By Benyamin Davidsons

Yusef Salaam’s recent victory in the Democratic primary for a seat on the New York City Council, is not just personal. Political analysts agree that his rise in indicative of a considerable shift in the politics of crime.

Salaam was among five teens exonerated in the infamous Central Park 5 rape case which occurred in 1989, when he was 15. He was wrongly convicted as a juvenile and imprisoned for seven years, but later exonerated in 2002 when a serial rapist confessed to the crime a decade later. All five of the exonerated defendants had sued the city of New York for malicious prosecution, and racial discrimination, claiming detectives coerced false confessions out of the teens.

While the  infamous 5 (including Salaam) indeed were innocent in regards to the rape of jogger Trisha Meili;  Matias Reyes, a convicted murderer and rapist, admitted that he alone was responsible for the attack on the Central Park jogger ; the 5 were part of a group of over 30 criminals, roaming the park, beating and robbing innocent people in Central Park.

Several of the teens questioned by police consistently described Yusef Salaam as carrying a pipe and using it, in several of the assaults, including one of a public school teacher , who was beaten to within inches of his life, by violent  teenagers.

The irony is that part of the new evidence that helped to exonerate the Central Park 5 with regard to the rape and assault of Trisha Meili, is a reconstruction of the timeline from that night, which instead of placing the five teens at the rape scene, placed them at muggings and beatings elsewhere in the park, either as participants or spectators (some questioned the new timeline’s accuracy and its margin of error), Hollywood vs History explained.

“That was the issue,” said Peter Rivera, Raymond Santana’s ( one of the Central Park 5)  lawyer in 1990. “But we didn’t say, ‘No, when the jogger was raped, my client was on 96th Street, mugging someone else.’ That would have been self-defeating” (The New York Times).

The city finally settled the suit in 2014 by agreeing to pay $41 million. Now, at age 49, Salaam is an award-winning motivational speaker, author and coach. His victory in the Democratic primaries virtually assures him the seat, as he is not expected to face a serious challenge in November’s general election.

As previously reported by the Jewish Voice, in Central Harlem, Democratic socialist Councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan had recently made a surprise announcement that she would not be seeking re-election for the city council. The Democratic primary for her seat, in the 9th District, was a face-off between three main contenders including: Assembly woman Inez Dickens, who served in the 70th district including Harlem, and formerly served in the 9th district; Assemblyman Al Taylor, who has represented the 71st Assembly District of Upper Manhattan since 2017; and Mr. Salaam. The race was expected to be a close call between Dickens and Salaam, with the later attaining strong backing from progressive voters as well as from Democratic Party leader Keith Wright.

As reported by the NY Times, Mr. Salaam stands to become the first exoneree to ever hold elective office in New York City. “It was inconceivable in the 1990s that Yusef Salaam could be elected to the City Council, but all these years later, there’s a change in the public consciousness and there’s now a willingness to put victims from that era in positions of authority,” said Joel Rudin, a lawyer who has handled dozens of wrongful conviction claims. “We’ve come a very long way.”

Per CBS News, his landslide victory, over other veteran elected officials, signals public willingness to not only accept but embrace a newcomer with an agenda to correct racial injustice. Central Harlem saw thousands more voters turn out at the primaries than any other district. “Considering now this is the second time where voters have chosen someone other than the old guard,” Political strategist Basil Smikle said, referring to current seat holder Kristin Richardson Jordan, “suggests that there is a growing movement, that has been for a little while, to change course.”

“The system that was trying to make me believe that I was my ancestors’ wildest nightmare, but I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams,” Salaam said during his victory speech at Harlem Tavern last Tuesday night.

In an interview with the NY Times last week, Salaam said he and the other Black and Hispanic teens convicted in 1989 were “run over by the spiked wheels of justice.” “The system was operating exactly how it was designed,” said Salaam. “These were people who were supposed to be protecting and serving us, but they literally built their careers off the backs of folks just like me.”