WASHINGTON – Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave a thumbs up to the new Netflix series about the Central Park Five, which launched on the streaming service last week.

“I’m thrilled that this story is being told, I’m thrilled at how it’s being told because that is something that really was such a huge significance in New York,” she said in an interview with TMZ from Capitol Hill.

The show “When They See Us” tells the story of the four black youths and one Hispanic boy who were convicted in two separate trials in 1990 of a number of crimes related to the 1989 rape and assault of Trisha Meili, a white woman jogger.

DNA from her rape kit did not match any of the suspects.

The five defendants’ convictions were vacated in 2002.

Then New York City businessman Donald Trump inserted himself into the narrative by taking out newspaper ads in 1989 calling for the return of the death penalty for those involved.

“I’m glad they’re telling this story,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “Especially when you see how the president spent so much money to take out an ad to make these innocent kids seem like they were, you know, gang members or thugs, etc.”

She said the story of the Central Park Five sheds light on the treatment of black and brown men in society, the war on drugs, mass incarceration and over-criminalization.

When asked specifically about Linda Fairstein, who oversaw the prosecution of the young men and has since become a novelist, Ocasio-Cortez answered more generally.

“I think overall we’re having a reckoning of the damage done by the war on drugs and the crackdown on young people of color, so I think we need to have that conversation,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

After episodes of “When They See Us” began streaming, calls to #CancelLindaFairstein rang out on social media, asking publishers and booksellers to stop supporting Fairstein’s literary career.