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UPDATE Jessica Altagracia Woolford Launches Bid to Replace Jeffrey Dinowitz in Assembly District 81

 

Photo Caption Jessica Altagracia Woolford has launched a campaign to unseat Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz in the 81st Assembly District.
Photo via Twitter

This is an updated version of our story first published in November 2021.

 

On Tuesday, Nov. 16, Jessica Altagracia Woolford, a Riverdale resident raised in Kingsbridge, announced her bid to replace Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz from New York State Assembly’s 81st district, via a bilingual digital campaign ad. Dinowitz has held the seat since 1994.

 

“I’m excited to make my case to the voters of the Northwest Bronx that it’s time for fresh leadership in the Assembly,” Altagracia Woolford said. “My abuela taught me that care should never be conditional. But the fact is, a lot of Bronxites are struggling to keep up with the basics because of what zip code they live in, where they came from, and, because leadership isn’t listening to what we need. It’s time to put people first and truly provide care for our beautiful, vibrant community.”

 

At the height of the pandemic, according to her campaign, Woolford started Kingsbridge Unidos, a volunteer-run, mutual aid effort to deliver over 30,000 pounds of fresh produce, in addition to thousands of masks, and valuable bilingual information about COVID-19 and more, to families in Kingsbridge. They said what started as a door-to-door, delivery program at her grandma’s building, has grown to include and prioritize families experiencing homelessness through creative, uplifting and joyful programming.

 

According to the candidate’s campaign, Altagracia Woolford is a proud alumna of neighborhood schools, including Head Start in the Marble Hill Houses, P.S. 207, P.S. 7, and Riverdale Kingsbridge Academy (M.S./H.S. 141). She is also a graduate of the PREP 9 and “Summer on the Hill” programs.

 

According to prepforpreg.org, the PREP 9 program helps the brightest and most hardworking African American and Latinx students in New York City and the metropolitan areas of Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut prepare for success at leading, independent, boarding schools across the Northeast.

 

According to the Horace Mann School, Summer on the Hill (SOH) was founded in 1994 at the Horace Mann School to offer supplementary educational enrichment to promising, disadvantaged, public school students from the Bronx, Washington Heights, and Harlem.

 

 

Altagracia Woolford currently lives in Riverdale with her husband and young daughter.

 

Campaign officials said she has worked in local and national Democratic politics and government for nearly a decade, including at the 2016 Democratic convention, the United Food and Commercial Workers International union, the de Blasio administration, New York Immigration Coalition, and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s office.

 

The 81st Assembly District comprises Norwood, Kingsbridge, Kingsbridge Heights, Van Cortlandt Village, Marble Hill, Riverdale, Woodlawn and Wakefield.

 

On Tuesday, Feb. 1, New York Communities for Change announced it was endorsing Altagracia Woolford in the 81st assembly district. The candidate reacted to the announcement on Twitter, writing, “I’m honored to receive the endorsement of  @nychange! To have our campaign’s first endorsement come from a grassroots leader in the fight for housing, racial, and environmental justice means the world to me.”

 

 

George Diaz is also running to fill the 81st Assembly District seat. He previously ran and ultimately lost against Dinowitz in the Democratic Primary in 2020, obtaining 36.2 percent of the vote on that occasion. Dinowitz went on to win the general election with 80.9 percent of the vote. His current term ends on Jan. 1, 2023.

 

 

Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.

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