"When They See Us" on Netflix

If you remember the spring of 1989 in NYC, you remember the Central Park jogger case -- a young white woman who was raped and beaten into a coma, and the young black men accused of this crime called a "wilding."

I remember the case well -- the feverish media coverage, the trolling racism masking itself as law and order-minded public outrage, and how these young men were proclaimed guilty even before trial, turned into animals and not human beings, and how public opinion and the courts of law drove them into prison and infamy.

One problem: it was all a lie. 

They were totally innocent -- in 2002 they were released after DNA testing and another prisoner's confession exonerated them. But then they faced another kind of prison -- difficulties readjusting to society and the city government, then led by Mayor Bloomberg, refusing a financial settlement with these men. That didn't happen until 2014 when Mayor De Blasio finally gave them some kind of justice.

The Central Park Jogger case is coming to Netflix tomorrow in a new miniseries called When They See Us. It's a story of this case and of NYC at a moment in time when it was still Fear City and not the Oz we live in today.

It's also an indictment of our culture -- of then and now -- and how failed reporting, corrupt law enforcement, pure racism, and public hysteria led to this tragedy. (It was also a tragedy for the victim, who didn't get proper justice).

We should all watch this and learn.