Blooming Bloomie may be throwing a lot of money around with The Blacks but it may be too little too late for one of the black men he kept under his foot while he presided over The Big Apple for 12 years.
Kevin Richardson, one of the Central Park Exonerated Five, is on the front lines of exposing the true identity of the presidential hopeful who was complicit in continuing in the miscarriage of justice that took place when five black teenagers from New York City went to prison for a horrific crime that they did not commit.
On Thursday, he joined New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and activist Tamika Mallory during a rally outside of former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign headquarters in Manhattan to slam him for not making good on the multimillion-dollar settlement the group’s wrongful prosecution awarded them.
“We all might vote for a different candidate, but I’m sure [any other Democrat] will be better than Michael Bloomberg,” Richardson said, according to the New York Post.
“It wasn’t about the lawsuit. It was about getting our life back,” he said of the $41 million settlement Bloomberg dragged on for more than a decade. “At the end of the day, no amount of money could equal what we endured.”
Richardson is one of the five teens – including Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise — who were wrongly convicted in the alleged 1989 attack of then-28-year-old jogger Trisha Meili.
“Don’t let these ads get to you. Don’t be bamboozled by this,” he added. “We know personally who Michael Bloomberg is, and I’m here to step forward and let you know it’s time to vote, it’s time for our voices to be heard.”
The public advocate reportedly said the Bloomberg is “trying to make people think that he sincerely cared about black and brown and working-class people when he was mayor of this city. There’s a 12-year legacy that we’re still trying to climb out of. We do not want to see that across this country.”
“Mayor Bloomberg can run a whole lot of ads, but can’t run from his record of hurting NYers of color Refusing to support the #ExoneratedFive, refusing to sign the Community Safety Act, refusing to apologize for deepening racial injustice, he’s made it clear he should stop running,” Williams wrote on Twitter.
The mega billionaire’s campaign reportedly issued a statement to the New York Post that did not directly address the former mayor’s handling of the controversial case, but pointed to his apology for backing stop-and-frisk, adding: “Mike will continue the dialogue he is having across the country on issues important to the Black and Latino community.”
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