Philadelphia used massive military firepower to destroy the MOVE compound

Evidence

The commissioner’s recipe for eviction: M16s, Uzi submachine guns, sniper rifles, tear gas, approximately ten thousand rounds of .50-caliber bullets, more than five hundred officers, 640,000 gallons of water, and one state police helicopter to drop two pounds of mining explosives combined with two pounds of C-4 on the MOVE family compound’s roof. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1231

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The city’s willingness to burn an entire Black neighborhood to destroy a small radical group exemplifies state violence targeting marginalized communities—parallel to sacrificial dynamics where authorities deem a group expendable.
• QUESTION: This passage leaves out the death toll and the fact that survivors were imprisoned for decades. Worth chasing the full MOVE story as a case study in state overreach.