Job lock-outs plus gentrification equals genocide

His magazine is the first of its kind – a Black-owned and operated publication that focuses on showcasing Black contractors and business owners. “There is so much negative media about Bayview Hunters Point and so much untapped talent,” he says. “There is racism for Black contractors. Business is definitely warfare.”

Muhammad is a UC Berkeley graduate who studied business and mathematics. Still, he fell back on his construction experience to start his own business.

Many Hunters Point residents are looking to become entrepreneurs through training in the construction trades. Unfortunately, after getting their contractors’ licenses, many find that the doors that so readily open to their white counterparts are closed to them.

The City and County of San Francisco pays billions of our tax dollars to private contractors to come into our communities and “revitalize” them. Residents in our communities, however, aren’t given priority when it comes to contracts or jobs on these projects.

Just this weekend, I saw a sign at a construction site in the Fillmore that read, “No Onsite Hiring … Call Ella Hill Hutch (Community Center).” Many believe that despite the positive press EHH has been getting, the organization is a twin of Bayview Hunters Point’s Young Community Developers. If it were not so and participants had in fact been given training and effective job placement, why then is the unemployment rate in these communities not declining?

Young Black men, who by any account are just as talented – if not more so – than their white and Asian neighbors in the Sunset or Nob Hill, continue to have the lowest employment rate and the highest mortality rate in the city. How can that be so?

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