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Raymond Santana was wrongly imprisoned. Now, he wants to join Yusef Salaam, also wrongfully accused in the rape of a Central Park jogger, on the City Council.
Feb. 25, 2025Updated 10:04 a.m. ET
Raymond Santana was only 14 in 1989 when he and four other Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully blamed for the rape of a white female jogger. The case of the so-called Central Park Five transfixed New York City, and their conviction later came to be seen as a notorious injustice.
Now, more than three decades later, Mr. Santana wants to reintroduce himself to New York — this time as a candidate to help lead the city whose prosecutors once put him in prison.
On Tuesday, he will announce that he is running as a Democrat to represent parts of his native East Harlem and the Bronx on the City Council. His platform centers on his own improbable story, but also what he called “the deterioration” of neighborhoods like his that he said are ravaged by rats, drugs and skyrocketing rents.
“You look around and see the normal stuff isn’t working,” Mr. Santana, a motivational speaker and activist, said in an interview. “That’s why we need someone who’s outside the system, who can come with a different lens.”
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Mr. Santana, 50, is hoping to replicate the success of Yusef Salaam, another member of the Central Park Five who won a neighboring Council seat in Harlem in 2023. The two men stood trial together as teenagers, appeared together onstage at last summer’s Democratic National Convention and have been consulting about the race.
