IDOT Signs $2M HCPTP Agreement with SIUE SWIC and MEBCO in 2008 but breaks promise.

 The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) announced a partnership with SIUE, Southwestern Illinois College and Metro-East Black Contractors Organization (MEBCO) in 2008 to help minorities achieve employment in local highway construction projects. The joint venture cost $2 million.

There are over 170 graduates of the construction program established by MEBCO and IDOT under the MOU, who are all trained-having obtained multiple certificates for various construction work-and who are prepared and eager to work to feed their families and contribute to the community.
IDOT has made no attempt to ensure that these 170 graduates are employed on IDOT projects because of the resistance and pressure from the unions and IDOT caving in to their discrimination.

Program graduate Tiama Dent (above) is among the graduates looking for work, She said “We worked our butts off. We want the same opportunity that they have.”

"Tiama Dent, a single mother of two, and a graduate of the Metro-East Black Contractors Organization training program, said she doesn't want government handouts such as food stamps and a Medicaid card.

Instead, she said she wants to work for what she gets and that's why she is willing to put her body in harms way to shut down the $749 million Mississippi River bridge project.

Dent, along with her fellow graduates, some local ministers and community activists want to halt construction if the Illinois Department of Transportation does not put more black people to work on the project.

Dent, flanked by East St. Louis City Manager Deletra Hudson, Alorton Mayor Randy McCallum, and pastors from across the metro-east, told reporters Friday she had a past that she wasn't proud of, but because of Metro-East Black Contractors Organization, she now has the education and training to be an apprentice under a journeyman." Courtesy of Carolyn Smith, Belleville News Democrat, 7/30/2011

IDOT and the white-controlled unions hire workers from outside East St. Louis while Tiama Dent is skilled and can't get a job at the Mississippi Bridge Project to feed her family, pay taxes, and support her community in East St. Louis. Ironically Ms. Dent was trained through the joint venture program IDOT put in place in 2008. Broken promises, lies, racism, that's what IDOT is all about.

The Metro East black community has vowed to bring IDOT to its knees if it doesn't give African Americans in these communities jobs and contracts.

"We will use litigation, protest, and blogging to fight and overwhelm IDOT", said Eric Vickers, the MEBCO counsel.