NYC NOW - June 9, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five, is challenging the Harlem political machine in the highly watched 9th District Race for the New York City Council. Plus, WNYC reporter Precious Fondren looks into “Bad Like Brooklyn Dancehall,” a new documentary at the Tribeca Festival. 

Good evening and welcome to NYC Now. I'm Jene Pierre for WNYC. We begin in Manhattan, where a political newcomer is challenging the Harlem political machine in the highly watched 9th District race for the New York City Council. Yusef Salam is one of the five black and Latino teenagers wrongfully imprisoned for the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park. Now, decades after his exoneration, Salam finds himself on the campaign trail. WNYC reporter Michelle Bocanegra has the story.

Yusuf Salam is standing in the back of a housing town hall in Harlem, near the free popcorn and refreshments. The 49-year-old is running for the 9th district seat in the city council, decades after he was wrongfully sent to prison at 15. I've been very close to the pain, and here I am. wanting a seat at the table. Salam is a member of the exonerated Central Park Five. Salam spent seven years in prison before being exonerated in 2002. He is vying for the Democratic nomination against two pillars of Harlem politics, Assembly members Ainez Dickens and Al Taylor in the June 27th primary.

The incumbent, Kristen Richardson, Jordan, is not seeking re-election. In the few times that I've seen Yusef Salam, he seems to naturally connect with people. That's former Governor David Patterson. However, he hasn't lived here in a long period of time. And, you know, I haven't heard a plan that he has to address the same issues that perhaps Taylor and Dickens have been addressing over the past a few years. Salam returned to Harlem last winter after six years in Georgia.

His bet is that while Harlem has changed, many of its problems have only fast. including its housing crunch. According to West 135th Street Department's Tenet Association president, June Moses, we're being squeezed out of where we live like we're toothpaste in a tube. Harlem has lost thousands of Black residents. It has transformed more dramatically than other gentrifying parts of New York by some metrics, has rent has skyrocketed and homeownership lagged. Kristen Richards and Jordan won the last election in 2021 by a margin of 114 votes.

over the late Bill Perkins, another Harlem powerhouse. Observers have attributed that to a confluence of factors, including the presence of 12 other candidates in the race. As longtime Democratic strategist, Basil Smichael puts it. Historically, Harlem does not support challenges. They support incumbents. Salam is jockeying for votes in what was once the bastion of black political power in the United States. That role has since been seated to Brooklyn.

Please, brother. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Glad you out here doing the world. Thank you, thank you. Salam is handing out flyers outside a subway stop on 116th Street during the morning commuter rush in April. For the folks that do recognize me, it's more like, okay, you know, thank you for doing what you're doing. Hi, and one of the city council here in Central Hall? Thank you. But then they're like, but, you know, you're a celebrity, like, how are you doing?

And I'm like, I'm not a celebrity. I'm a regular guy. I think being part of the exonerated five means something. That's Michael Walron Jr. senior pastor of the First Corinthian Baptist Church. Does that translate into people donating to a campaign? I don't know if that translate. Salam's campaign has a negative balance of about $23,000,

despite a near $117,000 boost this month for matching funds. From a sidewalk candidate forum on 135th Street, Inez Dickens sears into Salam's central campaign theme. We've all been impacted and affected. by having family members that have been falsely accused and incarcerated and put to jail, and no one helped them get out, and they're still in jail. Pastor Michael Walrind endorsed the law this month. He is himself no stranger to taking on Harlem's political elite,

the pastor challenged Representative Charles Rangel in 2014. Even with his congregation of more than 10,000 strong, Walron Lott, the primary. It takes a serious effort from a candidate to get people to go into the booth and intentionally choose a name that is not necessarily one of the usual suspects. Observers are looking at the primary as a bellwether for the future of Harlem politics and how strong the staying power remains for its ruling class. That's Michelle Bocanegra. Stick around. There's more after the break. New documentary at the Tribeca Festival shows how the musical style and cultural movement called Dance Hall made its way from the Caribbean to take root in Brooklyn during the 1980s and 90s.

WNYC reporter Precious Fondren has more. You've likely heard this popular hit by Shaggy. Or Sean Paul's seductive accent. Maybe even the song by Justin Bieber. Is it too late now to say sorry? They all reflect the influence of dance hall music and the culture around it. It can be seen and heard in numerous art forms and serves as a powerful expression of the Caribbean people who created it.

In a new documentary called Bad Light Brooklyn Dance Hall, directors Ben Di Jocamo and Dutti Vanya explore how the borough became a hub for the culture. Basically, it's the same thing, being raised in the West Indies and being raised in Cronn Heights. You can run into a Haitian, a guy in the age, a Bayesian, and a Jamaican all in the same piece of gumstain on the block. The film highlights how dancers, DJs, and everyday people in the dance hall community built a cultural bridge between Jamaica and New York.

We weren't literally born there, but we grew up in the cultures. We lived in the cultures, in our houses, and our families. Di Giacomo fell in love with dance hall music as a youth in France, but didn't know anything about the culture associated with it until he moved to New York years later. He says he and Vigné originally set out to make a film about contemporary dance hall parties, like one called rice and peas here in New York. A lot of people were telling us, you need to talk to these people, you need to tell these

stories. You need to explain where it comes from. Vigny says as they continued interviewing subjects, a pattern came to light. Everyone they spoke to wanted to talk about how the music was tied to history and community. A lot of them start mentioning immigration, their story, their parents, where they're from. We thought, okay, that's really interesting, and they all talked about it. So, like, we cannot, you know, not talk about it. That's when the filmmakers decided they needed some guidance

in dealing with sensitive historical issues like immigration. They reached out to one of the most prominent dancehall artists, Shaggy, among other voices. We really needed Shaggy, J-Well, and these people to really enforce certain point of the dog, certain point of the culture, to help us making those decisions that are a little more sensitive, I would say, to make on what to include, what to not include. Michelle Cole is a professor at New York University, where she teaches the anthropology of dance, as well as dance classes. She's also Jamaican and says it's almost impossible to talk about dance hall without addressing the political context around its creation. There was a political shift to a more conservative party in the 1970s that ended up kind of quieting the voices of the youth.

Cole says radio stations proudly played reggae, which was viewed as Jamaica's national identity. The dance hall was like, no, that's like a quote-unquote, ghetto thing, like that's a downtown thing. And it was the celebration. It was the voice of the youth that dance hall came out of. And it's like if you're just imitating steps, you don't really understand that context. Cole says dance hall culture is one way people stay connected to their roots. That's why neighborhoods like Flatbush and Crown Heights became a focal point for parties, parades, and backyard gettogethers. Because these Caribbean communities are living together in these places. You know, it's not just Brooklyn, but it's also the Bronx. It's wherever you can find

our communities, you will find our music, you will find our dance. It's a part of who we are. It's a part of our identity. Film director, Ben DiJacquimo, says making Bad Like Brooklyn dance hall was a constant process of discovering information you couldn't find on the internet because it wasn't officially documented. I think every time we talk to a subject that was kind of amazed about those stories that are so important that are hidden, that are just in people's mind and not necessarily like general knowledge in the culture that this happened or this happens. Bad Light Brooklyn Dance Hall is now playing at the Tribeca Festival. That's WNYC reporter, Precious Fondren.

Thanks for listening to NYC now. From WNYC, our production team includes Sean Boutage, Avey Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Leora Noam Kravitz, Jared Marcell, and Wayne Schoenmeister, with help from the entire WNYC newsroom. Our show art was designed by the people at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrano. I'm Jene Pierre. We'll be back Monday.