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The Current Transcript for July 12, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

They're using an environmentally friendly solution to get around. They're solving a congestion issue like there's a lot of huge benefits for a city that creates that so called net.

ROBYN BRESNAHAN: E-bikes and E-scooters are taking cities by storm, but as they grow in popularity, there are calls to clarify who goes where on roads and bike paths. In just a moment, a conversation about how micro transit is changing the urban landscape. Then, a celebration of Satchmo.

SOUNDCLIP

Jazz, a variety of all good music. And the only way to sum up music ain't with two things in music.Good and bad.

RB: The late, great Louis Armstrong spent hours cataloguing his music and cutting out newspaper clippings. These treasures are now housed in a brand new building in Queens, New York. We will meet the jazz pianist who said it was the thrill of his life to dig through Armstrong's archive. That's coming up in 30 minutes. Plus, how artificial intelligence is helping farmers in Africa. But we start in the city where an e-transit's transformation is taking place. I'm Robyn Bresnahan, sitting in for Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Sharing the road with e-bikes and scooter

Guests: Megali Bebronne, Brent Todderian

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: But my name is Harley Mills. I'm a tour guide with Cycle City Tours. We do run an electric bike tour. They're quite enjoyable to use and certainly for people with mobility issues or, you know, they haven't ridden bike for a while, way up the hill you go, no problem.

VOICE 2: I commute year round with this bike. It's a rad mission e-bike I got last spring. You can it can accelerate fairly quickly and they caught me off guard. I have admittedly been in one accident. It was my own doing. I think there's just needs to be a lot of awareness because you see people bypassing each other and cutting each other off because of the speed. I can commute faster from the North Shore than I could driving and then parking for downtown rates. I mean, I lock up for free.

RB: Those are a couple of e-bike riders in Vancouver. Cities across the country are seeing more and more electric bikes and scooters these days. They're part of a growing category called Micromobility Vehicles. And as they become increasingly popular, bike lanes are getting busier. And some people on Non-electric bikes say it's definitely an adjustment.

SOUNDCLIP

My bike is just a normal cross hybrid kind of city bike from the nineties, just a classical one. There is food delivery, there is trikes, it's oversized e-vehicles. There's different sectors like the delivery, food delivery, like parcel delivery and all these other working vehicles that are supposed to be e-bikes. But they're, I think they're going overboard as far as-- I don't think there are bike anymore.

RB: Well, Quebec recently approved the use of e-scooters on bike paths and public roads with speed limits of less than 50 kilometres per hour. They were previously banned there, but last week the province announced they will be legalised for a three year period that has some cyclists wanting more clarification about who goes where as bike paths see more traffic. Magali Bebronne is the director of programs at Velo Québec, a cycling advocacy group. Magalie, good morning.

MEGALI BEBRONNE: Good morning.

RB: By next week you will be sharing bike paths with E-scooters. How are you feeling about that?

MEGALI BEBRONNE: But it's not going to be very different from what we're seeing on the ground right now, because e-scooters are already a reality on the streets. So that's a reason we welcome the pilot project and the legal framework that from now on will let us know what is a good or acceptable e-scooter and what really shouldn't be on the bike paths with us.

RB: What do you mean? What is a good and acceptable e-scooter?

MEGALI BEBRONNE: Well, there's a matter of power and there's a matter of speed, obviously. So one thing that we were satisfied about was the 25 kilometre an hour speed limit that was imposed on e-scooters because, you know, when everything's illegal, it's kind of hard to make a difference between the really too fast e-scooters and the ones that, you know are very reasonable and should be able to share the bike paths with their regular users.

RB: What about e-bikes? Are they going to be allowed on bike paths?

MEGALI BEBRONNE: Oh, they've been for for a long time. And we do have a problem in Quebec, though, that the legal definition of what an e-bike is kind of up in the air since the federal government pulled out of the definition and the provincial government hasn't come up with a better definition. So we're still in the middle of a bit of a need of clarification, let's say that way. And what this means is that we are also seeing mopeds and e-motorbikes that pass or try to pass for e-bikes, sharing the bike paths with us. And that's that's been really more uncomfortable than e-scooters per se.

RB: When you say uncomfortable, what do you mean? Give me some examples of what it's like to to ride with some of those e-bikes on your back or your bike pathways.

MEGALI BEBRONNE: Well, really, you know, it's a matter of speed and weight. You know, that the violence of a collision is really dependent on these two factors. And of course, these vehicles are capped at 32 kilometres an hour, but that's already quite fast for most users. And they're also heavier and often they can carry a second passenger. And so that really makes, you know, that they're bulkier, they're bigger. So being over passed by it by one of those or having to cross on a narrow bike path, we hear a lot of concern from people who just do not feel comfortable, especially if you're talking, riding with your family, smaller and children, then you're not going to be you're going to not going to feel comfortable as sharing with more pets and motorcycles that were never meant to be on bike paths in the first place.

RB: Are there are a lot of accidents taking place?

MEGALI BEBRONNE: That is hard to say. And one reason it's hard to say is that the collision data is registered by the Automobile Insurance Board, and that's only when a motor vehicle is involved. So having precise data on a crash that involves all these other devices with no car is actually really difficult to capture.

RB: How long have you been commuting by bike?

MEGALI BEBRONNE: Oh, probably over 12 years in Montreal on a regular bike. As far as I'm concerned. But now that we have Bixi, the the shared bike system, the bike share system, sorry. And that has now included e-bikes. Occasionally when I have to go up a steep hill or I have to go one way, I will also be using these e-bikes.

RB: And do you still enjoy the commute now as much as you did 12 years ago when you first started?

MEGALI BEBRONNE: Well, I tend to enjoy it almost more in winter than I do in summer, because some of the bike paths that were designed in the eighties and there are bidirectional, pretty narrow bike paths just don't are not sufficient enough for for the kind of traffic we're seeing. Cycling has become so popular in Montreal that the city has a hard time keeping up and implementing new bike paths fast enough to meet the demand. What's interesting, though, is the city has now understood that they really need to go with that triple A designs, as we call them. So that's all ages and abilities and those are bike paths that are very wide, that can be maintained in winter and that are physically separated from the traffic and that are really wide enough so that faster users can safely overtake the slower users. And that's a big piece in making sure that all these different devices with different speeds and different users can, you know, can share the paths in a safe way.

RB: What would your ideal bike path look like, especially as as more of these micro e transit vehicles are brought into play?

MEGALI BEBRONNE: Well, we need to do away with a bi directional bike path. So those are the path that have both directions of traffic on one side of the street. We've known for a long time now that they multiply the number of collisions and conflicts at intersections because there are so many paths crossing in so many different ways. So that was already a good reason to get rid of them. But now with all these devices that are going at different speeds, we really they make any overpasses manoeuvre riskier because people are going faster or trying to overtake each other and then there's traffic coming in the other direction. So we really need to go towards that need directional bike paths on one side of the street very wide, and then special attention needs to be put into how we manage intersections. And that's what the City of Montreal has been doing really well. And the newer designs is to make sure that paths are not crossing. So we have exclusive phases at traffic lights where cyclists can have a head start and cross the intersection with no vehicle movement allowed for turning manoeuvres at the same time.

RB: So it sounds like, Maegali, that you welcome the e-scooter pilot largely because the speeds are lower than some of the what you're seeing on on the mopeds and and the so-called electric bikes. But you would like some clarification on e-bikes.

MEGALI BEBRONNE: Yes, that's definitely our priority. We need to get the the mopeds and motorcycles out of that category. And then what we're hoping for is that to her is to have some subcategories so that in certain settings we can maybe have a better distinction between what's compatible and what isn't. I'll give you an example. In the e-bikes, there are throttle e-bikes. So you have an accelerator with the hand and you can actually get going without pedalling. And you have other e-bikes that really require pedalling and provide assistance only to the pedalling, while maybe in some instances I can think of multi-use bike paths or in particular pedestrian streets, which we have seen a lot more happening in summer here in Montreal. Maybe you want to limit to regular bikes that really require some kind of pedalling. That's just an idea. But having at least these different categories would be important to be able to discriminate which device can go where, and also collect data so that in five or ten years from now we have proper data on, in particular collision data on what devices are safe and what devices aren't majorly.

RB: Megali, thank you very much for your perspective today. It was really good to talk to you.

MEGALI BEBRONNE: You're welcome.

RB: That's Megali Bebronne, the director of programmes at Velo Québec, a bicycle advocacy group. And we reached her in Montreal. Well, it is not just that city where forms of transportation are on the rise. In many cities across Canada, people are using e-scooters and e-bikes to commute. Food delivery drivers say they can get around much more quickly than being stuck in vehicle traffic. But with the proliferation of e-bikes and e-scooters, how are cities adapting.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: On last Sunday, I'm just doing this uber deliveries and one of the guy who was in, I think the Honda Civic, they just- I'm just turning it right, but they just always come and just try to hit me.

VOICE 2: Drivers are a lot more aggressive. There's a lot less space there. Stress. It's kind of bad and there's a lot more cyclists. And some of them don't know the rules of the road.

RB: Well, an increase in e-bikes and e-scooters has made things more complicated for drivers as well. Sean McDonald is a driving instructor in Vancouver.

SOUNDCLIP

SEAN MCDONALD: They make it a lot more hectic because not only are they quick, they are silent and quite often the users are inattentive and aggressive. So that's not a very good combination to have when you're driving in traffic and you're amongst cars and relatively unprotected. And this morning when I was driving down a side street, a guy on an e-scooter just blew through a stop sign from my left, through parked cars on either side of road limited visibility. So he just flew through the stop sign, but he was looking at a phone because I think he was trying to, he was trying to find an address. All these people deliver food, they tend to be looking at phones or maps as they're riding and they don't seem to pay a lot of attention. Sometimes they're through the crosswalks, they jump off the crosswalk, onto the sidewalk, then they cut through traffic across the street. And that makes it tough for drivers. It's more stressful.

RB: Well, on the line now is Brent Todderian, and he's an urban planning consultant and former chief planner for the city of Vancouver. Brent, good morning.

BRENT TODDERIAN: Good morning to you.

RB: As these forms of transportation become more popular. What do you see happening in cities?

BRENT TODDERIAN: Well, it's it's a good thing in the context of options to get around that are an extension of walking and biking and for cities to work better as they grow. And our cities are growing in population quite fast. If we grow in this at the same rate, the number of cars, then we've got a major problem. It's a basic geometry problem. No matter if cars are internal combustion or electric, there's just too many of them. They take too much space. It costs too much money and too much greenhouse gas emissions to build parking and roads, etc.. So if everyone tries to drive, no one really moves. And that's a bad thing for everyone, including drivers. So the best thing we can do in cities as population grows is to have more trips, but fewer car trips, more trips that take less space and have less of lower emissions, less greenhouse gas emissions, less public costs related to roads and road reconstruction, etc.. So micro-mobility is good because it takes less space. Active transport is good because it takes less space and promotes public health. So it actually lowers all of our costs, including our public health costs. So it's very good public policy. Whether you like bikes or not. It's good public policy for cities because it helps cities work better as they grow. So whether that's regular bikes or e-bikes, whether that's scooter, regular scooters or e-scooters, anything that provides attractive alternative to the car and car use and ownership.

RB: Yes, but those for cities, those need infrastructure too, Right? What are you thinking about when it comes to adapting infrastructure to make space for all these different types of vehicles and also pedestrians?

BRENT TODDERIAN: Well, they absolutely need infrastructure or else they end up sharing space with cars, which is inherently dangerous or sharing space with pedestrian. On sidewalks, which is also inherently dangerous, but to be clear, a lot less dangerous than sharing it with cars. The most dangerous thing in our transportation system by far are our cars in terms of rates of accidents and consequences of accidents. So separation of of mobility, aids like bikes or scooters or mobility aids for the disabled or what have you, provides a safer environment for everyone. It provides a safer environment for them. Absolutely. Full stop, guaranteed. But what people don't often understand is it actually reduces the rates of collisions and crashes and injuries and deaths for everyone, pedestrians and drivers. The studies have all been very clear that it actually makes everyone safer, including drivers. So it's often positioned as this. Well, bikes are. I heard one of your last commenters talking about how inconvenient some of these things can be for drivers. It's that they wear it, that it creates chaos for drivers. The simple fact is the more people that don't move by car, the easier it is for drivers. And this is the part that often gets missed in the dialogue because it gets positioned as a war in the car or some lazy narrative like that. When the facts of how cities work and transportation work and the facts of geometry is that the less people driving, the better it is for everyone, including drivers. So we end up having this false narrative of bikes and active mobility versus the car when the best thing that drivers can hope for is that you're not fighting for incredibly finite space with all the other people trying to drive.

RB: Brent Can we talk about an actual example of infrastructure and how it could change in North Vancouver? They're currently planning a network of so-called mobility lanes. How are those going to be different from the bike lanes that already exist?

BRENT TODDERIAN: Probably not that different. Vancouver and North Vancouver have have leaned in on the concept that your last speaker talked about a AAA. Its official policy in Vancouver has been for some years where you're not just building bike lanes, separated bike lanes, protected bike lanes, you're designing them so that they are comfortable for all ages and abilities. And that means they are designed frankly, better and safer than they have been in the past. And that's been policy in cities like Vancouver for a while. Vancouver was the was the originator of the AAA design approach. But we need more of it. We need complete networks. What cities are trying to do is build out a minimum grid, connecting all the origins and destinations. What I often say to drivers to help them understand is imagine if you had only a few roads and you had to get everywhere by your car. If you don't have that complete network of safe infrastructure, then you can't really get to all your origins and destinations. The same thing is true for bikes and other and other mobility approaches. And by the way, you asked, is it different for the so-called mobility lanes? I think mobility lanes is just a different way of talking about what used to be called bike lanes, because the truth is they handle more than just bikes. It can be the mobility scooter of someone who is a senior or disabled. It can be a scooter, it can be walking. It often is is multi-purpose multimodal lane.

RB: So so just to clarify, because what I had envisioned in my head without knowing too much about it, was that e-bikes and e-scooters were going to be, you know, in one bike lane and then beside them were going to be bikes in another bike lane. So you're not you're saying they're not separate, are they wider.

BRENT TODDERIAN: They are wider. AAA makes them wider anyway because that's just safer to begin with. So they generally are wider. But, but we've been trending towards not, not squeezing the lanes so much anyway, frankly in the first generation of bike lanes in Canada, because we didn't know all that much, we were very stingy with the amount of space we took back from the space we had surrendered to cars and and given to some of these other ways of getting around. And it was kind of in the leftover space. And it often, well, there's your bike lane, but it's not particularly safe. It's certainly not comfortable and it doesn't lead people to make the choice that we want them to make, not a forced position, but a choice where they say, well, maybe I'll ride the bike instead of taking the car.

RB: Well, Brent, we just have a couple of minutes left. So I wanted to ask you, though, if you feel that cities are keeping pace with this, you know, do you feel in a way that the horse has already left the barn, that cities are already full of these e-scooters and e-bikes and it takes some time to build even wider mobility lanes?

BRENT TODDERIAN: Well, e-bikes are an extension of bikes, and the studies have shown the so-called e-bike effect, where people, when they buy e-bikes, will actually ride more and they're more likely to use bike as a replacement to the car. So that's a good thing. But in E-scooters is a relatively new thing and it's a little more difficult to to plan for because they almost in cities landed overnight. Certainly the shared e-scooter systems they almost got dumped on sidewalks overnight and there was no regulation, no no management of where they could be picked apart. They tended in some cities, they were scattered all over the sidewalk. So cities have tried to catch up on how to manage and regulate e-scooter share systems, for example. But e-bikes are basically treated from a space in a management perspective, the same way as regular bikes and most e-bikes are. As your last speaker talked about, pedal assist. They're an extension of riding your bike, but they are not motorised vehicles in that sense. They're not more like a motorcycle than they are like a bike. And I think that needs to be the key distinction. She was quite right when she was talking about the need to get specific on the types of technology that's out there, because there are e-bikes that are real, e-bikes that are closer to a bike than a motorcycle. But there are other things you can buy that are also called e-bikes that are far closer to a motorcycle than they are to a bike. And I think we need to be very specific.

RB: In our last 40 seconds. Brent, is there a place in the world that you think does road sharing right?

BRENT TODDERIAN: There are many places in the world the best place in North America is Montreal. And it's not surprising, perhaps, that you're your story started off in Montreal, in Quebec. Montreal, by far is the best urban biking, active mobility city for a simple reason that they leaned into the infrastructure. If you want to have biking and other modes of getting around, be a comfortable, safe alternative to car use and ownership, which is what we need for our cities to work better, whether you like bikes or not. That is a simple truth. Then you have to have exceptionally good infrastructure. And Montreal has done the best job of any North American city on that. Vancouver is second best, but we're not the best anymore. Montreal has been pushing forward and doing remarkable things under the mayor there. Than than any other city. So when you say our cities going far enough, some are doing exceptionally well, some are doing pretty good and some are doing virtually nothing at all.

RB: All right. Well, Brenda, the problem it was great to talk to you this morning. Thank you so much for your time.

BRENT TODDERIAN: My pleasure.

RB: Brent Todderian, an urban planning consultant, former chief planner for the city of Vancouver. Well, the CBC news is coming up next. And then we will hear snippets of the late great Louis Armstrong. A brand new centre housing his vast archive has just opened up in New York City. In 6 minutes, we'll get an audio tour from the musician who curated the first exhibition. I'm Robyn Bresnahan. You're listening to The Current .

Back To Top »

Louis Armstrong’s vast archive; how AI could help African farmers cope with climate change

Guests: Jason Moran, Racine Ly, Canisius Kanangire

RB: Hello, I'm RobYn Bresnahan and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

RB: That is the unmistakeable voice of Louis Armstrong, one of the world's greatest jazz musicians. He was born in New Orleans, but he left for Chicago and eventually New York City, settling in Queens in 1943, the home where he and his wife Lucille, lived for many years is now a museum. And last week, a brand new building opened up right across the street to great fanfare.

[Music]

RB: That's a brass band leading a New Orleans second line to the grand opening of the Louis Armstrong Centre. It will feature selections from Armstrong's extensive archives and hosts, performances, talks and screenings. Jason Moran has curated the centre's first exhibition. Jason is the artistic director for jazz at the Kennedy Centre, a former MacArthur fellow, and he also scored the music for the 2015 film Selma. Jason, good morning. Great to talk to you.

JASON MORAN: Good morning. Good to be here.

RB: What do you remember about the very first time you heard Louis Armstrong?

JASON MORAN: You know, I remember hearing Louis Armstrong really like consciously when I was in college in Manhattan School of Music and a trumpet player. He was a little older than me. He's from New Orleans. And for his juries that we all have to do at the end of the school year, he wanted to play Louis Armstrong's West End blues. And I remember thinking like, okay, I haven't learned this song yet. But then I heard not only Lewis playing this incredible remix of King Oliver's song, but I also heard how Louis related to maybe one of his favourite piano players, Earl Hines. And then I understood that Louis was in dialogue with everyone around him, and I was like, Oh, okay, wait a minute. I may need to dive deeper into Louis Armstrong, which was a thing that maybe a lot of educators weren't really doing. And that was, you know, and now here I am, just a sucker for everything he does.

RB: And did you ever dive deep? Because there are around 60,000 items in Louis Armstrong's archives. I mean, what was that like for you to be able to comb through all of that?

JASON MORAN: You know, the great thing about Armstrong's archive is that he kept himself documented from the very beginning of his career. You know, and I mean documented like within the relationships he has with the people who helped him grow from his mother and his sister and his father and his, you know, his cousins, you know. And so he has these relationships that keeps an account up. And then as he becomes this big star, he's also well documented on his travels around the world. So this project also began right during COVID. So I was trapped at home combing through the archive online because much of the archive is actually digitised, thank God, and and it lives online for us to kind of comb through. And with the archivist, Ricky Riccardi at the Louis Armstrong Museum. I see. Don't you have something around this time, 1942, when he's coming off of a plane and Rickey would immediately located and send it to.

RB: It's so interesting that you mentioned Ricky Ricardo, because he is, of course, a biographer and jazz historian. And he said that the reason why Louis Armstrong has kept so many hours and hours of old tapes and cut out pictures, newspaper write ups is because he knew that one day he was going to be written about in the history books. And so he wanted to make sure that all sides of him, the good, the bad, the ugly, we're going to be captured and preserved by himself, not by anybody else. I mean, what do you make of that?

JASON MORAN: You know, one of the great things about Louis Armstrong's library is. Is is the library is full of like the autobiography of Frederick Douglass. So we hear Frederick Douglass, his account. And I think Armstrong takes his account very seriously. And so, yes, he's looking at not only those press clippings, but those press clippings also become the starting place for his collage art. You know, he's not only accepting all of the film and the photographs of him as artists, but he has his own camera, that he takes his own photographs, he has his own film camera, that he that he makes his own films and he has his own typewriter. And he writes his own account of the concerts he's played around the world. So he's kind of has his own journal, you know, his own press to a degree for documenting himself. And I think for black people in America is extremely important. We must not kind of like flatten out how important and how, I guess, special it was for him to make this kind of claim to his life and the importance of the people in his life to document them.

RB: Talk to me more about that. What do you mean?

JASON MORAN: Well, I think, you know, in America, we also all understand that the the centuries of chattel slavery, that robbing communities from the West Africa and bringing them across the ocean and planting them to kind of like create this country, you know, off of the backs of blacks. And without the ability to understand the history that they've come from, they've been robbed of it for centuries. They've been robbed of the language, been robbed of the drums. And the reason also Louis Armstrong claims a place in the music is because New Orleans is one of the rare places where the drums were allowed to stay. And so we have these people charting a new kind of history, and it happens in the music. And so Armstrong is claiming to himself that my story is important to write down. Phillis Wheatley. She claims that my poetry is worth writing down. Frederick Douglass. My escape from slavery is worth telling. And so Armstrong, not only does he practices trumpet, but he practices how to tell people about his extraordinary life.

RB: The exhibit you have curated is called Here to Stay. What is that in reference to?

JASON MORAN: Armstrong was a great collaborator and one of the great records he did was with Ella Fitzgerald.

SOUNDCLIP

[Song]

JASON MORAN: And they sing this beautiful Gershwin song, Our Love is Here to Stay. And there's just something about the way Armstrong says, You know, 'our love is here to stay'.

Speaker 2: [sc]

[Song]

JASON MORAN: He's got this, you know, long, long grown man's voice going to growling out this love to his partner. And I think for us to bring the archive back to Queens, back to Corona, Queens, across from his home, to bring him back home to the neighbourhood. It was also a declaration.

RB: What is something you learned in the course of curating this exhibition that you didn't know before about Louis Armstrong?

JASON MORAN: You know, one of the things I didn't know about Armstrong was that he was often used as the symbol for a forthcoming freedom. Now, by that I mean, like he was brought to to Ghana before it was independent a year before their independence by Kwame Nkrumah. He shows up to Africa to represent a kind of freedom. He shows up to the Congo to represent a kind of freedom to stop a civil war for a day. He's shown, you know, and lives this life as a person who unites people, who breaks barriers. I think he understands this power that he has because he grew up in New Orleans, the segregated city that he often would not go and play in because his SEC, his integrated band, was not allowed to play there. It was against the law. So Armstrong is aware of these these fictional laws that have been placed on very real people. And this way that he would battle it was to try to show and enable freedom and other people. And whether or not that freedom happened out loud or outside of the body or interior. On the inside, he found a way to unlock it for a moment for people. And just in the beginning of your program, when you played Hello, Dolly, there's something he's saying. When he says, It's me, it's Lewis. It doesn't even seem like he's in a film when he's saying that. It just sounds like he's in your head. And now you have this conversation with this guy you greatly respect.

RB: There's a picture of Lucille, his wife, and Lewis, sitting at the bottom of the Egyptian pyramids. What does that photo represent for you?

JASON MORAN: For me, it represents that Armstrong not only did he travel the world, but that he treated his own neighbourhood as a wonder of the world. And I think by having this archive home, by having this extraordinary home that Lucille and Lewis had lived and loved together in, to have them as a real marker of this is what this feels like. This is how powerful this is, that 50 years after the death of Louis Armstrong, we have this new museum and that we cherish his memory. This is not a common thing, unfortunately, in America or worldwide. I'd say there's something about culture and artistic culture, and especially for me, for black culture to be preserved this kind of way, too, that we need many examples. And so to say, here is Armstrong and Lucille at the pyramids, but also this this spot in Corona, Queens, is also as important as the pyramids.

RB: We are going to end with some more Louis Armstrong music. Whether Bird is one of your favourite songs, what do you love about it?

JASON MORAN: Well, you know, I'm a pianist at heart, so I love the way Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines just almost battle each other, creating an entirely new vocabulary about where jazz is about to hear to. And they do it with such flair technique that it almost seems simple to them. But to us as listener is just totally dazzling back and forth. True call and response of the highest order.

RB: Jason, what a treat to talk to you this morning. Thank you so much.

JASON MORAN: Thank you.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

RB: And that was Jason Moran. He is a jazz pianist, composer and educator. We reached him in New York City and. I'm Robyn Bresnahan, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

DEBORAH OSEI-MENSAH: Climate change is currently becoming the headache of every farmer. Bryson Me what I've been seeing on my farm, it's each year I record a bit less productivity. This is due to droughts, the changing weather pattern. Days that is supposed to rain, we are not getting enough. Those that we have the rain. We also get a sense of the rain for about two weeks of not being too far because you go then instead of being happy, you are sad.

RB: Deborah Osei-Mensah is a cocoa farmer in Ghana. Across Africa, more than 140 million people are facing acute food insecurity and climate change is taking a toll.

SOUNDCLIP

DEBORAH OSEI-MENSAH: We are not just producing for commercial purpose, we are also consumers. So if production is no longer going on, it means a lot of food. There will be a higher rate of hunger, there will be no banana there, there'll be no tomatoes, there'll be no chocolate or any cocoa products at the supermarkets. Why? Because a farmer had a lot of risk and so now they are not producing again.

RB: While now technology experts are hoping artificial intelligence might be able to help struggling farmers. Racine Ly leads a team of researchers in Senegal working on an 80 agriculture prediction tool called Africa Agriculture Watch, or AAgWa for short Racine. Hello.

RACINE LY: Hello.

RB: So if a farmer like Deborah, who we just heard where to use your A.I. tool, what kind of information would it give her?

RACINE LY: I think what I can say here is that it would be very helpful for Deborah. Basically, the model is using data from satellite data and combine it with artificial intelligence for her. For example, she would know what are the trends when it comes to exposure to solar, for example, radiation. She might know what are the predictions in terms of rainfall, evapotranspiration and information that we have from soil fertility. And we use those data to predict what we would have in the near future. So she would know what she can expect in terms of production quantities on her phone. That way she can take the appropriate actions to mitigate the impact of climate change. That's the power of predictability that AAgWa is putting on the table.

RB: To mitigate the impact of climate change. So could you foresee a year, for instance, where Deborah looks at the data and says it's actually not worth it for me to plant this year? Or what would she be taking away from that?

RACINE LY: Yeah, that's correct. For example, if you look at the information, you can tell yourself maybe this is not like the right amount of growing conditions that I need for this particular crop that I'm trying to grow. So it is not something that I should do because it's not be profitable for me. But also it might be important for her because she also mentioned that they're not growing crop only for money, but also for the food security of her household.

RB: I want to listen to another farmer, Graham Ray is a farmer in Zambia. He grows maize, one of the staples, of course, on the continent. Here's how he thinks that artificial intelligence could possibly help him.

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We need prior predictions so that we can plan in the field on how to mitigate with its excess rain, with it to short rain, Whether it's a normal rainy season.

RB: Racine any meteorologist will tell you, though, that sometimes the forecast can be wrong. So how accurate will these predictions be?

RACINE LY: Yeah, well, so far we are 94% accurate on average across the continent, because so far we are covering 47 countries and then crops. But indeed, sometimes we have countries where our predictions are diverging. And in that case it's because of a sudden climate event, for example, excessive rainfall that we didn't predict properly. In that case, what we do is we update the model and update the predictions based on that event.

RB: How do farmers feel about this kind of technology and using it? Because many farmers have been on their land for generations. They've kept notes about, you know, how their ancestors farmed. I'm just wondering, is this technology, is it being welcomed by farmers or is it is it scary for them?

RACINE LY: We have both scenarios. We have farmers are not willing maybe to open their doors to technologies and see how they can use it to improve their production. But also we have farmers that I'm very interested into using it. I have to say though, that the next hurdle for those who are doing artificial intelligence for agriculture, like myself and my team, the next hurdle would be how do we make the information easily understandable for them? You can understand that if I just sit in my office with the team of researchers. Building a model with mathematics and all of that and grass. How do you bring that to the farmer for him to use it? I think there's a need that we need to solve into transforming the information to something that farmers can consume and take the right action and hopefully the right outcome.

RB: Why is this work so important to you personally?

RACINE LY: I see myself as a mobiliser of experts across the continent to solve our most pressing issues at the nexus of food system and climate change. And me personally, I'm part of the people that thinks that our livelihood depends on farmers, and they might be the first to bear the cost of any disruption the climate change. So if I can use what I know in technology and to know it all and bring that on the table and mix it with what they have, it would be a better outcome for everybody. And food security, as far as we are on earth, we will have to eat.

RB: Did you grow up in a family of farmers?

RACINE LY: Yes, definitely. My from my mom's side of the aisle, farmers and myself, a farmer, I farm groundnut and also mangoes. So I'm trying to also apply what I'm preaching.

RB: Well, thank you for taking the time to explain this to us. It was really good to meet you.

RACINE LY: Definitely. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

RB: Racine Ly is the director of Data Management, Digital Products and Technology at the Pan-African Research non-profit Academia. 2063 Listening in to that conversation was Canisius Kanangire. He's the executive director of African Agriculture Technology in Nairobi, Kenya. Canisius, good morning.

CANISIUS KANANGIRE: Good morning. Good morning.

RB: You've been listening in to our conversation with Roisin. What are your thoughts on the technology that he's using?

CANISIUS KANANGIRE: The work that Racine is doing is fantastic because on the African continent, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, it is very difficult to predict the yield that the farmers will have, and that has an impact on the farmer themselves, but also on the policy makers at ATF who have been trying to bring in the insurance companies and the financials to support the work of farmers. But one of the things they say is that it is unpredictable, but with the tool that has been developed will increase predictability and what you can expect from the efforts of the farmer.

RB: The Red Cross has said that African countries, including Kenya, where you are, are facing the worst food crisis in four decades. I wonder if you can give us a sense of how that is directly impacting people's lives.

CANISIUS KANANGIRE: Oh, it is very serious. The eastern northern part of Kenya has been hit by a very severe drought, which has actually been generalised on the Horn of Africa. I think for four consecutive years there has been no harvests, literally. And famine has been very severe. Many families have not been getting even a meal for a number of days. Children have been malnourished and sometimes some died of hunger. It has been very difficult to adapt to the climate change issues.

RB: And do you see technology like artificial intelligence being as the whole answer or just part of the answer when it comes to solving the food insecurity crisis?

CANISIUS KANANGIRE: No one technology constitutes a silver bullet for the issues that we have had. And artificial intelligence certainly contributes one aspect of it. But we need more technologies coming in. For example, if we had access to controlled water during very severe droughts, we could ensure that we don't have these type of losses at the farm level. Also, there are other technologies which are seed technologies. If we could have drought resistant technologies translated into the seeds, I think then we could have seeds which are adapted to different climatic areas. And here we have been working on a number of solution technological solutions by producing, for example, maize, which is tolerant. And since we know that drought also gives more strength to insects which come to play on the crops, we have also insect resistant seeds, which the two of them can provide some sort of solution to the climate change issues. But as I say, no one, technology can solve it all.

RB: Exactly. I mean, a lot of people will say the solution to dealing with climate change is to address climate. Change that countries need to be proactive rather than than reactive. How do you think about that?

CANISIUS KANANGIRE: It is true. I think we need to be to be proactive. To be proactive means to get technologies and innovation to the continent and then adapt them to the conditions of the farmers and then provide them to the farmers and provide the knowledge that they need to apply those technologies. If we do it, then we would not be firefighting when the drought has hit in an area, but rather we would be preparing the farmer to adapt to the occurrence of droughts.

RB: How important is it to you that some of these technologies, like the one that we heard Racine working on, they are African led, they are totally developed by African people. Is that important to you?

CANISIUS KANANGIRE: It is very, very important to me and for sure, to many, not only in these I.T. and digital technologies and artificial intelligence and others, but even in the area of biotech, when it is done by Africans, we have to positive things that we see it first. It is adapted to the conditions of the African continent, the African farmer. Second, it is at least in assurance that those technologies will be sustained. And by building a critical mass of Africans doing what Roslin is doing. I think it is an assurance for many, and the policymakers need indeed to support this and understand that we have some talents across the world who feel that Africans we need to do something to change the current situation. And together I think we can do that if that effort continues and is adequately supported can exist.

RB: Thank you very much for your time today. Good to talk to you.

CANISIUS KANANGIRE: Thank you very much.

RB: Canisius Kanangire is the executive director of African Agriculture Technology. Coming up after your regional update, we continue with episode two of the CBC podcast, The Africas versus America, which investigates the events leading up to the bombing of a radical group in Philadelphia in 1985. My name is Robyn Bresnahan and you're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

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Episode two of CBC podcast The Africas VS. America

RB: I'm Robyn Bresnahan and you're listening to The Current. Throughout the summer we're bringing you some of the CBC's best podcasts. We continue today with The Africas versus America - telling the story of how police in Philadelphia dropped a bomb on a Black radical group called MOVE in the 1985. Here's Episode Two: "The Making of John Africa."

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INTERVIEWER: Where is John Africa?

DELBERT AFRICA: That's organization business right now.

MATTHEW AMHA: This is the voice of MOVE’s minister of confrontation and security. A man named Delbert Africa. He’s one of MOVE’s original members. Delbert is speaking with journalist Ademola Ekulona, inside this big Victorian house, its windows all boarded up. It’s 1978, and this is the organization’s headquarters. Not the home that would be bombed in 1985, but MOVE’s original headquarters, in the Powelton Village district of West Philadelphia.

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DELBERT AFRICA: What we're saying is that for security reasons, John Africa's whereabouts are organization business, and we will keep it that way.

MATTHEW AMHA: Ekulona is here to learn about MOVE, but also about a man who to this point, may as well have been a ghost. MOVE’s founder, John Africa.

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DELBERT AFRICA: We members of MOVE have a great reverence for the man, for the founder of this organization. That has nothing to do with any mysticalness. He ain't asking people to worship him. All he's asking people to do is be right, and for that, his presence isn't required.

MATTHEW AMHA: John Africa was many things to many people. Anarchist, animal lover, peacemaker, criminal, nuisance, genius, revolutionary, terrorist.

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INTERVIEWER: How old is John Africa?

DELBERT AFRICA: John Africa is one. One level, one greater life. Everything you see -- the sun, the air, the water that you drink up -- all of that is John Africa.

MATTHEW AMHA: A man as enigmatic in life as he was in death. To some, John Africa was a messiah. But before that, he was a little boy named Vincent Leapheart. I’m Matthew Amha, and this is The Africas VS. America, Chapter 2: The Making of John Africa.I’m driving around West Philadelphia with Mike Africa Jr. A map would tell you we’re in a neighbourhood called Mantua, but around here, they call it The Bottom.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: The Bottom is rock bottom. There is no lower or poorer section of West Philly than The Bottom.

MATTHEW AMHA: It’s an area of mostly Black folks, many of them descendants of those who migrated up to Philly from the South during Jim Crow. This is where Mike grew up.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: This is called “over the bridge.” You want to get into some real violent shit, come across the bridge. You want to get into some drugs? Come across the bridge.

MATTHEW AMHA: Mike is taking me to John Africa’s childhood home. We pulled up by an empty lot. There’s no house here now, but back in the 1930s, this plot of land was home to a big loving family. John Africa’s family. They were known as the Leapharts then, and John Africa went by Vincent. His parents had fled the racial violence of Georgia, and headed north to this neighbourhood, that was then overflowing with energy and ambition. What you’re about to hear is the story the MOVE family tells itself about its founder. Vincent was a boy who lived at the feet of his mother, Lennie Mae.

MIKE AFRICA JR: Stuck to her hip. Exactly like that. You know, he’s little, little boy. Right there with her while she's cooking in the kitchen, you know. Just hung around. He loved being around her.

MATTHEW AMHA: He was one of ten kids -- six boys, four girls -- and as the second eldest of the boys, he was a help to Lennie Mae as more and more children arrived. But of all of the kids, it was Vincent who had the toughest time orienting himself to life outside the home. He was a tiny, rail-thin boy who had been diagnosed as, quote, “orthogenically backward.” These days we’d just say that Vincent had a learning disability. But back then, little Black boys who didn’t quite fit in tended to be saddled with this sort of racist pseudoscience.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: They teased him about it. Just friendly, you know, brother and sister teasing type stuff. But it wasn't a big deal.

MATTHEW AMHA: The Leaphart home was a sanctuary. No white picket fence or anything, but for years the family lived a version of the Black American dream. But The Bottom, like areas I grew up in, is best described as “criminogenic.” Which basically means an environment where poverty breeds crime. And for the Leapharts, it wouldn’t be long before the conditions of the neighbourhood would leave their mark. In 1942, Vincent’s older brother, Frederick Jr., is shot dead in a case of mistaken identity. Vincent’s sister Louise would later write, quote, “What I remember most, though, about that time, was my mother. I can see her now, sitting quietly by that woodstove at the end of the day, grieving for her first born." Then in 1950, Lennie Mae, she’s diagnosed with pneumonia. She’s sent to the hospital for what should have been routine treatment. But instead, her health quickly deteriorates. Lennie Mae would never make it home. She was 42.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: The loss of his mother was, you know, something that you never get over.

MATTHEW AMHA: Vincent felt like Lennie Mae was victim of a negligent health care system. One that treated poor Black people, especially poor Black women, as disposable. He saw the circumstances surrounding her death as deeply suspicious. That more would have been done had she been white. This is something that would go on to inform his thinking later in life, but for now, he and his family had more immediate concerns. As Vincent’s family is dealing with this grief, his father turns to the bottle, which makes work increasingly difficult.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: And joblessness for Black people in Philadelphia was a problem. The father is broken-hearted and, you know, he can't do anything. He can't eat, he can't sleep, he can't work. His best friend, his love of his life, is gone.

MATTHEW AMHA: And Mike says with no money coming into the house, the court begins the process of formally separating the Leaphart kids, and placing them with other families. Vincent is now the oldest of the surviving boys. It’s 1952. He’s 21 years old, with no formal education, and few job prospects.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: He was like, I'll do whatever I got to do to keep my family together. And the only thing that was available was go into the military, and at the time the military was drafting young Black men.

[News reel on the training of Korean War paratroops]

MATTHEW AMHA: By this point, America was two years into a brutal war in Korea.

[News reel on America’s airborne striking power in Operation Back Door]

MATTHEW AMHA: Vincent’s father was ferociously anti-war and anti-militarism. He believed the nation was using young Black men as cannon fodder. And he wasn’t alone, either. Thousands of Black people across the country were publicly objecting to and outright refusing military service. It’s worth noting here that Benjamin Franklin High School -- Vincent’s original high school – is said to have produced the highest rate of U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam. Because the average student there qualified as a low IQ soldier, and as such, was sent to the front line. But back when Vincent is conscripted to Korea, he’s so desperate for work that he agrees to go. It’s in Korea that Vincent began to understand the war machine as part of a more sophisticated system.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: That war drove home a lot, and it made a hell of an impression on him about what the government is about. And it angered him.

MATTHEW AMHA: You have to understand, too, that the Black G.I. experience was a microcosm of the Black experience in America.

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DOCUMENTARY: (Narrator) Carrying a rifle in the infantry is just like pushing a broom in civilian life. The Black man doesn't escape it in the infantry for the same reasons he doesn't escape it on the outside: inferior education and opportunities in a racist society.

MATTHEW AMHA: The job provided little safety from the racist indignities Black servicemen had suffered at home. Vincent Leaphart’s time in Korea came more than a decade before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared the U.S. military “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” But it’s those same revelations that Vincent is now coming to on his own. On war, he would later write, quote: “panic and terror grip you like hot nails, tearing through thoughts of the mind like a bullet, running for safety and into more shrapnel…"

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MIKE AFRICA JR: So it's like, something wrong here. We got to do something different. And then you start to relate it to other stuff. The machine that creates the war is the same machine that creates the prisons and the same machine that creates the police and the same machine that creates poverty. It's all the same. And it needs to be destroyed.

MATTHEW AMHA: By the time Vincent gets back from the war, he’s in his early 20s. He’s a sartorially motivated young man; sharp as hell, dressed in tailored clothes. His older sister Louise would later write that growing up, she and her sisters couldn’t get into the family bathroom because he’d be in there for so long. Quote, “Shirt just right, tie just right, shoes all shined." Vincent and his brother Alfonso were inseparable. They looked and dressed just like one another. One day, says Mike, the brothers meet a pair of sisters. Fannie and Dottie. They’re from the same neighbourhood in West Philly. Dottie – Dorothy -- is beautiful and sophisticated, and she and Vincent fall in love, and they’re soon married. And by the way, Alfonso and Fannie? They also get married. But when Vincent moves to New York City -- to study interior decorating of all things -- Dorothy stays back in Philly. During this time, Vincent is also a drummer, and he’s playing with the giants of his time.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: He really loved jazz music. And Miles and Ornette and all of them, like he, yeah, he played with them.

MATTHEW AMHA: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Ornette Coleman. But music, like his time at war, provided him little escape from the racism of the day. Miles Davis was beaten bloody by the NYPD, outside of a venue he was about to play just after releasing his masterwork, Kind Of Blue.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: John Africa found out about that. When he heard about that -- and these are his friends -- he was f--ked up. And he was mad about it. He wanted to lash out. He appreciated the music; he liked the sound of it. And he liked being, like, in that world. You know, he liked being in that world. Until he until he got tired of it. Then he put his drumsticks down and said, “I ain’t doing this shit no more.” And he never did it again.

MATTHEW AMHA: Vincent’s radicalization is now underway, and he’s ready to move back home to start a life with Dorothy.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: He really wanted children. And they tried for years. And they, you know, there would be times where they would, you know, think they're pregnant and be pregnant for times. And it always ended in a false hope. So, she wanted to, like, try other things in other ways.

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REPORTER: Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.

MATTHEW AMHA: By the conclusion of the 1960s, America is in a moment of transition. Especially Black America. So much of the great hope and promise of the civil rights movement had fallen in on itself after years of subversion from the state. Medgar Evers had been murdered.

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DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: This event, this tragic occurrence...

MATTHEW AMHA: Malcom X had been murdered.

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UNNAMED SPEAKER: Apparently, two men approached the Speaker’s rostrum and discharged shots at him.

MATTHEW AMHA: Dr. King had been murdered.

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ROBERT MOSELY: Martin Luther King, 20 minutes ago, died.

[Crowd gasps]

MATTHEW AMHA: And Fred Hampton had been murdered.

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UNNAMED SPEAKER: You are going to decide whether or not Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were the victims of premeditated murder.

MATTHEW AMHA: For some Black folks, the collapse of the civil rights movement, it necessitated militancy. The Black Power era was now here. The politics of non-violence were now replaced by self-determinism and self-defence. The politics of compromise was now off the table, and revolutionary violence was on it.

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MUHAMMAD KENYATTA: W we are saying is this: if we are to be killed, then any killing that is done in retaliation is justifiable homicide.

MATTHEW AMHA: And as the nation changed, and changed again, so did Vincent. He did what so many African Americans did once they found liberation: he coronated himself with a new name.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: He chose ‘John’ for commonness. To do the work to be right and all of that, it doesn't, it doesn't take anything special. He said God is as common as dirt. And the name that he chose is common. We're all the same. You know, we're all each other. And the reason he changed it to Africa, is because he wanted it to be known and clear for our people that Africa is the origin of humans.

MATTHEW AMHA: Through these years of social change, there are a number of different philosophical paths to freedom for Black people. There’s Black nationalism, Black anarchism, Black Marxism, the Black church, the Black Muslims, and Black conservatism, to name a few. And John Africa, he’s aware of all of them.

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SPEAKER: So Malcolm X through the early 1960s has a very particular kind of viewpoint as it relates to the Nation of Islam, and is kind of preaching publicly about White Devils, about the idea that Black people may want to create their own colony within the United States. There's like a particular brand of Black nationalism. King is preaching a version of redemptive suffering; this idea that others may find salvation through your own suffering, related to Christ and Christianity and all that. And these are two polar opposite viewpoints. Where would someone like John Africa fall on this spectrum?

MIKE AFRICA JR: It wouldn't have fit in between either one of them, really. John Africa’s thing was destroy the whole system. All of it. Burn that shit down to the ground. All of it. All of it and all the ideas that created it too. And if anybody get in your way, get rid of them mother--kers too.

MATTHEW AMHA: Around this time, John Africa was known to fall into extended monologues about the state of the world and his new-found belief system. People in his neighbourhood would come to hear him speak. John Africa was a jukebox of political theory and revolutionary energy. The few accounts of John Africa that do exist, describe him as a powerful orator; a diminutive man with a deep-barreled baritone. And before long, he’s dictating these rants to an audience, where at least one person would be transcribing, for posterity. Stuff like this.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: Hey, Matt. Check this out. “Politicians solicit the indulgence of false patriotism, and leave you to mourn the death of his victims.” You'd be writing this stuff down as he's talking. You read it back to him and he’d say, naw, take that part out. And then he'd say it again in another way. It was very much a natural process.

MATTHEW AMHA: Slowly, John Africa is building the foundations of what would become the MOVE philosophy -- a philosophy that centres around his concept of “the system.” To John Africa’s mind, “the system” was the terrible school that he was sent to because of his learning disability. The system was the hospital that let his mother die. The system was the state trying to break his family up; the government that caused so much death and destruction in Korea and locked animals away in cages. And “the system” was what created the conditions of poverty in The Bottom. It was prisons, politicians, the grocery store, cars, technology, the law. Basically all of modern society, which he felt to be morally bankrupt and leading humankind toward inevitable catastrophe. Eventually, this would all be consolidated into a text known as the ‘The Guidelines’ or the ‘MOVE Bible.’ This was John Africa’s opus. John Africa’s Guidelines have been seen by few outside the family. But I’ve read parts of them, and to be honest, they’re belaboured, ponderous, unwieldy; even incoherent at times. For me, in the same way philosophers Michel Foucault or Frantz Fanon might be. But they’re also pretty compelling. He writes about mental health, vitality, relationships, politics, philosophy. It’s somewhere between a traditional religious text, self-help, and political manifesto. Things like: "Since these politicians don't see nothing wrong with compromise, let ‘em compromise 20 of that 40 pounds of steak they got stored away in their deep freeze to a few of their poor hungry supporters. Let ‘em compromise one of those cars to those crippled, legless veterans of war these politicians are to blame for.” And it made a lot of sense to a lot of people. Including John Africa’s older sister, Louise Sims.

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LOUISE SIMS: I am the type of person who has always looked for something that would help me to find justice. I was constantly seeking out people to follow. I followed and supported the Panther Party. I followed Angela Davis. I mean, I was just mesmerized by that woman. And as I continued to see nothing working in this political system for me, I continued to search. When I came across the teaching of John Africa, my search ended.

MATTHEW AMHA: In 1972, John Africa meets a young graduate student named Donald Glassey.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: Don Glassey, he wasn't part of that world.

MATTHEW AMHA: Glassey’s this young white guy studying sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. And he’s completely taken by John Africa.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: You know, he saw somebody that intrigued him, who became a friend. And he adopted parts of his belief system because it was so compelling and he was around it.

MATTHEW AMHA: So the two became friends, but this was also a transaction. I mean, where better to spread your gospel than a classroom? Within the year, Glassey starts teaching John Africa’s Guidelines to students at a local community college as part of a sociology course. And they’re taking to it. Mo Africa would become one of MOVE’s earliest members.

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MO AFRICA: I had never heard anything like this before. It was really, you know, like, very interesting. So I wanted to hear more. And you know, so I kept coming to, you know, those sessions down at community college. And it was so clear and so precise about what life should be and where this system is going and where we’re headed, as long as we continue to promote this system.

MATTHEW AMHA: After a time, it wasn’t just students showing up.

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MO AFRICA: Like for instance, me, I was from the Black Muslims. There was cops from the police force, there was people from, you know, some other kind of professional place. There was just people that was just from the ghetto that was just poor and looking for a better answer.

MATTHEW AMHA: The exact moment MOVE becomes an “official” organization is unclear.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: I don't think they were thinking of it as a movement at first. He was just trying to encourage people to be right. And it evolved into ‘I’mma start an organization.’

MATTHEW AMHA: For a while it was called the Christian Movement for Life, but by 1972, they’re known simply as MOVE. Of its meaning, John Africa said, quote: “The word MOVE is not an acronym. It means exactly what it says: MOVE, work, generate, be active. Everything that's alive moves. If it didn't, it would be stagnant, dead. Movement is the principle of life, and because MOVE's belief is Life, our name is MOVE. When we greet each other, we'll say, ‘Ona Move.’” And like the Guidelines, MOVE is this incredibly amorphous organization. They weren’t quite Black nationalists, not environmentalists. Not anarchists or abolitionists or militants. Not in the conventional sense, at least. So people didn’t really know how to categorize them. There were some familiar elements. Like Dr. King, they opted to include white people in their movement. And like the hippies of the day, there was a bit of a flower power vibe to them. The militancy of the Black Power era was also present in MOVE’s founding beliefs.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: If you punch me in the face, I got a fist too, and I’mma use it. If you got a club, you coming at me with a club and I got a baseball bat, then we gon’ be some club-swingin' motherf--kers. If you got a gun and I got one too, you better hope you got more bullets and a better shot than I am.

MATTHEW AMHA: But there were also principles that set them apart from other Black liberation organizations entirely.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: It's about life. It's about making a change for the better to protection for life itself. So, those groups were people power groups -- they were all about the advancement for people. Whereas MOVE was total revolution type. Because MOVE is about freedom for people too. MOVE is about prison abolition too. Anti-police... Not in a violent way, but, you know, you don't need them when everything is cool. But we also against Barnum & Bailey Ringling Brothers Circus. We're also against the Philadelphia Zoo. We're also against the atomic plant on the river. We're also against the Keystone pipeline, you know what I’m saying? So that's the difference.

MATTHEW AMHA: By the end of the year, MOVE is a philosophical movement. John Africa now has his disciples. All that’s left now is to put the philosophy into action. MOVE has now settled into a house in a neighbourhood of West Philadelphia called Powelton Village. It’s a community of artists, students, activists and hippies. It’s owned by that white academic Donald Glassey. This is MOVE’s first official headquarters. All members of MOVE have adopted the same surname ‘Africa,’ and the same age of one year old to symbolize a rebirth. They view themselves as a family, an activist organization, and as a religion. They raise money through odd jobs like a car wash and a watermelon stand. Or general carpentry work. And in the Powelton home, they live according to the tenets set out in John Africa’s Guidelines.

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UNNAMED SPEAKER: They have their own culture, as determined by John Africa who's a living human being. Who is incognito.

MATTHEW AMHA: Part of what drove public opinion of MOVE was just how unconventional the group was, and this was intentional on the part of John Africa. MOVE was designed to reject any conventional framing. They positioned themselves as fundamentally different from every other activist movement in America. Unlike other organizations of the day, they were entirely uninterested in popularity or coalition building. Neither did they care about “national healing” or reconciliation or communion. They believed in revolution. MOVE are seditionists. To them, freedom doesn’t mean running from the plantation to spare yourself. It means burning the master's house to the ground behind you. MOVE had identified virtually all of American society for criticism. This included liberals, conservatives, socialists, communists. They hurled invective at a group of high school students calling for President Nixon’s impeachment. They disrupted gatherings of other religions and civil rights groups: Buddhists, Quakers, Black nationalists like the Nation of Islam.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: John Africa felt that all of those people were still working for the system. It doesn't matter how you present it. You're still talking about supporting and holding hands with the system, so what the f--k difference does it make if it comes in a package of Jane Fonda or if it comes in a package of Richard Nixon? If it was wrong, then it was wrong.

MATTHEW AMHA: MOVE are now in the sights of local law enforcement, the media, and the public. They’re sort of a local nuisance. But they’re about to have a real coming out party. By the mid-70s, a man named Mike Douglas hosts the biggest TV talk show in the city. He’s Philly’s very own Johnny Carson.

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JAN PEERCE: Welcome to The Mike Douglas Show. This is Jan Peerce. And now, heeeere’s Mike!

[Theme music plays, audience applauds]

MATTHEW AMHA: It featured the likes of John Lennon, Muhammad Ali, and Princess Grace of Monaco. On September 4, 1974, one of the guests is a monkey.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: They brought a monkey in to be a part of this show and, you know, displayed him like some kind of spectacle. And the monkey was uncomfortable with the lights and the whole stage set up and all of that, and he started kind of like, you know, going crazy; he started running through the offices and running through the set and everything. And they caught the monkey and then they handcuffed him to a chair. And he was like, flipping out. The monkey was going crazy and everything. And John Africa saw it and he was very offended by it. He was very disturbed by it.

MATTHEW AMHA: For John Africa and MOVE, it was a form of animal torture. And torture… well, it demands a response.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: And a few MOVE members, you know, went to the taping of the show, and they handcuffed the host to the chair.

MATTHEW AMHA: So here they are, a collection of dreadlocked Black revolutionaries, sloganeering about “the system” and the sanctity of all life on prime-time television. It’s incredible theatre.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: So they wanted to set that example. That's not how you treat people, that's not how you treat life.

MATTHEW AMHA: We spent months searching for the dramatic tape of MOVE's daytime television raid. We poured through local media reports from the 1970s, looking for some measure of corroboration. I could hardly believe this all happened. It felt like urban legend. And then we happened upon some reporting from the Philadelphia Daily News. The headline of the story was a piece of racist innuendo fitting for the time. It reads, quote: "A Monkey's Uncle." Reporter Tom Fox describes this scene as follows: First, Conrad Africa, dressed in head-to-toe denim, he emerges from one side of the stage while Eddie Africa emerges from the other. Don Africa runs down the middle aisle of the audience past Delbert Africa, who then appears on the stage delivering a speech, as two other members of MOVE force Mike Douglas into cuffs. Tom Fox writes, quote: "The audience let out a gasp. The surprise raid was on. The MOVE cult, that great interracial family of social revolutionaries, had struck again." The story is also accompanied by a single image. In it, a MOVE member stands looming over a handcuffed Mike Douglas. The MOVE member looks to be lecturing him, like a parent might a child, while others stand on in disbelief in the background. MOVE’s performance on The Mike Douglas Showwould get a lot of people talking, and would place them squarely in the crosshairs of the most powerful man in the city.

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FRANK RIZZO: MOVE is nothing special. They've gotten away with it because we're compassionate and we don't want to hurt innocent people, particularly the children in their own family. And their women.

MATTHEW AMHA: Philly’s former top cop, “America’s Mayor,” Frank Rizzo.

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MIKE AFRICA JR: I just remember him being, like, the main enemy. Like, he was the major enemy of MOVE, he was the major enemy of Black people. He was an enemy to the city for people that were victims of his brutality and his beliefs.

RB: That was the CBC podcast The Africas versus America, episode two, "The Making of John Africa". We'll bring you episode three tomorrow. The whole series is available on the CBC Listen App or wherever you get your podcasts. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. I'm Robyn Bresnahan. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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Wednesday July 12, 2023 Full Transcript

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