One other member of Harlem’s Exonerated 5 is making an attempt his hand at politics. Raymond Santana Jr., 50, introduced he’s working in Metropolis Council’s District 8 race final week. He sat down with Amsterdam Information to speak about his previous, platform, and plans.
On a current frigid afternoon, Santana was at El Barrista cafe in East Harlem, sporting one among his white “Drafted By God” hoodies from his clothes model, Park Madison NYC, that he began in 2018.
“I all the time been a sketch artist since I used to be yea’ excessive. Liked to attract cartoon characters, Marvel characters. I began out doing stick figures. For me, it’s all the time been a ardour, so after I grew to become an activist, it was solely proper that I used that medium to get that message throughout,” stated Santana.
He’s working for District 8, which encompasses Mott Haven, Melrose, and Concourse Village within the South Bronx; Carnegie Hill, Yorkville, and East Harlem in Manhattan; and Randall’s Island. Deputy Speaker Diana Ayala, who’s term-limited, is the present councilmember. Santana has no scarcity of competitors: A number of outstanding candidates are working to interchange her, together with Ayala’s chief of employees, Elsie Encarnacion; lawyer Wilfredo López; and Bronx Group Board Chair Clarisa Alayeto.
“For me, after I checked out my neighborhood, I see all the tough circumstances that my neighborhood goes by way of on the subject of issues just like the trash on the road, public security, and inexpensive housing. It’s an extended record of issues that plague this neighborhood,” stated Santana. “[They’re] in a spot the place there’s no religion, there’s no hope.”
His principal priorities are inexpensive housing, particularly for seniors; pooling psychological well being and road homelessness assets; enhancing sanitation; supporting youth and training, and public security. He stated the primarily Hispanic and Latino district additionally feels “below siege” with rising anti-immigrant sentiments within the metropolis, and the fixed menace of detainment or deportation from the federal stage and President Donald Trump, who has a long-standing contentious relationship with the Exonerated 5.
“You bought people who find themselves simply making an attempt exhausting to make a greenback and now they worry that they’re gonna be deported or they’re gonna be snatched up in the midst of the evening,” stated Santana.
He can relate viscerally to such fears. An East Harlem native, Santana was 14 years outdated, attending Junior Excessive Faculty 117 (now closed), when he and several other younger associates had been wrongfully tried and convicted within the Central Park jogger rape case in 1989. The case concerned a 28-year-old white girl, banker Trisha Meili, who was brutally attacked and raped within the park whereas jogging. She survived with no reminiscence of what occurred. NYPD officers had already rounded up a bunch of Black and Brown boys (amongst them had been Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Korey Clever, and Santana) in relation to a sequence of different assaults perpetrated within the park that evening by youths, in keeping with the Innocence Undertaking.
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After hours of questionable police interrogations, the teenagers, apart from Salaam, made taped confessions to the crime. 5 had been discovered responsible of rape, assault, and housebreaking regardless of no matching bodily proof. Santana was tried as a juvenile and sentenced to 5 to 10 years in 1990. He served 5 years, and was launched on parole on the age of 20.
Whereas incarcerated, he earned his Basic Academic Improvement (GED) and an affiliate’s diploma, considering that might assist him with employment alternatives. Nevertheless, he struggled to get a job with the stigma of a conviction and being labeled a intercourse offender following him. He additionally had a “strained” relationship together with his household, particularly his father, Raymond Santana Sr., at the moment. He stated his father was a straitlaced, hard-working man who had by no means served any time and couldn’t relate to what his son was going by way of.
“The legal justice system had a maintain on me that I simply couldn’t get unfastened,” stated Santana. After failing to stick to the phrases of his parole, Santana stated he spent a further 20 months locked up. It was at this level that he hit “all-time low,” feeling like he had “given up.” Spiraling, Santana was arrested on a drug cost in 1998, admitted guilt, and was convicted once more.
Matias Reyes admitted he was chargeable for the Central Park jogger rape in 2002. Santana was launched and all the Central Park 5 convictions had been overturned. He obtained about $7.125 million out of a $41 million settlement with the town in 2014. Their story was captured in Ava DuVernay’s miniseries on Netflix, “When They See Us,” in 2019.
“My life has been an open e book since 1989, and so we proceed to go away it that method as a result of we’re not hiding [and] we’re not afraid,” stated Santana about campaigning. “The judgment has been handed on us and we’re nonetheless standing on the finish of the day, in order that’s the testomony to our power. We’ve been referred to as the worst labels: city terrorists, wolf pack, super-predator, wilding. How a lot worse can it get?”
His core lesson and message, Santana stated, is that “I must inform my youthful self [to] simply preserve transferring ahead, preserve pushing ahead, don’t hand over.”
His “Brotherhood” T-shirt and hoodie assortment is devoted to his fellow members of the Exonerated 5. It merely reads: “Yusef, Kevin, Antron, Korey, & Raymond.”
Since 2004, Santana has been an outspoken legal justice advocate and public speaker with the Innocence Undertaking and a member of the New York Metropolis Justice League. The Innocence Undertaking has pushed laws in a number of states to ban misleading police techniques through the interrogation of minors and mandate the recording of interrogations to stop wrongful convictions primarily based on false confessions. Within the entrepreneurial area, Santana has additionally produced a documentary about exoneree Kirk Bloodsworth, who was the primary particular person to flee loss of life row because of DNA proof within the U.S.
He maintained a residence in Atlanta, Ga., together with his solely daughter, however has stated he cut up his time between there and New York Metropolis since 2014. He briefly married and divorced Taste of Love star Chandra “Deelishis” Davis round 2021. His marketing campaign stated he at the moment lives within the district on one hundred and twenty fifth Road.
Santana is aware of he’s not a “politician” within the conventional sense. Basically, he’s following within the footsteps of his buddy Salaam, who’s the councilmember within the close by District 9 and chairs the council’s committee on public security. Santana stated that he “sees the success and alter” Salaam is bringing to Central Harlem, and is worked up in regards to the prospect of partnering with him.
Across the nook from the cafe, Santana’s father was tending to the neighborhood backyard and its 9 cats on 117th Road. The backyard’s constructing has a dedication to his son. Collectively, they converse to potential voters passing by.
Santana’s marketing campaign stated that their fundraising report will probably be out on March 17 with the town’s New York Metropolis Marketing campaign Finance Board (NYCCFB) submitting. They’re additionally within the means of gathering signatures to get his title on the poll in June’s major.
