Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry said he will be asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to open a Justice Department review of proposed new D.C. ward boundaries because, Barry says, they violate residents’ civil rights.
Barry compared plans to not add white neighborhoods to his majority black ward as being similar to Southern states creating all white congressional districts.
“Mayor Gray talks about One City,” Barry said Tuesday. “How can we talk about One City and push a plan that divides us racially along the river?”
The council dropped a plan on Tuesday to send to Ward 6 neighborhoods to Ward 7 and moved forward with a new draft of redrawn ward boundaries that kept the neighborhoods in Ward 6.
The residents of Hill East and Rosedale took to the streets in protest over the original plan that would have moved them to Ward 7, which needed to expand geographically after losing residents in the 2010 U.S. Census count. The council committee assigned to redrawing the ward boundaries to better balance the city’s population among its eight wards, chose instead to keep the two neighborhoods in Ward 6. Ward 7 was given the city’s jail and a homeless shelter to boost its population the required level.
Barry’s Ward 8 also needed to grow. He has pushed to expand the ward to the west side of the Anacostia River, where it would add the neighborhoods around Nationals Park. The redistricting committee didn’t take to the idea and instead expanded Ward 8 into Ward 7, which is also majority black.
