Philadelphia Weekly’s in-depth interview with mayoral candidate Wali Rahman

Until now, we’ve heard little else about Philadelphia’s independent mayoral candidate Wali Rahman other than his struggle to get equal airtime on NBC10.

NewsWorks partner Philadelphia Weekly changes that this week with a long (as in five pages on the web) interview with the candidate formerly known as Diop Olugbala.

Aside from his thoughts on opponents Michael Nutter and Karen Brown, Rahman talks at length about his involvement with the Uhuru activist movement. But if you take nothing else away from this interview, at least familiarize yourself with some of Rahman’s plans for office:

“No stop-and-frisk. No youth curfew. A community control board with the power to fire and hire police. A drastically reduced police force—perhaps by as much as 80 percent—with most of the nearly $1 billion earmarked for police, courts and prisons (roughly one quarter of Philadelphia’s annual budget) reallocated for economic development and social services in poor neighborhoods. Vacant lots turned into urban gardens whereby people would feed themselves and create businesses selling their produce. Funding to charter schools slashed, with that money redirected to strengthening the public school system. Public school curriculum adjusted to provide mainly vocational training. Taxes dramatically increased on corporations and rich people.”