Rodney Williams Is Ready For Kamala

Vice-President Kamala Harris is expected to hang out with senators, members of Congress, and assorted other politicians and pre-schoolers when she visits New Haven Friday.

If she makes time to pop in on Rodney Williams’s Dixwell Plaza office, she may leave town with a different message — and ideas for making the post-pandemic recovery work at the grassroots.

Harris’ is touring the country to pump the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill the Biden-Harris administration signed into law this month.

There’s no reason to believe that Harris’s schedule will include a visit to Williams’ Green Elm Construction office in Dixwell Plaza. Her official itinerary doesn’t mention it (though it does contain some secret gaps).

She might want to consider adding it to her schedule.

At least based on what Williams — an advocate for Black-owned contractors and prodigious mask-distributor in the Black community during Covid-19— would tell her.

In an interview Thursday on WNHH FM, Williams laid out how that visit would go.

Stop 1: An Office Chat

Williams would begin by offering Harris, the nation’s first Black, first Asian-American and first female vice-president, some warm water (apparently that’s now a trend) and chatting inside the office.

“I would [tell] her: I’m proud of the fact that she’s where she at,” Williams said.

Then he would tell her: ​“She needs to make it easier for people to come up.”

Williams would make the case that in addition to the $1.9 trillion stimulus, she focus on how the administration’s next jumbo package — a proposed $3 trillion infrastructure bill — might or might not benefit people of color.

The same way that initial Covid aid failed to flow into Black and brown communities, money targeted for road and bridge and transit work is also destined to bypass the communities that need it most, because of structural barriers, Williams argued. Beginning with: Black contractors and laborers tend not to have access to contracts or training on that work.

“That work has been going on in our state for years,” Williams observed. ​“On the highway, the only thing black you see is the tar.”

Williams noted how an opportunity he got to learn how to run an excavator and remove trees on the 201 Munson St. project enabled him to take on new other jobs. He recommended that the Biden administration seek to front-load programs to train laborers and prepare contractors for the upcoming infrastructure work. ​“That work has been going on in our state for years. We know the work’s coming. It’s going to take a while for the bill to pass. It’s going to take a while for the money to flow. Why are they not talking about training the workforce for this extra work?”

Stop 2: Dixwell Plaza

After they’ve sipped their water, Williams would then take Harris outside to look at Dixwell Plaza.

The crumbling commercial strip in the heart of New haven’s oldest Black neighborhood is poised for a $200 million reconstruction as a mixed housing-office-retail-cultural hub.

Williams noted that the developer, ConnCORP, is run by Black New Haveners with decades of relationships in town, and has a stated commitment to creating opportunities for local people. As a result, Black contractors and laborers will be on that job.

The takeaway for the Biden-Harris administration: Give preference on government-aided development to builders with a track record of hiring and helping the minority community.

Stop 3: The Q House

Williams would then lead Harris across the street to where the new Dixwell Community ​“Q” House is under construction.

Williams was involved in successful efforts to hire more Black and brown subcontractors and laborers on that job.

He would tell Harris about how the experience taught him about one obstacle to carrying out affirmative action construction hiring: An across-the-board mandate of hiring, say 10 percent people of color on a big job, ignores the fact that Black contractors are more likely to land some parts of the work rather than others. For instance, it’s harder to find subcontractors to put up the steel than to find subcontractors to put in the windows.

So if the general contractor falls below 10 percent of the former, it should have to compensate by meeting a higher percentage on the latter, Williams argued.

He also recommended that penalties for failing to meet minority-hiring goals be increased to more than ​“the cost of doing business,” and go toward a fund to train people of color for future jobs.

Stop 4: Visels

Finally, Williams would lead Harris to Newhallville, the neighborhood where he grew up. He’d take her to Visels Pharmacy, which has served the neighborhood for over a century.

Why Visels?

Because the family that owns it is white. And has always hired from the community.

The takeaway: ​“Because to me, it ain’t always about Black. I like to give credit to people that ain’t Black that help Black people,” Williams said. ​“They do exist.”

Click on the above video to watch the full interview with Rodney Williams on WNHH FM.

And click on the above video to watch community organizer and retired cop and Ward 28 alder candidate Shafiq Abdussabur’s separate interview Thursday on WNHH FM. He, too, is ready in case Kamala Harris swings by the Black community Friday: Abdussabur said he’d take her on a walk along Winchester Avenue to see how within blocks the city sees both abject poverty and luxury housing, and make a pitch for the Biden administration to propose sending New Haven a minimum of $50 million a year to compensate for the revenue (and poverty-fighting ability) lost due to Yale University’s tax-exempt status.