<\/p>\n
Bill Perkins was remembered Tuesday as a Harlem giant.<\/p>\n
And his death was mourned before a competitive primary for the City Council position he held twice.<\/p>\n
Perkins died at age 74 at his home in what his wife described as “the community he loved and fought for all his life.”<\/p>\n
The progressive champion had served on the City Council, then as a state senator before returning to the City Council.<\/p>\n
“And I’m excited about the potential of what we’re going to be able to do for the people of New York City,” Perkins told NY1 in 2017.<\/p>\n
Perkins’ last years were marked by health struggles.<\/p>\n
News of his death came the same day Kristin Richardson Jordan, who unseated Perkins by a razor-thin margin two years ago, announced she would not seek re-election.<\/p>\n
“Thank you for seeing the true possibility of radical love in the loveless land of politics,” Richardson Jordan posted to his followers on Instagram.<\/p>\n
Richardson Jordan had been a fierce critic of police tactics and said Tuesday he would continue his fight for “economic justice, abolition, liberation and radical social change.”<\/p>\n
Three Democrats remain in the City Council race, some applauding Richardson Jordan’s service.<\/p>\n
“We need women of color in the halls where decisions about our lives are made,” state Rep. Inez Dickens, a leading primary fundraiser, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Dickens added separately from Perkins’ death that Harlem had lost a “great warrior”.<\/p>\n
Also on the ballot is Yusef Salaam, one of Central Park’s Exonerated Five.<\/p>\n
“What I represent in this race is something different, something unique,” Salaam told NY1. “That uniqueness is that I’m not bound to the same political machinery.”<\/p>\n
Perkins had defended young men wrongfully accused of rape from the beginning.<\/p>\n
“Of course, he was with us in our darkest hours,” Salaam said. “I was 15 years old.”<\/p>\n
Also running is Al Taylor, a state Rep. whose district spans Washington Heights and Inwood.<\/p>\n
The three will face each other in a classified election primary for June 27.<\/p>\n