Protesters paying tribute to Gadhafi at a Harlem rally on Oct. 22. Photo by Khadijah Carter/Northattan.
The clock is ticking at Community Board 10’s November general meeting.
It starts spitting out its alarm, beeping to let the speaker know that his time – four minutes exactly – is up.
But Julius Tajiddin, a traditional Arab shawl draped over his shoulders, is standing firm at the lectern, and the small and scattered crowd in front of him doesn’t want him to stop either.
For the past four minutes, Julius has been listing the achievements of a former world leader, not usually a fixture on the agenda at Harlem’s monthly community forum.
But this is someone Julius admires, someone, he says, who gave free housing to his people, free health care, free higher education, and offered assistance to impoverished nations across sub-Saharan Africa.
“Long live Gadhafi!” he says firmly, the clock still beeping, raising his voice and lifting his monologue to its crescendo.
The crowd splutters its applause; lone voices here and there say “Thank you, brother” as Julius leaves the stage and retakes his seat.
Moammar Gadhafi may seem like an unlikely hero, but to Julius and handfuls of like-minded people across New York, the former Libyan leader embodied the struggle against Western authority, and offered a profound voice to Africans, and African Americans, everywhere.
For Julius, a music producer and former New York City Council candidate, Gadhafi wasn’t the dictator the West characterized him as.
“Gadhafi adores people that struggle for righteousness,” he said, claiming that the late colonel, killed on Oct. 20 after a seven-month NATO-led campaign severed his 40-year hold on power, emancipated Africans more than any other modern leader. “Gadhafi was representing black nationalism, or pan-Africanism,” Julius said, “Gadhafi wanted to bring Africa together as a United States.”
The December 12th Movement, a grassroots black-rights group, has been equally vocal in its lament for the death of Gadhafi. It claimed that the NATO-imposed no-fly zone over Libya was only “the most recent assault on African people’s right to self-determination.”
For those in New York angry at Gadhafi’s demise, Harlem has become a natural pedestal on which to remember “The Lion of Africa,” as many of his supporters here call him.
Just two days after his death, a small but noisy crowd filled the plaza outside Harlem’s State Building, their placards bobbing in the air. “Murderers Out of Africa” some read, referring to NATO and the United States; other protesters unfurled the emerald green flag of Gadhafi-era Libya.
But when New York’s Gadhafi-supporters were accused of naïvety for canonizing the former leader, especially given the West’s accusations that Gadhafi’s armed forces were killing nonviolent protesters as the popular uprising began in March, Julius bridled.
“How do they know he was doing this?” he asked.
Gadhafi supporter Julius Tajiddin at the Nov. 2 Community Board 10 meeting. Photo by Khadijah Carter/Northattan.
It’s a question that Gadhafi-supporters, and critics of the NATO campaign like Julius, often raise. The grim evidence emerging from post-Gadhafi Libya, of government-sanctioned torture and mass graves, hasn’t cooled the supporters’ admiration for the late leader.
Julius made the trip to Brooklyn on Thursday night where over 100 other supporters gathered at Sista’s Place, a Bed-Stuy jazz cafe, to pay tribute, and to discuss the ramifications of “Brother” Gadhafi’s death.
The three-hour meeting was billed as the official tribute to Gadhafi, organized by the December 12th Movement.
“The death of Moammar Gadhafi gives us the greatest opportunity,” said Abdul Akbar Muhammad, international representative of the Nation of Islam. Shunning the established political order was the legacy Gadhafi left behind, Akbar Muhammad said: “Western democracy doesn’t work in Africa.”
Speaker after speaker attacked the United States and NATO countries and their “colonial” motives for taking action against Libya.
Viola Plummer, a December 12th member, tried to rebuff Western rhetoric surrounding Gadhafi. She barked a question at the audience, asking it where Libya was; “Africa!” was the roar in reply, not “some place… called the Middle East” as the West would have it, she said.
December 12th co-founder Coltrane Chimurenga was equally forceful in his address to the crowd.
“How the hell can you sit here in the belly of the beast?” he shouted, referring to the United States and it actions in Libya.
The December 12th movement is galvanizing its supporters, the culmination of which they hope will be a criminal tribunal against the United Nations, the US and other NATO countries for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Columbia University Law School, December 12th hopes, will be the venue for the first session of the tribunal process, on Jan. 14. The next step they say, if they get enough signatures, will be the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Their aim is to secure the support of at least 400 people.
Julius says that Gadhafi’s shadow will continue to linger over those fighting for African rights, and serve as a source of inspiration. Transforming their anger, even grief, at Gadhafi’s death into action is the next step, he says.
But for now, Julius says, eyes wandering, “I’m still broken up over it.”
Russ Finkelstein contributed reporting.
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