The Hollywood Theatre presents a special screening of THE BOMBING OF OSAGE AVENUE benefiting Liberation Literacy, a non-profit organization bringing social justice literacy to those living inside the Oregon prison system. While this event is a benefit, nobody will turned away at the door for lack of funds until capacity is reached.
On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department orchestrated a military-style raid on the communal home of the Black Liberation organization MOVE, dispatching a small army of almost 500 cops to the residential neighborhood of Cobbs Creek and assaulting their building with automatic gunfire, tear gas, and bombs dropped from a helicopter. Six adults and five children were murdered; the ensuing fires – left intentionally to burn – destroyed more than sixty nearby homes. Writer/narrator Toni Cade Bambara and director Louis Massiah’s THE BOMBING OF OSAGE AVENUE provides a radically different perspective from the standard narrative that emerged across national media, focusing instead on the testimony of local black residents as a way to articulate “the dismemberment of a community, the relation of a people to a place, ruptured.”
About Liberation Literacy:
Liberation Literacy's mission is to build social justice literacy in prisons in order to reimagine and re-articulate the relationship between incarceration, our community, and ourselves. We are a non-profit led by formerly and currently incarcerated members of our community. We meet weekly inside of Columbia River Correctional Institution to discuss readings on a range of topics, including “Studies in Mass Incarceration,” “Policing and the Criminalization of Blackness,” and “Contemporary Social Movements.” Current projects include a weekly reading group inside CRCI, a bi-annual newsletter with writing and art by members of Liberation Literacy, monthly screenings of movies about social justice issues in partnership with Cinema Project, and a Freedom Library which provides full sets of books and a variety of movies inside Oregon prisons. To get involved or find out more about our projects, visit Liberation Literacy’s website, Facebook, and Twitter.