Babatunde Folayemi

Obituary of Babatunde Folayemi

In Memoriam By Martha Sadler, published in the Santa Barbara Independent, April 12, 2012. It’s not easy to bring soulfulness into the world. Many try, and if you have a positive view of human nature, you might say it is what everybody tries to do. Babatunde Folayemi did it. Aside from having served on the Santa Barbara City Council, Babatunde is most widely known for his social justice advocacy on behalf of disaffected and gang-involved youth. During his time in Santa Barbara he launched and participated in various programs to help “the kids,” as he called them, or “our children,” do well in school, get jobs, stay out of jail, take good care of their families, become entrepreneurs, pursue their dreams â€" and be activists for their own communities. One of these projects offered free removal of tattoos that were “anti-social” (e.g. gang tattoos) or “visible,” such that they might interfere with getting a job. Yet it was while sitting on the board of that organization that he himself decided to get his first tattoo, a large one, on his forearm. He drew it himself, after one of his paintings, of a black Christ, with dreadlocks. Going along to get along was never his way. Though he almost always presented as calm and very cool, Babatunde was a romantic idealist of the first water, with a particular heart for outcasts and fighters. Trying to determine why that was is like trying to answer any other fundamental mystery of the human heart. In Babatunde’s view, the children of the working-class, immigrant poor in Santa Barbara â€" of Santa Barbara’s servant class, if you will â€" are neglected and even victimized by the powers that be. This made him angry. I remember the first time I heard him say, in reference to some injustice, “That’s the way things work on this plantation.” He said it with one of his trademark laughs, one where he shook his head at the same time. Babatunde Folayemi was born Anthony Northern, in 1940, in Harlem, one of six children (five of them boys) of Sarah Freedman Northern and Chauncey Scott Northern. Chauncey Northern was an opera singer who lived and worked in Europe before returning to the United States, where he established the Northern Vocal Arts School at Carnegie Hall, and worked as the minister of music for a church. When Babatunde was a child the family was involved in leftist politics and the cultural life of the Harlem Renaissance; Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes were dinner guests. “If you hurt the vulnerable, he takes it personally,” said his wife, Akivah Northern. According to her, the Catholic elementary schools he went to were “horrendous,” and he once wrested a window-closing pole out of a nun’s hands as she was about to use it to punish a classmate. (Akivah herself was a practicing Catholic until a relatively few years ago when she and Babatunde were baptized as Seventh Day Adventists so that the family would all be attending the same church,) Babatunde described himself as having been a “brawler” as a teenager, feeling the need to fight for himself and his siblings as they walked home from school across the city, getting involved in gang skirmishes. Maybe that’s the key: He wanted to help kids having the same trouble he’d had. His wife, Akivah Northern, has a slightly different take on the same idea. Babatunde’s father would go to businesses along the kids’ route home, setting up tabs and asking shopkeepers to keep an eye out for his children, and shelter them if they were in trouble. In helping troubled youth, Babatunde was trying to share the advantages he’d had. After high school, Babatunde joined the Army and served in the Air Patrol during the Vietnam War; then left the Army and in 1963 became a close associate of Malcolm X, until his assassination in 1965. “Malcolm encouraged him to use his art as a political tool,” Akivah said. Babatunde produced murals, and he opened the Harlem Art Gallery in Harlem in the 1960s. He met Akivah in 1967. Babatunde Folayemi (right) at his swearing-in as a Santa Barbara City Council member, in 2002, with Akivah and their son, Cinque, now a filmmaker in New York. In 1972, when their son, Cinque, was two years old, the Northerns went to Tanzania, where Babatunde worked in the Ministry of Culture. He did propaganda not only for projects that the very idealistic young nation of Tanzania was undertaking but for numerous independence movements operating from Tanzania. “All of those movements became national governments,” said Akivah. “Some you’re proud of and some you’re not proud of, but he was doing propaganda for all of them.” Akivah has a photograph of Babatunde with Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s first president. (Nyerere was “a wonderful, gentle spirit” according to Akivah, who notes that Tanzania won independence from Great Britain without waging violent revolution.) They are in the national art museum during a celebration where, for the first time, she said “there are barefooted people in attendance.” It was Babatunde who persuaded Nyerere that not just the elite should come to the museum, but the poor and the traditional tribal people. It was while he was in Africa that Tony Northern took the name Babatunde Folayemi. Babatunde translates from the Yoruba language as “the father returns,” meaning that the child resembles his grandfather. According to their friend Michael Marzolla, a painting of Babatunde’s still graced the Dar es Salaam airport when he passed through there a few years ago. It is of “Africans doing progressive things,” Marzolla said. In 1977, the family moved back to the United States, first to the East Coast, then to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Babatunde worked in the Tenderloin with mentally challenged people. They then went to Los Angeles, where he got a job first working with seniors, then designing skateboards and clothing for Powell-Peralta; then opening “Bronze Age,” his own skateboard shop, in Venice, later selling it. He spent his spare time brokering a truce between the Crips and the Bloods. It was Akivah who, in 1987, initiated the move to Santa Barbara, where the beach reminded her of the beach on the Indian Ocean in Dar es Salaam. Babatunde worked briefly for the Alliance for Community Development, and then for about a decade as Coordinator of Youth Services for the City of Santa Barbara’s Housing Authority. During that time he also headed up the Pro-Youth Coalition. With Marzolla, a 4H club director, he started a community gardening project whereby seniors taught gardening to teens, and the teens in turn helped the seniors with computer skills. He was instrumental in establishing United Youth Empowered, which has since become a standing city advisory committee, the Santa Barbara Youth Council, which made sure that at least one of Babatunde’s campaigns, for a place downtown where kids can hang out, came to fruition â€" in the form of the Twelve35 Teen Center on Chapala Street. Margie Trejo, the Housing Authority’s director of resident services, said Babatunde’s title “could’ve just been ‘Babtunde.’” He helped people with whatever they needed: talking and listening for hours; praying with people, which was against the rules; helping people get jobs, helping with their budgets, helping with paperwork, bringing in tutors. Mary Jo Terrill, now the night nursing supervisor at Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital, was running St. Vincent’s home for drug-affected newborns when she met Babatunde in the 1990s, because he began approaching her about moms who needed safe houses; kids who needed foster care. He picked kids up from juvy or drove them to jail because they were turning themselves in. He spent a lot of time in court trying to get kids reduced sentences and alternatives to jail time. He’d been doing basically the same thing ever since he left the Housing Authority. Just a few months ago, he received an award from the parole and probation officers association, on the recommendation of Judge Frank Ochoa, who said Babatunde’s advice was enormously helpful in his sentencing decisions. One of his favorite nonprofit projects recently, which he supported and tried to get kids involved in, was Everybody Dance Now, a program combining dance instruction and mentoring. He was also agitating vehemently against the gang injunction. He did not believe in isolating young people from one another. “He was about bringing them together,” said Michael Valdez, who first met Babatunde a couple of decades ago, one of the many young people with whom Babatunde remained close. A Harley mechanic whose wife’s family owns the Judge for Yourself Café, Valdez is working on opening his own shop, where he intends to teach kids his skills. “I was taught by Baba to pass it along,” he said. Babatunde served as a city councilmember from 2002 to 2004, a term that was probably not as stellar as people expected, and probably would have been more so if he not been stricken with intestinal cancer. It might have been that, or it might have had something to do with his position on abortion, which he was openly, though not aggressively, against â€" while relying on the support of a strongly pro-choice progressive community. As one political friend said, “Any campaign manager can tell you that if you are running for City Council in Santa Barbara, you are pro-choice. Period.” It was no doubt a combination of factors, but in any case, he was not re-elected. Michael Marzolla Babatunde at a May Day march. “Love yourselves,” Babatunde told a crowd of thousands gathered at the Sunken Gardens for the immigration-reform demonstration dubbed A Day without a Mexican. “Don’t let anybody make you feel like you don’t deserve the best, don’t let anybody make you feel bad about yourself. You are children of God.” It was not the kind of language you expected to hear at a political demonstration. But his speech that day, as on other such occasions, a characteristic mix of rabble-rousing and peacemaking, delivered without notes, brought the house down. What the many Santa Barbarans who dealt with him on a personal basis know is that this kind of feeling was not just for the cameras. Behind the scenes, he walked his talk. Behind the scenes, he was there for people. “He cared,” said former state assemblymember (and current State Senate candidate) Hannah-Beth Jackson, “and made sure everybody else did as well.” Those of us who lucky enough to have basked in his warmth will always be strengthened by it. Speaking for myself, I know that Babatunde would want us to continue his legacy of speaking truth to power and embracing community. Pass it on. Besides his son, Cinque Northern; and his wife, Akivah Northern; Babatunde Folayemi is survived by two brothers, Glenn and Henry Northern, of New York, and by numerous nieces and nephews. A service will be held at at First United Methodist Church, 305 E. Anapamu Street, on Saturday, April 14. There will be a public viewing of the body from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30, and a worship service from 1-3 p.m., followed by repast in the fellowship hall. The next day at 2 p.m., his body will be hand-lowered into the ground, in a green burial at Joshua Tree Memorial Park. In leiu of flowers please consider a donation to one or each of the following three organizations: The Liberty Program, care of the St. Francis Foundation, 2323 De La Vina St., Santa Barbara, 93105, or Primo Boxing, 701 E. Haley St., 93101, or the soon-to-open Ben Carson Schoool of Medicine at Babcock University in Nigeria (contact family). Another celebration, with a showing of Folayemi’s artwork from the 1960s to the present, is tentatively planned for June 10, at a time and location to be announced. Daily Sound By Josh Molina - Daily Sound Nearly three hours of heated debate has passed inside the Council Chamber, when Babatunde Folayemi clicks on his microphone. Folayemi looks out at the crowd of working-class mothers, fathers, children and activists, many of whom are carrying signs. The crowd wants the Santa Barbara City Council to adopt a living wage ordinance. With a gentle boom in his voice, and a look of sincerity in his eyes, Folayemi takes a breath and speaks to the nearly 200 people in the crowd. Santa Barbara, he says, needs to send a responsible, compassionate message to the rest of the country. “Here, human life and human equity is our number one priority,” Folayemi says. “Without that, very little else matters.” The crowd applauds. Many rise to their feet. Folayemi was less than three months into his term on the Santa Barbara City Council when he made those comments in 2002. It was his first standing ovation as a City Councilman, sort of his breakthrough moment, at a time when he was confident, still basking in the glow of his stunning election to the City Council. His two years on the panel were but a footnote to his decades of activism all over the world, yet they were also something of a culmination, and validation of his works. The Harlem-born activist, who became the leader of Santa Barbara’s Latino community, shocked the political establishment to become the first black man to win a seat on the Santa Barbara City Council. In that moment, after years of fighting for recognition, he finally found acceptance. Folayemi died on Wednesday, March 28, at his home, of an apparent heart attack. He was 71. “Santa Barbara just lost a great leader and a friend and we are going to grieve his loss, but we are also going to live out his legacy,” said Councilman Grant House. “I felt his passion for social justice and I felt it deep. When I heard him speak I was inspired to action.” Artist turned Activist He was born Tony Northern, in Harlem, in 1941. Long before he was an activist, Folayemi first was an artist. He sculpted and painted. Many of his images depicted the plight of urban black youth, black Jesus and other spiritual images. He spent decades working in New York and in Africa, where he was inspired to change his name to “Babatunde,” which means “father has returned.” In Africa he worked for the Organization of African Unity, helping countries with their liberation efforts. He move from Africa to Los Angeles, and started a fashion company called “The Bronze Age,” and also began to work with gangs. In the early 1980s he moved to Los Angeles. Folayemi said he sat on the Watts Gang Task Force, and at one point served as a mediator between the Crips and Bloods, the notorious Los Angeles gangs. It was in Africa and in Los Angeles where Folayemi began to master his ability to be a peacemaker and find common ground among groups that disagreed, even hated one another. He later moved to Santa Barbara and founded the Pro-Youth Coalition, a group aimed at stopping gang violence. He became the nonprofit organization’s executive director and started to emerge as Santa Barbara’s rising star in activist circles. His rapid rise turned heads. Folayemi’s home on the Riviera recalls much of his history. Plaques, awards and newspaper articles highlighting his achievements among the youth decorate the walls. One of his proudest honors was from the Santa Barbara Independent, which declared him a “Local Hero” and called him Santa Barbara’s “Gang Czar” on the cover. He hung the honors in picture frames on his walls. His activism earned him resolutions from former state Assemblymember Hannah Beth-Jackson. Former Congressman Walter Capps installed Folayemi’s name in the congressional record for his work among the city’s youth. Folayemi said that honor was his highest achievement. He also kept a coffee table book called “Paradise by the Pacific,” which featured a chapter on Folayemi titled “A Friend to the Kids.” The People’s Champion Folayemi was the kind of guy who you couldn’t avoid. Even those who he rubbed the wrong way couldn’t keep from giving him a hug or handshake. Folayemi, full of enthusiasm and sunny optimism, made people pay attention to him. On the streets, whether on the Eastside or Westside, Folayemi was welcome. In a city that is about 40 percent Latino, Folayemi somehow arose to become the voice of its people. To some kids, he served as de facto father, attending court hearings with troubled youth. He encouraged young men with children to be responsible fathers even if they weren’t married. And he urged young people to go to, and stay, in school. While his critics said he was more about charm and style than substance, Folayemi maintained that the only way to rise above hate was to develop personal relationships with people. “He was an extraordinary man,” said First District County Supervisor Salud Carbajal. “Babatunde was consistently engaged in advocating for social justice especially as it relates to issues of our youth. He was consistent. He always worked really hard to bring attention to the challenges our youth, particularly our lower income youth, are facing.” Carbajal said Folayemi was gifted at speaking on behalf of people who didn’t have their own voice within the power structure of local government. “What Babatunde did was magnify how it is often the institutions that are failing our children,” Carbajal said. “It’s not just the children failing themselves. He made government institutions look to themselves and see that they are part of the solution.” As an activist, Folayemi worked to reduce the number of gang members in the community. One of his masterstrokes was the creation of a teen center â€" a place for teens from all parts of the community to come together. “Babatunde was always so soft spoken,” Carbajal said. “He never got agitated. I never saw him get angry. He always worked in what I consider a very peaceful, non-violent way, in the same ethos of someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. His tools of change were communication. That was his hallmark. He could address various people from different walks of life on sensitive issues and get people to effectively communicate.” City Council In 2001, Folayemi decided to take the plunge from activist to elected official. His interest surprised many at City Hall. Although he was a proven leader in activist circles, most political observers doubted that his popularity on the streets would carry over to the ballot box. But Folayemi was not concerned about what the power brokers believed. He felt that his name in activist circles was enough to make him a contender. He could win, he believed, if he knocked on enough doors and organized his grassroots network of supporters to spread the word about his campaign. And in politics, timing is everything. His chances were bolstered by two strong progressives who were also running, Iya Falcone and Roger Horton. Falcone, Horton and Folayemi became an unofficial liberal ticket in that election. On election night, he shocked the political establishment. He placed fourth in a race for three open seats â€" but won a spot on the council when Marty Blum was elected mayor. Her seat opened up, and Folayemi took the fourth slot, behind Falcone, Horton and Dr. Dan Secord. The man who couldn’t walk down the street without greeting a friend with a hug was now a sudden star in political circles. Once elected, he didn’t change hisfiery brand of activism. He attempted to interject it into City Hall. He pushed for the city to pay employees and contractors higher wages, called for more spending on affordable housing, and urged the city to take a more tolerant stance toward the homeless and people who live in their RVs. Former Mayor Blum said she enjoyed working with Folayemi both inside and outside of City Hall. Folayemi, she said, would stand side-by-side with her at anti-war rallies and he frequently showed up at the Veterans for Peace displays on the beach. Inside the Council Chamber, Blum said he again was a man of great character. “I always knew where he was coming from and I always knew I could count on him,” Blum said. “He was always very even.” She said that when he spoke for his causes, he knew that speaking the loudest and the longest wasn’t always the best way be effective. “I thought Babatunde was a very gifted speaker,” Blum said. “He spoke softly and it made everybody listen.” Still, Blum said that she never felt that Folayemi fully settled into City Hall. He was a political street fighter, and navigating bureaucracy and red tape wasn’t his strength. “I also felt he was a little uncomfortable on the council,” Blum said. “He didn’t enjoy being in power or making the decisions for everyone else.” Less than a year into his term, Folayemi started to have troubles. One of his creditors sued him for $7,000 for an overdue car loan. The debt sparked his critics to question whether he could manage the city’s money if he couldn’t manage his own finances. He weathered that storm, but then something more serious began to weaken him. He was losing weight. He started missing meetings. The behavior was unusual for the hard-working and unflappable Folayemi. Behind the scenes, he drifted from City Hall and stopped attending meetings. No one knew where he was or what was going on. He seemingly disappeared. Finally, after missing three council meetings in 18 days, Folayemi said he was entering the hospital because of unspecified health problems. The nine-pound tumor By the time he was admitted to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, he had lost 50 pounds, and had not eaten for nearly two weeks. Folayemi learned that he had colon cancerâ€"and a nine-pound tumor in his body. After a 10-hour surgery, doctors removed the tumor. A Christian, he publicly thanked God for his recovery and credited his survival to his faith. Reinvigorated, he vowed to run for re-election. But although he survived the cancer, his political career wouldn’t experience the same result. Re-election campaign During less than two years, Folayemi found himself fighting off creditors in court and cancer in the hospital. And now he was about to launch a re-election campaign. The ordeal was simply too much. He started raising money in June of 2003, later than what is typically necessary for a November election. He had been out of City Hall and the civic eye for about four months while recuperating. And the energy behind his campaign from the first election simply wasn’t there. Many of the supporters who backed him the first time had grown frustrated with him. They wondered why he kept his sickness silent, and disappeared, rather than sharing his illness right away. And the political landscape was different. He was running against a new generation of progressive activists, Das Williams and Helene Schneider, and a well-known moderate, Brian Barnwell. There would be no fourth place victories this time. Williams, Schneider and Barnwell far outraised Folayemi. Still, Folayemi felt as an incumbent that he stood a good chance of re-election. He tried to inject some energy into his campaign during the last days. Volunteers projected his name and photo on blank walls downtown. They handed out fliers. But on election night, he fell short. Once again, he placed fourth. But it wasn’t good enough this time. Folayemi credited his fourth-place finish to the loss of an endorsement by the Santa Barbara Independent, an endorsement he had during his first campaign. The weekly newspaper, which carries great weight in elections, endorsed Williams, Schneider and Barnwell. Folayemi at the time believed the lost endorsement was the difference in his campaign. But he accepted the loss, and vowed to continue his activism. He said he would continue his focus on youth and social justice issues. The one thing Folayemi never lost was his ability to touch people through his words. “Babatunde made me feel the way that a priest or pastor should make you feel,” said Das Williams, now an Assemblyman. “He inspired me and he inspired a lot of Santa Barbarans to be better. He inspired us to care more, to work harder, and be concerned about our fellow residents. He had a different spirituality and gentility and a passion that we should all strive to have.” Folayemi remained active after his time on the council. He often surprised guests at the downtown Pascucci’s, where he served as guest host and even sold his homemade sweet potato pie. He took a spiritual trip to the Middle East last decade and when he returned he refocused his activism on reducing gang violence in Santa Barbara. In 2008, he brokered a peace treaty between rival Eastside and Westside gang members. Gang members signed a treaty agreeing to keep the peace. The treaty lasted only a few months, but Folayemi proved that he was able to connect with gang members in a way that many current law enforcement and decision-makers struggle to do. And although Folayemi believed he lost power at City Hall as the council gained more conservatives, he began work on a “Green Streets” training program for young people, to help them get environmentally friendly jobs. Last year, he told The Daily Sound that the city’s pursuit of a gang injunction was the wrong approach. He felt that government needed to do less talking at City Hall, and do more face-to-face time in the neighborhoods. “Nobody is giving these kids a chance,” Folayemi said. “How can you do anything if you don’t know the community?” Blum said the community will miss him. “Babatunde was a real force,” she said. “His voice was heard. It was a quiet voice, but it was heard very strongly. He was a very wonderful soul who I am sure is doing just fine now. He was a kind and very peaceful man.” Folayemi is survived by his wife Akivah Northern, his son, several nieces and nephews, as well as grandnieces and grandnephews. He is also survived by his wife’s Aunt Bea (Vivian Scarbrough), who is 105 years old. “We are all grieving together,” said Akivah, in a statement. Babatunde’s family will celebrate his life with a public memorial service at a date yet to be determined. Santa Barbara Independent By Martha Sadler - Santa Barbara Independent (full obituary to be posted soon) Babatunde Folayemi, tireless and eloquent advocate for youth and former Santa Barbara city councilmember, has died. He was 71. Folayemi appears to have had a heart attack on Wednesday morning, March 28, while sitting in his living room. His wife, Akivah Northern, said he looked like he had peacefully fallen asleep. He had just brought her some fruit while she was preparing to deliver a sermon at her church. Folayemi served on the City Council from 2002 to 2004, and on numerous nonprofit boards. In recent months, Folayami, an artist, had devoted himself to painting. He is survived by son Cinque Northern, a filmmaker in New York City. The public will be invited to a celebration of his life. Upon learning of his death, Mayor Helene Schneider ordered the flag in front of City Hall to be lowered in Folayemi’s honor.
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