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Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park 5, to run for Harlem City Council seat
By
Michelle Bocanegra
and
Samantha Max
Published Feb 4, 2023
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Reece T. Williams/Gothamist
By
Michelle Bocanegra
and
Samantha Max
Published Feb 4, 2023
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Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park Five, is running for office.
Salaam formally announced his candidacy for a highly coveted City Council seat in Harlem's 9th District on Saturday.
Salaam and four other minors, who were all Black and Latino, were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for the rape of a white jogger in Central Park in 1989. Salaam, who was 15 at the time, served almost seven years in prison before he was exonerated.
“We are here now to chart a new path forward,” he said during a speech at the old Harlem YMCA on 135th Street.
Decades before he became president, Donald Trump took out a full-page ad calling for the Central Park Five to face the death penalty, which Salaam referenced in his announcement.
“In a country that's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, they saw the color of our skin and said ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty,’” he said. “It would have been OK if Donald Trump had taken out a full-page ad when we were found to be innocent.”
In 2002, a judge vacated the convictions of Salaam and the four other members of the Central Park Five after the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed a motion with a new theory of the case — and a different suspect. Prosecutors said that after conducting a new investigation, they no longer believed that Salaam and the others had committed the crime.
Since then, Salaam has written a memoir, become a motivational speaker and has advocated for criminal justice reform. His case has also been documented in books, a documentary and a Netflix miniseries.
The city of New York agreed in 2014 to pay $41 million to the Central Park Five for the years they spent in prison, with more than $7 million going to Salaam. The city dedicated a “Gate of the Exonerated” at the northeast entrance of Central Park in their honor in December.
Salaam is challenging Harlem Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan for her seat. The incumbent councilmember did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But after Salaam first shared that he was considering a run last fall, Richardson Jordan said in a statement to the news site Patch: “I think we have enough millionaires in office already. That is part of the problem.”
Richardson Jordan, who calls herself a third-generation Harlemite, has identified as a democratic socialist and ran on a progressive platform that called for free public transportation, prison abolition and cuts to the NYPD budget. She has been a staunch advocate for affordable housing, raising concerns about a plan to redevelop a stretch of 145th Street that she feared would displace residents if not enough units were made affordable.
She won the primary in the blue district by less than one percentage point. In the general election, she earned more than 94% of the vote.
State Assemblymembers Inez Dickens and Al Taylor have also said they plan to challenge Richardson Jordan in the June primary.
Tagged
manhattan
central park 5
City Council
Michelle Bocanegra
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Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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