Black Horizons; 3516; Top Dog

This is Black Horizons, and I'm your host, Chris Moore. Welcome to the show. They played to sold out crowds on Broadway, and now you can have a chance to see the hit play by the first African -American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. And if you missed it on cue, he's the captain of conjugation, the virtuoso of verbs, he's grammar man, and on cue correspondent, Tony Caruso, visits this hometown hero. But before we get to any of that, are you a minority contractor, or would you like to be our next guest, or are working to make black contractors a viable resource here in Pittsburgh? Please welcome, President of the National Association of Minority Contractors, Black Contractors Association, Mr. Earl Brooks, and Executive Director, Ms. Linda Couts. Welcome to the program. Mr. Brooks, what's the biggest obstacle to becoming a black contractor these days? If I had to pick one... Oh, there are many innumerous. Oh, yes, sir. Okay, well... Pick one, and then we'll go from there. Access to working capital without a doubt. You can be the most proficient, efficient tradesman out there. But if you don't have the working

capital to actually operate a business, no different than any other business, you're basically a good technician with no means to grow. You mean to tell me that a bank will loan you 50 grand about a new car, or a big four -wheel SUV, or something like that, but not 50 grand about a piece of equipment so that you can make more money in your job? Said to say that's true, Chris, and being that I think the reason is because they call it collateral. Oh, okay. Which is another issue with minority contractors, because if they want to collateralize a loan, say, to secure working capital, where does the assets come from if you don't have anything? Oh, Ms. Kyle, how do we take care of those kinds of problems? I think through collaborations with both, you know, financial people, and also in mental approach, a relationship's relationships that are between majority and

minority contractors. Sometimes those relationships get abused. You know what I'm talking about when it comes to pass -throughs. They constructed two new stadiums here a couple of years ago with taxpayer dollars. And I remember Ms. Kathleen Kerr refused to take a pass -through, and she was ostracized. I recently heard from her, her business is closed. She's gone on to another line of work. This could be a difficult choice when you're hurting financially as a contractor. That's correct. Kathleen was one of our contractors. I have all the documentation. She took it all the way to the federal government and nobody would help. I think that the association is kind of gives a strength to contractors. There's safety in numbers. And when something like that starts to happen, we need to all pitch in and work together on it. What about the training to get into programs? I understand you all have a pre -apprenticeship program. Is that another obstacle? We have an award -winning pre -apprenticeship program that basically teaches

the union curriculum. That works whether or not they're going to work union or whether the students are going to go into non -union contracting. And Ms. Brooks, what else needs to be done to smooth the path to becoming a contractor and providing a living for people's family and hiring other people, too? Well, one thing that happened recently that I'm glad to, that happened. Our previous president, Ruth Byrd Smith, is now executive director of the NBE certification process for the county. So getting certified is a key. So I mean, going back to what you mentioned earlier, the pastures, that is a critical position to be in, to eliminate or reduce the amount of those pastures that hurt the legitimate minority contractor who's basically trying to make a living. There are a lot of hoops to jump through to get that NBE certification. I think it's going to be a little bit easier now with Ruth in that position. It,

you did have to put a lot of financial information together, including your mortgage and all those things. I think some of that's going to go away. Really, they're supposed to certify that the company is African -American or other minority owned, not so much the financial part of it. You know, black church is a building huge edifices and constructing housing for the parishioners and other kinds of things. Seems to me a natural fit that black contractors wouldn't be able to get in there. Have you made any inroads with black churches in terms of construction? I would say yes and no to that, Chris. Yes. We recently completed a project in Duquesne, Macedonia Baptist Church for Reverend Penn, who's the pastor. And one of the key issues, and the reason I say it was critical, is because I asked him, what made you choose us to do this project? Because I was already aware of the misconceptions or misperceptions of minority contractors. I mean, if they couldn't handle the load.

Exactly. And what he said to me basically was, when I was in the pulpit and looked out at my audience, I was spending their money. So why wouldn't I include their people? You said this is recently completed project? Yes, sir. Is the church happy with it? They love it. It had a grand opening November of 2003. Had a lot of government officials there, local officials, and it was beautiful. It was a packed house. So what's the next step? What needs to be done to complete this process of guaranteeing that minority contractors can get a share of the work that's out there? Well, for one thing, if people are uncomfortable about using minority contractors, their process is in place. Peace is a paper that you can look at, the guarantee that that person does have adequate employees. Bonded in all of that? It's bonded in technically proficient. We started something called the Alliance for the Development of Construction Contractors

about a year and a half ago. And that turns out to be a big help. It really is a blue ribbon seal of approval. They can call us and get contractors. And you all want more minority contractors to join your organization. You want more of those big contractors to be able to sublet to your members, right? Oh, without a doubt. For example, we try to lead through example, Chris. We have a particular joint venture with Soda Construction who's built hundreds of new housing around the Pittsburgh area. And what that does, it allows a company such as my own to self -perform certain aspects of the contract. But I have to tell you, I have seen construction. A lot of construction going on in the yield district in the black areas. I've seen the Hillman Cancer Center building I drive up center Avenue and look over that hole before it came up and see very few people that look like you and I. The problem with that, Chris, is working capital and control. Let me explain the difference between you have to do it quick. OK,

it's easy to give members of a community a job. It's not as easy to get control of the job. And that's the key. That's the key. All right, thank you both for being here. We appreciate it. Now to find out more about the National Association of Minority Contractors, Black Contractor Association, just give them a call at 412 -247 -4822. That's 412 -247 -4822. When on cue contributed to Tonya Caruso, first met her first superhero. She didn't know that he would help her sentence structure. If you missed it on cue, here's the story of grammar man. This is how you'll find Chuck Herring on most days, a regular guy in regular clothes, fooling around on the keyboard. But with the run down the hall and a few fast moves,

boy, does he change? It's time to re -educate. Right into a yellow cape and bright red tights, proudly transforming into the superhero, grammar man. Put your hands up, cause it's time for us. It's exciting. It's exciting, the kids. It's a real rap concert. I mean, it's a real life rap concert. I believe in authenticity. And I don't believe in doing anything halfway. Do the work here when you are glad. Do the work always you are said. Herring is a former elementary school teacher and current college professor. So how and why did he end up in a costume singing rhymes to kids? The answer dates back nearly three decades. If

you recognize this song, chances are you grew up in the 70s. What's their function? We spent our Saturday mornings back then watching cartoons and soaking up the lessons from Schoolhouse Rock. The short videos with songs taught us everything from English to math to history. Herring loved them and couldn't believe students today didn't feel the same way. I had the videotapes to the Schoolhouse Rock stuff and I took it into the school, into my school, and was all excited about showing it to the kids. And the kids were like, this is boring. We don't like this. And I was like, my feelings were really hurt. But then it dawned on me that, you know, to me it was cool because that was when I was a kid. But to them it was just old people's music. But Herring still believed the concept

of using music and rhymes for learning was a good one. So in the basement of his home in Monroeville, he began to write a few songs of his own. It's time to talk about nouns. People everywhere catch a hear the sound. The result, a litany of lessons, ranging from black history month to nouns, verbs, and adjectives. In a car or a bus or a big freight train, we can ride anywhere. The reason why I got started with this is I noticed that the children, they were able to sing all of the rap songs and things of that nature. And a lot of them didn't know certain parts of speech. So I decided to take what they know and put an educational spin to it and so they can learn that way. And learning they are. While grammarman is indeed the highlight of every assembly, the

kids first meet Mr. C and love every minute of it. This is Adelaide Stevenson Elementary School in the Plumboro School District. And these students in kindergarten through the third grade are having a tough time sitting still. The first song they sing together is about Harriet Tubman. We actually came up with a black history program titled Black History and not just a month. And we talked black history from the month of February and talked about it throughout the entire school year. And we made songs about people like Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Alex Haley, Chris Bassadix, and a host of others. Twice as big, twice as large, twice as massive, two times as large. Quasi and Fumi, the national president of the NAACP, heard about it, wrote us a really wonderful letter of support, actually Princeton University, invited us to

come and be the special guest speaker at their first ever rap music and education forum. So that was awesome. It also paved the way for other ideas, like songs about fire safety and sang no to drugs. Got it? Tell me you have a place no black ones. No, no. I liked all of it pretty much. And did you learn anything here today? Um... Yeah, I learned that you should cover your face when there's a fire. I'm just here to save the plastic, cold painting, grass going so, so white. Did you learn anything when you were here? Yeah, like no taking drugs and stuff. Here I am, the grammar man. Hey, you. What you going to do when you know that GM is coming after you? Of course, the biggest cheers come when grammar man arrives and begins to entertain the crowd. Give yourselves a round of applause.

What? Fights his archenemies, double negative and split infinitive by singing songs with students about nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more. If you want to see Mr. C .S. He's a Michael Romney. We're going to talk about a fight scene. What's it coming with all three of them there now? Yeah. They get excited. They get really excited. The kids get tons of the teachers or, you know, laughing and smiling. And it's really funny because, you know, a lot of people have a negative connotation about rap music. And when they hear, you know, some people they hear about what we're doing, they're like, we don't, you know, you could just see that they're a little bit larry. But once they get past that and they see how the kids, the children are reacting and they're actually listening to the lyrics of what we're saying. Then they're like, this is all right. And then all of a sudden, by the end, the teachers are into it. The students are into it. If you had to write the assembly based on the kids' reaction, what would you say? Well, if it was on a scale of 10, I'm sure I'd give it at least a 15. Where am I? What school is this?

All right. I'm going to write the lyrics. They just so enjoyed it. They were up dancing. They were clapping for the minute he walked in. They were attentive. While it's a treat for the children to be an assembly, they think it's a special event. They certainly are learning at the same time. And kids learn so many different ways. And today was a perfect example of how they can be active and singing and listening and learning at the same time. So that's why we bring in programs like this. The USA driving true. Let's hear it from all the red flags. The program is designed to include follow -up classroom materials, including worksheets that correlate with the 20 songs on the Gremmerman CD. And what started locally is now getting some national attention. In fact, shooting is underway for the pilot of a Gremmerman TV show. Everyone is really starting to pick up on it. And now we're getting calls for people to do one to show the day at their schools. And, you know, people wanting us to travel. Actually, I just got a call from New York City. They want us to come up to Long Island

to do Gremmerman concerts. So it's just like, wow, it's really growing. It's amazing. And this particular part of speech that we're looking for are persons, places, and things. We're looking for persons, places, and things. I thought it was cool. What did you like about it? I like the songs and stuff. Did you learn anything here? Mm -hmm. Like, um, pronouns and stuff. I learned, like, I watch it. I just have nouns, verbs, stuff like that. And so you had a good time? Oh, yeah, I had a really good time. And what do you think about this about using music and songs to teach kids? It's really cool. It's a good idea that it's a really good idea to wait for kids to learn. Click his

line, yeah. You You