Yusef Salaam, Member of ‘Central Park Five,’ Wins NYC Council Seat | Video

*Yusef Salaam, one of the “Central Park Five” who was wrongly convicted and later exonerated for a 1989 attack on a white female jogger, will be a member of the New York City Council.

Salaam won a Democratic primary earlier this year. USA Today reports that he emerged victorious in the election Tuesday without opposition.

“I am really the ambassador for everyone’s pain,” Salaam told the Associated Press in an interview. 

We reported previously via CNN that Salaam was one of five teenagers accused of raping a jogger and pressured into giving false confessions. They were exonerated in 2002 when DNA evidence linked another person to the crime. The teenagers sued New York City and the case was later settled.

In the wake of the crime in 1989, former President Donald Trump took out full-page newspaper ads that read: “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!”

“There were large ads bought in 1989, a whisper for the state to kill us,” Salaam previously stated after a campaign event over the summer, according to CNN. “A whisper, in fact, into the darkest enclaves of society for them to do to us what they had done to Emmett Till.”

During that same event, Salaam thanked the community for giving him a “second chance” after his exoneration, per CNN. 

“This campaign has been about those who have been counted out,” Salaam said. “This campaign has been about those who have been forgotten. This campaign has been about our Harlem community who has been pushed into the margins of life and made to believe that they were supposed to be there.”

Speaking to the AP, Salaam addressed the controversial “Central Park 5” rape case, saying, “In many ways, I went through that for our people so I can now lead them.”

READ MORE: Bet on Exonerated Central Park Five Member Yusef Salaam to WIN NYC (Harlem) Council Seat | VIDEO

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