The Transportation Equity Network’s (TEN) “One Nation, Indivisible” event in Washington, D.C. on September 21st and 22nd achieved three amazing victories for us.

We invited Secretary LaHood to take part in a series of TEN “listening sessions” in regions across the U.S., sessions that will give you the chance to tell the USDOT exactly what you need to move your local transportation systems from crisis to opportunity. He agreed.

Secretary LaHood committed to personally calling the director of the Illinois Department of the Illinois Department of Transportation to urge him to apply TEN’s Green Construction Careers Model — 30% of workforce hours reserved for low-income people, women, and people of color, and 1% of the total public budget devoted to training low-income apprentices.  The Missouri Model is expanding!

The third victory came when MORE2 and TEN invited our own, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who is the First Vice-Chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, to play a key leadership role as one of our federal champions for transportation equity. We asked Rep. Cleaver to co-convene a Federal Jericho Table with us, built on the model that MORE2 formed in Kansas City to break down barriers for women and people of color in the construction industry.

Rep. Cleaver agreed. “I congratulate you for the work that you’ve done,” he said to MORE2 clergy and task force leaders, “because if you do what we’ve seen in Kansas City, I think that the nation is in for some dramatic changes related to transportation.”

 Pete Stover

MORE2 Access to Opportunity Chair 

MORE² Leaders go to Washington D.C. September 21^st and 22^nd to meet with Congressman Emanual Cleaver II and other political leaders to discuss how our values call for increased federal funding for public transit.  Check out www.transportationequity.org for more inforamtion.

Join Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity (MORE²) members and allies at 10:00 am on Thursday, September 2, 2010 in front of the Full Employment Council, 1740 Paseo Blvd., Kansas City, MO, to call for increased transit funding as a path to job creation and economic growth.   This event, on the eve of the Labor Day weekend, will coincide with simultaneous rallies in cities across the country sponsored by members of the Transportation Equity Network (TEN).

MORE²  leaders will discuss local job creation projections from More Transit=More Jobs,  a TEN report to be released that day. The report will rank Kansas City and 19 other U.S. metropolitan areas in terms of current transit spending, and will detail how many local jobs could be created by shifting the way transportation funding is spent.  Copies of the report will be available to journalists at the rally.