Author: Alfredo Casuso

AGC of California Joins with BuildOUT California

Written on January 13, 2021.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 13, 2021

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Holly Harper, AGC of California
(916) 496-0971 | harperh@agc-ca.org

David Perry, BuildOUT California
(415) 676-7007 / news@davidperry.com

AGC of California Joins with BuildOUT California: World’s First Industry Association Dedicated to Sustainable Growth of LGBTQ+ Owned and Certified Businesses

Partnership Shows Strong Commitment to LGBTQ+ Businesses and Entrepreneurs from Premiere Organization for Contracting & Construction Industry

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Associated General Contractors of California (AGC) and AGC Construction Education Foundation (www.agc-ca.org) have launched a landmark new partnership with BuildOUT California (www.buildoutcalifornia.org), the world’s first industry association dedicated to the sustainable growth of LGBTQ+ owned and certified businesses. The collaboration with California’s premiere organization representing the construction and contracting industry is the latest example of BuildOUT California’s rapid and respected impact on its member organizations. Founded in the middle of 2020, BuildOUT has quickly become recognized at all levels of the State government and by industry leaders across the board.

“We can do better as an industry to ensure diversity and inclusion are top of mind. A focus on our LGBTQ+ affiliated members is one way we can expand those efforts,” said Peter Tateishi, CEO, AGC, President, AGC CEF. “We are grateful to the AGC members who sit on our Diversity and Inclusion Task Force who are willing to share their diverse backgrounds and experiences and provide guidance on what is both appropriate and needed from AGC to make real and lasting impact in this area of industry.”

“To paraphrase incoming President Joe Biden, this is a terrific way to ‘build back better’,” said BuildOUT California’s President and Founder, Paul Pendergast. BuildOUT is an AGC Diversity and Inclusion Partner and AGC CEF Platinum Sponsor. “With so many infrastructure needs facing the Golden State, having access and input from our LGBTQ+ businesses with AGC is an incredible opportunity, and an incredible honor. This is truly a groundbreaking partnership, proof of our shared commitment to having all diverse California voices at the table.“

The partnership between AGC and BuildOUT California provides a vital component to the success of building a more resilient state and strengthening industry through diversity, equity, and inclusion on jobsites, in offices, and throughout our communities. AGC-CA is committed to acknowledging and promoting the importance of LGBTQ+ businesses and entrepreneurs to the fabric and overall success of our construction industry and state at large.

This is also a dedicated partnership to connect AGC members with LGBTQ+ owned/certified firms and allies, work together to actively promote construction careers to the diverse youth of California, and promote a zero-tolerance environment for discriminatory incidents on job sites across all industry workplaces.

“We strive to strengthen our efforts to promote a more diverse workforce and joint advocacy for economic equality at the local, state and national levels as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion,” Tateishi continued. “The inclusion and recognition of our LGBTQ+ businesses and allies is a crucial part of this.”

This partnership will focus on providing relevant, customized training opportunities to prepare LGBTQ+ businesses to effectively compete, bid, and perform on significant construction projects. AGC and BuildOUT California also will work together to leverage and raise necessary funding to develop, pilot, and grow programs related to all identified partnership outcomes and objectives.

“The collaboration between BuildOUT California and AGC of California is nothing short of fantastic,” stated Charles Jordy, CEO of Jordy Construction, an LGBTQ+ owned/certified General Construction firm based in Denver, Colorado that recently celebrated 60 years in business. We are looking to grow our footprint in California specifically because of this progress being made in terms of opening up real opportunities for LGBTQ+ contractors, architects, and engineers. Count Jordy Construction ‘in’ for taking part in this collaboration. It’s going to benefit many great firms, open opportunities and add tremendous resources and talent to the California design/construction industry.”

In June 2020, AGC leadership engaged in focused dialogue about opportunities to provide leadership and resources to AGC member companies on how to address issues of diversity and inclusion across their businesses and the construction industry at large. As a result, it became clear that members are seeking guidance on what is both appropriate and needed to make a true impact in this area. As a result, the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force was launched in 2020 and continues to be a guide in these efforts.

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About Associated General Contractors of California

Founded in 1920, the Associated General Contractors of California has been the premier organization of choice by experienced and next generation construction and contracting professionals. Through dedicated advocacy, education, career development and networking opportunities, AGC members receive top-tier access with state and local governments, while connecting with industry leaders through innovative programs and events. Visit www.agc-ca.org for more information.

About the Associated General Contractors of California Construction Education Foundation

The Associated General Contractors of California (AGC) Construction Education foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit benefit corporation dedicated to inspiring, developing, and equipping California’s current and future construction workforce. Through innovative workforce development programs funded by donations, the foundation provides AGC members access to resources, support and training needed to attract, develop, and retain California’s construction workforce.

About BuildOUT California

BuildOUT California is the world’s first LGBT Industry Association dedicated to the sustainable growth of LGBT owned & certified businesses, and our allies, in the fields of Architecture, Engineering, Construction Services, Real Estate Development, and Related Industries. BuildOUT California’s efforts are directed toward advocacy at the regional, statewide and national levels, providing relevant technical assistance & training and delivering connections that lead to measurable business growth. BuildOUT California’s 21 Founders represent over 620 years of experience in the A&E/Construction industries. For more information, visit www.buildoutcalifornia.org

Past is Prologue: Republican Chief Executives and Politically Engineered Public Violence

Written on January 8, 2021.

Past is Prologue: Republican Chief Executives
and Politically Engineered Public Violence

By John Murphy

On Wednesday, the Nation’s Chief Executive called for vigilante violence that ended in death. Then, he condoned the violence. It’s happened before. Trump’s role model: California Governor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph.

On Sunday, four days before Thanksgiving in 1933, a press-estimated mob of five to ten-thousand men, women, and children in what is now known as Silicon Valley, California savagely cheered the assault on the county jail in San Jose and the lynching of two local white men accused of the kidnapping and murder of the son of a wealthy retailor.

The horrific spectacle was documented by over 200 reporters, photographers, and newsreel cameramen because the lynching had been promoted repeatedly over the radio all day long throughout California. The following day, over 1.2 million newspapers were sold in the San Francisco Bay Area alone.

Factually documented in John D. Murphy’s American Incendiary Populism, the two accused men, a father of two and a man who had suffered a severe brain injury as a child who still slept in the same bedroom he grew up in, were innocent and victims of a Republican orchestrated political scheme predicated on the illusory promise of taking the nation back from gangsters who outran and outgunned law enforcement almost daily across America at the height of the Great Depression.

Along with a number of others from prominent American families, the infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh had been kidnapped nineteen months previously with no one yet apprehended for the crime.

The day previous to the lynching, Republican California Governor, James “Sunny Jim” Rolph refused a lawyer for one of the accused plea to call out the National Guard to manage the increasingly volatile mob outside the county jail and publicly promised to pardon anyone convicted of their lynching.

The day following the pardon promise, a body believed to be the kidnap victim was discovered in San Francisco Bay, and Governor Rolph, scheduled to attend a Western Governor’s Conference meeting in Boise, Idaho, canceled his trip to prevent Democrat Lieutenant Governor Frank Merriam from calling out the National Guard. Rolph also sent his new head of the California Highway Patrol to his neighbor’s ranch in the foothills of Santa Clara County to monitor the lynching on an open line to the county jail.

For weeks following the election of Joe Biden, President Trump, enabled by the Republican Party and Trump activist members, promoted an event in Washington, D.C., to protest— “Stop the Steal”—what he, other Republicans, and his supporters repeatedly characterized as a “rigged” election. Despite serial losses in federal courts throughout the United States because of the absence of any evidence of “rigging,” an estimated ten to twenty thousand rabid Trump supporters converged on Wednesday January 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. to hear him hold forth on how unnamed and unidentified Democrats stole the election from both him, and even more egregiously, them.

President Trump crowned his speech by announcing that he would lead the march to the capitol building at the other end of Constitution Avenue to protest the usually pro forma endorsement of the 50 state electoral votes for President of the United States.

Despite widespread promotion of the Trump speech and intention to converge on the capitol building both publicly and privately that ensued following the November election, the 2500 men and women of the capitol police force were almost fatally unprepared for the vicious assault on America’s enduring symbol of democracy.

President Trump had just publicly claimed that he would personally lead the “Stop the Steal” march to the capitol building, but perhaps due to the other-worldly return of the bone spurs that freed him from the draft during the Vietnam War, he retreated to enjoy what he had cynically fomented on a White House television set.

Just as in California in November 1933 where anonymous members of a ‘Vigilance Committee” and the citizenry had literally received “get-out-of-jail” cards by virtue of Governor Rolph’s pardon promise—reiterated the morning following the lynching—the thousands of rabid Trump supporters inoculated with a lie serum about the “rigged” presidential election, transmogrified from legitimate protestors into insurrectionists who literally forced all members of congress and their staff into terrified hiding within the labyrinthine corridors and passageways below ground in the capitol building.

Following the 1933 California lynching, transparently bogus investigations were conducted to determine those responsible, one such examination overseen by a man later to become the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren, who excluded both Governor Rolph and “Vigilance Committee” members from a coroner’s hearing that produced the verdict that no one could be held responsible for the lynching because no one could identify them.

The first casualty of war is truth and it is the responsibility of each American to relentlessly verify the claims of its political parties and politicians to ensure that no action is taken unjustified by fact. The enemies of the United States revel in our collective failure to comprehensively address the compelling issues of climate change, health care, infrastructure repair, renewal, and replacement, and education among others, because political partisanship generates billions of dollars for media companies, talk radio personalities, and politicians dedicated to implacable opposition regardless of objective facts.

American incendiary populism needs to be eradicated from public discourse or we will suffer the same fate of every powerful nation in history.

Murphy, is the author of “American Incendiary Populism”. He is a founder of the University of Phoenix authored an insider account of its formation and what transpired at the nation’s first accredited for-profit university after he resigned in 1997: “Mission Forsaken: The University of Phoenix Affair with Wall Street.”Subsequently, he wrote and produced the award-winning feature film, Valley of the Heart’s Delight based on the Republican politics of the 1933 San Jose lynching starring Pete Postlethwaite, Bruce McGill, and Gabriel Mann.

President-Elect Biden Nominates Isabel Guzman to head the US Small Business Administration

Written on January 8, 2021.

Media Contact: David Perry & Associates, Inc. / news@davidperry.com / (415) 676-7007

President-Elect Biden Nominates Isabel Guzman
to head the US Small Business Administration

7 January 2021 – San Francisco, CA: Isabel Guzman, a champion of BuildOUT California (www.buildoutcalifornia.org) and all of California’s small businesses, has been nominated to serve as the head of the United States Small Business Association (SBA). Ms. Guzman has been serving California these last several years as the Director of the Office of the Small Business Advocate of California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“Since Day One Isabel has been a champion of every small, minority, woman, Disabled Veteran and LGBTQ business in the State of California. As the Governor’s point person on Small Business, she has been a real ‘rock of Gibraltar’ during the COVID-19 Pandemic when small businesses have been overwhelmed by the economic impacts of this crisis,” stated Paul Pendergast, President and founder of BuildOUT California. “She will be an amazing advocate for all small businesses in the United States at one of the most challenging times in our Nation’s history.”

If confirmed, Ms. Guzman would lead an agency that is best known for its loan programs to provide small firms with capital. Many of the SBA’s loan programs rely on partnerships with banks and other financial institutions, which issue the loans and receive an SBA guarantee.

About BuildOUT California:

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS APPROVES MANNY YEKUTIEL AND FIONA HINZE TO SAN FRANCISCO MUNICIPAL TRANSPORTATION AGENCY BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Written on January 6, 2021.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Contact: Mayor’s Office of Communications, mayorspressoffice@sfgov.org

*** PRESS RELEASE ***

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS APPROVES MANNY YEKUTIEL AND FIONA HINZE TO SAN FRANCISCO MUNICIPAL TRANSPORTATION AGENCY BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Yekutiel and Hinze, nominated by Mayor Breed, will represent small business and disability rights communities and will complete the seven-member SFMTA Board of Directors

San Francisco, CA — The Board of Supervisors today approved Manny Yekutiel and Fiona Hinze to serve on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board of Directors. They were nominated to the SFMTA Board of Directors by Mayor London N. Breed and will fill the remaining two vacant seats on the seven-member Board.

“Manny and Fiona will each bring their unique perspectives and experience to help guide the SFMTA during this critical time for our transit system and our entire city, and I’m proud to have nominated them to serve on the Board of Directors,” said Mayor Breed. “Our transit system is a critical City service that our residents rely on and that our economy needs to recover. As we’re dealing with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and facing significant budget deficits, it’s important that we have a full Board at the SFMTA guiding policy. With Manny and Fiona on the Board, I’m confident that we’ll have the leadership we need to help the SFMTA as it does the hard work of keeping our transit system running while advancing our efforts to make transit more convenient, easy to use, and equitable.”

“I’m deeply grateful to the Board of Supervisors for their confirmation today and am honored to serve alongside my fellow nominee Fiona Hinze who has dedicated her life to access and advocacy,” said Manny Yekutiel. “On this board my goal is to serve as a bridge builder at a moment when our City and its public transportation system sits at a crossroads. I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to work.”

“I am excited to work with SFMTA and community members to ensure that San Francisco’s transit system and streetscape is accessible and equitable for all San Franciscans, including seniors and people with disabilities,” said Fiona Hinze.

Mayor Breed nominated Manny Yekutiel to the SFMTA Board of Directors in October 2020. Yekutiel is the owner of Manny’s, a civic gathering space featuring a cafe, restaurant, and bookshop in the Mission District. He currently serves on the San Francisco Small Business Commission, a position he will step down from upon his swearing-in to the SFMTA Board, and is a board member of the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association.

The Valencia Corridor Merchants Association worked with the City to close Valencia Street as part of the Shared Spaces program, an initiative created by Mayor Breed to help neighborhood businesses to share a portion of the public right-of-way for outdoor dining and other neighborhood retail activity. Manny also served on the SFMTA 16th Street Bus Improvement Project Mitigation Task Force.

Yekutiel comes from a long line of small business owners; his grandparents owned a grocery store in Brooklyn and his father, who emigrated from Afghanistan, had a small business in Southern California selling tablecloths. Yekutiel is a graduate of Williams College, and was a public engagement intern focusing on the LGBTQ and Tribal communities under the Obama Administration. He currently lives in the Castro District in San Francisco.

Mayor Breed nominated Fiona Hinze to the SFMTA Board of Directors in October 2020 to advocate for people with disabilities and ensure equitable access to transit. Hinze lives with Cerebral palsy and she uses her power chair to get around the city, including on public transit. In addition to her own experience navigating transit, Hinze advocates for people with disabilities, with a particular focus on employment, transportation access, healthcare access, and civic participation.

Hinze currently works as the Director of Systems Change for Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco (ILRCSF), a disability rights advocacy and support organization. She dedicates her time to the development of strategies around ILRCSF’s systems change and advocacy efforts by tracking key state and local advocacy issues and attending community committee and task force meetings. She works to ensure consumers are aware of advocacy opportunities in the community. Hinze is a graduate of Stanford University and has a B.A. in Psychology, with a concentration in Health and Development. She was born and raised in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond neighborhood.

Gilbane Building Company Joins BuildOUT California

Written on January 4, 2021.

Media Contact: David Perry & Associates, Inc. / news@davidperry.com / (415) 676-7007

Gilbane Building Company Joins BuildOUT California
to Help Break the ‘Concrete Ceiling’ for LGBT-Owned Firms in A&E, Construction, Real Estate Development and Related Industries

One of America’s oldest and largest construction management firms
joins forces with the world’s first industry association dedicated to
the sustainable growth of LGBT owned and certified businesses

4 January 2021 – San Francisco, CA: BuildOUT California (www.buildoutcalifornia.org), announced today that Gilbane Building Company (www.gilbaneco.com) has joined the organization to further open the doors of opportunity and job creation.

“Throughout Gilbane’s 150-year history, the company has been committed to creating opportunity,” said Michael McKelvy, President & CEO, Gilbane Building Company. “We believe that our workforce and our subcontracting partners should reflect the communities that we serve. We are proud to collaborate with BuildOUT California because we know that inclusion and diversity support a robust industry and strong economy.”

“This is enormously significant” stated Sandra Escalante, owner of the LGBT, Women, Minority-certified firm of Laner Electric headquartered in Richmond, California which is a wholesale distributor of electrical construction materials. “People want to do business with people they know. Gilbane is sending a strong message that they value diversity, equity and inclusion within an industry which is not known for embracing women and minorities.”

BuildOUT California’s President, Paul Pendergast, went on to add “At a time when our nation’s, and California’s, infrastructure needs immediate attention it is important that LGBT firms in A&E and construction are invited to actively participate in the competitive bidding process. Having a company like Gilbane, which is a significant prime contractor throughout the United States, open their doors to not only team with LGBT businesses, but to proactively work to mentor them, is immensely important news.”

Gilbane’s construction projects in California span multiple market sectors that reflect the state’s diverse economy. Notable completed projects include Genentech, Inc. Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Campus in Vacaville and the General Service Administration Federal Courthouse in Bakersfield, and among its current projects are the California State University, Monterey Bay Otter Student Union and the Department of General Services 10^th & O Street State Office Building in Sacramento.

There are over 500 LGBT-certified firms listed within the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Supplier Clearinghouse database.

“AGC [Associated General Contractors]of California just celebrated 100 years and now, more than ever, are looking to advance diversity and inclusion – it starts with innovative partnerships like BuildOUT and Gilbane working together” added Peter Tateishi, CEO, AGC of California. “It’s this type of collaboration from a key member company that makes me proud to be part of this industry.”

Gilbane’s partnership with BuildOUT California includes the placement of Debi Hertz, Senior Project Manager DBIA, CCM, on the organization’s roster of founders, participation in BuildOUT California’s ground-breaking Mentor/Protégé program and a strong presence in providing technical assistance/training to make LGBT A&E/Construction firms more competitive in the marketplace.

About Gilbane Building Company:

Gilbane provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services – from pre-construction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, general contracting, design-build and facility management services – for clients across various markets. Founded in 1870 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 45 office locations worldwide. Since 1995, Gilbane has been delivering construction services in California for clients across diverse market sectors. For more information, visit www.gilbaneco.com

About BuildOUT California: