In an exclusive interview last week for the Black News and Opinion Site theGrioButtigieg said the president’s $ 2 trillion job and infrastructure plan focuses on roads and infrastructure in black communities, as these are the very communities that transportation planning is targeting to exclude from desirable areas. “Often times this wasn’t just an act of neglect. Often this was a conscious decision, ”said Buttigieg. “Racism is physically built into some of our highways, and so the employment plan is specifically committed to reconnecting some of the communities that have been divided by those dollars.”
Gaetz’s response was a tweet on Saturday claiming the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, did not know what he was talking about despite numerous sources supporting his claim. “Mayor Pete is aware that he didn’t get any black votes in the 2020 primary. Now highways are racist.” Gaetz tweeted. He added an answer to his question on Sunday: “Highways are not racist.” Yes, actually they are.
Businessman Chris Ledford highlighted an example on Twitter in architect Robert Moses, who was trending for much of the day on Sunday. He “famously built the bridges over the park paths that connect New York City to Long Island’s beaches, which are too low for city buses to run underneath so blacks would have a hard time getting to them,” Ledford said.
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If you knew anything about Mayor Daley and the Dan Ryan Expressway; St. Louis / Hwy. 40 & Mill Creek; Robert Moses & NYC; or any # other examples, you wouldn’t tweet things like that. https://t.co/o8l4Onw6Rx
– Jeff Smith (@JeffSmithMO) April 11, 2021
Atlanta journalist Brendan Keefe added in a thread on Twitter that learning about Moses inspired him to become a journalist. “Reading Caros over 1,300 pages, describing the methodical, brutalist transformation of NYC (New York City and LI (Long Island) by Robert Moses. 1975 The Power Broker is not a” bright fantasy “about” racist highways “). It’s a documented, devastating story, “Keefe tweeted.
He said Moses created the South Bronx by “plowing the Cross Bronx Expressway through established neighborhoods” and tried to do the same in Greenwich Village. “Mayors huddled in his presence because he couldn’t get fired from his many jobs and had his own massive sources of income as chairman of the TriBorough Bridge Authority,” Keefe tweeted.
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Let me further explain that at the age of 14 I decided to become a journalist. I was a news photographer, reporter, television presenter. Later in my career I was inspired to become an investigator, hold those in power accountable, expose systemic and institutional errors.
– Brendan Keefe (@BrendanKeefe) April 11, 2021
Filmmaker King Williams said on a Twitter thread that Moses, known as “The Power Broker,” held 12 different government titles at the same time. “He was:
1) racist,
2) NYC entered into several questionable public-private partnerships,
3) often bumped into activists,
4) Highways intentionally used to destroy NYC, especially “Negro” communities,
5) is also a modern archetype of the “pro-business” politician, “Williams tweeted.
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With the stroke of a pen, Robert Moses helped create the havoc that plagued the South Bronx for GENERATIONS by literally building an expressway through it. https://t.co/YLlNOyRZxs
– Joel Leon. (@JoelakaMaG) April 11, 2021
In keeping with the racist story, Gaetz did not even have the decency to pay tribute to the black journalist he interviewed Buttigieg gave him the timely distraction. Gaetz Instead, his tweet included a link to an article by the Washington Examiner describing Buttigieg’s interview with journalist April Ryan.
In the interview, Ryan asked Buttigieg where he saw dollars for construction under President Joe Biden’s employment plan. The Secretary of Transportation stated that billions of dollars earmarked for construction would be shared fairly. “Sometimes you hear people say we tried to find a black company to bid on this project, but they just weren’t out there,” Buttigieg said theGrio. “Well, if that’s actually true, we need to take responsibility for why they’re not out there and build more companies that might exist but haven’t been certified.
“Maybe they weren’t big enough to get the binding or go through those tires to even get a shot. You are bidding on a federal project. We have to work on that. “
Biden’s plan calls for $ 20 billion to “reconnect” isolated communities overlooked by transportation projects and $ 40 billion to upgrade research infrastructure, half of which is for historically black colleges and universities and other institutions in the service reserved by minorities.
The plan even identifies a specific black community –Amy Stelly’s tremé Neighborhood in New Orleans – which is cut straight through by a freeway, The Washington Post reported. “Nobody thinks you can get rid of a freeway,” she said of the post. Biden’s plan does. “I’m down to earth,” she said.
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