WASHPO: St. Elizabeths construction project generates complaints over hiring
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Excerpt:
Last week more than 100 people, many of them men who had applied for work on the project, marched to the construction site to protest what they called a lack of job opportunities for city residents.
Marchers pulled on T-shirts saying “D.C. Jobs or Else,” and walked up Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE from Matthews Memorial Baptist Church to the gates of the former hospital on March 30, where they chanted and prayed with Donald M. Temple, a civil rights attorney.
Temple said the government’s efforts to improve the economy were not being directed at the poor. “They can stimulate Wall Street, they can stimulate the banks, but they can’t stimulate Washington, D.C.,” he said.
The Coast Guard building, being erected on the hillside overlooking Interstate 295 in Southeast Washington, is the first phase of a $3.4 billion consolidation of the Department of Homeland Security. It is the biggest federal construction project in the country, and Temple said it ought to raise the prospects of poor citizens living nearby in Anacostia, Congress Heights and other neighborhoods where unemployment topped 25 percent in January.
Excerpt:
By Jonathan O’Connell, Sunday, April , 5:19 PM
Discontent is growing about the hiring practices at a massive local construction project, the building of a new headquarters for the U.S. Coast Guard on the campus of St. Elizabeths hospital, despite numbers showing that hundreds of D.C. residents are working on the project.Last week more than 100 people, many of them men who had applied for work on the project, marched to the construction site to protest what they called a lack of job opportunities for city residents.
Marchers pulled on T-shirts saying “D.C. Jobs or Else,” and walked up Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE from Matthews Memorial Baptist Church to the gates of the former hospital on March 30, where they chanted and prayed with Donald M. Temple, a civil rights attorney.
Temple said the government’s efforts to improve the economy were not being directed at the poor. “They can stimulate Wall Street, they can stimulate the banks, but they can’t stimulate Washington, D.C.,” he said.
The Coast Guard building, being erected on the hillside overlooking Interstate 295 in Southeast Washington, is the first phase of a $3.4 billion consolidation of the Department of Homeland Security. It is the biggest federal construction project in the country, and Temple said it ought to raise the prospects of poor citizens living nearby in Anacostia, Congress Heights and other neighborhoods where unemployment topped 25 percent in January.