In Ward 8, Barry Strives to Reshape Legacy

Barry managed to wangle $100,000 out of the city budget to reopen the recreation center at the Choice Academy, formerly known as Douglass Junior High School, and $200,000 for other projects in the ward.

T'chaka Sapp is among the converted. A member of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission in Anacostia, he said he has received complaints from residents who got parking tickets because they failed to move their cars on street-sweeping days.

Residents never were ticketed before, he said, because the city never swept.

"They're fixing this stuff up now," Sapp said. He credited Barry, whom he called the "big whipping stick" that moves the city bureaucracy.

Others are skeptical.

The president of the Frederick Douglass Community Improvement Council said Barry has refused to meet with the Southeast civic association to help create a recreation center at an elementary school.

"I don't know what Marion Barry is doing in the rest of the ward, but he's doing nothing here," said Carolyn Johns Gray, president of the association.

"That's a lie," Barry said, referring to the invitation to meet the group.

A Champion for Blacks

Barry said he wants to lift up Ward 8 residents as well as black residents throughout the city. He said he has been disappointed in the reduction of black political clout and economic power since he left office in 1999.

"The neighborhoods have lost power and black folks have lost power, and that creates a new dynamic," he said.

Barry, an activist in the civil rights movement, has long championed increased economic power for blacks. His administration set aside at least 35 percent of city contracts for minorities. His departments hired many who couldn't find other work. And his summer jobs program is still paying political dividends.

Barry said he was astounded by Williams's appointment last month of a white former aide to a Washington Convention Center board that had no mayoral appointees who are women or minorities. Barry voted against the aide, but the council supported the nomination.

"There was a time any mayor of Washington, D.C., would have been run out of town if they did that," Barry said. "The reason [Williams] could get away with that is because the black community has lost power."

"My priority is black people," he added. "I tell that to everybody. Part of what I am doing is empowering those who have lost power."

Williams fumed at Barry's criticism -- "I think that's a ridiculous comment and over the top" -- and said he was proud of his appointments and his attention to Ward 8.

Barry said he wants to have the final word on development plans for the ward, especially along its Anacostia waterfront.

The future, according to Marion S. Barry Jr., is always brighter and always better.

He promised to be more aggressive in obtaining money for ward projects next year and to be the main deal maker in his ward.

"Next year, I will have more influence and more power," Barry said. "But we're doing fine. We're doing fine."