GERALD W. JOHNSON, publisher of Small Business Exchange

INTO THE NEW YEAR FROM MY DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, ANTI-RACISM, AND BELONGING BOOK SHELF — This Is Not For You: An Activist’s Journey of Resistance and Resilience, by Richard Brown and Brian Benson. “Richard Brown has opened his heart to allow us to see and feel his full life journey. From looking out the window to the street below as a child in Harlem, to…

As 2008 closed, the equal opportunity and contract compliance communities lost one of their staunchest advocates — and I lost a long-time friend. William James (1938–2008) William James, the former Compton, Calif. contract compliance officer responsible for crafting that city’s minority business enterprise program in the 1980s, died December 4, 2008. William suffered…

A Black Panther Party cub’s success story. (Hyperlinks are underlined) Akiko-Ayalla Cooks (Akiko) left her native California in 2006, after completing training as a psychiatric technician, settling in Las Vegas, Nevada. …

The business of government contracting The business tactic of honing and maintaining a competitive edge is as important to those companies doing business with government agencies as it is in the private sector. …

The Business of Construction Contracting A Q&A — Prevailing wage recoupment reporting By Käto Cooks In the wake of clearly aggressive enforcement of prevailing wage and related requirements, sometimes honest payroll errors can bring a storm of review to all of a contractor’s payroll reporting history on a project. The…

Published on August 12, 2022 Field investigator Lawrence I. Cooks Sr. (left), a son of Raymond Cooks Sr. and a brother of the author, interviewing a worker on a school district project. ©Peter Mack Media/Kato Cooks. Status is online PUBLIC WORKS: A PRIMER by Käto Cooks Nearly every construction contractor…

REMEMBERING “EL GATO NEGRO” By Käto Cooks ©1993 Primordiality What brought me to the Party were several events: the assassinations of Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and Jon Jerome Huggins at UCLA, and Fred Hampton in Chicago, and the LAPD assault — I labeled it a ‘shoot-in’ — on the Central Avenue…

In honor of Black History Month I would like you to journey with me back to a pivotal period in history where the Black Power movement arose. Get ready to voyage back to 1966–1982; the era when the Black Panther Party originated. …