He shed gang life for Christmas charity, keeping a promise to one who didn’t make it

For the seventh year in a row, Brandon Anderson will spend Christmas Eve in Moore Square, handing out blankets to the homeless who pass the holiday on a cold park bench.

At 35, he’s not a fountain of charity — an ex-Bloods gang leader, an ex-convict with a record for felony assault, a young man who struggles to find consistent work and housing long after he abandoned street life.

But Anderson made a promise to his best friend, a veteran of the Raleigh gang world who didn’t live to see his turnaround. And he plans on keeping it.

“The one thing he said, ‘I’m tired of this,’ “ said Anderson, recalling his friend James Alston. “ ‘I’m ready to do something positive. So our kids don’t grow up like we did.’”

Anderson pauses at the memory.

“It was short-lived,” he said.

‘My brother’s vision’

Anderson has spent the better part of a decade trying to outrun his youth on Raleigh’s south side, joining the Bloods in his neighborhood by the time he was 13. By 20, he’d been charged with attempted murder and spent five years in prison.

But by 2014, after repeated trouble and more time behind bars, he and Alston were driving around Moore Square, noticing the worn-down men on benches. They hit on the blanket idea, but both returned to prison before they could start.

By the next year, Alston had transformed into an activist, trying to broker a truce and inviting people to a “gang enlightenment meeting” at Chavis Park Community Center, talking of “getting the community to come together and make peace and stop the violence so we can make Raleigh a better place.”

He got shot the next day, and in his grief, Anderson committed to their charity mission.

“This was my brother’s vision,” he said. “He died behind it. I can proudly say I’ve been out of prison seven years, and if I get in trouble again, I won’t be able to do this. I always pray to God I stay strong enough not to drift back.”

‘An open ear’ means a lot

On his first year out, Anderson quickly found he hadn’t carried enough blankets.

So he built up a drop-off network, collecting enough to carry to the city’s hidden populations: the woods behind the Food Lions and Walmarts, and the camps off Poole Road and along South Saunders Street.

“Some of the guys I meet out here have my phone number,” he said. “Some of them don’t even want anything. They want to talk. They’ve got so much on their mind, they just want to unload. An open ear, man, that means a lot to people.”

Last year, he built up a network of blanket drop-offs and traveled to Goldsboro, Rocky Mount and Durham, passing out more than 1,000.

Now, Anderson doesn’t just work on Christmas Eve. He gave out blankets and hygiene kits at Moore Square last week, donated by Raleigh Seventh Day Adventist Church. In a half-hour’s time, he heard many stories of housing vouchers about to expire, directing people to anybody who he thought might help.

He struggles with post-prison life, having lost both his home and truck this year to financial instability. Working again both in cleaning and home health care, he hopes to show his teenage son a more positive face.

And when he’s downtown on Christmas Eve, he’ll shine some of that light on people in the city’s cracks — having been there, and not wanting to go back.

How you can help

To help Brandon Anderson, drop off blankets at Community Cuts at 3801 Western Boulevard in Raleigh or contribute to his Paypal account: Brandon Anderson@unityinthecom