Yusef Salaam is in the national spotlight

Less than a year into his first term as an elected official, New York City Council Member Yusef Salaam has been a voice for the national Democratic Party as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump go head to head. 

“She’s the light at the end of the tunnel,” he said of Harris. 

Salaam spoke in a primetime slot at this year’s Democratic National Convention alongside three members of the Exonerated Five, in which he slammed former President Donald Trump for calling for the then-teenagers’ execution after they were wrongly convicted in 1989 for a crime they didn’t commit. Salaam was also called to the spin room to support Harris’ performance following Tuesday night’s presidential debate. There, he introduced himself to Trump as the former president took questions from reporters – an encounter Salaam, who was elected to the City Council last year, described as strange, but ultimately unsurprising. 

Salaam said he’d approached Trump, seeking his “humanity.” “It was a moment for us to be able to say will this be the time that you will finally apologize or even if you don’t go that far say, ‘Oh wow, you’re here, let’s sit down and talk,” Salaam recalled. He was met with neither of those responses. 

Instead, video footage of the encounter shows several reporters asking Trump whether he would apologize or speak to Salaam after the council member introduced himself. Trump pointed at Salaam, saying “That’s good, you’re on my side.” Salaam laughed, taken aback and quickly responded “No, no, I’m not on your side.” Trump then stepped away to take questions from other reporters. 

“For me it was a moment of: this person is who they have always been,” Salaam said. “When a person shows you who they are, believe them. Vice President Harris laid out in the debate the legacy that Donald Trump has left. He’s always been that person. It wasn’t just about the Exonerated Five, but it was about the racist moments that he’s continued to participate in that’s caused the divided states of America rather than the United States of America.”

In the second half of the Tuesday presidential debate, Harris called Trump out for the advertisements he’d taken out decades ago in New York City papers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty after the brutal assault of a Central Park jogger. While the ads didn’t explicitly name the five Black and Latino teenagers, Salaam and the other boys had been wrongly imprisoned for the attack and ended up spending a combined 41 years in prison. Their convictions weren’t overturned until 2002 following new DNA evidence and a guilty confession from the true perpetrator. Salaam had been incarcerated for nearly seven years.

Instead of apologizing, Trump doubled down on the ads at the debate, accusing Harris of being “divisive” and falsely said the Exonerated Five had pled guilty and the victim was “ultimately killed.” Both claims were untrue.  

Salaam said he’s honored and humbled to have the opportunity to support Harris in the national spotlight.  He’d had to learn how to fight as a 15-year-old accused of crimes he hadn’t committed – so many others have had similar experiences. Now being both a City Council Member and of the Exonerated Five, it gives “much more power and ammunition” to the fight against Trump, he said.

“We’ve been fighting Donald Trump for most of our lives. We know very well who he is, but at the same time now we also know how to fight,” Salaam said of the Exonerated Five.