Raymond Santana de ‘Central Park Five’ will run for a position in New York

Raymond Santana was only 14 in 1989 when he and four other black and Latin teenagers were unjustly blamed for the violation of a white correra. The case of the Central Park five call in New York City, and his conviction later became seen as a noticeable injustice.

Now, more than three decades later, Mr. Santana wants to reintroduce to New York, this time as a candidate to help lead the city whose prosecutors once put it in prison.

On Tuesday, he will announce that he is postulated as a Democrat to represent parts of his native East Harlem and the Bronx in the City Council. His platform focuses on his own unlikely story, but also on what he called what he called “the deterioration” of the neighborhoods such as the one that, according to him, are devastated by rats, drugs and fired rentals.

“You look around and see that normal things do not work,” said Santana, a motivating and activist speaker, in an interview. “That is why we need someone outside the system, who can come with a different lens.”

Mr. Santana, 50, hopes to replicate the success of Yusef Salam, another member of Central Park Five that He won a neighborhood council seat In Harlem in 2023. The two men were judged together as teenagers, They appeared together on stage In the National Democratic Convention last summer and I have been consulting on the race.

“I have always said that those who have been closer to pain should have a seat on the table,” Salam said in an interview. “I think it is important that we have leadership, especially in times of greater darkness.”

Like Mr. Salam two years ago, Mr. Santana is likely to face a difficult career. A handful of other Democrats have already presented paperwork to work in the June primaries that will almost surely determine who fills the open seat.

Among them are Elsie Encarnación, Chief of Cabinet of the outgoing representative of the district, Diana Ayala. Mrs. Encarnación has already accumulated approximately $ 160,000 in campaign funds and has the full support of her current boss. It is expected that Wilfredo López, a non -profit lawyer with links with the council, will have the support of A well -financed Super Pac.

Although Mr. Santana has been in the public eye for decades as a defendant converted into an activist, the almost without electoral experience and few political connections of the type that often boost campaigns for the local position begins.

It is almost certain that he will also face questions about his recent residence outside the State. As of 2015, he said, he lived mainly in Georgia, where he raised a daughter and registered to vote.

Mr. Santana said he frequently returned to New York City to visit the family and lobby for state legislation aimed at protecting young people attacked by the police. But he said he only returned to East Harlem full -time last year.

In the interview, Mr. Santana admitted that he was still working on his positions on several issues that probably appear before the Council. He also refused to take a position on Mayor Eric Adams, who faces generalized calls to resign after the Trump administration said he would leave charges against him to help carry out his immigration agenda.

Mr. Santana argued that he was located uniquely to try to improve some insolubres problems that his district faces: to strengthen confidence between the Police Department and the New York, inspire younger residents and press for an enlarged program to help The imprisoned people to prepare to re -enter society.

He cited several problems of quality of life such as garbage and the enduring presence of homeless people on sidewalks. “The place is called Zombieland,” he said. “Nothing is being done about it.”

Parts of Mr. Santana’s history are well known. He was a Latin Afro teenager who lived in East Harlem in April 1989 when he, Mr. Salam and three others were arrested in relation to the violent assault of a woman who trotes in Central Park.

Mayor Edward I. Koch called “Monsters” teenagers. Donald J. Trump, then an outstanding developer, took out several full page newspapers, even in the New York Times, asking them to face the death penalty.

It was later clear that prosecutors used false confessions and non -conclusive physical evidence and did not offer testimony of eyewitnesses to win convictions. Mr. Santana initially served about five years, then another 20 months for a rape of probation. It also served four years for a separate drug charge.

Men were exonerated in 2002, after a rapist and murderous convict confessed to act only in the attack. The city then agreed an agreementPaying Mr. Santana and the others around $ 1 million for each year, they were in prison.

In later years, Mr. Santana resorted to activism, traveled to the country as a motivating speaker and A clothing line began. This fall, Penguin Random House will publish His illustrated memories Aimed at young adults.

Mr. Santana framed the postcard for a public office as a natural consequence of that work.

“Having a community to support me when Donald Trump and the rest of the world attacked us,” he said. “They always turned my back on me. Then I have to have his. “