Crews Control
Bobby Green’s SUV offers high clearance and excellent visibility—the better to spy on companies that spurn black workers.
Cover Story
Bobby Green bursts into his small office with a cell phone, as usual, parked at his right ear.
“What are you doing promoting that motherfucking company?” he asks. “What are you doing fucking with my goddamn company?...Tell me why you’re trying to knock a brother out.”
Green listens. A tinny male voice on the other end of the line can be faintly heard across the room—tones of strained, deliberate calm.
“Why shouldn’t I use profanity with you?” The screech is taking over—in the small office, the sheer force and volume of the voice are almost physical, a nice pairing with Green’s 6-foot-2, 350-pound frame. “That’s a soul brother, man.”
Tirades featuring such language spill easily from Green, 39, who is the D.C. chapter head of the National Association of Minority Contractors (NAMC), a 35-year-old national nonprofit that promotes the interests of mostly small and midsize minority contractors—especially black ones—in the construction trades. The office is located in a small building on a leafy street off Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. The chapter has approximately 65 members.
The very notion of minority contracting in the District summons a history of rhetorical emptiness and substantive failures. For decades, D.C. officials and activists have lamented the absence of disadvantaged D.C. residents on construction job sites across the District.According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, the D.C. unemployment rate for construction trades was 11.6 percent in 2002. ... Continued 
Issue of May. 14 - 20, 2004
News and Features
- Crews Control
Cover Story - Dr. Gridwalk
Feature - Green Space
The City - Price Pick of the Week
The City - Panning for Lead
Nimby Tribunal - Booze Hounded
The Mail - A Friend in Need
The Mail - Party Line
The Mail - Do Unto Others
The Mail - Corrections
Correction
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Cheap Seats - Veterans’ Affairs
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City Desk - Director's Cut
Loose Lips
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Young & Hungry
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Film Review - Sucking and Fucking
Film Review - Troy
Film Review - Godzilla
Film Review - Word Wars
Film Review - Divan
Film Review - Sole Food
Talking Pictures
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- Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Music Review - Some Wilderness
Music Review - The Other Shoegaze Drops
Music Review
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- Oy, Gay...
Theater Review
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- Into the Light
Arts - Cell Shock
Artifacts - Meditation Nation
Artifacts - Ample Consideration
Books - Better In Black And White
Show & Tell
City Lights
This week's best in Arts and Entertainment.
- Fang Film Fest
City Lights - Patrick Kiger
City Lights - Paul Elie
City Lights - Slovakia 001 and Postcards From Home
City Lights - Beauty in Service to Science: The Panoramas of Charles D. Walcott
City Lights - The D.C. Contemporary Ballet Festival
City Lights - With All Deliberate Speed
City Lights - Proof
City Lights - Amy Stewart
City Lights - Fiery Furnaces
City Lights - 50 Foot Wave
City Lights - Richard Brown
City Lights - Blood Orgy of the She-Devils
City Lights - Steve Poltz
City Lights - Priscilla Wood
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