By Adam Allington, KWMU
St. Louis – Demonstrators briefly shut down traffic on Interstate 70 during afternoon rush hour Tuesday.
Protestors representing the African-American Business and Contractors
Association stopped several large trucks on the freeway's depressed section near the Arch. They blocked traffic in both directions for about a minute.
The demonstration came a decade after a much larger protest shut down I-70 at Goodfellow and resulted in 125 arrests.
Eric Vickers helped organize the 1999 protest. He says not enough progress has been made since then to correct racial disparities in awarding construction contracts.
"One of the real issues is the fact that under the federal contracts, which will be receiving the bulk of the stimulus dollars, minorities and women have been lumped together," Vickers said. "And the result is that women, especially white women have gotten all of the contracts."
About 25 picketers also marched on Memorial Drive. Nobody was arrested, but the drivers of the trucks say they received tickets from police.