: street on their way to school every day and they
Speaker 2: do not want to see a street sign of a
Speaker 2: murderer on their block. So the pressure was so intense
Speaker 2: and Wilson it drew, it drew Wilson Good out. He
Speaker 2: got on the radio.
Speaker 7: He talked about how you know he was he was
Speaker 7: sorry for what happened.
Speaker 2: He had apologized multiple times he would be willing to
Speaker 2: support MOVE and John Africa for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: And so at the time, the MOVE nine were still
Speaker 2: in prison except for my mom. And when my mom
Speaker 2: got out of prison, the head of the FOP, John mcnesby,
Speaker 2: made a statement that said one of the MOVE members
Speaker 2: slipped through the cracks, but the next man up, the
Speaker 2: next person up, we're gonna be waiting for.
Speaker 7: He pointed and said this Michael Davis was just my father.
Speaker 2: He said this, Michael Davis, We're gonna make sure that
Speaker 2: he never sees the light of day. We're going to
Speaker 2: make sure that he stays in jail. And if that
Speaker 2: means that his he said, we want him to serve
Speaker 2: the full term. And if that means he dies before
Speaker 2: his terms are up, we want his body, his corpse
Speaker 2: to occupy.
Speaker 1: A sell for interrupting. When was that said?
Speaker 2: That was in uh June twenty eighteen, right when she
Speaker 2: came out, right, all right, my mom got out. So
Speaker 2: when that happened, I knew that the pressure that we
Speaker 2: had applied and all of the work that we had
Speaker 2: done to get my mom out, I knew that we
Speaker 2: were going to need more. The way people see women
Speaker 2: as opposed to how they see men, it would be
Speaker 2: harder for my father to make parole than my mom.
Speaker 2: So Wilson said he wanted to help. So I called
Speaker 2: him and I told him, I said, you said you
Speaker 2: wanted to help help. So he said, okay. So he
Speaker 2: said he wanted to set up a meeting. He said
Speaker 2: there was certain information that he could help with. There
Speaker 2: are certain things that he knew, and he said he'd
Speaker 2: be willing to provide that information. He'd be willing to
Speaker 2: provide support letters, He'd be willing to provide jobs. All
Speaker 2: of the things that the parole board needed you to
Speaker 2: have to make parole. He said he'd be willing to supply.
Speaker 2: So the first meeting that we had.
Speaker 4: Sounds like modern day mister. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: It was great, but I didn't know this part of
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 4: That's crazy. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: The first meeting that we had was I tell you so,
Speaker 2: just to give you a little bit of understanding about me,
Speaker 2: my family, the children that were in the house. I
Speaker 2: think about them every day. There is not a day
Speaker 2: that goes by in the thirty five years since I've
Speaker 2: seen them last that I don't think about him every day.
Speaker 2: And the women and the men that were in the prison,
Speaker 2: they were the parents of the kids that were killed.
Speaker 2: So going into Wilson Good's office it was the hardest
Speaker 2: thing I ever had to do in my life. It
Speaker 2: was I felt like I felt so dirty, Like just
Speaker 2: having a conversation with him and not jumping over the
Speaker 2: table to strangle him, I felt so I felt like
Speaker 2: I was betraying my family just looking at him and
Speaker 2: looking at him looking back at me.
Speaker 7: You know, I left the first meeting vomiting after.
Speaker 2: You know, it was it was really tough. But if
Speaker 2: you know anything about me, you know that I don't
Speaker 2: love anything more then I love my family, my whole
Speaker 2: MOVE family.
Speaker 1: And so with.
Speaker 2: One of the members of the Move nine dying in
Speaker 2: prison in twenty fifteen, you know, I just didn't want
Speaker 2: to see any other MOVE member come out of prison
Speaker 2: feet first. So I was willing to do whatever it took.
Speaker 2: It didn't matter how hard it was, it didn't matter
Speaker 2: how gut wrenching it was, it didn't matter how controversial
Speaker 2: it was. Because it was definitely controversial. People didn't like
Speaker 2: the idea of me going and sitting down and talking
Speaker 2: with Wilson Good but to bring my family home.
Speaker 7: I was willing to do that, and I don't regret it.
Speaker 3: Can I ask something a tom? So this documentary is
Speaker 3: what one hour and forty five minutes?
Speaker 5: I believe an hour and forty nine.
Speaker 1: Okay, so under out under two hours? One slight left turn.
Speaker 3: And this could have easily have been It could have
Speaker 3: been a short docuseries, like just just for us to
Speaker 3: conduct this interview and just unwrap twenty percent of the story,
Speaker 3: you know, is a lot to.
Speaker 5: Have, no idea a mirror do.
Speaker 3: Okay, not even I'm not even trying to self promote
Speaker 3: because I'm doing a documentary that at the same time,
Speaker 3: like cutting your kids is one of the hardest things.
Speaker 1: I gotta keep this in and I gotta keep this in.
Speaker 3: All this too important, This is too important, and I'm
Speaker 3: hearing a lot of things that now I'm like, well, wait,
Speaker 3: why wasn't that in the die? And then I realized
Speaker 3: that if you open that can of worms, then suddenly
Speaker 3: you're dealing with a three hour film. So talk about
Speaker 3: the storyline structure, like how hard was it? What was
Speaker 3: your original director's cut and how much did you have
Speaker 3: to cut on the floor just to get the sustinct
Speaker 3: start to finish story that you ended up with.
Speaker 1: Now that's just as powerful.
Speaker 5: So interestingly, I actually thought of this as a multi
Speaker 5: part piece to begin with, and that's what I started
Speaker 5: talking to HBO about. And they thought that it was
Speaker 5: a feature. And actually what I said to them was
Speaker 5: if it was anybody but HBO, Manswer will be hell no.
Speaker 5: But let me think about it. Okay, That's what I
Speaker 5: said verbatim, And so I thought about it and I
Speaker 5: I agreed, And then when I turned in the first cut,
Speaker 5: they were like, oh, I see what you were talking about.
Speaker 5: You want to have a conversation about this being more
Speaker 5: than one part, and we can have that conversation. And
Speaker 5: at that point I was like no. And it was
Speaker 5: about figuring out how to be disciplined and tell the
Speaker 5: story in a way that that really worked, because there
Speaker 5: are so many things that we could dig into. We
Speaker 5: could dig into August eighth for two hours by itself,
Speaker 5: and I'm not exaggerating. We have so much footage around it,
Speaker 5: we have so many perspectives and there's so much archival
Speaker 5: you can really dig into all of the details in
Speaker 5: so many ways. But for me, it was about understanding
Speaker 5: what the story was really about, understanding what the emotion was,
Speaker 5: which is this guy trying to get his parents home,
Speaker 5: and then the context around that, why are his parents
Speaker 5: in and how do we be laser focused on that.
Speaker 5: There's a reason that the film moves the way that
Speaker 5: it does, that it looks the way that it does.
Speaker 5: That the cutting the shoe, Like I shot the entire
Speaker 5: film myself, I cut it with a partner, and part
Speaker 5: of it is the idea of stripping away. I lit
Speaker 5: the film out it, all of it, and so it's
Speaker 5: just stripping away all the things that take you away
Speaker 5: from the emotion and the story, and that's it. Mething
Speaker 5: that does not fit on that you pull away.
Speaker 3: So the the scene in which Mike is about to
Speaker 3: hear that his mother is about to be released, you
Speaker 3: were there.
Speaker 1: How much FaceTime were you so?
Speaker 5: So so here's the thing, that's the one thing that
Speaker 5: I didn't and Mike and I had So Mike and
Speaker 5: I talked about this because we can imagine that scene
Speaker 5: image scene.
Speaker 7: So tell him about how you threatened me. You don't
Speaker 7: forget that part you.
Speaker 4: That you had to be there when it happened.
Speaker 5: So I was in La. I live in La. He's
Speaker 5: in Philly and and so, but I didn't. We had
Speaker 5: no idea when it was going to happen. So you
Speaker 5: can tell HI about the threat, right, So.
Speaker 1: I told you.
Speaker 2: I said, Tommy, I don't know when this is gonna happen. Man,
Speaker 2: if it's gonna happen, I said, what happens. If it
Speaker 2: happens and I just go pick her up? He said,
Speaker 2: if you pick her up without calling me, I will
Speaker 2: kill you.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I felled him on that because that was such
Speaker 6: a beautiful moment, like it was theatrical like just.
Speaker 5: So that that actual phone call I wasn't there for.
Speaker 5: But it was interesting because I was in I was
Speaker 5: in Miami at ABFF and I was there with my
Speaker 5: wife and our kids. And when he called me, we
Speaker 5: were actually planning on shooting a Black Love interview the
Speaker 5: following day, and so I had equipment with me which
Speaker 5: we had to cancel and they've never forgiven me since
Speaker 5: because I cancel it them. I couldn't tell them why.
Speaker 5: It was Juwan Howard and his wife and they just
Speaker 5: thought we blew him off. But anyway, so he called
Speaker 5: me at I think it was like ten am. I
Speaker 5: was on literally the first flight out of Miami, and
Speaker 5: I got there and that evening and we drove. It
Speaker 5: was a seven hour drive because they were up in
Speaker 5: Cambridge Springs and so wait where Pennsylvania And so it's
Speaker 5: about as far as you can get and still be
Speaker 5: in Pennsylvania. And so seven hours drive driven.
Speaker 2: Hour from from uh what two hours from Niagara Falls.
Speaker 5: But so it's a drive that we made a bunch.
Speaker 5: But that was one of the times where it was
Speaker 5: just like, okay, it's like there are I went back
Speaker 5: and forth a lot. I was probably in Philly. I
Speaker 5: was flying back to Philly at least once a month,
Speaker 5: sometimes twice a month, and more than that sort of
Speaker 5: woul needed, and so I was there as much as
Speaker 5: I could. But something like that where we had no
Speaker 5: idea when it was going to happen, we couldn't plan for.
Speaker 5: I had to rely on him where it was, Hey,
Speaker 5: I don't know what this is going to happen, but
Speaker 5: can you please make sure you captured and can you
Speaker 5: please make sure you captured widescreen? But that didn't happen.
Speaker 5: But it's all.
Speaker 1: It was like, wait, so this twenty eighteen, so that means, yeah,
Speaker 1: it couldn't happen.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I wasn't the one shooting. Somebody else was
Speaker 2: shooting and they didn't you know, even the whole sight.
Speaker 3: Well no, it just made it more authentic. And you know,
Speaker 3: now I got to go back and relook at it.
Speaker 3: But you know, I definitely I remember being floored watching it.
Speaker 1: And that's the.
Speaker 3: Thing, like I knew that Tommy knew that I didn't know,
Speaker 3: and you were so quiet that day and when it
Speaker 3: came I my heart dropped.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, you didn't know that. You didn't
Speaker 4: know how it ended. You didn't know. Is that what
Speaker 4: you're saying.
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to just watch.
Speaker 3: If I thought watching it, what I thought I was
Speaker 3: going to get out of it was how corrupt Rizzo
Speaker 3: was as a mayor.
Speaker 4: Not a beautiful kind of love.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I wasn't expecting them.
Speaker 4: I guess it isn't. It's a themeon.
Speaker 1: It's just I didn't see it coming.
Speaker 3: If anything, I thought, okay, well maybe the statue will
Speaker 3: come down or better.
Speaker 1: You don't know how many times I go past that mural.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to egg the shit out that mural,
Speaker 1: like that's what I thought I thought the endinge was
Speaker 1: going to be. And then we took there is a
Speaker 1: mural down that's not the.
Speaker 4: Right Africa way, and mirror this is what we're learning
Speaker 4: right right.
Speaker 1: Yes, but I didn't know about any of these things.
Speaker 7: I mean, we had no idea that they were going
Speaker 7: to come home.
Speaker 2: During the filming, we talked about it and like this
Speaker 2: was supposed to be something that could like bring you know,
Speaker 2: life to the case and help get people motivated to
Speaker 2: support them coming home, but there was no you know,
Speaker 2: we were doing all of this other stuff.
Speaker 7: I mean, there's a lot of stuff that did not
Speaker 7: make it.
Speaker 2: To the film. The work that we were doing, the
Speaker 2: meeting with the different politicians and the investigators, and we
Speaker 2: traveled to we almost got arrested, and.
Speaker 5: So I've got so there were several times, like actually
Speaker 5: several times. There was one time where we got I
Speaker 5: got chased off of the prison grounds and they followed us.
Speaker 5: There was another time where I was surrounded by four
Speaker 5: cop cars and about eight cops and it was insane. Also,
Speaker 5: every single time you see any footage at prison. I
Speaker 5: was probably this close to getting arrested because they do
Speaker 5: not allow cameras of I was going to but I
Speaker 5: didn't give a fuck. I needed for time and.
Speaker 2: I had to and I had to play that like
Speaker 2: the bad guy. I was like, Tommy, puts your phone down,
Speaker 2: but I was like, yeah, you know, but you know,
Speaker 2: but there was a lot of like really close calls
Speaker 2: when he when he was at the prison. We went
Speaker 2: to the prison to see delb where Delvil was beating
Speaker 2: the prison. He was beating it that he went to
Speaker 2: after he was beaten and all of that, and while
Speaker 2: we were there, Tommy calls me and there's there after
Speaker 2: you know, they're questioning police are questioning him because of whatever.
Speaker 2: And then when they get off the phone, they come
Speaker 2: to my car and they're like bringing their troops to
Speaker 2: snoop around. And none of that makes it to the film,
Speaker 2: But there was a whole lot of crazy moments where like,
Speaker 2: you know things ship was about to go down, like and.
Speaker 5: Some of it I have and I have it and
Speaker 5: you can see them, and I was sort of discreet
Speaker 5: about it, but I was still going to be like,
Speaker 5: you know what, in case something happens. Actually when I
Speaker 5: got stopped and there were five cops around me. I
Speaker 5: called Sean King and I called him and I texted
Speaker 5: and They'm like, just in case some shit goes down,
Speaker 5: I want you to know where I am. And so, yeah, whoa, yeah,
Speaker 5: they were not playing around, yo.
Speaker 6: Can I ask y'all since y'all mentioned Delbert because not
Speaker 6: for nothing? You know, we talked about and we said
Speaker 6: it as a sport. We were spoiling the end, and
Speaker 6: we've said that Mike's parents were both released. Beautiful ending,
Speaker 6: but at the same time, it was a multi kind
Speaker 6: of layered emotional ending, right because as we're seeing mice
Speaker 6: parents reunite and we're seeing Delbert home, you have this
Speaker 6: moment of like he was in his twenties, he got
Speaker 6: his ass beat for no fucking reason, Like, can y'all
Speaker 6: talk about Delbert in his life that we things that
Speaker 6: we may have, you know, we didn't.
Speaker 4: Y'all don't get a chance to show in the story.
Speaker 5: And I've actually never talked about this part I am.
Speaker 5: So Delbert got out in January of this year, and
Speaker 5: he did almost forties years, and I'd gotten now Delbert
Speaker 5: pretty well went to see him in prison. A couple
Speaker 5: of times, and he was just a sort of like Mike,
Speaker 5: just a positive, happy, good guy. Actually he kind of
Speaker 5: reminded me of General Iro from Avatar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go, there you go.
Speaker 5: And I'd gotten to know him and he was just
Speaker 5: a good guy. And then he finally got out, and
Speaker 5: I was there when he got out, And which is
Speaker 5: if I don't know if you've I hope you have,
Speaker 5: but if you haven't, watched to the very end of
Speaker 5: the film, because there's a very small clip of him.
Speaker 5: But the thing that was so hard for me was
Speaker 5: I was just about done editing the film, and the
Speaker 5: ending was really hard because I wanted to figure out
Speaker 5: the right balance of things. And then as I'm doing that,
Speaker 5: Delbert again forty two years in prison, got out in January,
Speaker 5: less than six months, like five and a half months afterward,
Speaker 5: he died. He died, and it broke my heart and
Speaker 5: the balance, the dance of trying to figure out how
Speaker 5: to make sure that I was honoring him, my friend,
Speaker 5: this man who went through so much, but also not
Speaker 5: at It's just there was a lot, because you go
Speaker 5: through this roller coaster of emotions and and like Mayor
Speaker 5: was talking about, it's like as you watch the film,
Speaker 5: it's sort of there where you're like, you want them
Speaker 5: to get out, but you don't want to allow yourself
Speaker 5: to believe that it's going to happen, because the disappointment
Speaker 5: of that happening after allowing yourself to believe is a lot,
Speaker 5: because it's it's typically what happens. And so after sort
Speaker 5: of that a juggle, and then you finally do you
Speaker 5: get there and it's this fairy tale ending, it's this
Speaker 5: thing that's happier and better than you could have ever
Speaker 5: hoped for. And then to show, oh, but Delbert died.
Speaker 5: I didn't see I didn't. I didn't because I could
Speaker 5: not figure out the yo yo of it. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: couldn't figure out how to go from here to here
Speaker 5: to here to hear without it feeling weird, which is
Speaker 5: why it's a here he's there, you see him, you
Speaker 5: hear him. And so that was my way of figuring
Speaker 5: out how to honor who he was and sort of
Speaker 5: what he stood for while still balancing the emotion and
Speaker 5: the journey of the film.
Speaker 6: And you answered a question for the viewer because as
Speaker 6: of viewers and see was such a pivotal part of
Speaker 6: the story. You wanted to know what happened to Dover
Speaker 6: and it was just you came. It was just so
Speaker 6: perfect in his face. Oh and this in years on
Speaker 6: his Oh, it's just so rest in peace.
Speaker 5: That was also one of the happiest things for me
Speaker 5: because I had been I'd seen this guy for so
Speaker 5: long in archival footage and photos and that's all I
Speaker 5: knew him ass And the first time I saw him
Speaker 5: it was plus thirty five years, like there was no gradation,
Speaker 5: there was nothing in between. It was just, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: here's this, you know, thirty year old man, here's this
Speaker 5: sixty five year old man. And it was trippy.
Speaker 3: Can I ask I guess at the time, when you
Speaker 3: officially have the green light and you're you're doing this project,
Speaker 3: in your mind, are you like this project is over
Speaker 3: when they are released or you know, okay, so say
Speaker 3: their bail gets denied back in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: for you, is it just like back before you knew
Speaker 3: there was a chance for it to really happen? Is
Speaker 3: there an alternative ending in your mind that would have
Speaker 3: completed this documentary if they had never gotten out out
Speaker 3: of prison.
Speaker 5: So it's a good question, and it's I'm the personal
Speaker 5: greenlit this film, and so HBO came on as a distributor.
Speaker 5: But I paid for this film out of my pocket.
Speaker 5: And so it was not about the idea of, hey,
Speaker 5: let's do this as a piece of business that needs
Speaker 5: to make sense and we have to know what these
Speaker 5: things are. I did it because I what Mike was
Speaker 5: doing was important and who he was was somebody that
Speaker 5: I wanted to be able to capture and showcase and
Speaker 5: be around. And that's what it was. And so it wasn't, hey,
Speaker 5: these things need to happen in order for this to
Speaker 5: make sense. It's like, no, it's like I was spending
Speaker 5: my own money. I was doing whatever I needed to
Speaker 5: do to capture it without an HBO, without anybody, and
Speaker 5: you know, that was just what I wanted to do,
Speaker 5: and so it and so in many ways, it's sort
Speaker 5: of running over a cane while building a bridge at
Speaker 5: the same time, and it's just like, you know what,
Speaker 5: I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. And in
Speaker 5: the end, if it doesn't make sense, it's all good.
Speaker 5: It's all good because it's.
Speaker 6: Still information that nobody had too for for sure, Right,
Speaker 6: you're still educating the masses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so so much to unpack here, because is there
Speaker 3: is there more story to tell?
Speaker 1: Like now that this is over, can you officially put
Speaker 1: this behind you?
Speaker 3: Or is there are there other fights that we don't
Speaker 3: know about or that we're not aware of. So, first
Speaker 3: of all, Mike, are you kind of a qualified paralegal?
Speaker 1: I mean do you?
Speaker 3: First of all, what was day What was day one
Speaker 3: for you when you decided I have to get them home?
Speaker 3: Like what do you remember the day where you're like
Speaker 3: hand on table, Okay, I gotta do this, and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna find go to city hall, find some papers, Like
Speaker 3: what year was it when you were like all right,
Speaker 3: I gotta do this myself twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think what it was is when
Speaker 2: Romota came and got me, when I Askedally to come
Speaker 2: get me. That was in nineteen ninety two, and she
Speaker 2: threw me right into I'm in lawyers' offices and learning
Speaker 2: about the case, and the lawyers are quizzing me. They're
Speaker 2: telling me, listen, this is your parents. You need to
Speaker 2: know this information. And I've been around lawyers ever since thirteen,
Speaker 2: fourteen years old, so learning and hearing the language that
Speaker 2: they use and creating strategies and learning about the different
Speaker 2: ways in which that you can insert information to judges
Speaker 2: where they accepted. If you don't do it the right way,
Speaker 2: you don't use a certain language, you don't enter it
Speaker 2: into the right court, it won't be accepted. I was
Speaker 2: learning all of.
Speaker 7: This type of information since then.
Speaker 1: I think as a teenager. Correct, I was fourteen years old.
Speaker 7: I was fourteen years old when I first started in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was falling asleep and lawyer's offices because it
Speaker 2: was boring information I didn't want to hear. I mean,
Speaker 2: it wasn't that I want to, but it was boring.
Speaker 2: I'm fourteen years old.
Speaker 7: I got a namagy I shouldn't play ball, right, So I'm.
Speaker 2: Falling asleep and all that kind of stuff, and they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes they let me sleep, but sometimes they
Speaker 2: woke me up and made me pay attention. So as
Speaker 2: time went on, I was always around Ramona, I was
Speaker 2: always around Pam, involved them with me and stuff a lot, right,
Speaker 2: learning about his case and the illegal the illegalities of it,
Speaker 2: and the ways in which to try to support him.
Speaker 2: And I've always been involved in it. So in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: when Phil passed away in jail, and Ramona had gotten
Speaker 2: sick herself and we found out later that she had
Speaker 2: stage four can answer and she had had a massive
Speaker 2: stroke too, So she really was like kind of the
Speaker 2: person that was kind of driving the Move nine information,
Speaker 2: and she was out of the picture because she couldn't
Speaker 2: do it anymore. And she told me, she.
Speaker 7: Said, I said for MoMA. I said, listen, I said, Lona,
Speaker 7: people are.
Speaker 2: Calling me this investigator he's calling and the lawyer wants
Speaker 2: to know something, and we need to pick a lawyer.
Speaker 7: We don't need to have a lawyer for the Move
Speaker 7: nine And what are we going to do?
Speaker 2: And she gave me a sit down and she said, listen,
Speaker 2: she said, you've been around this information long enough. You're smart.
Speaker 2: Do of those people are your parents, one is your uncle.
Speaker 2: You know all of the people. You know the case,
Speaker 2: and you have plenty of move belief in your head.
Speaker 2: You are going to have to take the lead on
Speaker 2: this stuff and you're going to have to have the
Speaker 2: confidence in yourself to know that you can do it.
Speaker 2: I know that that you can do it. You need
Speaker 2: to know that, so you need to just go ahead
Speaker 2: and do it. So when she told me that, I said, okay.
Speaker 2: And you know, I had my own ideas about what
Speaker 2: I thought should happened, and my dad had been giving
Speaker 2: me information and my uncle Chuck, who was who's wanting
Speaker 2: to move nine too, my mom's little brother, and they
Speaker 2: fed me information and I used what I had and
Speaker 2: Tommy was part of it, you know, with him, we
Speaker 2: talked about different things, and then we just kept on
Speaker 2: pushing and eventually we developed a strategy that proved to
Speaker 2: be true, too, proved to be right.
Speaker 7: So that's how it happened.
Speaker 1: Slight sidebar. I do want to know like human moments,
Speaker 1: like did you get to go to your prime?
Speaker 7: Do you so so amazingly enough?
Speaker 2: I asked me. When my mom first came home, I
Speaker 2: told her, I said, Mom, you spent forty years in prison.
Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of money, but whatever you
Speaker 2: say you want, I will make it happen. I know
Speaker 2: a lot of people. I don't care what it is.
Speaker 2: Whatever you say you want, I'll make it happen. And
Speaker 2: she was living with me at the time, and Mom
Speaker 2: said to me, she said, honey, I'm just happy to
Speaker 2: be home with you. She said, you gave me everything
Speaker 2: that I wanted, and now I want you to be
Speaker 2: free and I want you to fly.
Speaker 7: So I'm like, all right, cool. So when when my
Speaker 7: dad came home.
Speaker 5: Wait, wait so quick, quick sidebar. The song that you
Speaker 5: hear when the film ends, fly Baby, that's him. That's him,
Speaker 5: fly Baby.
Speaker 2: Right, based on that conversation we had, So when my
Speaker 2: dad came came home, he says, I say the same
Speaker 2: thing to him. Dad, you've been in prison forty years.
Speaker 2: You can have I don't care what you asked for.
Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of money, but I'll make
Speaker 2: it happen. What do you want, he said, Mike, I
Speaker 2: only want one thing, he said. I want to marry
Speaker 2: your mom. Wow, he said, He said, I want to
Speaker 2: marry your mom like I should have done forty years ago.
Speaker 6: Oh tom oh, Tommy, is it gonna be an episode
Speaker 6: of Black?
Speaker 4: What are we doing? So you?
Speaker 5: I got you because what I did. Sorry to cut
Speaker 5: you off with what I did. There was so much
Speaker 5: footage that did not fit, and had so many interviews
Speaker 5: with Mike and with his mom and with Mike and
Speaker 5: Debbie and so it's just a lot of really cool things.
Speaker 5: So I cut a thirty five minute epilogue and it
Speaker 5: looks at them and it is just so sweet. I'll
Speaker 5: actually send it to you. I'll send it to you tonight,
Speaker 5: and it's actually going to be on HBO as well,
Speaker 5: and so it'll be so like additional content.
Speaker 4: They are so TV ready, they're so gorgeous.
Speaker 5: It is so I sent it to Mike and his
Speaker 5: parents a month ago.
Speaker 2: To see the wedding. You get to see the wedding.
Speaker 2: And so the wedding cake, that the four tier wedding
Speaker 2: cake we made. We made my mom. So my mom
Speaker 2: is a I'm a fifties man like at heart. My
Speaker 2: mom is a thirties woman at heart. She when they
Speaker 2: said fifteen hundred dollars for cake, what I'm not paying fifteen.
Speaker 8: I'm not letting you paid fifteen. So I'm like, she said,
Speaker 8: we can make that cake and it'll be a great moment.
Speaker 8: I said, yeah, okay, let's do it. It took us
Speaker 8: eleven hours. In the song, I said, we spent the
Speaker 8: night making her wedding cake.
Speaker 7: Wow, And that is in the thing.
Speaker 3: This is now about to turn into reality show. Tyler
Speaker 3: Perry's the Africa's.
Speaker 4: Yes no, but don't let Tyler touch it, don't are you?
Speaker 4: Tommy Africa.
Speaker 1: From one inspectrum to the other in inspectrum.
Speaker 3: Yes, you guys mentioned something that I personally wanted to know.
Speaker 3: You know, there was a there was a moment in
Speaker 3: the mid nineties, uh, the late the early aughts in
Speaker 3: which a lot of conversations about Mumia's future was up
Speaker 3: in the air, you know, stay of execution. All these
Speaker 3: things haven't heard much since, you know, like I guess
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, two thousand and five. Occasionally when
Speaker 3: when I talked to tom Arello, he'll give me an
Speaker 3: update in general, is there and I don't mean the
Speaker 3: kind of hope where you like, we hope this happens.
Speaker 3: Where where does Momia stand right now as far as
Speaker 3: this case concerned. Is there any hope or for his
Speaker 3: eventual release or total exoneration or just the general story.
Speaker 7: Definitely, So that's what we're working on now.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's funny like the HBO poster has
Speaker 2: a picture of me and the Move nine above me,
Speaker 2: and it says he will never be free until his
Speaker 2: family comes home, right, And that's such a true statement.
Speaker 2: Mamia I've been I've known Mamia since I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and my work around the Move nine doesn't end with
Speaker 2: trying to get them. Trying to get them home is
Speaker 2: equally distributed, and probably even more so with Momia, Like
Speaker 2: I have just as many files on Mamia as I
Speaker 2: do on the Move nine. And so my work has
Speaker 2: been in large part to help with his case too.
Speaker 2: And in the early part of this year, in January,
Speaker 2: he was granted by Judge Leon Tucker the right to
Speaker 2: appeal his case and a PCR post conviction relief appeal
Speaker 2: was granted, and so it was in Larry Krasner's hands.
Speaker 2: Larry Krasner was then attacked by Marie Faulkner as being
Speaker 2: saying that.
Speaker 7: She was saying that he was prejudiced. He was on
Speaker 7: the MIA's side and all of this.
Speaker 2: So she created this thing that got it pushed into
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court's hands. And so now it's kind of
Speaker 2: in limbo and with COVID things are moving much slower.
Speaker 2: But the answer to your question is, yes, there's a
Speaker 2: real chance that Mumia Abu Jamal could be free, and
Speaker 2: we're working on that very hard and if we can
Speaker 2: get the result that we're that we expect that we
Speaker 2: can get. Ironically enough, he could come home. During that
Speaker 2: forty year mark too.
Speaker 4: Wow, Where's where's he at now?
Speaker 5: Ye?
Speaker 2: Right, he's at uh In on December ninth, This December ninth,
Speaker 2: March year thirty nine. Yeah, okay, so next year is
Speaker 2: year forty and we expect that we can get him
Speaker 2: home within that year forty Okay?
Speaker 3: Can you are you allowed to speak at all? What
Speaker 3: your personal theories are? Similar to good sort of saying
Speaker 3: that it was most likely friendly fly fire and this
Speaker 3: was a setup?
Speaker 1: Is what is the story on that particular with Daniel
Speaker 1: Faulkner and right that case, the.
Speaker 2: Story is Mumia was a cab driver who was dropping
Speaker 2: off of Fair and thirteenth and Locusts at the time.
Speaker 2: His brother was His brother and his brother's friend were
Speaker 2: bending and they were when he pulled up on the scene.
Speaker 2: When Moumia pulled up on the scene, he saw his
Speaker 2: brother's brother being beat by policeman Daniel Faulkner with a
Speaker 2: right He was beating in with a flashlight, a police flashlight.
Speaker 2: Mamia goes over to intervene. The officer shoots Mamiya and
Speaker 2: Mamiya is shot, unconscious and ben and taken to the hospital.
Speaker 2: And when he wakes up, he's handcuffed to a bed
Speaker 2: and he's told that an officer was killed and he's
Speaker 2: the one being charged.
Speaker 7: With the murder. That's what happened.
Speaker 2: And there's so much like so many witnesses who said
Speaker 2: that Mumiya did not do it, do it. He was
Speaker 2: not the shooter. But there are so many like they're
Speaker 2: specifically Veronica Jones was an eyewitness said that Mumia Abu
Speaker 2: Jamal did not shoot this cop. We saw the man
Speaker 2: who did it. We saw him run away. There were
Speaker 2: more than more than her, and who said that the
Speaker 2: security guards that were intimidated into they were intimidated by
Speaker 2: the officers into changing their stories to say Mumia Abu
Speaker 2: Jamal was the one who killed the cops. So there's
Speaker 2: all this evidence that proves that Mumia is innocent. But
Speaker 2: you know, because he supported moved the way he did,
Speaker 2: Rizzo threatened him. He actually said it in the press conference.
Speaker 2: These reporters blah blah blah blah blah. We need to
Speaker 2: get that death penalty back. Then I'll be there to
Speaker 2: pull switch that kind of thing. So uh me a
Speaker 2: supported move and that's and and so he was he
Speaker 2: was a target because of it.
Speaker 3: Any other political prisoners in Philadelphia that we might not
Speaker 3: be aware of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Russell, Maroon Shows, Joseph Jojo Bowen, Fred Muhammad Burton.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of political prisoners in Pennsylvania, and then.
Speaker 2: There's a lot outside too, Motulu Shakur stepfather of tupac Uh.
Speaker 2: And then some people are not even political prisoners, but
Speaker 2: they're exiled because of the tyranny of this country, like
Speaker 2: a side of Shakur. So you know, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of a lot of repair that needs
Speaker 2: to be done. But my focus specific typically is on Mamia.
Speaker 2: We we have a real shot to get him out.
Speaker 2: And I mean I focus on Maroon two and freyd
Speaker 2: Mohammed Burton too, and I speak their names and everything
Speaker 2: and I support them one hundred percent too. But Mumiya
Speaker 2: is a very very personal battle for me because of
Speaker 2: how he was there for my family when no.
Speaker 7: Other news media was there for my family.
Speaker 4: The Philadelphia police.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the things I learned, man, what can I say, Like,
Speaker 3: I really want to thank you guys for doing this,
Speaker 3: just that you know, as as as a black man,
Speaker 3: as a as a Philadelphian, definitely, this is this is
Speaker 3: one of the kind of the unanswered questions that I've
Speaker 3: had in my life that I didn't know about. And
Speaker 3: I'm so glad that the world will finally get to
Speaker 3: see this documentary.
Speaker 4: Can we just mentioned the mirror. You're not gonna plug it,
Speaker 4: but I will.
Speaker 6: This is the first project that I've seen your name
Speaker 6: black thought comment, John forgot that Jackson.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying saying about me, man, I'm just saying.
Speaker 6: But that's dope that y'all saw that there was a
Speaker 6: reason there was a.
Speaker 1: Need for Yeah, I totally forgot.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're also we did music for the project as well.
Speaker 1: Forgive me, I mean, like no.
Speaker 3: For me, Like the story is so the story is
Speaker 3: so important that you know, I kind of forgot that
Speaker 3: I played a part in this as well, and I'm
Speaker 3: glad to be included because I was feeling a certain way.
Speaker 9: Might say that I really appreciate your involvement because you know,
Speaker 9: it wasn't a lot of people are really afraid to
Speaker 9: talk about this story. A lot of people were really
Speaker 9: afraid to get on board and support move, even though
Speaker 9: they may have been sympathetic. So I really, you know,
Speaker 9: was thrilled to here Tommy tell me, like, hey, guess
Speaker 9: who guess who we got to help with the with
Speaker 9: the film, and I'm like, oh, he's like the biggest
Speaker 9: Dan you can think of.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, what do you mean, the biggest thing. No,
Speaker 2: the biggest Okay, Philly, Philly, Like yeah, I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: you didn't, you know, So like yeah, man, I just
Speaker 2: you know, really appreciate you, you know, and gave Tommy
Speaker 2: a chance to show it, to see the film, you know.
Speaker 7: So I just want to thank.
Speaker 1: You, no, thank you.
Speaker 3: When I got admit when it was happening and my
Speaker 3: manager Sean g told me about it, he was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know comming and John Legend.
Speaker 5: Wait a minute, wait a minute, you did me or
Speaker 5: I would have did the same thing.
Speaker 4: They can't happ on it before me full time.
Speaker 3: I mean technically, look, you know a lot of a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot a lot of John's education and
Speaker 3: oakness and right now he's a soldier. Yes, it was
Speaker 3: was acquired and learned.
Speaker 1: At University of pen No, dude, right now.
Speaker 4: John, I'm not cutting John down at all. I was
Speaker 4: just saying that you.
Speaker 3: Created the toxicity that's happening right now with a lot
Speaker 3: of my heroes and hip hop. Yeah, John Legend is yeah,
Speaker 3: he trust me, he's frontline.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was like, yo, we gotta get somehow get down.
Speaker 1: But I'm very.
Speaker 5: Happy as somebody who is from Philly who grew up
Speaker 5: on the roots, and there was just there was nothing
Speaker 5: better than that. And shout out to Derek Dudley, who's
Speaker 5: the person who actually introduced me to Sean, and he
Speaker 5: was like done, I got you. Sean came to the
Speaker 5: office watch and he's like, yeah, yeah, we need to
Speaker 5: do this, and it was just it's just been nothing
Speaker 5: but love the entire time.
Speaker 3: And I got it. I got admit that this was
Speaker 3: probably the perfect platform. Sean couldn't have been happier to
Speaker 3: have made this happen, because, you know, we had we
Speaker 3: had a passing of like our manager, Richard Nichols was
Speaker 3: like you know, he was he was like our fifth Beatle,
Speaker 3: and when he passed away in twenty fourteen, the Lukema
Speaker 3: it was kind of an unspoken thing, even though I
Speaker 3: never believed it in my heart. It was sort of like, well,
Speaker 3: I guess we're not going to make records anymore. And
Speaker 3: you know, I spent a lot of time since you know,
Speaker 3: late twenty thirteen, early twenty fourteen, thinking of, you know,
Speaker 3: other ways to be creative, and that's when I like
Speaker 3: started writing a lot of books and doing like a
Speaker 3: lot of other things besides making like any excuse to
Speaker 3: not make an album. So you know, I couldn't, I
Speaker 3: couldn't think of a better way, uh, for us to
Speaker 3: get back in the studio six years, seven years after
Speaker 3: having not created anything inside of the studio with each
Speaker 3: other than this project. So you know, again, I thank
Speaker 3: you both because this, like once we started this, then
Speaker 3: this really just unleashed a flooding. You know, we're subsequently
Speaker 3: working on three records right now.
Speaker 4: So well, thank you, Mike.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I said, you too.
Speaker 5: I am very happy to have played.
Speaker 1: From the far.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, I'll take it. I'm putting that in my bio.
Speaker 2: Like that.
Speaker 4: You can, I can.
Speaker 5: But I can't wait for the world to actually hear
Speaker 5: the tracks.
Speaker 4: Because I don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: Because nobody's heard of me. And so you can hear
Speaker 5: him the trailer, you can hear one of the instrumentals,
Speaker 5: and then one of the things, one of the songs afterward,
Speaker 5: which is just fire and Tarik. So there's this line.
Speaker 5: First time I heard it, I just it stuck with
Speaker 5: me so much. And what he says is every time
Speaker 5: I fight, the reason I fight is to not fight again.
Speaker 5: And yes, somebody who grew up in Philly fighting, you
Speaker 5: don't fight because you want to fight, I gues that's
Speaker 5: not what it's about. And so he just captured it
Speaker 5: so succinctly. And to understand what Mike's doing, what we're
Speaker 5: doing in this movement, it's not about fighting for the
Speaker 5: sake of fighting. We want to fight to get things
Speaker 5: into a better place for us but also for kids.
Speaker 5: And so the music is just it's fire. So I
Speaker 5: cannot wait for people to actually hear all of the tracks,
Speaker 5: the whole ep, and it's just.
Speaker 1: I gotta say that, you know, for a lot of
Speaker 1: for a lot of them.
Speaker 3: I never said the Roots Army before in my life,
Speaker 3: but I guess I'll see now at a lot of
Speaker 3: people that have history with the roots, you know, for
Speaker 3: the longest they they've put us under. You know this,
Speaker 3: I guess, you know, socially conscious or political rap thing,
Speaker 3: which you know I used to joke a lot and
Speaker 3: say like, well, okay, I know we're politically correct, but
Speaker 3: you know, just because you know we aren't cutting keys
Speaker 3: and drug deal in our songs doesn't necessarily sarily mean
Speaker 3: that we're a political group per se. And then there
Speaker 3: became a point when we were like thirty five, like
Speaker 3: all right, someone's gonna call us out one day and
Speaker 3: realize that we're not as political as we were. So,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot a lot of our post two
Speaker 3: thousand and eight material, especially you know the time in
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight when the murder rate in Philly
Speaker 3: was astounding and we were under what we thought was
Speaker 3: the worst presidency of all time with a Bush. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, well, we can only go for so
Speaker 3: long talking about you know, how how diggity dope our
Speaker 3: stickity styles are in riggity rapping, and so you know,
Speaker 3: we kind of had this streak of like the last
Speaker 3: four albums of like these like dark political records, which
Speaker 3: I don't think was performative at all, but really like
Speaker 3: represented where we were at the time, because you know,
Speaker 3: you can't turn your back on no matter like how
Speaker 3: much success you have, like you still have a cousin,
Speaker 3: like you might the same with your fight, Like okay, great,
Speaker 3: you got your parents out, but you know there's more
Speaker 3: fight to go you know, I kind of thought that
Speaker 3: we were going to close the chapter on the darkness
Speaker 3: of roots albums with our last album and then you
Speaker 3: shoot your cousin basically because that was the album that
Speaker 3: we were making as our manager and co producer Rich
Speaker 3: was dying. So if anything, that album was more of
Speaker 3: our very dark goodbye to him. So I'd sort of
Speaker 3: forgive roots fans for like, that's way too dark for me.
Speaker 3: I can't take this shit. But you know, if you
Speaker 3: knew Rich, that was like the perfect send off. So
Speaker 3: the thing was in my mind, I thought, Okay, well
Speaker 3: we are gonna I'm gonna shock the world and just
Speaker 3: return to the first four records, like the Sunday Afternoon
Speaker 3: House Cleaning Roots album that everyone wants us to do.
Speaker 1: But we're living in you know, this time now and.
Speaker 3: You know, since twenty sixteen and utter Madness in the
Speaker 3: upside Down, and I was like, yo, man, it's not
Speaker 3: time to make a lighthearted record like we got one,
Speaker 3: more like this is our chance to make our statements.
Speaker 3: So if anything, I feel like this this album really
Speaker 3: puts in context of what the last five albums have
Speaker 3: been about. So yeah, I'm excited for people to hear it,
Speaker 3: you know, and again we're making three records, so this
Speaker 3: is this is just one of three of us unpaid
Speaker 3: bill What do you think? Oh no, I'm babe bills
Speaker 3: on Sesame Street. This is Sugar Steve. Wait, damn sugar Steve. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm just I'm just here together for sure,
Speaker 3: report back to white people.
Speaker 7: So he said.
Speaker 4: That he did, he did?
Speaker 8: How long?
Speaker 7: How long did it take for the I'm sorry to
Speaker 7: extend the sorry I didn't know.
Speaker 3: Steve has lived with this project enough because he's engineered
Speaker 3: the record for us, So.
Speaker 7: I mean I haven't I haven't seen the documentary in full.
Speaker 2: But uh, my one question was how long did it
Speaker 2: take for you to make this this documentary from start
Speaker 2: to finish?
Speaker 5: It took about three and a half years until about
Speaker 5: two and a half years or so of shooting and
Speaker 5: about a year of editing.
Speaker 1: I haven't a fully archival question.
Speaker 3: Once again, yes, also because of what I'm working on
Speaker 3: right now now, I just discovered did you use any
Speaker 3: of the archival footage?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: Do you know of this woman in Philadelphia whom I
Speaker 3: guess her backstory is that she did not trust the government.
Speaker 3: I actually thought she was down with move. She did
Speaker 3: not trust the government, a Philadelphia woman. And what she
Speaker 3: did was she purchased five Beta Max machines. Yes, and
Speaker 3: she obsessively, she obsessively recorded.
Speaker 5: The problem it was I found I came across her,
Speaker 5: I saw an article and I looked her up. The
Speaker 5: problem was her recording started I think four months after this,
Speaker 5: and so she recorded everything. She has this incredible database
Speaker 5: of everything that happened. It was insane.
Speaker 3: But we think, think of think of a put she
Speaker 3: would have. She would have been a perfect fit for
Speaker 3: a quest Love Supreme, like she was a pop culture hoarder.
Speaker 1: Like she recorded. She recorded.
Speaker 3: I don't know how she I don't know if she
Speaker 3: had a job or anything, but she literally recorded whatever
Speaker 3: was on television.
Speaker 1: What thirty seven years in a row?
Speaker 5: Yes, I believe that was.
Speaker 1: She started what seventy seven I think.
Speaker 5: I think it was sometime in seventy eight.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, she got five Beta Max machines. Said I
Speaker 3: don't trust the government, so I'm gonna record everything on
Speaker 3: NBC ABC. So she brought five VC, five Beta maxes,
Speaker 3: and five televisions.
Speaker 1: And all she did was she would change tapes every
Speaker 1: four hours like clockwork. Is insane, but like over not help.
Speaker 3: I think like four thousand tapes at the end of
Speaker 3: the day. So yeah, I wanted to know if you use.
Speaker 5: Then honestly, if we start actually talking about our travel process,
Speaker 5: we'll be here for.
Speaker 4: Another for process. I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: The name of the film, do you who do you
Speaker 5: think it's referring to?
Speaker 1: I assumed that it was about Mike, because.
Speaker 5: So see, that's the thing where some people will be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's it's it's parents, his parents, and like, no, it's
Speaker 5: it's Mike. Oh it's Mike. It's Mike. And if you
Speaker 5: and a mirror.
Speaker 4: God, because he's he's a yes exactly.
Speaker 5: And and his dad is the one who really brings
Speaker 5: that home in the end where he talks about us
Speaker 5: being home freed him and it took the burden off
Speaker 5: of him so he could actually live his life.
Speaker 2: That's funny about that. I never knew my dad felt
Speaker 2: that way until I saw that interview.
Speaker 3: Again, when we have a question of supreme we think
Speaker 3: you Mike, God, Africa Junior and Tommy Oliver for joining
Speaker 3: us on behalf of Fontigelow and Unpaid Bill and Sugar,
Speaker 3: Steve and Layah and Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: Zone from Melis Avenue, Quest Love. This is Quest Love
Speaker 1: Supreme signing off. We will see you on the next program.
Speaker 1: Thank you yo.
Speaker 5: What's up? This is Fante.
Speaker 2: Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at
Speaker 2: QLs and let us know what you think and.
Speaker 1: Who should be next to sit down with us.
Speaker 5: Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast all right peace.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.