Dan Ryan reconstruction issues...

According to the Chicago Defender, some black alderman are on the war path with regards to the lack of contracts or jobs for blacks. Check this out...

Although the project runs through the heart of Chicago’s Black communities, Hispanics have more jobs on the project than African Americans; fewer than 2 percent of the firms working on the project are Black-owned; and the Illinois Department of Transportation failed to make infrastructure improvements to wards where highway traffic has been rerouted.

The article mostly talks about how IDOT Secretary Tim Martin lied about the impact of Ryan reconstruction on those communities affected by the Dan Ryan reconstruction. Also the issue is not of inconvience, the south side alderman contend that their communities have been locked out of working on the project. This is what 20th ward alderman Arenda Troutman said...

“This was a half-cocked proposal and an unorganized, ill advised effort,” Troutman said. “It was a great idea, but shouldn’t we have some community input?”

And here's something else that strikes me...

Troutman, whose ward runs alongside the expressway, asked Martin why so few Blacks are working on the $600 million project.

Martin told her that trade unions rejected his proposals to buy back members’ dues that were in arrears and to target certain zip codes for union membership.

“That really frustrates me,” Troutman said. “Historically we’ve been shut out and we’re still shut out of the unions.”

Now this bothers me. Of course Martin's chief of staff Clayton Harris has this to say about Ald. Troutman's charge that black contractors have been kept from profiting from this project...

“There are no Black road building contractors working on the Dan Ryan. Blacks have no more than 2 percent of the Dan Ryan or the Kingery (Expressway reconstruction) project,” she said.

Harris said few Black companies were available with the ability to take on a project of this magnitude.

“We can encourage a Walsh (Construction) to partner with someone, but we cannot force them,” Harris said.

I don't think I like this quote by Ald. Troutman. It's an outlandish suggest to me that she makes of these unemployed by tradesman...

Though there are about 200,000 construction jobs in Chicago, there could be as many as 10,000 unemployed Black people in construction trades in the city who want to work on projects in their own backyards. Instead, those people are left to suffer through and commit street crime, Troutman said.

Ouch. I can agree that IDOT may need to do a better job of getting black contractors onto this project but I think an umemployed black person in the construction trade should be insulted by the alderman's comment.