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LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The five men arrested in adolescence, convicted, sentenced to years in prison and eventually exonerated for the rape and assault of a white jogger at Central Park in 1989, have never liked the name 'Central Park Five. They avoid the sentence when possible. It was not a nickname they had chosen, but a name that had been given to them by the press: by outlets that regularly printed their legal name, though all five were minors; by tabloids who often failed to write "allegedly" in describing their accusations; by newspapers that published ads from an entire page of a playboy real estate developer with latent political ambitions, attacking them with a huge black font: "BRING BACK THE MORATH PENALTY".
On Friday afternoon, at the 25th annual luncheon of the US Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, where the five men were honored, much care was taken to steer the celebration away from this phrase and to face-to-face -vis the five people she had hidden: Korey Wise, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana.
When actor Michael B. Jordan introduced the five winners, he told the story famous for the crowd. "It was news from the east coast, but a familiar story for everyone growing up black in America," said Jordan. "We did not know their names, but we knew their ages: 15, 14, 16 – the same ages as us. They could be us. "
"In 1989, the police found the body of a young white woman in Central Park, covered in blood and left for dead after a sexual assault. A few weeks later, Trisha Meili woke up from a coma. She was unable to remember his attack. But the police had already arrested suspects and interrogated black and brown teenagers who were in Central Park that night. They focused their interrogation tactics on five boys in particular. Four of these teenagers did not know each other when they were arrested. I repeat, four of these boys did not know each other when they were arrested. "
The men came to receive the first Roger Baldwin Courage Award and accept another one on behalf of director Ava DuVernay, including the recent Netflix series. When they see us told about their decades-long legal battle. DuVernay had won the annual ACLU Social Media Accountability Award – an irony that has not been lost on anyone, much less for Yusef Salaam. When Salaam took the stage to accept his award, he presented himself with a new name: "I am one of the five exonerated."
"After decades of being known as the Central Park Five, we thank Ava for recognizing our humanity and for telling our story with honesty and factual representation," said Salaam during his speech. acceptance of its price. "We had to fight to break the etiquette that the media gave us. We stumbled forward, falling on our face sometimes. "
"It was almost like they were trying to find some of the darkest enclaves of society to enter our homes, pull us off our beds and hang ourselves at the trees of Central Park."
During his speech, Salaam recalled that the media had been less human: when the chroniclers called them a "pack of wolves" and Pat Buchanan insisted that "the eldest of this pack be tried, convicted and hanged. in Central Park, June 1, and 13- and 14-year-olds were undressed, whipped, and sent to jail, the park may soon be secure again for women. "
Salaam dwells on the full-page ad taken by the man currently occupying the White House.
"Korey [Wise] said so well, said Salaam. "He stated that when Donald Trump published this one page ad and that it was published in all New York City newspapers, claiming our execution, he put us a premium at the head."
"They had published our names, phone numbers, and addresses in New York City newspapers. Imagine the horror of that. Just a step back once, in the 1950s – we would become the Emmett Tills of modern times. It was almost like they were trying to find some of the darkest enclaves of society to enter our homes, pull us off our beds and hang ourselves at the trees of Central Park.
As he spoke, Salaam took long breaks. At one point, an assistant appeared with a handful of tissues. "I'm not ashamed to cry in front of you," he said. "These are tears of pain. These are tears of joy. We are the heroes of this story. "
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