He has a knack for getting attention - by heckling candidate Barack Obama on the 2008 presidential campaign trail, for scuffling with police inside City Council chambers in 2009, and by landing a prime half-hour television platform on NBC10 last night.
Rahman, who uses the name Diop Olugbala and tried without success to place that name on the ballot, says the city should redirect much of its spending on police, prisons, and courts to programs improving communities.
(The city's latest budget projects $889 million in spending on those three departments in 2011-12 - $551 million for police, $227 million on prisons, and $111 million on courts.)
A resident of Germantown for the last three years, Rahman was arrested in 2009 for disrupting City Council proceedings while protesting the death of a 14-year-old Frankford boy who was shot in a confrontation with a retired police officer who was delivering pizzas.
A Common Pleas Court judge eventually found Rahman guilty of aggravated assault and sentenced him to two years' probation.
Rahman contended that it was officers who assaulted him. "I wasn't interrupting anything. I was just raising up a sign," he said. "The community didn't have anyone in Council courageous enough to raise these issues."
He also confronted Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, organizing a protest in St. Petersburg, Fla., that accused Obama of avoiding issues of critical importance to the black community, including predatory lending and police shootings of minority youths.
Rahman settled in Philadelphia about 10 years ago after joining the Uhuru movement. Its local office is a storefront near 38th Street and Lancaster Avenue and now serves as Rahman's campaign headquarters.
