The Riverdale Press is a Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly covering the northwest Bronx.

The Riverdale Press

It was a big showing for The Riverdale Press at the New York Press Association spring conference last weekend in Saratoga Springs, with the paper winning 11 state awards, including a repeat performance being named New York’s best newspaper.

That honor is bestowed as the Past Presidents’ Award for General Excellence, which judges newspapers based on a number of categories including news coverage and quality of writing, use of pictures and artwork, community engagement, opinion pages, and graphic design, among other factors. This is the second consecutive year The Press has won this award, having been a runner-up in previous years.

Michael Hinman, the former editor of The Press, was also recognized for his design work, earning the Richard L. Stein Overall Design Excellence award.

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When Gloria Nixon-Crouch saw the news reports of Russian troops amassing at the Ukrainian border, she feared the worst for the people living there.

After President Joe Biden made it clear war in that part of Europe was imminent, the ceramic artist turned to sculpture. She imagined what the Ukrainians there must be feeling, and their pain. Nixon-Crouch felt helpless so many thousands of miles away, but found a way at least to express her emotions with a 12-inch statue she aptly called, “The Pain of Ukraine.”

“My work basically speaks about the pain that people experience through atrocities like this,” Nixon-Crouch said. “Not only Ukraine, but atrocities that happened through centuries.”

Little did the Spuyten Duyvil artist know how much this piece of art from a former art teacher would resonate on social media. A Facebook post caught the attention of her longtime neighbor Don Appel. He shared it with other Facebook groups, and insisted she put out a news release to share what she’s created.

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Jose Colon was just 17 years old when he was charged with murder. By the time he was 19, a judge sent Jose to prison for at least the next 30 years, if not the rest of his life.

Now 40, the teenager Jose once was is a faded memory, according to wife Jeannie. But he’s done anything but rot.

Jose is now a certified paralegal. He’s completed a number of rehabilitation programs. He survived cancer. And now he’s a clerk in the prison’s education department.

Jose is even working toward a bachelor’s degree. And, of course, he tied the knot with Jeannie.

“He’s done everything that he can possibly do to change himself and try to give back,” his wife said. “The nature of the crime is never going to change, but he as a person can definitely change.”

Jose still has seven years before he’s even eligible for parole. Even when he does get that hearing sometime toward the end of this decade, Jose’s chances of being released from Sing Sing Correctional Facility are grim, given the current laws surrounding parole. If he were to go in front of the board today, “I believe he would be denied parole,” Jeannie said, solemnly.

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Traditional college students may occasionally feel like they’re serving time — especially right before mid-terms. But there’s a push to make another group of eager learners more traditional as well. And many of them actually have served time.

Getting a degree from prison really wasn’t all that uncommon. That is until President Bill Clinton slashed federal funding in 1994 that helped pay for that expanded education behind bars. Clinton’s “get tough on crime” essentially ended many college programs in prisons across the country, but it did start something else: Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison.

People who serve their time in prison are often scared to leave, especially knowing the odds to lead a decent normal life on the other side are stacked against them. It’s even more difficult if they entered a facility at a very young age.

Educational opportunities and occupations are a significant roadblock for many, making it seemingly impossible to succeed after release.

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Usually it’s the first half of winter commonly known as the season of giving.

But that hasn’t stopped the Association of Riverdale Cooperatives & Condominiums from creating its own season of giving, with several of its member buildings the beneficiaries.

What do those tenant groups need to get $500, or even $2,000? A good idea, and a team of people willing to help see it through.

“It’s something brand new,” said Stephen Budihas, the president of the co-op and condo group. “It’s the only time that we’ve done this. We looked at our financial situation. We’re not rich, of course. We’re a volunteer organization, which earns nominal dues that we charge of our members. But we had enough to spare some” money.

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It’s been 11 months since synagogues in and around Riverdale were terrorized by a serial vandal who some described as quite angry after seeing him in released security camera footage.

Over the course of nearly a dozen days, the man shattered windows at four different synagogues, and destroyed Jewish prayer books as well. Prosecutors have charged a Spuyten Duyvil man, Jordan Burnette, with the attacks. And they’re looking to convict him of hate crimes.

But Burnette — who has pled not guilty to the charges — is discovering the wheels of justice don’t move swiftly. He’s set for yet another pre-trial hearing on March 22. There, his defense attorneys are expected to lay some of the groundwork for how prosecutors will ultimately try the case.

Neither Burnette, nor his attorney, Michael Nedick, returned requests for comment.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is coming back to North Riverdale, joining U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman in an invitation-only town hall at the College of Mount Saint Vincent.

"Speaker Pelosi has led the Democratic Party to new heights in its agenda to deliver for the people, and I am thrilled to have her join us right here to discuss how we can continue fighting and working to deliver resources to our communities," Bowman said, in a release. 

"The Speaker and I have worked together on beating back the COVID-19 pandemic, restarting our economy, getting people back to work, and I look forward to continued partnership and collaboration with the Speaker to ensure the needs of our neighbors are at the forefront of our legislative agenda."

Pelosi will join Bowman at The Mount on Monday afternoon. They're expected to talk about the anniversary of President Joe Biden's signing of the American Rescue Plan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and other legislative priorities in Bowman's congressional district. 

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It might have otherwise seemed like a typical Sunday morning Mass at St. Michael’s Ukrainian Catholic Church.

Father Kiril Angelov led the crowded sanctuary through the typical prayers, as well as calls and responses. The choir sang from a balcony in the back of the room, decorated heavily with religious iconography from throughout The Bible’s New Testament. People stood up from the pews, and then sat down again — over and over, always in unison.

Yet there was nothing typical about this particular Sunday morning in Yonkers. Television news cameras and reporters were impossible to miss. Elected officials, including state senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Yonkers mayor Mike Spano occupied their own seats in the sanctuary. And many were holding small blue and gold flags, representing what was once home either to them, or to those they loved.

As Angelov made his way through the liturgy, minds certainly wandered to what was happening thousands of miles and an ocean away. Days before, Russia had begun its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Casualties were already tallying into the thousands, as troops continued to push toward the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

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Home may be where the heart is. But for Margaret Cullen, home has just been a headache.

That home is a Mitchell-Lama program co-op unit at 3400 Fort Independence St., where Cullen has been at what seems like a never-ending war with water. It’s a series of battles that have victimized her floors and her bathroom. And for the last six months, she’s waited for something — anything — to be done to address it.

She spends a lot of time thinking about the door to her balcony, for example. It’s not fitted properly, Cullen says, which allows water to seep in during bad weather.

“Because of the spacing between the bottom and the floor, you could still feel the draft in the apartment when it gets really cold,” Cullen said. “The entire door needs to be replaced. Look at this building. Everything here has shoddy work. It’s ridiculous.”

It’s not that no one is paying attention. In fact, officials from the city’s housing and preservation department have become regular visitors, and pointed out a problem with not just Cullen’s balcony door, but doors on three floors.

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The Riverdale Press is a Pulitzer Prize-winning weekly newspaper that covers the northwest Bronx neighborhoods of Riverdale, Spuyten Duyvil, Kingsbridge, Kingsbridge Heights, and Van Cortlandt Village, as well as the Manhattan neighborhood of Marble Hill. It was founded in 1950 and is known for its hyperlocal coverage of news, community events, and politics.

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