Central Park Five member Yusef Salaam wins primary for NYC council

Yusef Salaam spent seven years in juvenile detention as a member of the Central Park Five – the teenagers wrongly convicted of the rape and assault of a jogger.

He now looks set to join the New York City Council after winning the Democratic primary in Harlem’s 9th District – 34 years after false accusations, including by then-future President Donald Trump, upended his life. The district is unlikely to elect a Republican in the general election in November.

The poet, activist, and author, now a member of the Exonerated Five, appeared in court at age 15 at his sentencing hearing in August 1990, the year after the incident, telling the judge that he saw “this legal lynching as a test by my God Allah”.

His conviction was overturned 12 years later. As the results came in on Tuesday night, Mr Saalam looked likely to receive just over 50 per cent of the votes out of the around 11,000 ballots cast in the district.

When addressing supporters, a seemingly stunned Mr Salaam said: “Harlem is the place that gave me a second chance. I am my ancestors’ wildest dream.”

“This campaign has been about those who have been counted out. This campaign has been about those who have been forgotten,” he said.

During his campaign, Mr Salaam, 49, emphasised housing and criminal justice reform.

“​​I’ve often said that those who have been close to the pain should have a seat at the table,” he told the AP earlier in June.

Mr Salaam was wrongly convicted of the attack on a white woman in her late 20s, Trisha Meili, jogging in Central Park on 19 April 1989 along with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise – all minority teenagers between 14 and 16 years old.

They all spent between five and 12 years behind bars before the convictions were overturned in 2002. DNA evidence revealed that a serial rapist, Matias Reyes, was connected to the attack. The city agreed to a settlement with the exonerated men worth $41m.

The attack led to frantic media coverage and a massive public outcry. Mr Trump bought several full-page spreads in several newspapers calling for the return of the death penalty.

The indictment of the teenagers went ahead despite witnesses contradicting each other and despite the lack of forensic evidence connecting any of the teenagers to the crime.

“When I came back here from prison, I couldn’t afford my apartment,” Mr Salaam told Air Mail earlier in June. “I remember that big, orange eviction sticker on my door. I remember the shame I felt when my neighbors saw that.”

“We have to climb out of the gravitational pull of all the negatives that pull us down,” he said.

Mr Salaam is now set to join the framework of city power that once put him in prison. The father of 10 told the AP that “When people look at me and they they know my story, they resonate with it”.

“But now here we are 34 years later, and I’m able to use that platform that I have and repurpose the pain, help people as we climb out of despair,” he added.

Poverty in Harlem is around 10 percentage points higher than the 18 per cent across all of New York City, figures from New York University’s Furman Center show.

More than a fourth of those living in Harlem spend more than half their income on rent, and the area has some of the highest child homelessness rates in the city.

The incumbent in the seat that’s likely to be held by Mr Salaam, Kristin Richard Jordan, dropped out of the race in May after a tumultuous first term in office.

In the primary, Mr Salaam faced off against New York Assembly members Al Taylor, 65, and Inez Dickens, 73. They argued that Mr Salaam doesn’t know enough about local government to be an effective council member.

Ms Dickens, who has previously represented Harlem on the council, told the AP earlier this month that “No one should go through what my opponent went through, especially as a child. Years later, after he returns to New York, Harlem is in crisis. We don’t have time for a freshman to learn the job, learn the issues and re-learn the community he left behind for Stockbridge, Georgia”.

Mr Salaam left New York after being released from prison before returning in December.

“I think that folks will identify with him and the horrendous scenario that he and his colleagues underwent for a number of years in a prison system that treated him unfairly and unjustly,” Mr Taylor told the news agency earlier in June.

“But his is one of a thousand in this city that we are aware of,” he added. “It’s the Black reality.”

Mr Salaam brought up his arrest on several occasions during a Spectrum News debate. Mr Taylor noted that he had also been arrested. When he was 16, he was detained after he was found carrying a machete. The charge was later dismissed by a judge.

“We all want affordable housing, we all want safe streets, we all want smarter policing, we all want jobs, we all need education,” Mr Salaam said during the debate.

“I have no track record in politics,” he noted. “I have a great track record in the 34 years of the Central Park jogger case in fighting for freedom, justice and equality.”

Mr Salaam has never received an apology from Mr Trump after his ad placed in four papers with the line “Bring back the death penalty” before the teenagers went on trial in 1989.

In 2019, Mr Trump told a reporter that there were “people on both sides” of the issue when he was asked if he would apologise.

“They admitted their guilt,” he said. The falsely accused men have said they were coerced into confessing to the attack.

“Some of the prosecutors think the city should never have settled that case. So, we’ll leave it at that,” Mr Trump added at the time.

As Mr Trump was indicted in New York in April of this year on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments to women who alleged to have had affairs with him, Mr Salaam shared a mocking ad on social media, similar to the one Mr Trump had placed in the papers decades previously.

“Over 30 years ago, Donald Trump took out full page ads calling for my execution,” Mr Salaam tweeted alongside the ad, which stated, “Bring Back Justice & Fairness”.