“We hit the Trifecta,” Johnson said over the telephone Wednesday. “Disney is huge, man. We will have

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Two weeks ago Monday, Drexel Johnson was about to convene the meeting of the board of directors of the Los Angeles chapter of the Young Black Contractors Association cheap barcelona hotels at the Clarion Hotel in Carson, just south of LA, when his cell phone rang.
"Hey, folks, this is it," he beamed at the six board members sitting cheap barcelona hotels around the table after he put down the phone in something less than a split second. "We can go to dinner and celebrate. That was Skanska Energy, and they got the contract with San Diego Gas and Electric, a unit of the Sempra Corporation. cheap barcelona hotels That means that we will  get our fair share, too."
known globally cheap barcelona hotels as Skanska/ Rados/Parsons/Bickerhoff, had just been awarded a $1.5 billion contract to develop a natural gas pipeline system for San Diego Gas and Electric (SDGE) System, one of California's largest public utilities. And Johnson's YBCA had forged an alliance with Skanska in their application for the contract, a deal that will assure cheap barcelona hotels the young black contractors a substantial income for the next five years.
Members of Johnson's association will gain upward of $68-70 million in construction work for their work in public utilities in Southern California because of the contract, the president of the group said.
"Until now, we have been completely shut out of the large public utilities contracts throughout California," Johnson said. "Man, you don't know what this means to us after all these years of butting our heads up against a wall of defiance. cheap barcelona hotels This means that at least 100 business organizations affiliated with us and the National Black Contractors Association (NBCA) will finally be brought into the fold of this lucrative mainstream of development."
Yet, this major development was just the beginning of the welcome news in store for Johnson and his associates. Two other major contract deals were about to be confirmed – one with the Disney Corporation and the other with Southern California Gas Company, the nation's largest gas supplier, another affiliate of Sempra, Inc.
"We hit the Trifecta," Johnson said over the telephone Wednesday. "Disney cheap barcelona hotels is huge, man. We will have contractors ranging from food suppliers, costume makers, building contractors and a whole lot of other suppliers who have not enjoyed the many contract awards that Disney has available. We also got a call – while we were out picketing against Sempra last week – from one of the top officials in the Los Angeles operation that they were ready to do business with us. This, for us, is better than hitting the lottery, in terms of contract opportunities."
Johnson, who serves on the board of the NBCA and is vice president cheap barcelona hotels of the California chapter, said that it helped the black contractors a lot that the state Public Utilities Commission had given Sempra, Inc., the parent company of San Diego Gas Electric a "D" rating in its most recent report on diversity in SDGE's relationship to minority contractors.
Although SDGE has a black president/CEO and a black vice-president accountable for contracts and personnel, Johnson said, a nationwide scandal broke out last year when the Hispanic female cheap barcelona hotels in charge of the company's Diversity Program sent out an e-mail caricature of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama depicting them as black savages with bones through their noses.
"We were picketing Sempra's headquarters in Los Angeles when I got a call from the contracts manager of the company saying that, after 15 years of shutting black contractors out of the contracts mainstream, we were about to be brought into the fold."
The Trifecta that Johnson has played up so big in his recent observations also flow over into the wider expanse of the San Diego-based National Black Contractors Association, headed cheap barcelona hotels by Abdur Rahim Hameed, the national president.
At the time of Sempra and Disney breakthroughs, Hameed was about to launch a major picket and public cheap barcelona hotels exposure of Popeye's Chicken owners, whose reluctance cheap barcelona hotels to use black contractors in building their new developments throughout Southern California had a burning issue until last week. Popeye's management and NBCA representatives are now in negotiations over the issue, cheap barcelona hotels Hameed said earlier this week in telephone conversation with the Jackson Advocate. He, too, expressed elation over the breakthroughs with the utilities and with Disney.
"Sempra is now moving to take a more aggressive stand to include and increase the participation of African Americans, in particular," Hameed said. "Where the numbers have been low and dismal, they (Sempra) now have expressed good will and committed resources for black contractors with PU certification to gain public utility contracts.
"There've been several efforts to get to this point, both in San Diego and Los Angeles,"  he added. "Whereas San Diego – meaning NBCA, the national organization – has had a longstanding cheap barcelona hotels relationship with Sempra, and as the national representative of  African American contracts, we were the first to go in and negotiate on equal opportunity. So that's where we are today.
"We're looking at a billion-dollar contract that Sempra will be involved with," Hameed concluded."And we're not looking at five or ten truckers being included in the process. We're looking more at 100 truckers, and we should be able to achieve $100 million in contracting opportunities for our contractors of color. There are no caps. There's no maximum or minimum. cheap barcelona hotels And there's cheap barcelona hotels no limit."
Johnson, a native of Bolton, MS, attributes his winning negotiating tactics to his hometown cheap barcelona hotels mentors cheap barcelona hotels and former teachers, Joseph Brown, Jr., and Roosevelt Hawkins. Brown taught high school and industrial arts in Bolton and at the Raymond Branch of Hinds Community College, while Hawkins was an Industrial arts teacher and coach in Bolton.
"Those two men put my life on the right track at a time when I had no sense of direction in life," Johnson cheap barcelona hotels said. "Add this to the whole civil rights experience I got from growing cheap barcelona hotels up in Mississippi and I have to say that because of them, I have been able to endure some of the most depressing and hopeless times of my life while fighting for the simplest measure of equality in the California building trades. I'll be forever thankful to them and to the people who helped shape my character and life in the small community of Bolton."