Tommy Oliver & Mike Africa Jr.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of I Heart Radio. Mary.
It looks like you won this man Alive on mars
Ar's Man on mars Alive. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, welcome

(00:22):
to Quest Love Supreme. You know, I'm trying to refrain.
I think I start every episode where I say, like
a special episode of Quest Love Supreme, like it's a
you know, a special, a special family times or whatever.
This is definitely yes, this is probably a very this
is a very personal episode, at least for me. It's

(00:44):
a Philadelphia, and I think that you might claim you
might want to claim your city for once, like yeah,
oh yeah all day, especially when Okay Good comes to
this topic. Yes, yes, we are all Philadelphians now. Yeah.
I know that Quest Love Supreme UH is normally our
source for pop culture, Easter eggs and education edumication. But

(01:10):
because of the times that we're living in right now, UM,
I felt it was only apropos for us to focus
on a very powerful documentary that as a Philadelphia Uh,
this is very near and dear to my heart. UM.
I'm speaking of the powerful story that is forty years

(01:30):
a prisoner coming to UH. Well, now at HBO, you
can get on HBO Max as well. UM, this is
a tale, of course, the black lives of injustice, of
UM police, brutality of murder, of corrupt politicians, of an
imbalanced system. A lot of questions and hardly answers that

(01:53):
can't come fast enough. But you know this is also UM,
this isn't just uh torture porn. This is this is
a story of determination UH and a story of hope.
Really the bond of a black family whose UH spirit
cannot be broken no matter what opposition comes its way.

(02:17):
And we have two key members of this very powerful documentary,
UM director or forty years of prisoner UH in Philadelphia,
Tommy Oliver, and I guess I can say the star
and the hero of four years a prisoner, the very
very patient Mike Africa Jr. Welcome, gentlemen to quest Love Supreme. Yeah,

(02:41):
I feel like don care want to say, Actually, I've
always wanted to be on sol train, so I'll take it.
I'm actually I'm actually proud that, you know what, I'm
becoming more aware. I've been listening to a a lot of
old episodes and I Obama itis a lot of uh

(03:02):
um uh. So I'm trying to do less ah and
gaps as I think in free time. Um, so there's
there's a lot to uncover here, gentlemen. I'll start by saying, um,
how gut wrenching and amazing this documentary is. When Mr
Oliver first came into my radar about this project, the

(03:27):
first thing he asked me was what do I know
about move And instantly I thought, Hell, yeah, I'm gonna
be a talking head because I lived on O Sage
Avenue and at that I consider like May thirteenth to
be like one of the worst days of my high
school life. Not even to make light of that day,
but like you know, like just imagine like that morning

(03:50):
my ninth grade girlfriend just dumped me in the most
like embarrassing way in front of the class, and then
like my sister got to go to Cosby show taping
without me, and literally like I came over and puffing,
and then exactly like four pm like this. I lived
on fifty second in No Stage, so I'm like eight
blocks away from where this particular MOVEM incident happened and

(04:15):
you just heard this explosion and Tommy just stopped me instantly,
he was like, this isn't about Matve. So then I
thought about Palton Avenue and then I said, oh, I
remember commissioner at the time, Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo lining
up a bunch of African American mills outside their home,

(04:37):
button naked. And then he stopped me again. He's like, no,
that was the Black Panthers, And I was like, wait
a minute, Okay, I know about Mumia, I know about
May of eighty five, and I thought I knew about moving.
I'm like, how many how many stories of the Philadelphia
police system versus black people are there? And he just looked, oh,

(05:00):
you need to sit down and watch this, and he
showed me this is so much unpacked. I'll throw it
out to you time before I get to get to you. Brother, Mike,
Why did you even think that this was the story unpacking?
And I don't know, like, are we going to kind
of give the ending away? Because for me, yeah at

(05:22):
this point, because I don't know when this will come out,
but it'll come out and then yeah, it's all good.
We can we can definitely talk about it. Okay. Well,
the thing is is that going into it, you you
know you're doing this in real time and you don't
know what the outcome is no idea whatsoever. And you
wouldn't have told me in a jillion years that what

(05:46):
we concluded with what's going to happen. So even then
as I'm watching this, so watching when arms folded, like okay,
more more torture porn? You know, wait, let me let
me just ask this because because he asked you, what
you know about move? But Tommy, not to judge, but
you obviously a little younger. First of all, what did

(06:08):
you know about move? And why? I'm just learning that
there are a multiple movement attempted massacre stories, but why
this particular story more than the two that we know?
Did you just said no, I didn't even go because
I was waiting for the bomb to drop. And I
was like, wait, so can you explain that, Tommy. So
I grew up and I sort of heard about move,

(06:29):
but not really. So I'm thirty six and I was
one when happened, and I wasn't alive when this event happened,
and but nobody really talked about moving any with any clarity.
It was Philly is really tricky that way, and so
it's like move and there was this thing and there

(06:50):
was a bomb and there was just you know, those
just what it was, and so I never really understood it.
But I'm a complete research junkie, and at some point
I just went down a rabbit hole and so I
read every book that I could Final Move. I've read
every article I could find. I went down to the
urban Archive at Temple where there are seventy two boxes

(07:10):
of content, and I threw so much of that stuff.
But I realized that there was still more stuff that
was missing. And so I had my buddy who he
served for the mayor, Maxwell Brown. He introduced me, so
Max is the homie. It's like, look, anybody anything that
I need and feeling anybody any to get to him?
Like Maxwell was like can you? And so I'm like
can you? And It's like, yeah, of course I got you.

(07:30):
You're my god done. And so he made an intro
to to Mona, to Ramona, Africa, and then she brought
along Mike and I was like, who is this dude?
I was like, I was there to meet Ramona and
Mike and I we just hit it off like very
very quickly, and I learned so much at that point
that I didn't know. So at that point, two of

(07:50):
the MOVE members who were imprisoned because of seventy eight
had passed away in prison, seven of them were still
in prison. Two of those seven were his parents. And
the fact that he was born in prison I had
no idea about, and the fact that he was fighting
to get them out and that's all he was doing
with his life, That he was just a kid who

(08:11):
wanted his parents home and despite all of what he
went through, there wasn't a shred of bitterness about him
was just incredible. And then to talk on top of that,
the fact that to really understand that what move was
fighting against and police brutality, wronged incarceration to stemic racism,

(08:34):
abuse of power, same ship we were fining against at
that point three years ago or so, and same ship
we're finding against right now. And so for me, it
was the idea of trying to just do whatever I
could to be around him and sort of to just
even just as a friend, because he was just doing something.
He's wanted his parents home, and as somebody who grew

(08:55):
up with a difficult childhood, My dad wasn't around all
those things. I just wanted to see this guy get
his parents home. And then from a storytelling perspective, people
knew about eighty five kind of nobody knew about seventy eight,
but it was also specifically related to what his journey
was into what was going on with his parents, and

(09:15):
so that put me and the rest of my team,
which is really three of us. It was me, my
EP slash or cover producer Keith Janet, my co editor
Joe Keho. The three of us just researched the hell
out of it because there was no definitive account of
what happened in seventy eight, and so we just said
of went from there. I already know that this is
going to be the Snoop dog Doggie style episode of

(09:40):
Question Left Supreme where the star of the episode doesn't
even come in until the second song. So that's it.
I'm like, we didn't even talk to Mike yet. I
don't even know, and I just like everyone gets on
Snoops record before Snooth does and we're like to this

(10:04):
episode just hit me that we left the train station
without even talking to Mike. Right. First of all, Man,
I'm extremely honored that you're doing us the solid by
giving us this interview. I guess for the non Philadelphians
and the non connected people to your story I would

(10:27):
like to definitively ask you. Could you please tell us
what does move mean? And what do they stand for? Oh?
That's an easy one. Uh yeah, I mean I know
a lot of people don't really know what move means.
They a lot of people think of it as an acronym. Listen.

(10:48):
Growing up, I heard a lot of acronyms that people
made up about us. Man, Listen, We're interesting. The best
one that I've ever heard. It makes me laugh every
time I hear it. Now they say it stands from monkeys,
own vines everywhere. What you gotta be kidding? But what

(11:08):
can I ask you a question? Though? And this is
going to pay me to ask, because I know what
the answer might be. Did you first hear that from
a black person? Yes? Yo, we got to talk. I
want you to answer that question first, and then I
need to explain how move was explained to me. And

(11:29):
then we can really uncover the dirty secret of Black
America's conservatism. And then I'm going to explain so much
of how much the media drove all of that in
the seventies, and you're gonna misinformation. There was so much
misrepresentation about who they were, and there was no place

(11:51):
else to go but to watch the news and so
we can dig into all that. Okay, So for starters, Mike,
could you please explain to us what is MOVE and
what does this stand for? The Move organization's name Move
it came from the founder John Africa because he said

(12:13):
that all life moves and in order to be in
harmony with life with nature, you have to move to
And we have a system in place that is stagnant
and it causes people to stop or be stopped, and
we are anti that establishment. So we are completely opposite.
So that's why we are called Move and our mission

(12:36):
is to encourage people to protect life, people, animals and
the environment. That's it. The water moves, the trees move,
the air flows and moves, the people move, the animals move,
All life moves, and that's how we got the name
pre E p a yo. You you know what saddens

(12:56):
me about this whole thing is because okay, twin you know,
for us, for thus that for a lot of us
that are on social media and you know, you always
see like you know and Bengo card and surprises are
bounding and a lot of things are infurling that you know,

(13:18):
manages to shock you, even though I think nothing is
shocking in But the one revelation that came to be
that really threw people for a gut punch was how
conservative a sect of black America is, especially in the

(13:38):
light of the election that UM has recently passed. And
I say that because UM in especially let's say, like
five or six days before the O Sage Avenue bombing.

(13:59):
What what I'm saying is that UM, I grew up
UM with uncle's in the police force of the Rizzo
era under under Rizzo rule, Frank Rizzo. UM. For the
for those that don't know, UM, I was about to say,
Frank Rizzo is not the character from the Jerky Boys.

(14:20):
Frank Rizzo is UM. You know a lot of what's
happening now in the Trump administration to a lot of Philadelphians. Uh,
that is nothing shocking or new. Frank Rizzo was probably
one of the most vile UH politicians in the history
of America. The dude once said that I'm going to

(14:44):
make a till of the un look like a faggot.
That is a direct quote from the person who was
the mayor of at the time the fourth biggest city
in the country. Yeah, he is a direct also one
of the at you that's been trying to pull down.
And he was somebody who he started as be cop

(15:08):
and made his way all the way up to police commissioner,
two term city mayor, and he basically operated under the
principle of you can have safe streets or you can
have civil liberties pick one. Yeah. He again a lot
of the code talk that or the you know, the
the hidden he didn't even hide the code because I
think at one point I remember my father being upset

(15:33):
at that. He I think he directly told white people
to just rail against black people because they were taking
your jobs, like whatever the I think it was the
garbage union or something like that, but like he just
directly told white people fight for yourself. So, I mean
everything that we're experiencing now with Trump, we had to

(15:54):
deal with that. Um. He's been mayor since I was born.
I believe his time ran out seventy nine, I'm not certain,
but was long though, right, because he was police commissioner first, Yeah,
he was, and in his family is in the government
as well. Right. He had a brother brother who was

(16:15):
the the fire department, who ran in the fire department,
and they were all over. His father was a fire
department that was in the fire department too. They were
they were involved for a long time, and he ran
the city like a mob boss exactly. You know the
thing of like, um, like the racism in him. It
wasn't even he didn't try to hide it. I mean,

(16:36):
it was it was how he felt. And um. You know.
One of the examples I give about Frank Rizzo and
his ways, like in the city of Philadelphia, where there's
over two thousand statutes or monuments in the city that
is mostly black, there's only three that are black people.
One is Martin Luther King and is only eighteen inches high.

(16:57):
One is Octavia Kate. That just we just got that
statue outside the city hall just a few years ago.
There there there is no statue of Bernard Hopkins, who
was a heavyweight champion at the age of fifty. However,
but there's a but there's a statue of a fictional
character named Rocky Ball, right, so, and that's because of Rizzo. Italian.

(17:23):
He was pushing the whole Italian thing, and he wanted
people in the city to be with this Italian thing.
So he pushed it, and he, like you said, he
said he wanted to urge white people to fight black
people for better jobs and all that kind of stuff.
So his and his racism spilled over on everyone, and

(17:45):
Move got it really hard. A lot of it was
because of Palton Village and the gentrification of that community,
a lot like what you're seeing now and a tempo
and pen and a lot of it had to do
with the fact that Move was very much before our time.
We didn't see dred Locks in nineteen seventy whatever. And

(18:07):
the first time I was saw locks outside of my
family was Whoopie Goldberg, and that was in the eighties
and then and she exactly. And so the raw food thing,
we were long before the raw food restaurants that are
popping up all over the vegan in the wrong place,

(18:29):
you were trying to be vegan in the city, the exercise,
I mean, move, women having the babies at home. We
were so before our time, and the you know, it was,
it was we were demonized because of it, and people
you know, discriminated against and that was in large part

(18:50):
what what were led to them accepting what happened to us.
You know, the thing that perplexed me was that a
lot of my I a lot of my thoughts on
what move was came directly from black people, older black people,
and that's when I realized that at the time, I

(19:13):
think when the roots first started, and this is when
we were like busting on the streets of like West Philadelphia,
like we do something at Clark Park or whatever. We
did this thing at Clark Park. Once, I think like
ninety one and I met Ramona. There was on Baltimore Avenue,
like a farmer's market or something like that, and she

(19:34):
was there and it was kind of like my us weekly.
Oh she's just like us, Like, oh, she talks proper
English and she's eating salad. To see her eating more.
I'm telling you, I was told the worship about that
this is addressed, and this is addressed in a documentary

(19:54):
that Were Heavens that it was like a cult that
you know, like raw foods and raw. Now I get
what the raw means as in a vegan lifestyle, but
when it's five and people don't understand the contextualization of
a cleaner, healthy living, I mean, this is stuff like
Erica Bado taught me in nine seven, But you guys

(20:16):
were just twenty years not twenty thirty years ahead. Of
the game. And you know, once I talked to her,
I walked away. I was like, wait a minute, that's
not what my uncle's or my grandmam or like anyone
that was older said, And um, it just that was

(20:37):
the That was the moment where I realized, how, um,
you know, if you kind of go against I hate
to say it like this, this conservative Christian Black people
go yeah, like it's it's against God. And what God
do they wors him? They don't worship my God and
da dada and that's not even that's not even necessarily

(21:01):
accurate the the original A lot of people don't notice,
but the original name for the move organization was the
Christian Movement, the American Christian Movement for Life. Uh, that
was their original name. The people black people were ashamed
of us. They thought they thought that even though the

(21:23):
message was cool when we talked to them one on one,
because we didn't come in the suit like Martin Luther
King had delivered that message, they didn't want to accept
it because we didn't come in a suit like Malcolm,
you know, and these were the heroes that had just
been honored and celebrated. So they thought of it as

(21:46):
this is how you're supposed to look. If you're going
to be a revolutionary or if you're going to be radical,
then you need to look like the Black Panthers. So
MOVE come along with different than all of those groups,
different than anyone has ever even seen before. And it
just made people question it from the beginning. And and

(22:08):
it didn't help that the news media was saying things
like we eat out of garbage cans, and we don't bathe,
and we don't the children, the children are not schooled,
and just they made it worse by just you know,
inflaming people's minds and their passions with these lies. You know,

(22:32):
they demonize us, and that just gave them like justification. Okay,
So at the time, I mean, how or where were
you of the O. Sge Avenue incident and what affect
did that have on your life? Like were you going
by miket you were born as Mike Africa, right, So

(22:56):
you know, if you researched MOVE history, there's a lot
of opprontations and incidents with the police that you will find,
but there's a lot that you will never find. One
in particular that you it's a footnote within the history
and on paper, but it left a major impression on
the children and the seventies. In the In the very

(23:17):
early eighties, um John Africa sent the children to our
sister chapter in Richmond, Virginia was called the Seat of Wisdom.
And I was one of the kids. After I was
born in the jail, my grandmother took me to the
Seat of Wisdom in Virginia to Bertie was there. All
of the kids that were in the house made their teeth.

(23:38):
They were all there. We were all together, and a
bunch of other kids were there too. It was about
fifteen of us. You know, It's like you never really
got any peace. You could never really feel safe or secure.
Every time you started to like feel that things were
gonna change, they just they didn't. Um. I mean, I

(24:00):
can remember times where neighbors black and white would walk
up to us and just like paul as much mucus
out of their chest and out of their throat and
just spit on us. I remember, like like the police
come by. They they're not even doing anything. They're not

(24:21):
coming by the two raid our house or anything. They
just walking the beat. And as they're walking they see,
you know, one of us, and they just pick us
up by our hair and throw us across the street.
That that's the kind of stuff that happened throughout my childhood.
So children, yeah, I mean you know three four or

(24:42):
five seven, you know, and so like we always like
stick stuck together and and like trying to fight for
each other. But you know, we were all kids. The
oldest one was only eight or nine years old of
the fifteen of us. And so like when we were
in Virginia, there was this thing that happened where they
pull the police raided our house and uh they would

(25:03):
say that there were some housing co violations. The children
were said to be abused in all of this nonsense.
So they put us in an orphanage. We were in
the orphanage for eleven days. And while we were in
the orphanage, we were like neglected, I mean totally abused.
Like I mean, look, I was, I was I was

(25:24):
almost three years old. And they did you know, the
the caretakers, the nuns that was running the place, they
didn't change my diaper for eleven days. I had a
diaper rash that was near my knees and up to
my neighbor. And when my when my family and I

(25:45):
wasn't the only one and I was not the youngest.
And you know, I mean they they like my cousin.
My cousin had locks down to his almost down to
his shoulders, and like the nuns like we're trying to
comb his hair, and they combed his hair to the
point where like his head was bleeding. He had went

(26:06):
by the time they finished, by the time we were
you know, by the time our family got us back,
he had half of an afro and the other half
of his head was still locks, you know, and and
he has sores all over his head. You know, they
were they they you know, when we didn't cooperate, they
try to throw us. They actually threw some of the
kids down basement steps. You know. We would hide behind

(26:28):
hot water tanks to try to try to get away
from him. And we went through all of that for
that eleven days. Our family rescues us and then they
bring us back to Philadelphia, and you're thinking, wow, this okay,
finally we're home. The worst it can't get any worse
than this, Right, it's over. The worst has to be

(26:51):
over because we just survived something that we shouldn't have
and then you know, it just it never it didn't
get better for them. You know, we were I remember
hearing about the confrontation is gearing up. The cops were
always around our houses, flying helicopters. I mean, I was
terrified at the sound of any siren. It could have

(27:13):
been an ambulance going to rescue somebody, but the sound
was so terrifying. And and when I was here, I
would run home. It doesn't matter where I was or
what I was doing, I would run home as fast
as I could. And then one day I went outside
the house and I turned, I walked down the steps.

(27:35):
I'm about four miles away from o s Age Avenue
on Reno Street, West Hilly and one of my friends
he looked at me and said, they dropped the bomb
on move. And my first reaction was, no, they didn't.
And he pointed up to the sky. And when I
turned around and looked up, the entire sky was black.

(27:56):
And I didn't know what that meant. And I was
six years old. I ran in the house and I
asked my grandmother, I said, and before I couldn't even
ask her anything, her and my aunts were huddled around
the television with tears just pouring out of their faces.

(28:16):
And you know, and I said that looked like our house.
And I looked at me and said, it is, and
and I wonder. I didn't know if anyone had died.
I didn't know who was in the house. I just
knew that our house was on fire, and it didn't
look like it was being put out. It took me
a lot of years to find out who was actually

(28:38):
in the house. I had no idea that all the
children that I was in Richmond with was in the house.
I would ask my grandmother where they are? And you know,
how do you tell a six year old your family
was just killed? Right? So with move having the belief
of life and believing that all life is one and

(29:00):
connected and we all need each other and we all
depend on the same sources for life, and we don't
believe in death, right. We believe that life is continuous.
When when apple falls from a tree, it goes into
the ground and it provides with more apples, more seeds,
you know, so we just that's how we think about

(29:21):
everything in life. So when I would ask my grandmother
where the where the people who are where the kids?
Where's Tomaso at? She would say, look out the window,
and you know, I might see a cardon at the
time I asked that question, I saw a cardinal land
on the branch, and she pointed to the cardinal that said,
there he is. If you want to see your family,
you want to see your brothers and sisters, look out

(29:42):
the window and see the life that you'll see him.
And that's the way it was for about eight years.
And when I began to understand who was in the house,
that came when Ramona came home and e two m

(30:02):
I asked my mom, who was at the prison with
her before she came home. I said, Mom, I said, Mom,
can you can you have Ramon to come and get
me when she come home? And ramoned the day she
came home, she came and got me and we were
Ramona went straight to like a speaking thing where she
was on the radio or something, and I was with
her and she was telling the story to the audience.

(30:24):
And as she's telling the story, I'm learning what happened
to my family as she, as the audience, is learning
it too. So there was a lot of catching up
that I had to do. I didn't know who. I
knew my parents were in prison, but I didn't know
what they were in prison for. I didn't know that
they had a hundred years sentence. I didn't know that

(30:45):
that they were in prison for killing a cop. I
didn't know what was going on really, because again, how
do you explain to a child that his family is
in prison and he won't see them until outside on
the street. He won't see them until he's at least
thirty years old. So you know a lot. I was

(31:08):
just learning as audiences were learning. I traveled with Ramona
throughout the country. Um we we went on I mean,
she went on tours, speaking tours all around the country,
and I'm just soaking up as much information as I
can from her and from Pam. And I listened to
Movia speak a lot movie and talked a lot about
move I listened to his recordings and his commentaries, read

(31:30):
some of his writings. That's how I learned about Made
thirteenth and the and the depth that I that I
was able to understand it in and about what happened
on Auticus, they that sent our people to prison. I
gotta ask this just from the after watching the documentary,

(31:50):
after you just listen to your speech just now, like
and I think that a mayor mentioned this in your
in the intro um, your patience is and you're just
where with all to just push through is amazing, and
knowing it's astounding, and knowing just a piece of the
story makes you feel that way, but then knowing the totality,

(32:12):
like not just about your parents, but just life outside
of that and the things that you've seen. So I
gotta ask you as a man, like as a black man,
like how do you maintain this? Like? And I'm just
pointing to my your mind because at such a beautiful
level that it seems to exude from you. You know.
I was asking this question earlier today. Oh damn, people

(32:36):
people ask me this. People ask me this, I mean,
because it's kind of like advice too. We want to know,
we want to know if you can do it, we
can go through anything we got going on. One of
the I was doing an interview with a reporter from
the Guardian newspaper. He asked me what was your What
was the thing that you disliked about the film the most?

(32:57):
And I said, I didn't dislike the film at all,
I said, But there was a comment that was made
by one of the officers, uh Bob Herst. Bob Herst
made a comment that said. He said something like, they
took move to jail, but they should have took him
to the morgue. And that was probably more disappointing than

(33:22):
it was angering, because how you know, if we're going
to move forward and grow as a people, right, how
do you still harbor the same hate in your heart
that led to one of his fellow officers being killed.
I mean, what happened on August eight when a cop

(33:46):
where a cop was killed. That didn't happen because people
were loving each other. That happened because people were fighting
each other because of a system that one was trying
to protect and the other side was trying to get
rid of because of the danger it caused for people,
the animals, the environment, and everyone, including the cops. So

(34:09):
you know, it's just I have enough understanding of the mission,
and I'm clear enough to understand that we're not going
to get in anywhere carrying hate in our hearts. We're not.
It doesn't get us anywhere. You know, where hate gets you,
it gets worse, It gets violence. The hatred that you
must have in you to shoot a brother down in

(34:31):
his back in front of his mother, kneeling on his
neck while he's calling for his mother, crying for his mother,
pleading for his mother. That is what hate breathes. And
I'm trying to get as far away from it from
that type of activity as possible because it doesn't get
us anywhere, it doesn't help us in any kind of way.

(34:51):
And it is exactly what like um like Trump Trump
was saying that. Trump made a statement about Frank Rizzo himself.
He said, we need more mayors like him, you know, um,
And we see the type of person he is and
the type of the type of evil that is evoked
by his mentality. You've got people walking around shooting protesters

(35:15):
because protesters are trying to make a better way, because
they're just trying to say, stop killing black people. And
you got anti protesters protesting the protests because they want
to continue to kill black people. So, you know, I
do a lot of It ain't easy. That's why I'm
asking you, like do you meditate? Like asking you like,

(35:38):
how do you maintain this spirit? Yes? Right in life?
You know, I mean you you know, I am. I
had a lot of time to think. I just I've
had a lot of time to process what happened. Tommy
talked about He's a research junkie. I'm a research junk

(36:00):
as well. I have files. I have boxes and crates
and filing cabinets and storage binds. Tommy has been to
my basement. He's seen the towers of storage binds. In fact,
you can see it. You can see a portion of
my archives in the film. You know, I'm sitting in
front of it. That is ten percent of the information

(36:21):
that I have. Okay, So there's a part of the
film that uh our mayor from W. Wilson Good very
transparently says that it's it's most likely that um friendly
fire was the cause of the death of uh the

(36:47):
officer forget the offers's name, m J. James Grant Ramp,
James Ring. Okay, sorry, UM, Now, I do know that
because of the bulldozing of the compound and whatnot, I
assume that it might might assume that the evidence that

(37:10):
would have officially exonerated them was that in the rubble
and the pile of of mess like, because it's so
obvious that it was friendly fire, and I know that
you know forensics, and you know the whatever the grassy
no magic bullet JFK theory thing couldn't be been proved

(37:32):
proven because of the of the wash job of the
Philly Police Department. But how I mean, how close were
they too? Kind of reaching that conclusion like it was
there was that ever introduced in court? That hey it was.
It was introduced in court, and it was a mess.

(37:53):
There were so many things that happened, from evidence disappearing,
to the official bographer not taking any photos in the basement,
to him saying that when he was in the basement
he saw no guns in the basement, to the there
was a time where they changed the trajectory of the

(38:14):
bullet in court and so they said that oh it
was going this way. Oh no, I'm sorry, it's actually
going this way in court on on the official Corners report,
they just said, oh no, no, sorry, it's supposed to
be the other way. And the judge allowed it. And
so there were so many things. I mean, if you
just stopped the think about it for a second, why

(38:36):
would anyone destroy a crime scene hours after why Acam's razor? Like,
why why would somebody do that? Tommy? How did you
not lose your ship during these interviews? Because I know
that Mike is super human. However, I and in these

(38:56):
moments from the moment of of the with Mike just
reminded us of what the officers said to to buy her,
to Rindell, to Wilson Good, to all of them coming
back and now being like, well, you know, maybe they
should be and they should be in jail. You know
everybody forty years, Like how do you how did you
keep your cool during the taping of these moments that

(39:17):
were just like the fuck? What you mean? Like forty
years ain't ship? I'm sorry, That's how I felt. I mean,
so much of it came down to, like, I set
out to tell a story that was open, honest and unbiased,
and there are no franking bites in this. I'm not
misrepresenting what people say. I'm not taking it out of context,

(39:40):
and in many ways it was giving people enough rope
to hang themselves because I was surprised you got some
of those people. I was surprised you got Rendell and Mary. Yeah,
I was Jesus Christ. How hard or easy was that?
That was the last that's watching Wilson Good speaker on
move So wait, can I can? I can? I assume

(40:00):
that you had to assure them that this was not
about five and that he was only going to speak
one that actually came through Mike, and so speaking of
the idea, and I know it's it really came down to,
in his case, the ends justifying the means and the

(40:21):
only thing and not to put words in your mouth,
you can speak for yourself. But he wanted his parents
home and as such, it was about whatever it took
to do that, and the idea of sitting with the
men who was significantly responsible for what happened to his family.
Even the idea of that wasn't too much. You were there,

(40:44):
you were there, was there. Let me let me put
it in context for people that might not get it. UM. W.
Wilson Good was mayor of Philadelphia. Um our first black
mayor in kind of a source of pride. Not Obama esque,
but it was kind of like okay, you know, okay,
if bry Well you didn't smoke crack at least. Um No,

(41:08):
it was it was. It was a quasi. I mean,
if you were into that sort of thing. I mean,
I've never got the quote Obama. Whatever the feeling. I
guess the idea of something supersedes the actual reality. So yes,
I I would say that the idea of the first
black mayor Philadelphia was kind of a source of pride,
especially for a city that was under the under the

(41:31):
thumb of of you know, Rizzo for so long, and
then eight years later you have your first black mayor. Um.
But this incident may Um really tarnished his legacy. UM,
And I guess we need to also explain that that,

(41:53):
you know, in addition to what happened in Um has
explained earlier. Um the city of Philadelphia flew a helicopter,
did it? Though, like you say, it's harniss legged legacy.
Yet they got re elected, and so he got re

(42:15):
elected after that, and and and so I see part
of the problem is it's there's so much more to
that where when you dehumanize a people, which is what
the media did to Move, it makes it really easy
to justify what happens to them. Insert whatever them you want,
whether it's Move or immigrants or natives or or whatever

(42:38):
group you want to insert, because they've been be humanized
and as such it becomes easy to justify it, because
how then do you not get confused by the idea
of this man gets re elected the next year. But
it's for me, there's always going to be an asterisk there,
like or maybe you know, I'm just in the right

(43:01):
mind of things. You know, of course, if you were
to ask an older black person or a conservative person,
I don't know. I just think that the stain of
what happened too to the block of O Sage Avenue
and the subsequent blocks that also got destroyed, that was

(43:22):
way way too There's a there's always going to be
an asterisk on his entire legacy that is not going
to be there for Rindell or Nutter or any other
mayor which and what's what's even weirder is that Rizzo

(43:46):
was way worse. And I yes, I think he's one
of the worst politicians of all time. But I think
generally in history, like there isn't a statue of Wilson
Good up in Philadelphia. You know, Now, if you were white,
I'm certain that there would have been a lot of
a rature and you know, kind of uh a revisionist

(44:06):
history of his legacy. But you know, I mean, Wilson
Good has actually been in I still consider in hiding.
Like besides this interview, I can't recall ever seeing a
Wilson Good SoundBite or an interview or anything in the
last thirty five years now, I'm interested in you about

(44:27):
Mike and his relationship since he was the one that
introduced him to the project. Because so, how how did
how did that? Well, yeah, I'm shocked to hear this.
How did that? Even? How is that brokered? Well? It
wasn't easy. How it started was Wilson Good was honored

(44:48):
with the street sign called Wilson Good Way on his
block where he lives. And when that happened, some members
of the community who are also Moved and Moving us
A porters were enraged by it, and they talked about
how they take their kids by that street on their
way to school every day and they do not want

(45:10):
to see a street sign of a murderer on their block.
So the pressure was so intense and Wilson it drew.
It drew Wilson Good out. He got on the radio.
He talked about how you know he was he was
sorry for what happened. He had apologized multiple times he

(45:31):
would be willing to support MOVE and John Africa for
the rest of his life. And so at the time
the move nine, we're still in prison except for my mom.
And when my mom got out of prison, the head
of the FOP, John mc nesbi, made a statement that

(45:54):
said one of the move members slipped through the cracks,
but the next man up, the next person up, we're
gonna be waiting for He pointed and said, this is
Michael Davis. It was just my father. He said, this
is Michael Davis. We're gonna make sure that he never
sees the light of day. We're gonna make sure that
he stays in jail. And if that means that his,

(46:18):
he said, we want him to serve the full term.
And if that means his, he dies before his terms
are up, we want his body, his corpse to occupy
a cell. Sorry for interrupting. When was that said? That
was and uh June came out. My mom got so

(46:40):
when that happened, I knew that the pressure that we
had applied, and the all of the work that we
had done to get my mom out, I knew that
we were going to need more. The way people see
women as opposed to how they see men, it would
be harder for my father to make parole than my mom.
So Wilson and said he wanted to help. So I

(47:03):
called him and I told him, I said, you said
you wanted to help help. So he said okay, So
he said he wanted to set up a meeting. He
said that there was certain information that he could help with.
There are certain things that he knew, and he said
he'd be willing to provide that information. He'd be willing
to provide support letters. He'd be willing to provide jobs,

(47:27):
all of the things that the parole board needed you
to have to make parole. He said he'd be willing
to supply m So, the first meeting that we had,
I'm sorry it was but I didn't even know this
part of the story. That's crazy. I'm sorry. The first

(47:48):
meeting that we had was I tell you so just
to give you a little bit of understanding about me,
my family, the children that were in the house. I
think about them every day. There is not a day
that goes by. And the thirty five years since I've
seen them last that I don't think about every day.

(48:11):
And the women and the men that were in the prison,
they were the parents of the kids that were killed.
So going into Wilson Goods office it was the hardest
thing I ever had to do in my life. It
was I felt like I felt so dirty, like just

(48:33):
having a conversation with him and not jumping over the
table to strangle him. I felt so I felt like
I was betraying my family just looking at him and
looking at him looking back at me. You know, um,
I left the first meeting vomiting after. You know, it
was it was really tough. But if you know anything

(48:56):
about me, you know that I don't love anything more
then I love my family, my whole MOVE family. And
so with one of the members of the Move nine
dying in prison in two thousand and fifteen, you know,
I just didn't want to see any other Move member
come out of prison feet first. So I was willing

(49:17):
to do whatever it took. It didn't matter how hard
it was, it didn't matter how gut wrenching it was,
it didn't matter how controversial it was. Because it was
definitely controversial. People didn't like the idea of me going
and sitting down and talking with Wilson Good, But to
bring my family home, I was willing to do that

(49:39):
and I don't regret it. Can I ask something, Tom? So,
this documentary is what one hour, intive minutes I believe
an hour and forty nine okay, so under two our
under two hours, one slight left turn and this could

(49:59):
have easily have been. It could have been a short docuseries,
like just just for us to conduct this interview and
just unwrapped of the story. You know, is a lot
to have, no idea mirror, dude, Okay, not even I'm

(50:22):
not even trying to self promote because I'm doing a
documentary that at the same time, like cutting your kids
is one of the hardest things. I gotta keep this in,
and I gotta keep this in. All this do important.
This is too important, and I'm hearing a lot of
things that and I'm like, well, wait, why wasn't that
in the diet? And then I realized that if you
open that can of orange, then suddenly you're dealing with

(50:43):
a three hour film. So talk about the storyline structure,
like how hard was it, what was what was your
original director's cut, and how much did you have to
cut on the floor just to get the sustinct star
to finish story that you ended up with. Now that's
just as powerful. So interestingly, I actually thought of this

(51:07):
as a multipart piece to begin with, and that's what
I started talking to HBO about, and they thought that
it was a feature. And actually what I said to
them was if it was anybody but HBO. My answer
will be hell no, but let me think about it.
That's what I said verbatim, and so I thought about

(51:29):
it and I I agreed, And then when I turned
in the first cut, they were like, oh, I see
what you were talking about. You want to have a
conversation about this being more than one part, and we
can have that conversation. And at that point I was
like no. And it was about figuring out how to

(51:49):
be disciplined and tell the story in a way that
that really worked because there are so many things that
we could dig into. We could dig into August eight
for two hours by itself, and I'm not exaggerating. We
have so much footage around it, we have so many perspectives,

(52:13):
and there's so much archival. You can really dig into
all of the details in so many ways. But for me,
it was about understanding what the story was really about,
understanding what the emotion was, which is this guy trying
to get his parents home, and then the context around that,
why are his parents in and how do we be

(52:35):
laser focused on that. There's a reason that the film
moves the way that it does, that it looks the
way that it does that the cutting the shoe Like
I I shot the entire film myself, I cut it
with a partner. And part of it is the idea
of stripping away. I lit the film at at all
of it. And so it's just stripping away all the
things that take you away from the emotion and the story,

(52:58):
and that's it. And anything that does not fit on
that you pull away. So the scene in which Mike
is about to hear that his mother is about to
be released, you were there? How how much face time
were you? So? So so here's the thing. That's the

(53:23):
one thing that I didn't and Mike and I had.
So Mike and I talked about this because we tell
him about how you threaten me time, you don't forget
that part that you had to be there when it happened.
So I was in that l A. I lived in
l A. He's in Philly and and so but I

(53:43):
didn't We had no idea when it was gonna happen.
So you can tell him about the threat, right, So
I'm told, I said, Tommy, I don't know when this
is gonna happen. Man, if it's gonna happen, I said,
what happens if it happens, and I just gonna pick
her up. He said, if you pick her up, what
I'll call me? I will kill you? Yeah him that,

(54:05):
because that was such a beautiful moment, like it was theatrical,
like just just so that that actual phone call I
wasn't there for. But it was interesting because I was
in I was in in Miami at a b f
F and I was there with my wife and our kids.
And when he called me, we were actually planning on

(54:27):
shooting a black Love interview the following day, and so
I had equipment with me, which we had to cancel them.
They've never forgiven me since because I can't sl to them.
I comes of them. Why it was Juwan Howard and
his wife, and they just thought we blew him off anyway,
So he called me. I think it was like ten
a m I was on literally the first flight out
of Miami, and I got there and that evening and

(54:52):
we drove. It was a seven hour drive because they
were up in Cambridge Springs and so Pennsylvania, and so
it's about as far as you can get and still
be in Pennsylvania and sour from from uh what two
hours from Niagara Falls. But so it's a drive that

(55:13):
we made a bunch. But that was one of the
times where it was just like, okay, it's like there
are I went back and forth a lot. I was
probably in Philly. I was flying back to Philly at
least once a month, sometimes twice a month, and more
than that sort of what needed, and so I was
there as much as I could. But something like that
where we had no idea when it was going to happen,
we couldn't plan for. I had to rely on him

(55:34):
where it was, Hey, I don't know what this is
gonna happen, but can you please make sure you captured
and can you please make sure you captured wide screen?
But that didn't happen. But it's all it was so
the two thousand eighteen, So that means iPhone, Yeah, it
couldn't happen. Okay, Well I wasn't the one shooting. Somebody

(55:57):
else was shooting and they didn't, you know, leave even
the whole site. Well no, I just made it more authentic,
and you know, now I gotta go back and relook
at it. But you know, I definitely I remember being
floored watching it. And that's the thing, like I knew
that Tommy knew that. I didn't know, and you were

(56:22):
so quiet that day, and when it came I my
heart dropped. I was like, Oh, he didn't know that.
You didn't know that how it ended. You didn't know?
Is that what you're saying? I mean, I thought I
was gonna just watch if I thought watching it, what
I thought I was going to get out of it

(56:43):
was how corrupt Rizzo was as a mayor, not a
beautiful kind of love. I didn't know. I wasn't expecting them.
I guess it's just I didn't see it coming. If anything,
I thought, Okay, well maybe the statue will come down

(57:05):
or better. You don't know how many times I go
past that mural. I just wanted to egg the ship
out that mural, Like that's what I thought I thought
the ending was gonna be. And then we took the
ris mural down. That's not this is what we're learning, right, Yes,
but I didn't know about any of these things. We
had no idea that they were going to come home.

(57:27):
During the filming, we talked about it and like this
was supposed to be something that could like bring you know,
like to the case and help get people um motivated
to support them coming home. But there was no you know,
we were doing all of this other stuff. I mean
there's a lot of stuff that did not make it
to the film. The work that we were doing, the

(57:49):
meeting with the different politicians and the investigators, and we
traveled too. We always got arrested and Dallas so I've
got so there were several times, like actually several times.
There was one time where we got I got chased
off of the prison grounds and they followed us. There

(58:11):
was another time where I was surrounded by four cop
cars and about eight cops and it was insane. Also,
every single time you see any footage at prison, I
was probably this close to getting arrested because they do
not allow cameras of any I was going to ask,

(58:31):
but I didn't get I needed and I had to
and I had to play that like the bad guy.
I was like, Tommy, put your phone down, but I
was like, yeah, you know, but I was, you know.
But there was a lot of like really close calls
when he when he was at the prison. We went
to the prison to see delver Um where Devil was

(58:51):
beaten the prison he was beating it um that he
went to after he was beating and all of that,
And while we were there, Tommy calls me and there's
there after you know, the question and police are questioning
him because of whatever. And then when they get off
the phone, they come to my car and they're like
bringing their troops to snoop around. And none of that

(59:13):
makes it to the film, But there was a whole
lot of crazy moments where like, you know things ship
was about to go down, like and some of that
I have and I have it and you can see them,
and I was sort of discreet about it, but I
was still going to be like, you know what, in
case something happens. Actually, when I got stopped and there

(59:34):
were five cops around me, I called Shaun King and
I told them affected and they're like, just in case
some ship goes down, I wan't even know where I
am until yeah, whoa, Yeah. They were not playing around, yo.
Can I ask you all since y'all mentioned delvert, because
not for nothing, you know, we talked about and we

(59:55):
said it was a sport. We could we were spoiling
the end, and we said that Mike's parents were both released.
Beautiful ending, but at the same time, it was a
multi kind of layered emotional ending, right, because as we're
seeing Mike's parents reunite and we're seeing Delbert home, you
have this moment of like he was in his twenties,

(01:00:16):
he got his ass beat for no fucking reason, Like,
can y'all talk about Delbert and his his life that week?
Things that we may have you know, we didn't. You
don't get a chance to show in the story. And
I've actually never talked about this part. I am so
Delbert got out and January of this year and he

(01:00:40):
did almost forties two years and I've gotten no Delbert
pretty well. I went to see him in prison a
couple of times, and he was just a sort of
like Mike, just a positive, happy, good guy. Um actually, uh,
he kind of reminds me of General Iro from Avatar,

(01:01:03):
and I had got to know him and he was
just a good guy. And then he finally got out,
and I was there when he got out. And which
is if I don't know if you've I hope you have,
but if you haven't, watched to the very end of
the film, because there's a very small clip of him.
But the thing that was so hard for me was

(01:01:24):
I was just about done editing the film and the
ending was really hard because I wanted to figure out
the right balance of things. And then as I'm doing that,
Delbert again forty two years in prison, got out in January,
less than six months, like five and a half months afterwards,
he died. He died, and it broke my heart and

(01:01:48):
the the balance, the dance of trying to figure out
how to make sure that I was honoring him, my
my friend, this man who went through so much, but
also not It's just there was a lot because you
go through this roller CoA serve emotions and and like

(01:02:09):
Mayor was talking about, like as you watch the film,
it's sort of there where you like you want them
to get out, but you don't want to allow yourself
to believe that it's gonna happen, because the disappointment of
that happening after allowing yourself to believe is a lot,
because it's it's typically what happens. And so after sort
of that a juggle and then you finally do you

(01:02:32):
get there and it's this fairy tail ending. It's this
thing that's happier and better than you could have ever
hoped for. And and then just to show, oh, but
Delbert died I didn't see, and then I didn't. I
didn't because I could not figure out the yo yo
of it. I couldn't figure out how to go from

(01:02:53):
here to here, to hear to hear without it feeling weird,
which is why it's ah, he is there, he's there,
You see him, you hear him. And so that was
my way of figuring out how to to honor who
he was and sort of what he stood for while
still balancing the the emotion and the journey of the film.

(01:03:15):
And you answered a question for the viewer, because as
of viewers, and he was such a pivotal part of
the story, you wanted to know what happened to Dover
and it was just you came and it was just
so perfect in his face. Oh and it's the years
on his oh just that was also one of the
trippiest things for me because I had been I had
seen this guy for so long in archival footage then

(01:03:38):
on photos, and that's all I knew him as. And
the first time I saw him, it was plus thirty
five years, like there was no gradation, there was nothing
in between. It was just, oh, yeah, here's this, you know,
thirty year old man, here's this sixty five year old man.
And it was trippy. Can I ask, uh, I guess

(01:04:03):
at the time, when you officially have a green light
and you're you're you're doing this project in your mind,
are you like this project is over when they are
released or you know, okay, so save there there there

(01:04:24):
bail gets denied? Um back in two thousand seventeen, two
eighteen for you, is it just like back before you
knew there was a chance for it to really happen?
Is there an alternative ending in your mind that would
have completed this documentary if they had never gotten out

(01:04:46):
of out of prison? So it's a good question, and
it's I'm the personal green lit this film, and so
HBO came on as the distributor. But I paid for
this film out of my pocket, and so it was
not about the idea of, hey, let's do this as
a piece of business that needs to make sense and

(01:05:07):
we have to know what these things are. I did
it because I what Mike was doing was important and
who he was was somebody that I wanted to be
able to capture and showcase and be around. And that's
what it was. And so it wasn't hey, these things
need to happen in order for this to make sense.
It's like, no, it's like I was spending my own money.
I was doing whatever I needed to do to capture

(01:05:29):
it without n HBO, without anybody, and you know, that
was just what I wanted to do, and so it
and and so in many ways, it's sort of running
over a cane while building a bridge at the same time.
And it's just like, you know what, I'll figure it out.

(01:05:50):
I'll figure it out. And in the end, if it
doesn't make sense, it's all good. It's all good because
it's still information that nobody had to for for sure, Right,
you're still educating the masses. Yeah, so so much to
unpack here, because is there is there more story to tell?

(01:06:12):
Like now that this is over, can you officially put
this behind you? Or is there are there other fights
that we don't know about or that we're not aware of.
First of all, Mike, are you kind of a qualified paralegal?
I mean, first of all, what was day What was

(01:06:36):
day one for you when you decided I have to
get them home? Like what do you remember the day
where you're like hand on table, Okay, I gotta do this,
and I'm gonna find go to city hall, find some papers,
like what year was it? When you were like, all right,
I gotta do this myself. But you know what it

(01:07:01):
was is when Ramota came and got me, when I
actually actually to come get me, that was in and
she threw me right into. I'm in lawyers offices and
learning about the case, and the lawyers are quizzing me
that that they're telling me, listen, this is your parents.
You need to know this information. And I've been around

(01:07:24):
lawyers ever since fourteen years old, so learning and hearing
the language that they use, and and creating strategies and
learning about the different um ways in which that you
can insert information to judges where they accepted. If you

(01:07:45):
don't do it the right way, you don't use a
certain language, you don't uh enter it into the right court,
it won't be accepted. I was learning all of this
type of information since then. Um, I think as a teenager.
Correct was fourteen years old. I was fourteen years old
when I first started in that. Yeah, I was falling

(01:08:07):
asleep in lawyer's offices because it was boring information I
didn't want to hear. I mean, it wasn't that I
want too but it was boring. You know, I'm fourteen
years old. I got I shouldn't playing ball, right, So
i'm I'm I'm falling asleep and and all that kind
of stuff, and they're like, you know, sometimes they let
me sleep, but sometimes they woke me up and maybe
pay attention. So as time went on, I was always

(01:08:28):
around Ramon, and I was always around Pam, involved in
mea stuff a lot, right, learning about his case and
the illegal the illegalities of it, and the ways in
which to try to support him, and and I've always
been involved in it. So in two thousand and fifteen,
when Phil passed away in jail, um and Ramona had

(01:08:54):
gotten sick herself and we found out later that she
had staged four uh answer and she had had a
massive stroke too. So she really was like kind of
the person that was kind of driving the move nine
information and she was out of the picture because she
couldn't do it anymore. And she told me, she said, uh,

(01:09:16):
I said, Ramona, I said, listen, I said, Lorna. People
are calling me this investigative. He's calling and the lawyer
wants to know something, and we need to pick a lawyer.
We don't need to have a lawyer for the move
nine and what are we gonna do? And she she
gave me a sit down and she said listen, She said,
you've been around this information long enough. You've you you're smart.

(01:09:41):
Do all those people are your parents, one is your uncle.
You know all of the people. You know the case,
and you have plenty of move belief in your head.
You are going to have to take the lead on
this stuff and you're gonna have to have the confidence
in yourself to know that you can do it. I
know you can do it. You need to know that,

(01:10:02):
so you need to just go ahead and do it.
So when she told me that, I said, okay. And
you know, I had my own ideas about what I
thought should happen. And my dad had been giving me
information and my uncle Chuck, who was who's wanting to move,
not to my mom's little brother, and they fed me
information and I used what I had and Tommy was

(01:10:23):
part of it, you know, with him, we talked about
different things and then UM, we we we we just
kept on pushing and eventually we um we developed a
strategy that proved to be true. True who proved to
be right? So um that's how it happened A slight sidebar.

(01:10:43):
I do want to know like human moments like did
you get to go to your problem? Do you so
so amazingly enough? Um? I asked me. When my mom
first came home, I told her, I said, Mom, you
spent forty years in prison. I don't have a lot
of money, but whatever you say you want, I will

(01:11:05):
make it happen. I know a lot of people. I
don't care what it is. Whatever you say you want,
I'll make it happen. And she was living with me
at the time, and Mom said to me, she said, Honey,
I'm just happy to be home with you. She said,
you gave me everything that I wanted, and now I
want you to be free and I want you to fly.

(01:11:26):
So I'm like, all right, cool. So when my when
my dad came home, wait, wait so quick, quick sidebar.
The song that you hear when the film ends, fly Baby,
that's him. That's him, fly Baby? Right, based on that something,
based on that conversation we had. So when when my
dad came came home, he says, I say the same

(01:11:50):
thing to him that you've been in prison forty years,
you can have I don't care what you asked for
I don't have a lot of money, but I'll make
it happen. What do you want, he said, Mike, I
only want one thing, he said. I want to marry
your mom. Wow, he said, he said, I want to

(01:12:13):
marry your mom like I should have done forty years ago. Oh, Tommy,
is it gonna be an episode of Black? What were doing?
So you? I got you? Because yet I did. Sorry
to cut you off of what I did. There was
so much footage that did not fit, and had so
many interviews with Mike and with his mom and with
Mike and Debbie, and so it's just a lot of

(01:12:36):
really cool things. So I cut a thirty five minute
epilogue and it looks at them and it is just
so sweet. I'll actually send it to you. I'll send
it to you tonight, and it's actually gonna be on
HBO as well, and so it'll be like additional content.
They are so TV ready, They're so gorgeous. It is

(01:12:57):
so I sent it to to Mike and his parents
a month ago. You get to see the wedding. You
get to see the wedding, and so the wedding cake,
that the four tier wedding cake we made. We made
my mom. So my mom is a I'm a fifties
man like at heart. My mom is a thirties woman

(01:13:17):
at heart. She when they said for cake, what I'm
not paying fifty I'm not letting you pay fifty in
so I'm like, she said, we can make that cake
and it'll be a great moment. I said, yeah, okay,
let's do it. It took us eleven hours. In the song,
I said, we spent the night making her wedding cake.

(01:13:37):
And that is yeah, it is now about to turn
into uh reality show. Tyler Perry's the Africa's No, but
don't that Tyler touch you? Don't? Are you? Tim From
one inspector to the other in inspection activism, you guys

(01:14:01):
mentioned something that I personally wanted to know. You know,
there was a there was a moment in the mid nineties, uh,
the late the early aughts, um, and which a lot
of conversations about mu MIA's future was up in the air,

(01:14:22):
you know, stay of execution and all these things haven't
heard much since. You know, like I guess two thousand four,
two thousand five. Occasionally, um, when when I talked to
uh tom Arello, UM, he'll give me an update in

(01:14:42):
in general is there and I don't mean the kind
of hope where you like, we hope this happens. Where
where does Mumia stand right now? Uh, as far as
this case is concerned, is there any hope or for
his eventual release or total exoneration or just the general story. Definitely,

(01:15:09):
So that's what we're working on now. So you know,
it's funny like the HBO poster has a picture of
me and the Move nine above me, and it says
he will never be free until his family comes home, right,
And that's such a true statement. Muvia I've been I've
known Muvia since I was a kid. And my work
around the Move nine doesn't end with trying to get

(01:15:30):
them trying to get them home. It is equally distributed
and probably even more so with Muvia, Like I have
just as many files on Moua as I do on
the movie nine, And so my work has been in
large part to help with his case too. And in
the early part of this year, in January, UH he

(01:15:52):
was granted by the by Judge Leon Tucker the right
to appeal his case and a PCR, a post conviction
relief appeal, was granted. Um and so it was in
Larry Krasni's hands. Larry Krasner was then attacked by Marie
Faulkner as being saying that she was saying that he

(01:16:14):
was prejudice, he was on the mere side and all
of this. So she created this thing that got it
pushed into the Supreme Courts hands. And for now it's
kind of in limbo. With with covid um, things are
moving much slower. But the answer to your question is, yes,
there's a real chance that movie Abu Jamal could be free,

(01:16:36):
and we're working on that very hard. And if we
can um get the result that were that we expect
that we can get. Ironically enough, he could come home
during that forty year mark two where right, he's at
uh in uh or December ninth. This December ninth marks

(01:16:58):
year thirty nine. Yeah, okay, so next year is year
forty and we expect that we can get him home
within that year forty Okay? Can you are you allowed
to speak at all what your personal theories are? Similar
to good sort of saying, um that it was most

(01:17:21):
likely friendly fire fire and this was a setup. Is
what is the story on on that particular with with
Daniel Faulkner, and the story is was a cab driver
who was dropping off of Fair and thirteenthrom Locus at

(01:17:43):
the time. His brother was His brother and his brother's
friend were vending and they were when he pulled up
on the scene. When Moneya pulled up on the scene,
he saw his brother's brother being beat by policeman Daniel
Faulkner with him. He was beating in with a flashlight,
a police slashlight. Luma goes over to intervene. The officers

(01:18:06):
shoots Muma and Muma is shot, unconscious and beaten and
taken to the hospital. And when he wakes up, he's
handcuffed to a bed and he's told that an officer
was killed and he's the one being charged with the murder.
That's what happened. And there's so much like so many

(01:18:30):
witnesses who said that Muvia did not do that do it.
He was not the shooter. But there are so many
um like there. Specifically, Ronika Jones Or was was an eyewitness,
said that Muvia Abu Jamal did not shoot this cop.
We saw the man who did it. We saw him
run away. There were more than more than her who

(01:18:53):
said that um the security guards that were intimidated into
they were intimidated by the officers into changing their stories
to say MoMA Abu Jamal was the one who killed
the cops. So there's all this evidence that proves that
movie is innocent. But you know, because he supported moved
the way he did, Rizzo threatened him. He actually said

(01:19:15):
it in the press conference. These reporters blah blah blah
blah blah. We need to get that definitalty back. Then
I'll be there to port switch that kind of thing.
So uh a supported move and that's and and so
he was he was a target because of it. Any
other political prisoners in Philadelphia that we might not be
aware of, Yeah, Russell Maroon, Shows, Joseph Jojo Bowen, Fred

(01:19:38):
Mohammed Burton. There's a lot of political prisoners in Pennsylvania.
And then there's a lot outside to Mutula Shakur, stepfather
of tupac um Uh. And then some people are not
even political prisoners, but there exiled because of the tyrany
of this country. Like inside of Shakur, you know, there's
a lot of a lot of a lot of repair

(01:19:58):
that needs to be done. But my focus efically is
on Movia, we have a real shot to get him
out and and um, I mean I focus on Maroon
too and Fred Mohammed Burton too, and I speak their
names and everything and I support them too. But Mvia
is a very very personal battle for me because of

(01:20:19):
how he was there for my family when no other
news media was there for my family. Philadelphia Police. Yeah,
the things I learned, man, Um, Well, what can I say, Like,
I really want to thank you guys for doing this,

(01:20:39):
just that you know, as as as a black man,
as a as a Philadelphian, definitely, this is this is
one of the kind of the unanswered questions that I've
had in my life that I didn't know about. And
I'm so glad that the world will finally get a

(01:21:00):
ants too. Um see this documentary And can we just
mentioned the mirror. You're not gonna plug it, but I will.
This is the first project that I've seen your name
black thought comment, John leg I forgot that Jackson. I'm
just saying. I'm saying about me. Man, I'm just saying,
but that's dope that y'all saw that there was the
reason there was a need for Yeah, I totally forgot. Yes,

(01:21:21):
we're also we did music for the project as well.
Forgive me, like no for me, Like the story is
so the story is so important that you know, I
kind of forgot that I played a part in this
as well, and I'm glad to be included because I
was feeling a certain way might say that I really

(01:21:41):
appreciate your involvement too, because um, you know, it wasn't
a lot of people are really afraid to talk about
this story. A lot of people were really afraid to
get on board and support moves, even though they may
have been sympathetic. So I really, you know, was thrilled
to here Tommy tell me like, hey, guess who. Guess

(01:22:02):
who we got to help with the with the film.
And I'm like, oh, he's like the biggest and you
can think of And I'm like, what do you mean
the biggest? He's like the biggest. Okay, fully thank Philly
and tas like yeah, and I'm like, no, you didn't,

(01:22:25):
you know, So like yeah, man, I just you know,
really appreciate you, you know, and um, that gave Tommy
a chance to show it, to see the film, you know,
so I just want to thank you, no, thank you.
When um, I gotta admit. When it was happening and
my manager shown Gee told me about it, he was like, yeah,

(01:22:46):
you know comment and John Legend said, wait An, wait
you did. I would have did the same thing. They
can't happen on it before me. It's I mean technically, look,
you know a lot of a lot of a lot
a lot of John's education and oakness and right now
he's a soldier. Yes was was was acquired and learned

(01:23:07):
at the university to Penn. No, dude, right now, John,
I'm not cutting John Donald. I was just saying that
was created the toxicity that's happening right now with a
lot of my heroes in hip hop. Yeah. John Legend
is yeah, he trust me, he's frontline. Um. Yeah. I
was like, yo, we gotta get somehow get down. But

(01:23:31):
I'm very happy as somebody who is from Philly who
grew up on the roots, and there was just there
was nothing better than that. And shout out to Derek Dudley,
who's the person who actually introduced me with Sean, and
he was like, done, I got you. Sean came to
the office watch and he's like, yeah, yeah, we need

(01:23:52):
to do this, and it was just it's just been
nothing but love the entire time, and I got it.
I gotta admit that this was, um, probably the perfect platform.
Seuan couldn't have been happier um to have made this happen,
because you know, we we had um uh, we had

(01:24:16):
a passing of like our manager Richard Nichols was like
you know, he was he was like our fifth beatle,
and when he passed away in two thousand fourteen, Lakima,
it was kind of an unspoken thing, even though I
never believed it in my heart, it was sort of like, well,
I guess we're not gonna make records anymore. And you know,

(01:24:38):
I spent a lot of time since you know, late
two thousand thirteen, early two thousand fourteen, uh, thinking of,
you know, other ways to be creative. And that's when
I started writing a lot of books and doing like
a lot of other things besides making like any excuse
to not make an album. So you know, I couldn't
I couldn't think of a better way, uh for us

(01:25:01):
to get back in the studio six years, seven years
after having not created anything inside of the studio with
each other, UM than this project. So you know, again,
I thank you both because this like once we started this,
then this really just unleashed a flooding. You know, we're

(01:25:24):
we're subsequently working on three records right now. So well,
thank you, Mike. Yeah, that's what I said. Thank you.
I am very happy to have played the roots back
from the Yeah, absolutely, I'll take it. I'm putting that

(01:25:45):
in my bio. Ye can, but I can't wait for
the world to actually hear the tracks, yes, because I
don't know what I'm talking about because nobody's heard the
meet and so, yeah, you can hear it in the trailer.
You can hear one of the instrumentals, and then one
of the things, one of the songs afterwards, which is

(01:26:07):
just fire and and Tarik. So there's this blind first
time I heard it, I just it's stuck with me
so much. And what he says is every time I fight,
the reason I fight is to not fight again. And
somebody who grew up in Philly fighting, you don't fight
because you want to fight, and that's not what it's about.
And so he just captured it so succinctly. And to

(01:26:28):
understand what Mike's doing, what we're doing in this movement,
it's not about fighting for the sake of fighting. We
want to fight to get things into a better place
for us but also for our kids. And so the
music is just it's fire. So I cannot wait to
for people that I see, hear all of the tracks,

(01:26:49):
the whole ep, and it's just I gotta say that, um,
you know, for a lot of uh, for a lot
of them. I never said the Roots Army before in
my life, but I guess I'll see now a lot
a lot of people that have history with the Roots,
you know, for the longest they've they've put us under.

(01:27:11):
You know this, I guess, you know, socially conscious or
political rap thing, which you know I used to joke
a lot and say like, well, okay, I know we're
politically correct, but you know, just because you know we
aren't cutting keys and drug dealing in our songs doesn't
necessarily serially mean that we're a political group per se.

(01:27:35):
And then there became a point where we were, like
thirty five, like all right, someone's gonna um call us
out one day and realize that we're not as political
as we were. So, you know, a lot a lot
of our post two thousand and eight material, especially you know,
the time in two thousand and eight, when the murderate
in Philly was astounding and we were under what we

(01:27:57):
thought was the worst presidency of all time with with Bush.
You know it's like, okay, well, we can only go
for so long talking about you know, how how digity
dope are sticky styles are in rigety rapping, and so
you know, we kind of have this streak of like
the last four albums like these like dark political records,
which I don't think was performative at all, but really

(01:28:19):
like represented where we were at the time, because you know,
you can't turn your back or no matter like how
much success you have, like you still have a cousin,
Like you might the same with your fight, Like okay, great,
you got your parents out, but you know there's more
fight to go. You know. I kind of thought that
we were going to close the chapter on the darkness
of roots albums with uh, our last album and then

(01:28:43):
you shoot your cousin um, basically because that was the
album that we were making as our manager and co
producer Rich was dying. So if anything, that album was
more of our very dark goodbye to him. So I'd
sort of forgive roots fans for like that was way
too dark for me. I can't take this ship. But
you know, if you knew Rich, that was like the

(01:29:05):
perfect send off. So the thing was in my mind.
I thought, Okay, well we're gonna I'm gonna shock the
world and just return to the first four records, like
the Sunday Afternoon House Cleaning roots album that everyone wants
us to do. But we're living in you know, these

(01:29:25):
this time now and and you know since two thousand
and sixteen and utter Madness in in the upside Down,
and I was like, yo, man, it's not time to
make a lighthearted record like we got one, more like
this is our chance to make our statements. So if anything,
I feel like this this album really put some context
of what the last five albums have been about. So yeah,

(01:29:48):
I'm I'm excited for people to hear it. Um, you know.
And again we're making three records, so this is this
is just one of three uh of of us unpaid
bill what do you think? Oh you know, I'm bay
bills on Sesame Street. This is Sugar Steve, Damn Sugar Steve. Yeah,
you know, I'm just I'm just sharing together from Masure

(01:30:09):
Report back to white people. So he said, that he
did he did? How long? How long did it take
for the I'm sorry to extend the sorry. Steve has
lived with this project enough because he's engineered the record
for us. So um, I mean I haven't I haven't

(01:30:32):
seen the documentary info, but uh my one question was
how long did it take three to make this this
documentary from start to finish? It took about three and
a half years until about two and a half years
they're still of shooting and about a year of editing.
I haven't a Philly archival question once again, yes, also

(01:30:58):
because of what I'm working on right now out I
just discovered did you use any of the archival footage?
Do you know of this woman in Philadelphia whom I
guess her back stories that she did not trust the government?
I actually thought she was down with move she did
not trust the government, a Philadelphia woman. And what she

(01:31:21):
did was she purchased five Beta Max machines. Yes, and
she obsessively, she obsessively recorded. The problem it was I
found I came across her, I saw an article and
I looked her up. The problem was hard. Recording started

(01:31:42):
I think four months after this, and so the nude
me she recorded everything. She has this incredible database of
everything that happened. It was insane. But we think think
of a think of a she she would have. She
would have been a perfect fit for a quest Love Supreme,

(01:32:03):
like she was a pop culture hoarder. Like she recorded.
She recorded. I don't know how she don't know if
she had a job or anything, but she literally recorded
whatever was on television. What thirties seven years in a row. Yes,
I believe that was she started what I think I

(01:32:25):
think it was sometimes Okay, Yeah, she got five Beta
Max machines. Said I don't trust the government, so I'm
gonna record everything on NBC ABC. So she brought five VCR,
five Beta maxes, and five televisions and all she did
was she would change tapes every four hours like clockwork,

(01:32:50):
but like overnight helps. I think like four thousand tapes
at the end of the day. So, yeah, I wanted
to know if you use then I honestly, if we
started actually talking about our our trival process, we'll be
here for another Fortunately, I don't want the process. I'm sorry.
The name of the film, what do you who do

(01:33:11):
you think it's referring to? I assume that it was
about Mike, because so see that's the thing where some
people will be like, oh, yeah, it's it's it's parents,
it's parents and Mike. No, it's it's Mike. Oh it's Mike.
It's Mike. And if you and a mere god, because

(01:33:34):
he's yes, exactly, And and his dad is the one
who really brings that home in the end where he
talks about us being home freed him and it took
the burden off of him so he could actually live
his life. That's funny about that. I never knew my
dad felt that way until I saw that interview. Again,

(01:33:58):
when we have a question of Supreme, we think uh
my Guy Fricker Jr. And Tommy Oliver, uh for joining
us on behalf of Fontagelo and Unpaid Bill and Sugar,
Steve and Layah and Philadelphia Zone from ost Avenue. Quest Love.
This is quest Love Supreme signing off. We will see
you in the next proground. Thank you, yo. What's up?

(01:34:21):
This is Fonte. Make sure you keep up with us
on Instagram at QLs and let us know what you
think and who should be next to sit down with us.
Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. All right, m
quest Love Supreme is a production of my heart Radio.

(01:34:45):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.

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Questlove

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