Yusef Salaam stood near the free popcorn and refreshments at the back of a muggy room where hundreds had gathered for a housing town hall in Harlem. He’s rarely a missable presence. But he was, from the vantage point of onlookers that night, indistinguishable, another face in a packed audience there to question city officials who lined the stage.
The auditorium inside the Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Community Center sits a couple dozen blocks above the North Woods of Central Park, where his highly publicized childhood trauma unfolded in 1989.
Salaam’s persona on the sidelines starkly contrasts with his persona on the campaign trail — where the 49-year-old jockeys to fill a now open City Council seat with the ease of the career politician he is not, handing out fliers to longtime residents and newcomers who say they remember when he was sent to prison at 15.
“I’ve been very close to the pain,” Salaam said, sipping a breakfast of turmeric tea from Silvana on 116th Street. “Now I want a seat at the table.”
Salaam’s exoneration for the rape and assault of a white female jogger in 1989 would take over a decade. He and the four other Black and Latino teenagers with whom he was wrongfully convicted were known as the Central Park Five.
As he vies to represent the City Council’s 9th District, Salaam, often dressed in crisply pressed clothes, a watch and a jacket, is easy with his admission that he lacks experience in elected office.
Salaam and the other teens captivated a city in the grips of anxiety around public safety. He has leaned into his past, through activism and speeches prior to his run for the Council, and now as a candidate trying to build momentum ahead of the June 27 Democratic primary, challenging Harlem’s storied political machine.
“For the folks that do recognize me, it’s more like, you know, thank you for doing what you’re doing,” Salaam said in April, outside a subway stop along 116th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. “But…
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