Concerned Black Women Issue a Call:
Show Us the Money!
By Kent Ashworth
Hartford – Five Black women leaders concerned for their communities have called on Connecticut’s congressional delegation to investigate whether federal relief funds have reached the human beings and neighborhoods most desperate for support amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Warning of the “possible disparate, economic impact of COVID-19 on Black and Brown families and other marginalized groups throughout Connecticut,” the five fairness advocates October 26th put out a call to action in these words:
“We demand that our Congressional Representatives put in place immediate
policies and enforcement mechanisms to prohibit misspending, misappropriation, waste, and disparate distribution of COVID-19 federal funds intended for all Connecticut families.”
The five advocates who raised concerns last week (that COVID relief funds might be missing the mark) were: Connecticut Parents Union President Gwen Samuel, Filmmaker Bridgitte Prince of Veterans for Black Lives Matter; Co-Founder Antonia Edwards of the statewide anti-discrimination organization SoliDarity; Pastor Ernestine Holloway of Serenity House Ministries (an independent candidate for mayor of Meriden); and former Hartford City Councilwoman Cynthia Jennings.
A red light began blinking on this matter October 20th, when West Haven’s 116th Assembly District Rep. Michael DiMassa was arrested for allegedly stealing more than $600,000 in COVID-19 relief funds from that city. DiMassa is under FBI and federal Housing and Urban Development-Inspector General investigations, according to the CT U.S. Attorney’s Office. He has resigned his state assembly seat – and the governor last Friday set a new election for December 14th.
State officials reportedly are pursuing an independent audit of pandemic relief spending.
Attorney Jennings ticked off the questions requiring urgent congressional action: how many COVID relief dollars have been distributed; who got the funds; and how fairness is monitored – what measures are in place to ensure “racial and economic equality” in COVID relief aid.
Moreover, she said, the investigation must not overlook how COVID has affected the economic and social burdens already borne by Black and Brown families living on – or over – the edge of poverty.
In a call for a separate – but related – congressional investigation, President J. Stan McCauley of the Greater Hartford African American Alliance (GHAAA) took a surgical stance against discriminatory funding of contractors. In an open letter October 29th to the congressional delegation, the GHAAA sought scrutiny of how construction contracts over the past five years appear to have cheated Black and Brown contractors (see this separate letter on page xx).
Attorney Jennings addressed COVID relief funding and broader concerns about disinvestment in Black and Brown communities in her own letter to the Inquiring News, which follows.
Editor’s Note: The letter below was written to the Inquiring News by former City Councilwoman Cynthia Jennings. Following last week’s press conference calling for a congressional investigation into the distribution of COVID-19 monies in Black and Brown communities throughout the state, Attorney Jennings addressed the broader questions of disparate funding in these words:
There are millions of dollars that we would not know anything about if not for you covering it in your newspaper. The Hartford Enterprise Zone Business Association (HEZBA) is eligible and should absolutely receive COVID money. Who gets the word out better than you do to our community? Our Minority Contractors should be building houses for our families so that our children can grow up in a safe and secure environment, and we need to let OUR elected officials know that they are expected to deliver the money to our community.
In fact, they should know that every dime that goes into our community should be treated like alimony. Send it to us, don’t say anything to us, and you have nothing to do with how we spend it. We do not tell others how to spend their money in their communities, and we certainly do not spend it FOR them. Like I used to tell my children, last time I checked, I was grown!!! We had signs ready to go for the press conference in front of the FBI Building in New Haven, that said “Get your knee off my money.” We need to let our elected officials know that it is their job to secure all of our money, make sure it is sent to us, and to stop ANY diversion or repurposing of our money.
I am going to take a very severe approach to our community getting its fair share of tax dollars, particularly when we get a great deal more money coming into our community BECAUSE so many of us live in poverty and are truly suffering. Why should anyone think it is alright to spend our money? We need to drill down and let them know that we want every dime that is intended for us. It is not their money to spend, and that type of conversion is no longer going to be tolerated. If you want something of ours, ask for it, and better yet, don’t ask for it. Back away from our money, and from this day forward, we will have to be diligent about taking what is ours and using it any way we choose to use it as long as it is legal. This is NOT Tulsa!!!
A congressional investigation has to be conducted so that we can divide our money from theirs, have our money in our own account, and start to manage it in a way that will truly transform our community. Additionally, every grant that goes to any nonprofit will be looked at as well, and part of every grant must go to our community. When I first got on city council, in the first Council meeting I attended, the council approved $9 million in grants in one meeting. Every council meeting approved millions of dollars in grants to non-profit organizations that are supposed to be serving Hartford residents.
When we start looking at who is running those non-profits and who is getting thousands of jobs in the private sector, we need to call them out and make them accountable as well, or have those grants redirected or as they call it, repurposed for our needs. We need home ownership. We are plagued with environmental racism BECAUSE we do not have environmental and economic control of our community and what is sited in our community. Last but not least, we need to look at those banks, insurance companies, and other offices, that are occupying our city, and ask ourselves why out of thousands of employees do only hundreds come from Hartford? Why are we giving multi-million dollar companies tax breaks to stay here when they are not hiring Hartford residents? Every major corporation within the City of Hartford receives all kinds of tax breaks. When they get a tax break, Hartford residents are paying the taxes that they do not pay. These major corporations need to start today, hiring Hartford residents, and they need to keep hiring our people until their workforce is as diverse as our community. Additionally, they need to look at COVID monies, and every other state and federal dollar that should have come to our community and has not.
That state and federal money is our ALIMONY, that is our reparations, those are OUR TAX DOLLARS, and we want all of our money. No one should have the option of telling us what to do with our money. We can decide what the alternative is. They need to treat it like alimony: Send it to us, we will decide how it will be spent, and you just pay the bill. We have to insist that we are adults, and we are taxpayers, and if there is money coming to us, we want it.
This is going to have to be a community-wide consensus. Trust me, I know that we are not going to have any problem with our community members in the North End and throughout the city letting every single elected official know that WE WANT OUR JOBS, we want our MONEY, and we want the economic racism to STOP now!!! They can say anything that they want to say, but they better leave our kids alone. Not one more child should die in the streets. If anyone dies, it should be the adults in this community, fighting for what is ours and our legacy for our children. If our children knew that they were going to have a home to live in and inherit, if they knew that they were going to have the job of their choice; if they knew that they could go to college, and have a secure future, then they would not have a reason to opt out and act out, and drop out. They would know that they are loved and protected, and that their present and future is secure. They would know that their parents can take care of them, and that they do not have to fend for themselves – that is totally unfair and just generally MESSED UP.
We cannot allow our children to grow up like that. We should have our fair share of the use of Board of Education monies so that we can have choices for our children based on a good basic education, and we should never let thousands of people come into our city and take our jobs and our children’s jobs and go home to the suburbs and spend our money living large.
If people have to go to jail for stealing public money and giving it to their friends, that is because stealing public money is a CRIME!!! If people go to jail for stealing our votes for their families to be more comfortable, then so be it. The powers that be are going to have to stop stealing elections, stop stealing votes, and stop killing our community by repurposing our tax dollars into programs outside of our community. The Inquiring News has been saying this for so long!!! We need to seriously take control of our families, our communities, our cities, and then the world. We have the ability to do it, all we need is the WILL to get it done.
Never again should we allow someone to come into our community, take our jobs, take our money and give it to their friends, and treat us like we are the help. All this starts by bringing our elected officials into a room and reading the riot act to them: We need to let them know that as an elected official, your job is to deliver money and jobs to our community. Every day that you go to that capital, that is what you have been elected to do. Stop selling us out for a better appointment or committee so that you can pad your nest. If you cannot deliver to us, then we definitely do not need you. However, if you refuse to step down, then you better do your job until the entire community is served and comfortable with an economic and educational future, home ownership for all, and put our contractors to work, NOW.
If it takes another Congressional Investigation into what is happening to our contractors’ money, then so be it. We elect our congressional leaders to deliver the money to us as well, and if they don’t, then all they should be doing is conducting investigation after investigation, until we get our money, until our contractors get their money, and until our children are living in homes that they will inherit, and live in for the rest of their lives, while attending schools in their neighborhoods, where we, the taxpayers, tell them what we want our children to learn, where the teachers look like the children they serve, and where we regain respect and accountability in our homes and our communities and in our state.
If people that are elected do not perform, then they should resign. We should be looking at how much money comes into our communities, and our schools, and we should spend it ourselves. Believe me, we would not have the same type of programs that they think are okay for our children if we spent the money and set up the programs that mean something to our children. They want to be airline pilots, they want to be doctors, scientists, and so many other things that they are never going to be able to do unless we take back the reins.
This is our mission, and we need to spread this word and make sure that we get buy-in from our community, starting with getting our fair share of the COVID monies, so we can spend it on whatever we want to spend it on in our communities. The COVID monies support long term investment into our communities, and since that is the case, we want home ownership for all of our families that have children. We can invest COVID money into property for our families. We can buy houses for our families, pay off the mortgages, and the owners, our parents, can deal with taxes, utilities and any other bills once the mortgage is paid, and with proper training program programs in money management, our parents can maintain their bills and maintain their homes. We can put first time homeowners through a training program so that they can effectively manage their money and manage their property. ONE/CHANE put potential homeowners through a 30-week training program, and they have effectively managed their units to date. We can do this for our parents. We can have sweat equity programs so that they can assist in building the homes that they are going to live in. This is also what ONE/CHANE did, and many of those properties are beautiful and operational to this day.
Bridgitte Prince and I went last week to Westland Street to meet with Ralph Knighton, Al Gary and Abe Ford, to videotape the beautiful homes that they built almost five years ago. There are 14 two-family homes, many sold to pre-qualified owners, however five years later, they are sitting unsold, even though they had buyers. I am working on a documentary with filmmaker Bridgitte Prince on housing disparities in Hartford and we want to find out why CRDA did not see fit to put in the water lines from the houses to the street so that these Black developers who do BEAUTIFUL work, could get those houses sold and move those families in. We did videos of the luxury apartments next to the Yard Goats’ stadium to demonstrate how fast White Developers receive financing, tax breaks and land, and how these downtown developments with out-of-town developers seem to go up with lightning speed.
We are doing a documentary on what racism has done to Hartford, Connecticut, and what we need to do to correct the harm. This is in the wake of the Connecticut Legislature passing a bill and the Governor signing this bill, stating that “Racism is a Public Health Crisis.” We need to get our money for COVID, and any and every other (state and federal) dollar that has been earmarked for us, in order to create wealth in our community, and to secure our communities from adverse police action, and interference.
We need to have people’s jobs for profiling our children, profiling our community, and putting us in harm’s way in so doing. We can deal with this racism, and it won’t be pretty; however, as long as you keep your hands off of our children, off of our money, and off of our votes and elections, we are good.
We need to have a North End video town hall meeting and bring in our elected officials and have them report what money and jobs they have created in our town, and what resources they have had for our children and what is their plan to put our adults to work so they can support their children. If they don’t have a plan, we will GIVE them a plan!
We elect our officials to deliver to us, and nothing more. I could care less about their resumes. In fact, if they are taking committee chairmanships, and other benefits at the capital, then I really question what votes they threw in order to get what they got. We need to have their staffers report their position on EVERY vote that took place, every day, of every session. That way, we can know what it is that they are voting on, and whose agenda they are supporting.
Every single vote should be questioned as to the impact that it has on OUR community. I hope we can take some of these recommendations and come up with a way to transform our community, get our elected officials in line, and have them start delivering to us IMMEDIATELY. We may not get reparations; however, this is pretty close.
Cynthia R. Jennings, Esq.
OPEN LETTER TO CONNECTICUT CONGRESSIONAL MEMBERS
The Greater Hartford African American Alliance Calls for a Congressional Investigation
October 29, 2021
To the Honorable Members of the Connecticut Congressional Delegation: Dear Congressional Leader:
The Greater Hartford African American Alliance (“Alliance”) is demanding a Congressional Investigation into the huge economic inequities and wholesale economic exclusion of Minority Contractors in Connecticut.
The following list of concerns delineate why the Alliance is seeking a congressional investigation by our elected Connecticut Congressional Delegation.
Minority Business Enterprises (MBE) and Women Business Enterprises (WBE) are set up under the law as two enterprises that have the same or similar issues. The scheme of coupling WBEs and MBEs has undermined, devalued, and eroded the intent for which they were originally designed. As it now stands the scheme of coupling WBEs, and MBEs exacerbates harm against black and brown contractors by simply creating another venue for White contractors to economically benefit from federal, state, and local construction dollars.
When we refer to Minority Contractors, we are specifically referring to Black and Brown contractors. We consider “Minority” Contractors to be an offensive term, as it includes Women contractors, who are their own separate protected class, and are not ‘minorities’ at all. To many, these moments have felt like one step forward, two steps back.
This scheme to couple MBEs and WBEs has set up a competitive and unfair advantage to position White Women Owned Businesses to funnel monies into the already profitable White Construction Companies that are neither disadvantaged, nor for the most part, legitimate members of protective classes.
It is within this context that The Greater Hartford African American Alliance joins with Black and Brown Contractors in calling for a congressional investigation into how government aids and abets, the funneling of public monies into White, highly financed, and heavily bonded construction companies, often using White women who are counted as minorities, and allowed to take billions of dollars out of the hands of MBEs. This is done while Black and Brown construction companies face huge economic disparities, struggle to get bonding capacity, and continue to be robbed of resources by White female fronts.
Like Watergate, we need to do nothing more than to follow the money for all construction contracts over the past five years, and to look at the numbers of Black and Brown contractors that go to their graves, never benefiting from the laws that continue to be ignored relative to Minority Contractors.
The families of MBEs struggle and suffer under the weight of a system that continues to turn their heads to the injustices, inequities and inequalities built into the very laws that have been written to protect them.
We are calling for a CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION into the longstanding practice of diverting federally funded public dollars from MBEs into White construction companies that are anything BUT disadvantaged business enterprises. We would like the scope of this CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION to address specifically, the following issues:
1- Why Connecticut Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs) are not receiving their fair share of federal, state, and local contracts from public monies.
2- How much money has been diverted from MBEs over the last five years?
3- What is the economic impact on Minority Business Enterprises (MBEs) when they are coupled with Women Business Enterprises (WBEs)?
4- Does coupling of MBEs and WBEs create a scheme where monies can be funneled into the pockets of non-disadvantaged, White Contractors that are not Disadvantaged Business Enterprises?
5- How much money has been funneled into White Contractors through White, Women Business Enterprises (WBEs) over the last five years?
6- What can be done to IMMEDIATELY provide bonding opportunities for Connecticut MBEs?
7- What can be done to IMMEDIATELY provide early payments to MBEs for construction work that has been completed, so that MBEs can meet their payroll requirements?
8- Is there legislation in place to guarantee early payments to MBE Contractors so that they can make payroll?
9- Are MBEs adversely impacted because timely payments to MBEs are routinely ignored? What is being done to enforce timely payment policies for MBEs?
10- What is the economic impact on MBEs when construction goes back to a General Contractor (GC) bid process compared to a Construction Manager (CM) bid process?
11- What is the actual dollar utilization of MBEs in publicly funded projects in Connecticut for the last five years, with and without counting WBEs?)
12- What is the current utilization of MBEs on state on-call lists (with and without counting WBEs) and what is the dollar value/amount required before a project must go out for a public bid?
13- What is the procedure or policy currently being utilized by White Contractors that allows state agencies to grant contracts without a public bid?
14- Is it a requirement that publicly funded projects must have a public open bid process?
15- What is the policy on Publicly funded projects relative to open bids? Is this policy routinely enforced, and if not, does failure to enforce this policy have an adverse economic impact on MBEs?
16- What is the enforcement mechanism and what are the penalties for contractors and agencies who do not comply with laws designed to protect MBEs?
17- Are towns and municipalities following the local business preference in their town and city ordinances for federally funded or partially federally funded projects?
18- Is the micro business preference policy a requirement in construction contracts?
19- Is there a practice of MBEs being named on bid day by prime contractors, while these same MBEs that were named on bid day, were not utilized to perform the work after the bid was won?
20- We would like our Connecticut Congressional delegation to investigate how tax dollars are spent by organizations funded to support, grow, and advocate for MBEs in construction.
21- We would like the following questions answered: Does funding of MBE advocacy organizations result in more enforcement of laws designed to protect MBEs? Do these organizations create more contracts and bids, or more bonding capacity for MBEs? Does the funding of these contractor advocates result in more money going into the pockets of MBEs?
22- Investigate union relationships with MBEs and whether union contracts benefit, harm or undermine MBEs?
CONCLUSION
Members of the Greater Hartford African American Alliance stand prepared to work with our Connecticut Congressional Delegation to assist in the development of the scope of the investigation into the above matters. Our goal is to have our Connecticut Congressional Delegation change the way that Black and Brown Contractors are treated in the State of Connecticut, and to put in place immediate policies and enforcement mechanisms that will prohibit the violation of Connecticut Contractor’s civil, human and economic rights under federal, state and local law.
Respectfully,
J. Stan McCauley, President
Greater Hartford African American Alliance
