Antoinette Bridges, the new executive director of the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) is recovering from the flu, but that doesn’t seem to slow down this low-ley and determined woman. “I had chills and fever,” she said. But she was still at her desk in the CCNV building at Second and D Street NW early in the morning, getting used to her job and creating new plans.
And does she have plans. Bridges, 49, was appointed interim executive director last November 5, replacing outgoing director Terri Bishop. Bridges was named executive director on January 20 and she has launched initiatives in five areas: mental health services, security arrangements, neighborhood outreach, fundraising, and moving towards having a paid staff. All of these but one—the staff proposal—met with approval at a March 5 CCNV board meeting, she said.
As a package, Bridges’ proposals would create “far-reaching changes in the way CCNV does its work with its guests,” said longtime homeless activist Paul Magno, director of the McKenna Center, a social services center located near Second and D. The proposals, if implemented, would amount to a “professionalization of the place, which a lot of people would like to see, and a significant departure from [CCNV] tradition.”
Bridges wants to start her tenure by empowering people through a large infusion of counseling services, including individual and group therapy and more support groups. She cited an existing CCNV group, “Women on a Mission,” as a good role model.
“My focus is on people helping people. A lot of the residents have been knocked down by life, bruised, and some suffer from alcoholism or drug addiction,” she said. She wants a shelter message that “their destiny is up to them. They are in charge: are you going to live in a shelter the rest of your life or are you going to do something else?”
Bridges said she is looking for at least 25 volunteer counselors willing to donate an hour a week on-site; she is negotiating with a private nonprofit to provide some of them and is looking for additional volunteers.
One new CCNV support group, for former prisoners, met for the first time the week of March 1. It attracted 28 participants, said the group’s organizer Carol Fennelly, who is the director of Hope House, which sponsors programs for incarcerated feathers. Fennelly worked with Mitch Snyder to establish the CCNV shelter and was a member of CCNV for 17 years. She served as shelter director from the time of Snyder’s death in 1990 (she is his widow) until 1994, and praised Bridge’s counseling initiative.
Bridge’s second area of concern has been security, the drugs-and-crime issue, and “getting the building cleans up.” Under current policy, selling drugs should result in immediately being barred from the shelter, and drug users should get into a treatment program or leave. “We try to get help for people first,” Bridges said. There is some urine testing. More extensive testing would be expensive, but “might be something to consider.”
However, said Paul Magno, “The word on the homeless grapevine is that CCNV has an entrenched problem with drugs and drug-related crime, one that has persisted in spite of very conscientious efforts to change it. When you work with homeless people you’re inevitably going to be dealing with some who use and traffic in drugs.”
While more treatment is one part of Bridges’ approach, beefed-up security is another. On March 2, Bridges arranged a meeting between CCNV security directors and officers of D.C. Protective Services, (which provides security agencies for city agencies), including Chief Plez Jenkins and Assistant Chief Arnold Bracy. As a result of the meeting, Protective Services will sit in on some of Second and D’s formal service provider meetings to exchange views, will try to create better coordination with the Metropolitan Police Department, and will try to get city funding for off-duty officers to work at CCNV.
Of these security proposals, Magno said: “Will they be working in the service of the guests, our homeless brothers and sisters, or protecting CCNV’s reputation? That has the potential to be perceived by homeless folks as working against them.”
In a third initiative, Bridges would like the shelter to be a better neighbor. “I would love for the city community and CCNV to embrace each other as a mutual learning experience,” she said. She has dispatched staff members to meet with businesses and government agencies in the neighborhood, and they have already talked to people at the Hyatt Hotel, the Department of Labor, and the U.S. Tax Court.
Bridges’ fund-raising efforts are in the initial stages, she said, but it’s “very important.” CCNV receives contributions from both foundations and individual donors, and these have to pay for all of the building’s routine operating expenses aside from city-funded case management.
In one of her more eyebrow-raising initiatives, Bridges has proposed to move to having a paid staff. CCNV workers, including Bridges herself, get room and board but are “not paid a dime,” as one worker put it. Bridges said the issue can affect motivation and performance: “Remember I come from a business background.”
Although she called it a “great idea,” Fennelly estimated the cost of paying CCNV workers would run to millions of dollars a year, a figure given to her by the city in the 1990s when the possibility of the city running the shelter was raised. Fennelly said that CCNV workers received a small stipend when she was with the organization.
However, in the wake of the March 5 board meeting, Bridges said the issue had been tabled: “We are not going to deal with it at this time.”
Bridges has two business degrees, including an M.A. in management, and her background includes working for the Internal Revenue Service in Nashville, where she was involved in IRS organizational issues and agency restructuring. She is divorced, with one grown daughter living in their hometown of Baton Rouge, and she has three grandchildren.
After 20 years in Nashville, her divorce and a dropped Ph.D. program prompted Bridges to leave. “I had just made a decision I needed to start over and do something different.” When D.C. job plans didn’t pan out, she found herself at CCNV in September 2002. “It wasn’t easy. I’d never lived in a shelter before.”
Bridges volunteered to be a desk monitor and chore monitor, became a staffer working 30 hours a week, and eventually codirected arts and education programs. Last fall she applied for the position of executive director. She described her style as “pretty open,” and said, “I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.” Her overall philosophy is positive: “The sky’s the limit.”
Said Fennelly, “[former director] Terri Bishop did a great job at stabilizing the finances and the system. I think Antoinette will take it to the next level in dealing with these systems and the spiritual issues in the building.”
