Dr Yusef Salaam was in his family home in Harlem, gearing up for the next fight of his life: a daring run for political office.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said Salaam, whose story of false accusations and wrongful imprisonment as one of the Central Park Five has become a watchword for everything wrong with America’s justice system.
Salaam has a complicated relationship with New York. It’s where he was falsely accused at age 15 of a brutal gang rape in 1989, and then incarcerated for seven years. After being found innocent in 2002, he spent the next 12 years suing the city for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and emotional distress.
Salaam moved from New York to Georgia, in part to escape the painful memories and media frenzy.
The Central Park Five are widely remembered as a definitive moment in America’s fractured race relations. But now Salaam is back in New York and running for city council and criminal justice reform is central to his campaign.
“This place has always been my home,” Salaam, now 48, said. “It hurts me to see so many young people in Harlem who have never been given an uplifting hand. There are too many families here struggling to find ways to not just stay in their community – but to find purpose and opportunities to thrive. I want to change that.”
Salaam is running in Central Harlem and his opponents have been quick to point out that he has no prior experience in politics. But that hasn’t discouraged Salaam who is hoping to use his personal experiences to create a positive change.
“My story is extreme but not unique. It’s one that continues to play out in communities all over America,” he says. “Countless lives have been upended by a system that has failed us. I not only fought the system but I beat it; now I want to fight for my people.”
Since his release in 2002, Salaam has worked as a criminal justice advocate and serves as a board member for the Innocence Project, which works to highlight cases of wrongful conviction across the US.
As a city council member, Salaam said he plans to overhaul the city’s criminal legal system, end mass incarceration and support police reform. The latter is high on the agenda of legislators and civil rights advocates across the country after the brutal murder of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police last month.
Nor was Nichols’ death an isolated incident. Despite global condemnation and increasing pressure for reforms following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer, 2022 was the deadliest year on record for police violence in the US since 2013.
According to a recent NAACP study, the US holds over 25% of the world’s prison population and New York has one of its highest rising incarceration rates. “Around 1,278 people have died while in state custody in the past decade,” said Salaam. “That’s one death in a New York prison every three days.”
To tackle this, Salaam intends to roll out a public safety plan that will hold the NYPD and department of corrections accountable. He is also committed to challenging America’s infamous school-to-prison pipeline; where young people are too often funnelled out of public schools and into criminal legal systems.
The ACLU estimates that on any given day, nearly 60,000 youths under age 18 are incarcerated in juvenile jails and prisons in the United States. “Most of these youth are Black or brown and could benefit from additional support,” said Salaam. “Instead, they are punished and pushed out, depriving them of meaningful opportunities for education and future employment.”
It is something Salaam knows all about.
A widely circulated photo from 1990 shows a young, sharply suited Salaam being escorted into court by white police officers for a crime he didn’t commit. Though his dress sense remains much the same, today Salaam is marching down Malcolm X Boulevard with his head held high and community support. Outside the yellow brick building of the old YMCA Harlem, at the heart of New York’s African American community, Salaam is met by a large crowd chanting his name.
Inside, the room falls silent as Salaam’s daughter Winter starts to sing the Black national anthem. A loud round of applause follows as Salaam makes his way to the front and starts to speak. “My people, I’m not here today to talk to you about politics,” he said. “Because as you know, I’m not a politician. I’m not here to do a deep dive of all the policies we need to stop the abuse of our beloved Harlem – because we all know we need a lot of help and we need it now.
“There exists an existential crisis right on our door that threatens the health and survival of our community,” he continued. “There are no opportunities for young people, a lack of affordable housing, no jobs that elevate us financially, no help for our seniors or mental health services for our most vulnerable. This is what we are seeing. This is what we are experiencing.”
Salaam’s supporters are enthusiastic.
“I’m backing Salaam because of his reformative vision for America’s policing system and prison facilities,” said Mufazzal Hossain, 30, from Queens. “As a city council member, I believe Salaam’s work has the potential to set a global example, especially in countries where the targeted incarceration of coloured people is widely practised but not as widely talked about.”
Salaam believes his personal story can now really make a difference, not just in Harlem but across the US.
“I know what it feels like to be handcuffed, to be dragged through the court system and to be thrown into prison. I know what it’s like to have my youth stolen, my family questioned and my childhood denied,” said Salaam. “I have lived in the silence of a prison cell and found in there a calling for justice.”
• This article was amended on 7 February 2023 to correct the spelling of the first name of Mufazzal Hossain.
