Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry threatened to the sue the D.C. Council if it moves forward with a proposed plan for redrawing the city’s ward boundaries.
The council committee that released the plan Wednesday evening paid Barry no heed and sent the plan to the full council, which will vote on it on June 7.
The plan splits a Ward 6 neighborhood in half and sends some of it to Ward 7, most of which lies east of the Anacostia River. It also sloughs off Shaw from Ward 2 and drops it into Ward 6.
But Barry’s concern was that his Ward 8, which had to grow geographically due to a drop in its population, made no movement across the river. The day the U.S. Census numbers came out showing his ward needed to grow, Barry was quick to assert that it would be divisive and racist if his majority black ward didn’t pick up whiter neighborhoods around Nationals Park on the west of the Anacostia.
He continued that mantra Thursday.
“The river has long been a divider of races, class and a whole range of other dividers,” Barry said. “This committee has an opportunity to let the Anacostia River be a uniter.”
He later added, “I’ll talk to a lawyer about what we can do in case the council doesn’t do the right thing.”
