Nov 8, 2023
UPDATE: 'Central Park Five' Member WINS City Council Seat
UPDATE: 'Central Park Five' Member WINS City Council Seat
- 6 minutes
Dr. Yusef Salaam, Central Park Five Victor
he's a dear friend of mine.
I've interviewed him multiple times.
When it comes to Atlanta,
we try to make sure we connect, but
he has won his election.
We talked about him running
before winning his primary.
[00:00:18]
Let's put him up full mass,
man very proud of him.
Very proud of him.
Exonerated, Central Park Five member Dr.
Yusef Salaam won a seat Tuesday
on the New York City Council,
completing a stunning reversal
of fortune decades after
[00:00:37]
he was wrongly imprisoned
in an infamous rape case.
Dr. Salaam, Democrat, will represent
a Central Harlem district on
the city council, having run unopposed for
the seat in one of many local elections
held across New York State Tuesday.
[00:00:55]
I won his primary election.
The landslide, we covered that right here.
The victory comes more than two
decades after DNA evidence was used
to overturn the convictions of Salam and
four other black and
Latino men in the 1989 rape and
beating of a white jogger in Central Park.
[00:01:14]
Dr. Salaam was arrested at the age of 15
and imprisoned for almost seven years.
For me, this means that we can really
become our ancestors wildest dreams,
Dr. Salaam said in an interview
before the election.
[00:01:32]
And I will say this.
There's an interview where
I sit down with Dr. Salaam.
It's on YouTube through
Bueller Heights University.
And I did a lecture series
where instead of lecturing,
we would bring in leaders and
we would talk to these leaders.
So college students all in front of us.
[00:01:49]
And Dr. Salaam talked about
the moment of incarceration.
He talked about how he just knew that at
some point somebody was going to say, hey,
you know what?
We have the wrong people.
And he kept waiting for that moment.
That moment did not happen to many,
many years later.
[00:02:05]
And in the midst of that,
you have powerful people like Donald Trump
putting up billboards against them, right?
Basically calling for the execution,
not even apologizing when the DNA evidence
shows they never did
a damn thing to anyone.
They were innocent the entire time.
[00:02:22]
But the irony, the irony.
Dr. Yusef Salaam exonerated.
Now a member of the New York City Council,
an elected leader,
and the man who wanted him to die for
crimes he never did.
[00:02:37]
Well, he becomes president, and
now he has damn near a 100
indictments on him for things he did.
When I talked to Dr.
Salaam about how did it make him feel when
Trump became president,
you have to hear his response.
[00:02:55]
Because think about this, the man that did
all of these adverse things to you and
was unapologetic about it, becomes the
most powerful man in the entire nation.
As if what he did against
you was a prerequisite,
a requirement for
him to be validated in this way.
[00:03:12]
So now our dear brother's where he's at.
Dr. Salaam says something
that I repeat often.
He says, nothing happens to you.
Everything happens for you.
Here's some of what he said.
[00:03:29]
>> Speaker 2: I don't mean to walk you
through the painful time in your life, but
I think it's instructive to where you're
coming from as you run for office.
And can you just speak to what it
was like to be sitting in prison for
something you absolutely
knew you did not do?
>> Speaker 3: The biggest
challenge of being in prison for
[00:03:45]
a crime you didn't commit is that
you constantly have thoughts, well,
maybe I should just become this.
Maybe I should turn into the monster
that they're talking about.
And of course, the challenge is you're
the ingredient that they're trying
[00:04:01]
to get to accept a definition of
yourself that you weren't born with.
You were born on purpose and
with a purpose.
You have to constantly remind
yourself every single day.
The greats have said things like,
if you can't see it, you can't be it.
And so in your mind's eye, you have to
hold the most positive of thoughts,
[00:04:20]
so that wherever your mind goes,
your body follows.
>> Speaker 1: He's always
talking like that, by the way.
That's how he talks 24 hours a day,
all right?
Beautiful soul,
very motivational individual.
Put him up full mass,
unlike this character,
[00:04:39]
Donald Trump, and
the mug shot with a sheriff's
badge behind him of a black
sheriff named Labat.
Donald Trump, who once called for
the execution of Dr.
[00:04:57]
Salaam and the others in
the exonerated Central Park Five,
is now facing his own legal problems.
Almost poetic if they secure the deal and
lock his ass up.
[00:05:12]
All right, Mr. Mayor, thoughts?
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I talked
to Brother Yusef about his election in
the early stages during the primary and
telling them.
Now if you were in the primary basically,
we knew this was his seat after the crime.
>> Speaker 1: That's right.
>> Speaker 4: But
it became official, like you said,
[00:05:28]
because he was unopposed last night.
But what I was telling that, brother,
is this is beyond our ancestors wildest
dreams or
things they couldn't even imagine.
This is also a love letter to all black
men who have suffered at the hands of
the so called justice system in this
country about what's possible when you
[00:05:46]
continue to put one foot
forward in front of the other.
And I think the testament isn't to say or
negate all of the hurdles that we
have to face to be here, but for
those of us who have interactions like
me with the criminal justice system.
[00:06:01]
It is wonderful to find ourselves in
the spaces being true to ourselves and
still speaking truth to power.
Not selling out our community, not
forgetting what the system did to us and
does to us and speaking on behalf
of those people in those basis.
>> Speaker 1: All right, farewell, said.
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