Saafir Rabb is a business strategist, community activist and former advisor to Barack Obama, serving on his transition team in relation to public diplomacy.
His career has involved promoting social enterprise, as well as working with ex-convicts and other vulnerable people on issues such as addiction recovery and building low income housing.
[11][12][13][14] His campaign was endorsed by Keith Ellison, the current Attorney General of Minnesota, Dr. Yusef Salaam (a member of the exonerated five in the Central Park jogger case), and Hasim Rahman a two-time world heavyweight champion.
Apart from calling for Jewish and African American communities to find more ways to work together, he also criticized "Racialized policing, mass incarnation, and a lopsided law-enforcement driven approach" which he said "will inevitably aggravate the root causes of violence, leading to much bigger challenges down the line.
He supported gun control legislation to prevent ordinary citizens purchasing military-grade weapons, but advocated that should not be done in a way which infringes the Constitutional right to bear arms.