One can fire-bomb police vehicles and be less harshly treated than if you were let into the Capitol building and walked around taking pictures.
On May 30, in the first days of protests and looting in New York City following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Urooj Rahman and her friend Colinford Mattis allegedly gathered gasoline and other materials in order to construct Molotov cocktails.
According to court documents, they brought the homemade bombs to the protest, and Rahman is accused of hurling a Molotov cocktail inside the broken window of a police car. The pair also reportedly attempted to distribute the Molotov cocktails to others to encourage them to do the same. After initially being released on bail, the court on Friday ordered both of them back to jail. If convicted, they could face between 5 and 20 years in federal prison and be disbarred.
During her attack on the police car, Rahman wore a Palestinian keffiya covering her nose and mouth in imitation of Palestinian protesters. A photo of her that appears in court papers shows her brandishing a Molotov cocktail in one hand while holding the keffiya over the lower part of her face with the other hand.
In a video interview with Loudlabs News conducted on a Brooklyn street, Rahman wears a blue medical mask and additionally wraps her keffiya around the back of her neck and over her lower face. This imitation of Palestinian protesters does not appear to be accidental.
During the interview, Rahman justified the violence taking place against the police. People are so angry and frustrated over the deaths of Eric Garner, George Floyd, and too many others, she said, that the only answer is violence: "This s--t won't ever stop unless we f—king take it all down, and that's why the anger is being expressed tonight in this way. These people have so much pain – we all have so much pain from how f—ked up this country is towards black lives. This has to stop. And the only way they hear, the only way they hear us is through violence, through the means that they use. We've got to use the [slave] master's tools, that's what my friend always says."
When asked if she had heard that some police officers were hurt that night, Rahman again justified violence and blamed the mayor for not pulling the police back. Violence would continue, she warned, because "nothing else works." She also asserted that no reform of the police would be sufficient and declared, "It's not gonna be enough until they defund the police." Rahman has a history as both a supporter of the Palestinian cause and an anti-police activist from her student days at Fordham Law.