A Christmas Eve tradition that both helps Raleigh’s homeless and honors a slain friend

For the past eight years, Brandon Anderson has kept up the same Christmas Eve tradition: march out into the cold and pass out blankets to the homeless — one holiday cast-out at a time.

He passes the park benches downtown, the empty storefronts and the dozens of camps hidden in the woods around Raleigh, keeping a heartfelt promise.

“You’ve got to want something better,” he said, reciting a personal mantra. “You’ve got to find your purpose for being out here.”

At 36, Anderson’s annual blanket drive represents a decade-long attempt to move past his troubled youth on Raleigh’s south side, one he celebrates each year as his personal record for staying out of prison grows longer.

Anderson joined his neighborhood Bloods set at 14, became its leader by 16, bounced in and out of jail throughout his teenage years before landing in prison for five years at 20 — charged with attempted murder.

Before ‘gang enlightenment meeting,’ tragedy

But by 2014, after repeated trouble and more time behind bars, he and longtime friend James Alston III were driving around Moore Square, noticing the haggard men on benches. They hit on the blanket idea as they stopped and spoke with Raleigh’s homeless, but both men returned to prison before they could start.

By the next year, Alston had transformed into an anti-gang activist, calling for an end to the violence that had brought him and Anderson nothing but lost years.

He called for 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.”

But hours before that meeting, a pair of assailants shot him on Quarry Street, leaving him with his head resting against the rear tire of a bullet-riddled car. Alston had three children.

At that moment, Anderson pledged to shed gang life, keep out of prison and carry out the charity he and his friend imagined. That pledge has lasted eight years so far.

In eight years of delivering blankets, he’s met a man who lost his family to a car crash, a soldier who stumbled into drugs while in the Army and, most recently, a population of teenage kids living in tents.

“There’s so many kids that stay in these camps,” he said. “A lot of them have homes to go to but have burned a lot of bridges. It’s hard to see.”

More than 1,000 blankets last year

Last year, Anderson distributed more than 1,000 donated blankets, so many that he dropped loads off at Raleigh shelters. But his outreach has grown enough that he ventures out all year, often assisted by the nonprofit Healing Transitions, saving Christmas Eve for his pact with Alston.

“Most weekends I’m downtown or in the woods,” he said. “Everything we run into I’ve been through myself. I’ve been homeless. I’ve slept in my car. I was a troubled youth. I was a gang leader. I’ve reentered society three times.”

Walking this road isn’t easy. The world slams a lot of doors in the face of an ex-convict. But Anderson has a cleaning job now and a steady roof over his head, and seeing his own high-school-age son help out with his missions inspires him to venture out each holiday.

A friend, he knows, is watching.

How you can help

To donate blankets for Anderson’s drive to help the homeless, drop supplies at the Community Cuts barber shop at 3801 Western Boulevard in Raleigh. The shop is hard to see without a sign out front, but it stands in the storefront just to the right of the Yemeni Grocery.

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