Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park Five, is all but assured of a seat on the New York city council after being confirmed as the winner of a Democratic primary, an improbable feat for a political novice who was wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned as a teenager for the rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park.
Additional votes released on Wednesday showed Salaam as the clear winner of the primary to represent Central Harlem, which took place last week.
“I am here because, Harlem, you believed in me,” he said in his victory speech.
Salaam, now 49, and four other Black and Latino teens became known as the Central Park Five after their arrest in 1985 over the headline-grabbing rape of a white jogger, one of the most notorious and racially fraught crimes in New York history.
Salaam served nearly seven years in prison before the group was exonerated through DNA evidence.
He has now prevailed over two veterans, New York assembly members Inez Dickens, 73, and Al Taylor, 65. The incumbent, the democratic socialist Kristin Richardson Jordan, dropped out of the race in May but remained on the ballot.
Salaam declared victory with his vote tally barely exceeding 50%, though an unknown number of absentee ballots were yet to be counted. But his lead over Dickens seemed insurmountable and she and Taylor conceded.
While all three candidates focused on promoting affordable housing, controlling gentrification and easing poverty, Salaam capitalized on his celebrity in neighborhoods that consider the Central Park Five to be living symbols of the injustices faced by the Black and Latino residents who make up about three-quarters of the district’s population.
Zambi Mwendwa said she voted for Salaam because he is “a new face”, not because of the injustice in his past.
“I’ve heard him talk. He seems to be talking about the things I care about,” Mwendwa said.
But for others, Salaam’s status as a member of the Central Park Five was a motivating factor.
“He comes from the neighborhood, and he was incarcerated then turned himself around,” Carnation France said. “He’s trying to do something for the people.”
Salaam’s lack of experience in public office might have worked in his favor, according to Amani Wells-Onyioha, a partner at Sole Strategies, which worked on Salaam’s behalf.
“In a time like this, when people are looking for a hero, they’re looking for somebody who can relate to them,” Wells-Onyioha said. “I think people saw him as a survivor. He was vindicated and the system eventually ended up working out for him.”
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Salaam moved to Georgia after he was released and became an activist, speaker, author and poet. He returned to New York in December.
He was 15 when he was arrested with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise, who served between five and 12 years in prison before prosecutors agreed to re-examine the case.
DNA evidence and a confession linked a serial rapist and murderer to the attack, but he was not prosecuted as too much time had passed. The convictions were vacated in 2002 and the city agreed to pay the exonerated men a combined $41m.
In 2012 a Ken Burns documentary, The Central Park Five, rekindled public attention. In 2019 a TV miniseries, When They See Us, drew attention again, just before the Black Lives Matter movement launched in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Burns and his co-directors applauded Harlem voters for “electing a man who has dedicated his life to reconciliation”.
Donald Trump, who in 1989 placed ads in four newspapers demanding “Bring Back the Death Penalty” for the Central Park Five, later refused to apologize, saying all five pleaded guilty, a reference to coerced confessions. Salaam reminded voters of that in April, putting out his own full-page ad, headlined “Bring Back Justice & Fairness”, in response to one of Trump’s own indictments.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
