Yusef Salaam, one of the five Black and Latino teenagers convicted in the 1989 rape of a jogger in Central Park, who was later exonerated, was elected to the New York City Council by a landslide.
Salaam, a Democrat, will represent a central Harlem district on the city council.
“I am really the ambassador for everyone’s pain,” Salaam told the Associated Press in an interview. “In many ways, I went through that for our people so I can now lead them.”
Salaam was a teenager when wrongly convicted for the brutal attack. At the time, Donald Trump called for all five young men to be given the death penalty—going as far as to take out a newspaper ad to push his agenda.
“Every single thing that happens to you happens for you. Having to be kidnapped from my home — as a 15-year-old child — to be lodged in the belly of the beast, I was gifted to turn that experience into the womb of America. I was gifted because I was able to see it for what it really was: a system that was trying to make me believe that I was my ancestors’ wildest nightmare, but I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams,” said Salaam.
The victory comes more than two decades after DNA evidence was used to overturn Salaam’s convictions. The convictions of Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise were also overturned and the city eventually agreed to a $41 million settlement.
