2 Comments:

• I've been in DC since 1985, which means I have not seen the entire career of "Mayor for Life" Marion Barry. But I have seen the ward that elected him, the poorest, most neglected ward in the city. The current mayor has thrown his lot in with the big downtown developers, who are gutting downtown buildings and filling them with million-dollar condos, with lots of nice restaurants, coffee shops, etc. within walking distance.
  
  Mayor Williams has largely ignored the frightening disparities between his wealthy downtown funders and the people who live a world away "across the river" in Anacostia, the ward where Barry won. Barry has always been popular with the city's poor, at least in part because he has always been a thorn in the side of the city's establishment that ignored them. And in city suffering under the dead hand of a Congress that refuses to even consider allowing its citizens to have the right to vote for their own members of Congress, Marion Barry's outrageousness has been a light in the dark, a source of amusement in an otherwise grim landscape of little girls being killed by stray gunfire.
  
  So Barry may look funny to you, but voting for him makes perfect sense for his supporters.

  By Anonymous, at 11:15 AM  

• Thanks for writing. I think it's a sad commentary when there is no better spokesperson for a community in need than Barry. That says more about DC politics than anything else. After living for many years in NYC and seeing a similar caliber of representation there propping themselves up to be advocates for the poor communities, you get tired of seeing these leeches getting re-elected over and over. The poor deserve better.

  By Pam, at 12:59 PM