NEW YORK – Yousef Salam, one of the exonerated “Central Park Five,” won a Democratic primary for a seat on the New York City Council, all but ensuring an eventual victory. It’s an unlikely feat for a political novice who was wrongfully accused, convicted and imprisoned as a teenager for raping and beating a white jogger in Central Park.
Salaam campaigned to represent Central Harlem on the City Council. The Associated Press held back from calling the race on election night, but additional votes released Wednesday showed he was the clear winner.
“Many doubted us along the way, but this was a campaign built on change,” Salaam said after the AP called the race. “Voters overwhelmingly agreed with our vision for a better, stronger and more tolerant community.
“We are going to have a new Harlem Renaissance,” their statement said.
Salaam and the four other black and Latino teenagers from Harlem became known as the Central Park Five after their arrest in 1985 for the headline-grabbing rape, one of the city’s most notorious and racially fraught crimes. She served nearly seven years in prison before the group was exonerated through DNA evidence.
His independent campaign prevailed over two political veterans, New York Assemblymembers Inez Dickens, 73, and Al Taylor, 65, in their first run for public office. Socialist Democrat Kristin Richardson Jordan, the incumbent councilwoman, withdrew from the race in May but remained on the ballot.
Salaam declared victory on election night with a vote count that barely topped 50%, although an unknown number of absentee ballots had yet to be counted. But her advantage over Dickens, her closest competitor, seemed insurmountable, and both she and Taylor conceded.
Salaam fell slightly below 50% of the vote in Wednesday’s update, prompting the release of the preliminary version. ranked choice voting results that showed him as the clear winner. The city Board of Elections was still tabulating late-arriving mail-in ballots that could potentially push him over the 50% threshold for an election night win.
While all three candidates focused on promoting affordable housing, reining in gentrification and alleviating poverty in Harlem, Salaam parlayed his celebrity in neighborhoods that regard the Central Park Five, now the Exonerated Five, as living symbols of the injustices they face. blacks and latinos. residents who make up about three quarters of the district’s population.
“He comes from the neighborhood, he was jailed and then he turned himself in,” voter Carnation France said. “He’s trying to do something for the people.”
Others were looking for a change of leadership.
Zambi Mwendwa said he voted for Salaam because he is “a fresh face”. She said that her decision had nothing to do with injustice in her past.
I have heard him speak. He seems to be talking about the things that matter to me,” Mwendwa said on election day.
Salaam’s lack of experience in public office might actually have worked in his favor, according to Amani Onyioha, a partner at Sole Strategies, which ran phone banks and contacted residents on Salaam’s behalf.
“At a time like this, when people are looking for a hero, they are looking for someone who can relate to them,” Onyioha said.
“I think people saw him as a survivor,” Onyioha said. “He was vindicated and the system eventually ended up working for him.”
Salaam moved to Georgia shortly after his release and became an activist, motivational speaker, author, and poet. He only returned in December to launch his campaign.
Salaam was 15 when he was arrested along 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 eventually linked a serial rapist and murderer to the attack, but he was not prosecuted because he had spent too much time. His convictions were overturned in 2002 and the city finally agreed in a legal settlement to pay the exonerated men a total of $41 million.
A 2012 Ken Burns documentary called “The Central Park Five” rekindled public attention to the saga of the men’s childhoods. More recently, a 2019 TV miniseries, “When They See Us,” garnered attention again, just before the Black Lives Matter Movement was 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 before the group went to trial with the strident headline “Take back the death penalty,” later refused to apologize, saying all five had pleaded guilty, a reference to their forced confessions. Salaam reminded voters of that in April, posting his own full-page ad titled “Let’s Take Back Justice and Fairness,” in response to one of Trump’s accusations.
