Norwood News

Last winter, when times got tough for the oldest, most influential grassroots organizing group in the northwest Bronx — a financial crisis compounded by a leadership void — they looked within for a path forward.

Almost half a year later, though challenges still lie ahead, the result for the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition is an unprecedented new leadership team and a restructured organization on solid financial footing.

The Coalition was created in the mid-1970s by Fordham University clergy determined to fight off the housing neglect, abandonment and arson fast creeping north from the South Bronx. Through grassroots organizing efforts — helping community residents identify common concerns and developing their leadership skills to go toe-to-toe with politicians, bureaucrats and landlords — the group was largely successful in saving the local housing stock, which it felt was the core of stable communities.

Over the decades since, the Coalition spun off a handful of nonprofit housing groups and branched out to tackle any number of issues, including immigration, crime, development and education. 

And now, for the first time in its 35-year history, the group has split its executive director position in two and given the top spots in the organization to women of color.

Aleciah Anthony, 34, who’s African-American and Laura Vasquez, 33, who’s Hispanic, were named co-executive directors earlier this spring. The pair became de facto heads of the Coalition following the November departure of James Mumm, the previous executive director.

While Mumm was an outsider chosen after a nationwide search, Anthony and Vasquez were promoted from within after working at the organization, in various roles, for the past decade. 

‘Way of life’

“When it happened, my first thoughts were, ‘it’s about time,’” said Yorman Nunez, a 20-year-old former youth organizer with the Coalition who’s now running for City Council. “They’re from the community or have lived here for a very, very, very long time. Deep in their hearts it’s not a job. I know [organizing] is part of their way of life.”

Before joining the Coalition, however, the pair didn’t know much about organizing. In fact, both stumbled into the Coalition, mostly by chance and circumstance.

After her father passed, the pre-teen Vasquez missed school to translate for her mother as she went about navigating the frustrating welfare system. After that experience, “I vowed that I would never treat people negatively when they needed my help,” Vasquez says.

Raised upstate, Vasquez graduated from Ithaca College in 1999 with a vague idea that she wanted to help Latinos. She went through the Coalition’s training program and soon started organizing tenant leaders in the Mt. Hope area. “Lots of the organizing I was doing was with Latina women,” she says. “I loved seeing the transformation of these Latina women, from shy and kind of quiet to leading and speaking out in front of big crowds.”

Vasquez went on to found the Coalition’s strong youth arm, Sistas and Brothas United (SBU).

The frustrating welfare system led, more directly, to Anthony’s arrival at the Coalition. Born and raised in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, Anthony eventually came to an early crossroads in her life after graduating from NYU around 2000.

Despite her degree, Anthony was an unemployed mother collecting welfare checks. The one thing she knew was that she didn’t want to do the menial jobs the city’s welfare-to-work program was assigning her to. “I kept turning them down,” Anthony says.
Eventually, they sent her to a job training program, run through the Coalition. It was just a job. And not one she thought she’d last in.

She started working in the summer. “It was hot and I was door-knocking on six-floor walk-ups,” Anthony says. “I thought, ‘there’s no way I can keep this up.’”

But she did and, after doing every kind of organizing the Coalition has to offer, she eventually found her niche as the group’s education coordinator.

New leadership

By 2006, Vasquez and Anthony had risen to the top of the organization, which often struggles to keep staffers, especially people of color. “We’ve lost many talented people of color to other opportunities,” says Mary Dailey, a former executive director of the Coalition.

When Mumm moved on to another organization, Anthony and Vasquez were tapped to run the show while the group’s board decided on a long-term solution.

Vasquez had been deputy director for the past three years and Anthony was director of leadership development and also the field director. “It was a natural fit,” says Coalition member Myra Goggins. “One of our goals is to promote from within and to have women of color in those positions, and so far it’s worked out.”

 “I think what you get are two people steeped in the tradition of organization.” Dailey says. “But they’re also familiar with innovation and not being stale in their approach.”

Speaking about their new role at the Coalition’s home on East 196th Street, Vasquez and Anthony laugh and swap organizing war stories.

They talk about the flexibility that sharing leadership gives them. “You never know what’s going to happen, so it’s good that there are two of us,” Anthony says.

Vasquez is focusing on building relationships and leadership with and within local institutions, like churches and existing tenant and block associations, and also fund-raising.

Anthony is running field operations and doing staff and other leadership development.

Besides their focus on building up institutional leadership and fund-raising, the duo say they want to re-focus the Coalition’s energy on local housing issues, the group’s bread and butter, while also trying to affect change on the state level. “We need to build our presence on two levels — locally and upstate [in Albany],” Anthony says.

Like most nonprofit organizations in this shrinking economy, Anthony and Vasquez say they’ve had to adapt and restructure how they do business. 

Five years ago, the Coalition was made up of 10 neighborhood associations, each with its own organizers, turf, board and members. But that wasn’t cost effective, Dailey says.

Now, the group still has what they call regional organizers (the Coalition works in most northwest Bronx neighborhoods above the Cross Bronx Expressway) who focus on issues that cross neighborhood lines — housing, education, safety, youth issues, etc. — but are also responsible for issues that are neighborhood-specific, such as park improvements or other quality of life initiatives.

Much like how they view themselves, Vasquez and Anthony want their organizers to be flexible. 

At the 35th anniversary gala on April 30, everyone participated; everyone knew what was going on. For the first time, the annual fund-raiser brought in loads of small, individual donations, rather than big institutional checks. Anthony greeted people at the door as Vasquez zoomed around the room, mixing with the crowd, which included leaders from the past, present and future.

There was a buzz in the air, energy in the room. At a storied organization, it marked the beginning of a new era.

Ed. note: To reach the Coalition, call (718) 584-0515 or visit www.northwestbronx.org.