Long Live Gaddaffi! - Protest at Obama Library

CHICAGO — Members of the Center for Political Innovation (CPI) gathered outside the Obama Presidential Center on the morning of August 14, condemning former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy and honoring slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Carrying copies of Gaddafi’s Green Book, demonstrators marched outside the center chanting “Long Live Gaddafi!” “Obama Killed Gaddaffi!” and “Hands Off Africa!” The protest focused heavily on the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, carried out during the Obama administration and culminating in the overthrow and killing of Gaddafi.
“People need to stop worshiping war criminals like Obama,” Paul Greene declared, in his remarks also highlighting the displacement of local residents to build the Obama library. Penny Arcos connected the destruction of Libya with continuing instability across West Africa, arguing that “Obama is responsible for the crisis of terrorism in the Sahel.”
CPI founder and director Caleb Maupin contrasted Obama’s record with Gaddafi’s economic policies in Libya, pointing to the Green Book, which was the first title published by CPI.

“They used to tell us that was the American dream, owning your own home,” Maupin said while discussing Gaddafi’s writings on housing. “But in Libya, Gaddafi made it reality… He nationalized the oil and he used the oil to build Libya up.”

Maupin also explained that the political battles surrounding Libya played an important role in the eventual formation of CPI. He recalled being involved with Occupy Wall Street while NATO was bombing Libya in 2011.

“We need to bring the war against Wall Street here at home in coordination with the war to defend Libya from U.S. imperialism,” Maupin recalled arguing at the time. He said disagreements with other activists over Libya helped convince him that a different kind of political organization was necessary.

“That was the beginning of me realizing we needed to have a new type of organization,” Maupin said. The CPI director concluded by connecting the organization’s support for Gaddafi with its economic program for the United States.

“If Gaddafi can do what he did in an impoverished African country, imagine what we could do here if we had a real government,” Maupin said. “If we took control of America’s oil and America’s coal and America’s timber, if we had a national bank that injected credit into communities, if we enacted an economic bill of rights like Roosevelt talked about, America could be a high-tech utopia.”

“The wealth is there,” he said, “but the problem is the wealth is in the hands of Wall Street and London.”

The gathering ended with chants of “Dare to struggle! Dare to win!” Participants then marched past the Obama Presidential Center holding copies of the Green Book aloft and chanting “Long Live Gaddafi” and “Hands Off Africa.”

ORDER THE BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B3335LY