On April 30th, 1989, Donald Trump famously took out this ad in the New York Times that called for the Exonerated 5 (including Yusef Saalam) to be executed.
Now, in 2023, Yusef Salaam is running for City Council, and has published his own ad, explaining how Trump and the criminal justice system took years away from him and his unnecessary ordeal.
Being wrongfully convicted as a teenager was an experience that changed my life drastically. Yet I am honored when people express how deeply they connect with my story.
Salaam notes that when his name was splashed across the newspapers a generation ago — inadequate housing, underfunded schools, public safety concerns, and a lack of good jobs wracked New York City. Years later these issues only became worse during Donald Trump’s time in office.
Salaam writes:
Here is my message to you, Mr. Trump: In response to the multiple federal and state criminal investigations that you are facing, you responded by warning of “potential death and destruction,” and by posting a photograph of yourself with a baseball bat, next to a photo of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. These actions, just like your actions leading up to the January 6 insurrection at the U .S. Capitol, are an attack on our safety.
Thirty-four years ago, your full-page ad stated, in all caps: “CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS.”
You were wrong then, and you are wrong now. The civil liberties of all Americans are grounded in the U.S. Constitution, and many of us fight every day to uphold those rights, even in the face of those like you who seek to obliterate them.
Salaam concludes that:
And if the charges are proven and you are found guilty, I hope that you endure whatever penalties are imposed with the same strength and dignity that the Exonerated Five showed as we served our punishment for a crime we did not commit.
Rat Mitigation Zone
Harlem has been included in a group of NYC neighborhoods designated Rat Mitigation Zones.
According to a notice posted by the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on Monday, the “rat mitigation zones,” which are areas with “high levels of rat activity,” include Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and Chinatown, the East Village, the Lower East Side, and Harlem in Manhattan. These identified zones will be the focus of a multiagency effort to address the rats and the conditions that cause them, according to the city.
Image courtesy of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
The city selected these neighborhoods based on criteria that included the number of rat-related cleanup orders issued by NYC within the last year, rat-baiting visits by the city’s Health Department, rat-related 311 complaints, and NYC Parks-owned properties that have been considered susceptible to rat infestations.
Three of the designated zones, the Lower East Side zone, the Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Prospect Heights zone, and the Grand Concourse area, had already been the focus of city rat cleanup efforts that former Mayor Bill de Blasio led in 2017.