At 8 a.m. on a Saturday, five Black pastors and one white lawyer sat at the directors’ table in a West Grove church sanctuary. They listened to reports from a police commander and a representative of the State Attorney’s Office. A Congressional candidate showed up to explain what he’s doing.
This was the January meeting of the Coconut Grove Ministerial Alliance, a center of power that often attracts politicians’ seeking votes, such as Eileen Higgins when she was running for mayor.
The lawyer is Anthony Alfieri, founder and director of the University of Miami School of Law’s Center for Ethics and Public Service, now celebrating its 30th year helping the poor and disadvantaged while providing training for students and civic leaders.
In the West Grove, the Center and the pro bono lawyers it enlists have worked with local residents to win some huge battles over the years, including the Trolley Garage Campaign, in which it fought in the courts and through government agencies to stop Coral Gables’ plan to build a large garage in the historically segregated neighborhood.
“It is unprecedented for a university and its law school to establish and sustain a collaborative, long-term relationship with a historic community of this importance,” Alfieri wrote in an email to the Spotlight.
Lawyers connected with the Center are now involved in what is perhaps their toughest fight yet — alleging that the city has violated fair housing standards by upzoning a stretch of Grand Avenue in a way that amounts to discrimination, driving out long-time residents in favor of new upscale developments.
The West Grove complainants have lost one major ruling but the fight continues.
Alfieri is not one to seek the spotlight. He said in an email he preferred an article “more broadly about the Center. … its community partners and its local civil rights campaigns.”
Still, among West Grove leaders, it’s clear how important he’s been personally to the area’s activities over the decades:
“He’s a go-getter,” said Christopher Hudson, secretary of the Ministerial Alliance. “Once he gets a handle on something he doesn’t let go.”
“He’s made a big difference,” said Clarice Cooper, president of the Coconut Grove Village West Homeowners and Tenants Association (HOATA). “He’s really been instrumental in putting us in touch with professionals to help work on our problems.”
Apostle John H. Chambers, founder of Believers of Authority Ministries, put it this way: “As short as he is, he’s taller than a giraffe in this community.”
Alfieri dodged a question when asked his height: “Prefer to avoid the specific height reference as it might be a distraction from the Center’s work and our community partners’ objectives.”
Ivy League trained (BA from Brown, law degree from Columbia), Alfieri has long focused on issues involving the poor. As an undergraduate, he worked for Rhode Island Legal Services as a community organizer for economic development and housing. He started his legal career with three years in the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx. In 1991 he joined the Miami faculty, and five years later he founded the Center.
The Center’s mission is “to educate law students to serve their communities as citizen lawyers.” Its staff of four trains 20 to 30 law and undergraduate students each academic year, as well as some Brown University undergraduate student interns during the summer. Their activities are in addition to their regular class work. Altogether, the Center has trained more than 1,400 students and engaged with 51,000 civic leaders in various programs and campaigns.
About 20 years ago, the Center began focusing on the West Grove. It was fairly close to campus, and it wasn’t getting much attention.
“The faith-based and neighborhood organizations of Coconut Grove Village West were at the forefront of the early civil rights movement in Miami, and the needs of the community were neglected by local government and underserved by the nonprofit sector,” Alfieri said in an emailed comment.
(The law professor, wanting to make certain his statements for this article were precise, insisted on submitting all quotations in writing.)
Much of the Center’s work has been through the churches and their Ministerial Alliance. Alfieri said his civil rights and anti-poverty work are “faith-driven,” and the churches are excellent action-based centers.
“Civil rights movements and many other social justice movements often start and gain momentum in faith communities,” Alfieri wrote. “Churches are safe gathering places where people can organize, share ideas, and mobilize for change.”
GRACE (Grove Rights and Community Equity) and HOATA have also frequently partnered with the Center.
Perhaps the battle that has gotten the most publicity was sparked by the decision of upscale Coral Gables to put a trolley garage in West Grove.
Cooper was a leader in organizing local opposition, which began in 2012.
“They wanted to put this in a mostly residential neighborhood. It was outrageous, but we were pretty much just sitting around and talking” until Alfieri “put us in touch with professionals” who worked pro bono, she said.
The four-year battle involved both the courts and complaints to state and federal agencies before the Gables gave up. The 10,000-square-foot garage, which was built but never used, still stands at the corner of Douglas Road and Oak Avenue.
The Center’s lawyers also joined residents in a second battle against Coral Gables, which didn’t want to provide trolley service to the predominantly black East Gables area. The Gables lost that one too.
Center lawyers have also won legal fights over gerrymandering and other voting issues.
One still on-going campaign concerns Old Smokey, the West Grove incinerator that was demolished more than a half-century ago. University of Miami researchers discovered a cluster of cancer cases in the neighborhood in 2013, fueling health concerns.
The Center helped civic leaders get contamination cleaned up in many parks, but basic remediation work still needs to be done.
READ MORE: Natives of historically Black West Grove demand action for 'Old Smokey' soil contamination
Almost all of these local campaigns have become case studies for the nation’s lawyers, thanks to Alfieri writing articles in law journals, including Harvard’s and Yale’s.
For West Grove groups, the current focus is on affordable housing. The city rezoned a stretch of Grand Avenue in 2010 to encourage development, which resulted in investors buying up lots and tearing down existing apartment buildings.
These decisions “have resulted in the mass eviction and displacement of hundreds of Coconut Grove Village West residents, resulted in the forced out-migration of residents into more hyper-segregated communities,” Alfieri wrote, “and resulted in the cultural erasure and destruction of the Coconut Grove Village West community.”
Reynold Martin, chairman of GRACE, said that the irony is that decades ago, “they didn’t have much use for the land, but needed a place to house their laborers. Now they need the land but no longer the laborers, and they’re forcing them out.” He added that the biggest value of the Center has been finding lawyers to work on cases.
In July 2023, Center lawyers worked with GRACE, the Ministerial Alliance and HOATA to file a complaint with U.S. Housing and Urban Development under the Fair Housing Act. In September 2025, HUD rejected the complaint by ruling the complainants didn’t have standing to bring the action.
At the Ministerial Alliance meeting in January, the Center’s Emily Balter told the board that the Center and complainants are now considering “next steps.”
One step is in state court, in which the West Grove groups have filed a demand that the city release memos about fair housing in the West Grove it has failed to provide under a public records request.
A major challenge is that the Trump Administration has slashed HUD staff and is consistently rejecting Fair Housing complaints, according to a New York Times report.
That’s not deterring Alfieri: “The Fair Housing Act stands as a matter of law, and the federal government has a duty to enforce it.” He pointed out that the trolley campaign took several legal actions over four years and he has no plans to give up on the housing issue.
Balter, who is the Center’s practitioner-in-residence, said in an email: “We are working with a national network of academics and advocates facing similar issues and hope to be part of the solution.”
Several West Grove leaders hope that the new administration of Mayor Eileen Higgins might make changes to help the area’s housing problems. Affordable housing has been a key issue for her, and during her campaign, she regularly attended the meetings of the Ministerial Alliance. Last spring, she spoke to the Center’s students.
“We are looking forward to sitting down with the new mayor and staff,” said Martin. He has hopes for improved relations with City Hall. “It can’t be worse.”
As of now, West Grove leaders have yet to meet with Higgins or her staff.
“The incoming Higgins administration could and should engage the Village West community,” Alfieri wrote in an email, “and similarly situated communities across the city, in a dialogue about fair and affordable housing remedies, including the well-documented claims set forth in the HUD complaint.”
The situation is getting dire, community leaders say.
Carolyn Donaldson, GRACE vice-chair, said that not only are residences being torn down, but people who remain struggle with mounting issues, such as rising taxes.
“There are a lot of moving pieces and they’re moving at an extremely accelerated rate,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Center’s other work continues. One initiative has been the Freedom School at the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church on Douglas Road.
Offering its third year of K-12 classes this summer, the school integrates Black history and cultural awareness with material promoting literacy and civic engagement. The church has received a city grant of about $350,000 to build a new classroom wing.
Donaldson, the church’s financial officer, said Kesha Merritt, the Center’s senior program director, and Anaise Boucher-Browning, the Center’s program coordinator, have been key in developing and teaching the school’s program.
A “hub of information” has been created for “others to look at replicating our program,” Donaldson said.
Another Center effort just getting under way is the Good Government Project, “to inform and support our community partners and, equally, to hold elected officials accountable for their campaign promises, especially when those promises are broken,” Alfieri wrote.
Alfieri is 66. Does he have plans to retire? “When the work is done,” he responded.
Which means not anytime soon.
Spotlight Editor Don Finefrock contributed to this report.
This story was originally published in the Coconut Grove Spotlight, a WLRN News partner.
