Anibal (Sonny) was elected 1st Vice President in 2019. He has held this position for 3 years and was re-elected in 2022. Sonny began his long postal and Union carrier in 1981. In 1998 Sonny was elected as Shop Steward by a group of his fellow carriers. As a Steward, Sonny strived to become the leader his fellow carriers needed and pushed himself to learn everything he could to assist them. In 2005, Sonny graduated the 1st NALC Leadership Academy. He continued in the leadership path by being appointed to the route adjustment team, Customer Connect and becoming a Formal step A representative that same year. In 2006, Branch 36 carriers banded together and elected him as the Director of Compensation. Anibal never stopped working for the letter carriers of Branch 36. In 2022, Anibal was re-elected to the position of 1st Vice President a position he has held with pride and will continue to do so.

A WORTHY CAUSE

The National Association of Letter Carriers has a long tradition of providing services to the public other than simply delivering mail. Through the Carrier Alert Program, they keep a watchful eye on the elderly customers of their respective routes; they have rescued people from fires and have had fundraisers for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. And once a year, carriers across this nation pick up non-perishable food donations from their customers that are then delivered to a local food bank.
On May 11th, I had the honor of participating in the NALC’s 31st Annual Food Drive kickoff. The event was held at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger on West 86th street. Besides myself, representing Vincent R Sombrotto, Branch 36, Executive V.P. Pascual Ortiz and the food drive coordinators, Shirtedra Thomas and Charles Kinard joined me. Also in attendance were Ms. Tiffany Brown from the mayor’s office and Ms. Ellen Granger from City Harvest. A proclamation, from Mayor Adams, acknowledging the importance of the food drive and the efforts of the letter carriers in New York on making it a success was read by Charles and Tiffany.
The idea of a national food drive began in 1991 during a discussion between the then president of the NALC, Vincent R Sombrotto, Joseph Velasquez, Director of the AFL-CIO Community Services and the Postmaster General Anthony Frank. In October of that year, the first drive was held in 10 cities. It was so successful that it was decided to make it a nation-wide effort. Beginning May 15, 1993, a goal was set to have at least one branch in each of the 50 states participate in the drive. As a result, more than 11 million pounds of food was collected. It was also decided to designate the second Saturday in May of every subsequent year the NALC National Food Drive Day. Since 1993 there have been over 1.9 billion pounds of food collected that were delivered to community food pantries. Last year alone, over 35.6 million pounds of food were collected from customer donations.
In Branch 36, we encourage carriers to purchase Food Drive t-shirts as well as collecting the donated food from customers. The proceeds of the t-shirt sales are given to City Harvest who in turn purchases food. I’m optimistic that we will surpass the amount collected in 2023. The Branch thanks all those who bought t-shirts and who participated in this year’s food drive in any capacity; helping those in need is its own reward.