CATHERINE PUGH RESIGNS FROM BALTIMORE MAYOR’S POST (CORRUPTION SCANDAL)

CATHERINE PUGH RESIGNS FROM BALTIMORE MAYOR’S POST (CORRUPTION SCANDAL):

BALTIMORE & ATL - DRAIN THE SWAMP.

MOST BLACK POLITICIANS USE THEIR EDUCATION & POWER AS A WEAPON AGAINST BLACK VOTERS.

HOW DOES THIS ABUSE OF POWER HELP STRENGTHEN BLACK COMMUNITIES?

BLACK VOTERS DESERVE MUCH BETTER LEADERSHIP.

YES, WHITE POLITICIANS CAN EFFECTIVELY LEAD BLACK VOTERS WITHOUT RACISM.

2020 ELECTION


Post Sources: CBS News, Fox News, NY Times, Washington Post, Youtube


****** Baltimore’s Mayor, Catherine Pugh, Resigns Amid Children’s Book Scandal


After weeks of mounting pressure, Mayor Catherine Pugh of Baltimore resigned on Thursday amid a widening scandal involving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of children’s books that she wrote and sold to the University of Maryland Medical System while serving on its board of directors.

Her resignation comes days after the Baltimore City Council proposed amending the city charter to make it possible to remove her, and after the F.B.I. raided her two homes and her office at City Hall.
Ms. Pugh stepped down from the hospital network’s board, but she had resisted calls to step down as mayor.

She has been home on medical leave for weeks. Her lawyer told reporters previously that she was too ill to make decisions.

Bernard Young, president of the Baltimore City Council, has been serving as acting mayor and will complete the rest of her term.

“I am sorry for the harm that I have caused to the image of Baltimore and the credibility of the office of the mayor,” Ms. Pugh said in a statement read aloud by her lawyer, Steve Silverman, at a brief news conference that she did not attend. “Baltimore deserves a mayor who can move our great city forward.”

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who appoints the board of the University of Maryland Medical System, applauded Ms. Pugh’s resignation in a post on Twitter.

“This was the right decision, as it was clear the mayor could no longer lead effectively,” he wrote. “The federal and state investigations must and will continue to uncover the facts.”

Ms. Pugh has been under intense scrutiny since March, when The Baltimore Sun reported that she was one of nine members of the board of the University of Maryland Medical System who had profited personally from contracts with the hospital system.

When the scandal broke, Ms. Pugh maintained that there was nothing illegal or unethical about her deal to sell her “Healthy Holly” children’s books, which promote nutritious food and exercise, to the hospital network, whose board she has served on since 2001.

The network, in turn, was supposed to donate the books to Baltimore schools and day cares.

She apologized for failing to report the deal on disclosure forms when she was a state senator and returned the most recent payment of $100,000.

But questions continued to swirl over who authorized the contract and how many of the books actually reached children, especially after thousands of books were discovered untouched in a school warehouse.

Ms. Pugh has received $500,000 since 2011 from the medical system for the books.

Other entities, including Kaiser Permanente, reportedly paid her an additional $190,000 for the books.

“This whole entire episode has been hurtful to the city,” said Jill Carter, a state senator representing Baltimore who has been pushing to limit self-dealing on the hospital network’s board. “Those of us who are holding elected office now, it is incumbent upon us to do everything in our power to restore the public trust.”

Ms. Carter said she began investigating the hospital network’s contracts after hearing complaints from minority-owned businesses that it was impossible for them to bid on contracts, while politically connected board members received lucrative deals that did not go through normal channels of procurement.

Ms. Carter noted that other board members reaped far more from the hospital network, including Francis X. Kelly, who advocated the privatization of the hospital network as a state senator, and went on to obtain $16 million in contracts through his insurance company, Kelly & Associates Insurance Group.

“It’s been very troubling to me that so much focus has been placed on the mayor that there has been too little scrutiny and too little desire to investigate the other members,” Ms. Carter said.

The hospital network’s website lists Mr. Kelly as being “on leave” from the board, along with three other members who had business contracts.

He did not return a call seeking comment Thursday.

A recent bill passed by Maryland’s General Assembly will replace the medical system’s entire board in July, and generally prohibits future board members from receiving no-bid contracts.

Michael Schwartzberg, a spokesman for the medical system’s management, said it would not be issuing a statement on the mayor’s resignation.

Ms. Pugh, who was elected mayor in 2016, has long been a fixture in the city’s politics.

She previously served as a state senator and majority leader in Maryland’s General Assembly.

Her resignation comes after a series of other corruption scandals in the city have shaken faith in Baltimore’s government.

Last year, six Baltimore police officers pleaded guilty in a wide-ranging corruption trial that included robbing a motorist of $25,000 and dumping garbage bags full of stolen prescription drugs on the market.

The city, which endured riots and unrest in the wake of the 2015 death in police custody of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, has seen four police commissioners cycle through since Mr. Gray’s death.

Last year, former police commissioner Darryl De Sousa pleaded guilty in federal court to failing to file income tax returns.

In 2010, another Baltimore mayor, Sheila Ann Dixon, resigned after being found guilty of misappropriating gift cards for the poor.

Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a nonpartisan watchdog organization, said her group has received several calls from people expressing a loss of faith in Ms. Pugh.

But Ms. Antoine said she is heartened by recent proposals brought by Baltimore City Council members to tighten ethics disclosure rules and make it easier to remove the mayor.

“I think we’re on the verge of recovering from all of this,” she said. “We believe the City Council is taking steps to move forward.”

KENNEKA JENKINS IS MURDERED YET MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL REMAINS SILENT (BUT HE SCREAMED FOR DACA)

#RAHMEMANUEL

KENNEKA JENKINS WAS MURDERED YET CHICAGO MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL REMAINS SILENT:

HOW IRONIC RAHM SPOKE UP LOUD FOR DACA DREAMERS BUT KEEPS HIS MOUTH SHUT FOR KENNEKA.

PERHAPS IF KENNEKA WERE LATINO RAHM WOULD CARE.

WHAT A SHAME BLACK VOTERS ARE BEING REPLACED AND NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE, NOT EVEN BLACK LEADERS.

#KENNEKA


Sources: Chicago Tribune, CBS News



**** What we still don't know about Kenneka Jenkins' freezer death — despite what's on social media



Nearly three days after Kenneka Jenkins was found dead inside a walk-in freezer in a Rosemont hotel, police have said very little about what happened to the 19-year-old.

No cause of death has been released and police won't say if there were signs of trauma on her body when it was discovered early Sunday morning at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Yet that has not kept thousands and thousands of online commenters from accusing and making threats against people they think set Jenkins up and then attacked her. "The day of punishment will come," one person posted, though police have not even said whether a crime has been committed.

Much of the speculation is based on a livestream video that was apparently broadcast from a hotel room shortly before Jenkins disappeared.

The video — which has gotten more than 4 million views — features a woman in mirrored sunglasses talking to the camera. Reflected in her glasses is the other side of the room, where Jenkins appears to be sitting.

The video has been shared more than 53,000 times and has drawn nearly 35,000 comments. Some viewers claim to hear her cry for help, others hear someone say she is being attacked.

But words are often garbled or obscured by music or other people talking. The images reflected in the woman's sunglasses appear clear at times, but it's still hard to tell what exactly Jenkins is doing.

Investigators say they have been reviewing the Facebook video as well as surveillance video, and have been talking with people who were in the room. But they have said very little so far about what they have found.

Here is a timeline of events that unfolded over the weekend at the hotel, as disclosed by family and police, followed by what we do not know about the case.

Yet that has not kept thousands and thousands of online commenters from accusing and making threats against people they think set Jenkins up and then attacked her. "The day of punishment will come," one person posted, though police have not even said whether a crime has been committed.

Much of the speculation is based on a livestream video that was apparently broadcast from a hotel room shortly before Jenkins disappeared. The video — which has gotten more than 4 million views — features a woman in mirrored sunglasses talking to the camera. Reflected in her glasses is the other side of the room, where Jenkins appears to be sitting.

The video has been shared more than 53,000 times and has drawn nearly 35,000 comments. Some viewers claim to hear her cry for help, others hear someone say she is being attacked.
But words are often garbled or obscured by music or other people talking.

The images reflected in the woman's sunglasses appear clear at times, but it's still hard to tell what exactly Jenkins is doing.

Investigators say they have been reviewing the Facebook video as well as surveillance video, and have been talking with people who were in the room. But they have said very little so far about what they have found.

Here is a timeline of events that unfolded over the weekend at the hotel, as disclosed by family and police, followed by what we do not know about the case.

• 12:48 a.m. Sunday. Jenkins is pronounced dead, according to the Cook County medical examiner's office. The cause of death remains undetermined after an autopsy the next day, pending further studies and investigation.

• Around 5 a.m. Sunday. Martin is allowed to see her daughter's body. She says the body had been removed from the freezer, which appeared to have been defrosted. “Her hair had soaking water up on there," she told reporters.

What We Don't Know

• What Jenkins was doing between the time she left home at 11:30 p.m. Friday and the time the video began around 1:35 a.m. Saturday.

• Who was in the hotel room. Police have not said how many were in the room and whether Jenkins knew all or most of them.

• What witnesses have told police about what went on in the room. Do they contradict each other?

Jenkins' mother has said her friends’ stories about what happened have changed. Is anyone considered a suspect?

• Whether Jenkins left alone or with someone, and whether anyone else was with her at the front desk.

• Who finally found Jenkins? How? Police have not said whether video shows her entering the freezer or whether there was anyone with her.

• We don't know how Jenkins died or whether there were signs of trauma. Jenkins' family said they were initially told by police that Jenkins apparently let herself into the freezer while drunk and died inside.

But a police spokesman said on Monday that nothing has been ruled out.

The medical examiner's office says the cause of death remains undetermined pending further studies and investigation.

• Police initially said the freezer was running at the time, but a spokesman later appeared to back off that comment.

It's also unknown whether there was a lever inside that would have allowed Jenkins to get out.

KASIM REED SLAMS BERNIE SANDERS & OVERHAULS ATLANTA'S PUBLIC SAFETY

KASIM REED SLAMS BERNIE SANDERS & OVERHAULS ATLANTA'S PUBLIC SAFETY:

REED HAS ENDORSED HILLARY CLINTON; REACHES FOR U.S. SENATE.

Sources: AJC, CNN, Fox Atlanta, Youtube

**** Mayor Reed on BERNIE SANDERS:

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed stepped up his attacks on Sanders as Sanders' Atlanta visit neared. Our AJC colleague Katie Leslie reports that he predicted a Sanders thrashing in Georgia on March 1.

Our AJC colleague Katie Leslie reports that at a press conference on Tuesday, he predicted Sanders would be clobbered on Georgia’s March 1 primary.

“He’s never led anything in the U.S. Senate. What has he led? How many bills has he passed? He’s no Senator Kennedy,” Reed said of Sanders, comparing his rallies to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s raucous events.

“We are not going to put our party in the hands of someone who is not even a Democrat and watch him take this party over a cliff,” he said. “He is not going to get away with this foolishness in Georgia or South Carolina.”

He added: “Stop treating Bernie Sanders like he’s something special. He’s not going to be the nominee.”

**** Mayor Reed on PUBLIC SAFETY:

According to Mayor Reed, 461 individuals were responsible for 10,000 crimes last year and only 16 of them, or 4 percent, spent time in jail.

"Not only are we going to be tough on crime, but we are going to be smart on crime." 

Reed said repeat offenders are no longer getting a "free pass." Approximately 55 percent of repeat offenders are now receiving jail time, according to Reed.

At the briefing, Reed also said officials are working to improve safety on the city's Westside, which will consist of adding more than 1,000 cameras in the area.

"Today gives us an opportunity to keep our eyes focused on repeat offenders, and to let you know what we have planned to keep you and the city of Atlanta safe in 2016."

The briefing was held at the Atlanta Public Safety Headquarters. Reed was joined at the briefing by the city's Chief Operating Officer, Chief of Police, Fire Chief and the head of the city's Department of Corrections.

**** Mayor Reed on WINNING ON ANOTHER ELECTION:(Circa Tuesday, June 23, 2015)

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, long rumored to have his sights on higher political office, said he has “another election” in him before retiring from public life.

“I think I have another election in me, because I love public service,” Reed told WABE radio hosts Denis O’Hayer and Rose Scott on Tuesday.

Reed wouldn’t reveal just which office he’s eyeing, though he’s widely believed to desire a gubernatorial run, if not U.S. Senate. Reed has said he plans to return to the private sector after leaving Atlanta City Hall in 2018, but on Tuesday left open the possibility of another campaign.

He could face stiff competition if he runs in 2018. Former gubernatorial candidate Jason Carter and House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams could run on the Democratic ticket, and several Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, Secretary of State Brian Kemp and Attorney General Sam Olens are said to be considering a bid.

Reed could also wait out until 2022, when shifting demographics could play more into the Democratic Party’s favor. An influx of minorities and newcomers has analysts predicting Georgia could become a purple state by the decade’s end.

ANTHONY FOXX ENDORSES HILLARY CLINTON (WOOS BLACK CHARLOTTE DEMOCRATS)

TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY ANTHONY FOXX ENDORSES HILLARY CLINTON:

WOOS BLACK CHARLOTTE DEMOCRATS & HE PROBABLY WANTS TO SERVE ANOTHER TERM.

~ Anthony Foxx Endorses Hillary Clinton For President

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has announced his endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Fox, Charlotte's former mayor, called Clinton “a champion of American families.”

“Hillary Clinton is my candidate for President of the United States,” he said in a statement.

“She is best positioned to continue the progress made by President Obama on a range of issues — from strengthening our economy, to making the right investments in our infrastructure, to common-sense gun safety laws, to ensuring a fair criminal justice system.”

Clinton will join other Democratic candidates in Charleston this week for a debate.

Sources: CNN, Charlotte Observer

RAHM EMANUEL WHERE WAS YOUR APOLOGY WHEN LAQUAN MCDONALD WAS FIRST MURDERED?

RAHM EMANUEL WHERE WAS YOUR APOLOGY WHEN LAQUAN MCDONALD WAS FIRST MURDERED?

AN APOLOGY IN 2014 WOULD HAVE DERAILED RAHM'S RE-ELECTION CHANCES.

So why didn't Mayor Rahm Emanuel apologize when 17- yr old LAQUAN MCDONALD was first Murdered in 2014 after he was Shot by Chicago Police sixteen times?

If he had apologized back in 2014, Rahm Emanuel would Not have been re-elected.

If Rahm Emanuel RESIGNS as Mayor will his resignation improve the quality of life for Chicago's BLACK voters, or bring Laquan McDonald back from the dead?

NO.

~ Emanuel apologizes for Laquan McDonald police shooting, repeats call for change

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday apologized to aldermen for the police shooting of Laquan McDonald "that happened on my watch."

"If we're going to fix it, I want you to understand it's my responsibility with you," Emanuel said in a rare speech to the full Chicago City Council. "But if we're also going to begin the healing process, the first step in that journey is my step, and I'm sorry."

Emanuel — who has dismissed his police superintendent, parted ways with the head of the police shooting review agency and dropped opposition to the release of the McDonald shooting video during the last two weeks — framed up the situation as "a defining moment on the issues of crime and policing — and the even larger issues of truth, justice and race."

The address of about 40 minutes, coming during a crucial time of Emanuel's tenure, was more of a political speech designed to assuage Chicagoans than one filled with specific plans that several aldermen called for this week to deal with entrenched problems in the Chicago Police Department.

Those problems were highlighted nationally by the fatal shooting of 17-year-old McDonald, an African-American, by a white police officer, the 13 months it took for video of the incident to be made public by court order and for a murder charge to be brought only shortly before the video's release.

And so the mayor on Wednesday talked about many Chicagoans' lack of trust in police officers, and returned to his oft-discussed argument that there are too many guns on Chicago streets. He reiterated his frequent argument that elected officials and community leaders have a responsibility "to earn back that trust and to change that narrative," and said there's a need for police to build trust with young African-Americans.
Emanuel spoke of the larger challenges as ones shared by people throughout Chicago.

"This time must be different. It will be a bumpy road, make no mistake about it," Emanuel said. "It is a painful process, and it is a long journey because of the issues we need to confront. But we as a city will not hesitate in the pursuit of what is right. We cannot shrink from the challenge any more than we can ignore the wrenching video of a troubled young man, a ward of the state of Illinois, failed by the system, surrounded by the police and gunned down on the streets of Chicago."

Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, said the mayor still has a lot of work to do to regain the city's trust.

"That's the challenge he has, quite honestly, and it's going to be judged by his actions, not his words," Sawyer said moments after the mayor's speech. "So, we hope the ensuing actions will be substantive and will show real meaning to make that connection back with the community so we can establish that trust."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson sat in the front row of the gallery in the City Council chamber to watch Emanuel deliver his speech, which he called "an impassioned address on the extreme duress" of the city.

"The word must become flesh, and we'll know the value of it then," Jackson said of Emanuel's speech. "It must become a practice, and it must happen immediately. We now know police saw the killing of Laquan McDonald and filed a false report. They should be addressed immediately."

Jackson called on the federal government not to limit its Justice Department probe to the Police Department, but also investigate Emanuel's office and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez's office.

 He said many questions remain about what Emanuel and Alvarez knew and when they knew it.

"Who saw the tape when and delayed the tape for 13 months?" Jackson asked. "When subpoenas are issued to testify under oath, then we'll know who knew what when."

The real test, Jackson said, will be how Emanuel deals with the stringent Fraternal Order of Police contract that limits police discipline.

Aldermen — many of whom have approved hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for victims of police brutality while demanding little change in how the department operates — had mixed reactions to the mayor's talk.

Ald. Howard Brookins, 21st, a congressional candidate who has long spoken out about police abuse, said he thought Emanuel's speech was "genuine and heartfelt," but that many in the public will be skeptical and he'll have to follow up his words with actions.

"Everybody will be cynical that we're just doing this, or it was just said to get past this particular crisis at this time," Brookins said. "I'm saying that the public will hold us to the standard that 'talk is cheap, let's see what your actions will be.' "
Ald. Will Burns, 4th, a mayoral ally, said Emanuel will have to take real action. "I think that in order for our city to function, for our city not to tear itself apart, the reforms have to happen," Burns said.

Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, said "it's going to be a tall order" to make the type of real improvements in policing that Emanuel called for Wednesday. "It's going to take a lot of funding, and given the state of the city, we're going to have to find the resources to do this," she said.
Ald. Leslie Hairston, 5th, a frequent Emanuel critic, said the mayor surprised her by not delivering "just the regular speech" she expected.

"It seemed to be real. It hit me. It hit me. It went straight to the core, and that's what I appreciated about it," Hairston said. "This is something we haven't heard before. It was not window dressing. It talked about some of the core and key things that are problems here in the city of Chicago, and I think that's a very big step."

Emanuel has appointed his own five-person task force to recommend Police Department reforms in response to the McDonald shooting fallout, and the task force is set to announce its findings by the end of March.

In his speech, Emanuel said the panel has already recommended the hiring of a "senior officer for civil rights" at the Police Department to implement the panel's recommendations and those of federal investigators.
As he has in recent days, Emanuel focused much of his talk on the broader implications of McDonald's death after being shot 16 times by police Officer Jason Van Dyke in October 2014.

Nothing, nothing can excuse what happened to Laquan McDonald," Emanuel said. "Our city has been down this road before. We have seen fatal police shootings and other forms of abuse and corruption. We took corrective measures, but those measures never measured up to the challenge."

The mayor was at his most emotional when he discussed the need for respect between officers and young black men, and when he mentioned parents who have lost children to violence and people who get out of jail with few options.

He talked about a recent lunch with young men who had been in trouble with the law.

"So I asked them, tell me the one thing I need to know," Emanuel said. "And rather than tell me something, one young man asked me a simple question that gets to the core of what we're talking about. He said, 'Do you think the police would ever treat you the way they treat me?' And the answer is no, and that's wrong," Emanuel said, his voice rising before he began to pound the lectern. "And that has to change in this city. That has to come to an end and end now. No citizen is a second-class citizen in the city of Chicago. If my children are treated one way, every child is treated the same way."

Aldermen applauded the mayor when he noted that double standard.
As he often does when talking about the parents of gunshot victims, the mayor choked up as he recounted "their extraordinary grace."

And without giving specifics, he called for residents to have a forum to talk about their problems with the police. "We have to have better oversight of our police officers to make sure they are living up to the high standards we expect of them, and we also have to create a place for the community to vent their understandable feelings and fears about the police without it devolving into acrimony and finger-pointing," he said.

Emanuel said the next police superintendent who will replace the recently fired Garry McCarthy will need "to address the problems at the very heart of the policing profession."

"This problem is sometimes referred to as the Thin Blue Line," Emanuel said. "Other times it is referred to as the code of silence. It is the tendency to ignore, deny or in some cases cover up the bad actions of a colleague or colleagues.

No officer should be allowed to behave as if they are above the law just because they are responsible for upholding the law. Permitting and protecting even the smallest acts of abuse by a tiny fraction of our officers leads to a culture where extreme acts of abuse are more likely, just like what happened to Laquan McDonald."

Emanuel, who once tried to settle a police brutality lawsuit that found a code of silence existed in the Police Department, said Tuesday evening on "Chicago Tonight" that such a code exists. "The short answer is yes," Emanuel said.

Access to City Council chambers was limited Wednesday. The administration said there was a list of those who were to be allowed in but later said some members of the public were admitted.

Protesters chanted outside council chambers after the speech, and more protests were unfolding against Emanuel later Wednesday.

Sources: Chicago Tribune, YouTube

MARION BARRY IS DEAD AT 78 R.I.P.; GREAT BLACK LEADER WITH A TERRIBLE VICE ( SMOKING CRACK)

R.I.P. former Washington, DC Mayor MARION BARRY, a BLACK Man with Great LEADERHSIP abilities yet he Could NOT or Would NOT control his desire for Illegal Drugs (CRACK).

However despite MARION BARRY'S Substance Abuse problem and various Scandals, his GOD-given Ability to LEAD never left him.

And despite MARION BARRY'S Failures he always BOUNCED Back!

The man was Elected FOUR Terms!

I know FOX NEWS will most likely call the Voters who kept re-electing Mayor MARION BARRY "Stupid" but who cares??

FOX NEWS could be an Awesome News Organization but for the RACISM it projects in its
daily News Reporting practices.

By the way......RACISM really does make Human Beings STUPID!

Enough about FOX NEWS, now back to my post on MARION BARRY.

MARION BARRY had the uncanny ability to always BOUNCE Back in life.

He was persistent and never gave up.

It was as if GOD could see MARION BARRY'S Heart and True Intentions of his Soul, gently Guiding him and telling him "I FORGIVE YOU MARION", now keep going even if you mess up while trying".

Bouncing Backing is definitely a sign of True LEADERSHIP ability.

Real LEADERS can be knocked down Six times but they will rise again the Seventh time!

Real LEADERS are Creative, Intelligent, Independent Thinkers, Bold (most of the time), Resilient, Gifted, Wordsmiths, often Misunderstood, Charismatic, Visionaries, Persistent, in Charge of their OWN Destiny, can be easily Frustrated, can be Inpatient and are sometimes Anti-Social in personality.

Real LEADERS are Imperfect HUMAN BEINGS.

Regardless of what anyone says or researches on the subject of LEADERSHIP,
Real LEADERS are Born NOT made.

True LEADERSHIP is an Inherited Trait, but that Trait can either be Diminished or Developed based upon one's Childhood and Adolescent environment.

If people who possess Natural born LEADERSHIP Skills are never taught how to properly develop those LEADERSHIP Skills, or are not taught how to protect those LEADERSHIP Skills, when faced with Hardships and Temptations those same Natural born LEADERS will crumble & FALL.

Just as MARION BARRY did.

Just as ROB FORD did.

Just as BILL CLINTON did.

Just as TOM DELAY did.

Just as BARACK OBAMA JR did.

In fact the only GREAT LEADER in the history of Mankind to Never FAIL while on Planet Earth, is our Lord and Savior JESUS CHRIST!

MARION BARRY will be remembered in my book as a Great LEADER because he kept Bouncing Back!

I won't judge him and I hope he is now in HEAVEN.

R.I.P. Mayor Barry!


Article Sources: CNN; NY Daily News; Washington Post

***ARTICLE: "Marion Barry Dies; 4-term D.C. Mayor The Most Powerful Local Politician Of His Generation"


Marion Barry Jr., the Mississippi sharecropper’s son and civil rights activist who served three terms as mayor of the District of Columbia, survived a drug arrest and jail sentence, and then came back to win a fourth term as the city’s chief executive, died early Sunday at United Medical Center in Washington. He was 78.

Mr. Barry, who also served on the D.C. Council for 15 years and had been president of the city’s old Board of Education, was the most influential and savvy local politician of his generation. He dominated the city’s political landscape in the final quarter of the 20th century. There was a time when his critics, in sarcasm but not entirely in jest, called him “Mayor for Life.” Into the first dozen years of the new millennium, he remained a highly visible player on the city’s political stage, but by then on the periphery, no longer at the center.

His personal and public life was fraught with high drama and irony. He struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, relapse and recovery. He was married four times, divorced three times and separated from his fourth wife. His extramarital liaisons and legal trouble over unpaid taxes made news.

He came to Washington as a champion of the downtrodden and the dispossessed and rose to the pinnacle of power and prestige. As mayor of the District, Mr. Barry became a national symbol of self-governance and home rule for urban blacks.

His programs helped provide summer jobs for youths, home-buying assistance for the working-class and food for senior citizens. And he placed African Americans in thousands of middle- and upper-level management positions in the city government that in previous generations had been reserved for whites.

“He was really the architect of creating a local government infrastructure in the early days of home rule,” Frederick D. Cooke Jr., a longtime friend who served as Barry’s attorney, said in a 2014 interview. “He helped it to diversify to be more inclusive. It had been a stilted, segregated entity, and he made it possible for people to believe they could have a seat at the table.”

Gladys Mack, assistant city administrator for budget in the first and subsequent Barry administrations, was among the mayor’s early managerial appointments appointees. Decades later, she would remember Mr. Barry as “a forward thinker.”

One example, Mack said, was his decision to build the new District Government building at 14th and U streets in Northwest Washington — a spawning ground for the 1968 riots that followed the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

His advisers counseled against it, Mack recalled, but the mayor said, “We need to do this . . . and it became a catalyst for development of the entire area.”

Mack was named chief of the D.C. budget in 1979, a time when few women in the nation were in top municipal leadership jobs. Mr. Barry, she said, “appointed close to a dozen women to positions that were not traditional for women.”

When Mr. Barry took office, so chaotic had the District’s finances been that the city didn’t even know how much money it had in the bank. He instituted budgetary and fiscal accounting procedures to figure that out. But by the end of his last term as mayor, Congress and the courts had stripped him of much of his authority, complaining of graft, corruption and gross mismanagement in his administration.

“Some governments are corrupt but are known for their competency in running the city,” Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) told Mr. Barry at a 1989 hearing on the D.C. budget. “Others are incompetent but considered clean. [Washington’s] government is scandalously corrupt and hopelessly incompetent.”

In 1990, Mr. Barry was arrested on drug charges in a sting by the FBI and D.C. police after having been lured to a Washington hotel room by a woman with whom he’d previously had an amorous relationship. “Bitch set me up!” he muttered aloud as he was being placed under arrest. The comment was captured on FBI videotapes of the sting and broadcast on television, and it would endure as a signature phrase in Mr. Barry’s vocal legacy. His conviction months later would become front-page news around the world.

He completed a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program and served six months in a federal prison, then used the experience to his political advantage as a platform in his improbable comeback bid for elected office.

“Who can better help our city recover than someone who himself has gone through recovery?” he asked rhetorically.

Charismatic, irrepressible and engaging, Mr. Barry always seemed to get up again. In 1977, while on the council, he was shot during the siege of the District Building (now the John A. Wilson Building) by Hanafi Muslims, who also had taken over the Islamic Center and B’nai B’rith offices.

Mr. Barry’s wound was superficial, but it nevertheless enhanced his personal mystique. After a brief hospitalization, he returned to the political arena and in less than two years was mayor of the District.

For 16 of the next 20 years, he would hold that office. Over time, he would come to reflect a personal style that was almost regal.

In a chauffeur-driven Lincoln Town Car, he traveled across the city, accompanied by a select security detail of police officers and an entourage of aides and hangers-on. Attractive women were omnipresent. He delighted in such extravaganzas as his annual “State of the District address” at the Washington Convention Center, where city workers, senior citizens and schoolchildren were rounded up for a Marion Barry spectacle.

When the Washington Redskins went to the Super Bowl, Mr. Barry went, too, as the First Fan of the hometown team. After Washington beat Miami in the 1983 Super Bowl, he flew back to Washington on the team’s charter aircraft, which was met at Washington Dulles International Airport by President Ronald Reagan. First off the plane to be greeted by the president: Marion Barry.

He was a regular at title prizefights in Las Vegas and elsewhere, he vacationed in the Caribbean and he met with heads of state in Africa.

His constituents, he said, liked and expected this lifestyle. “We’re an example of pride to D.C., to the nation and especially to the international community,” Herbert O. Reid Sr., Mr. Barry’s longtime counsel, mentor and friend, said in 1979. Reid died in 1991.

In large measure, Reid told The Post in 1987, Mr. Barry’s political ambition and success stemmed from the wounds of a dirt-poor childhood and his need to overcome the feelings of rejection he experienced early in life.

“He really wants to be loved and liked by everybody,” Reid had said. “He is proud of his achievements. . . . But I think the background and struggle have left some scars. I think there is some concern about being accepted.”
Champion of the poor

As he ascended the stairway of power and prestige, the mayor promised never to forget the folks who put him in office. He could “walk with kings” and not “lose the common touch,” Mr. Barry often said, quoting from the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling.

He cherished his reputation as a champion of the young, the aged and the poor, having plowed hundreds of millions of tax dollars into job training and employment programs, senior centers and social-welfare endeavors. Rank-and-file workers were hired by the thousands to serve under Mr. Barry’s newly-appointed supervisory corps of African American middle and top level managers.

“He was so in tune with the common person that he could make you feel as if you’d had a long term relationship, even if you’d only just met him for five minutes,” said his attorney, Cooke.

And Mr. Barry’s constituency, Cooke said, was not limited to the dispossessed. He promoted local African American businesses, “using government as an economic level to increase participation.”

Mr. Barry’s enemies saw it differently.

“Patronage, in the guise of local ‘empowerment,’ has always been hallmark of Barry’s governing philosophy,” wrote former FBI agent and Washington lawyer Carl T. Rowan Jr. in a 1998 New Republic article. To the mayor, Rowan said, the D.C. bureaucracy was “a source of jobs for people whose main qualification was their eligibility to vote for Barry.”

Before leaving office in 1999, Mr. Barry would lose his power over the city’s finances to a financial control board that Congress created in 1995. Courts would take over entire city departments.

The city agencies that served public-housing residents, foster children, inmates and the mentally ill would all be placed in receivership. A judge would later call conditions at the city’s receiving home for juvenile delinquents “unacceptable for a civilized country.”

Residents of a city-operated nursing home had limbs amputated because of infected bedsores. Infant mortality and murder rates remained among the highest in the nation, and the Fire Department would plead that its ability to fight fires was seriously impaired. In the public schools, dropout rates remained high, test scores low.

Mr. Barry left the mayor’s office insisting that the city was better off than it was when he was first elected. “I’ve had . . . more homers, more doubles, more triples than I’ve had strikeouts.”

In the turbulence of the 1960s, Mr. Barry had made his mark in the national capital: a young civil rights activist, streetwise and confrontational, with an “in-your-face” style that won the hearts and minds of thousands in the most depressed and impoverished of Washington’s black neighborhoods.

Over the years, their support would remain unshakable, even in the face of such crises as the conviction of high Barry administration staffers on charges involving political corruption, a soaring D.C. murder rate, deteriorating municipal services and Mr. Barry’s own incarceration.

Voters in the city’s white and more-affluent neighborhoods were less forgiving. By 1994, when Mr. Barry made his last run for mayor, he was soundly repudiated in these areas, but this was more than offset by his strength in such poverty-stricken neighborhoods as Shaw, in the inner city, and Far Southeast Washington, east of the Anacostia River.

For those who harbored resentment that he could still be elected mayor of Washington after a drug conviction and jail sentence, Mr. Barry had this advice: “Get over it!”

In January 1979, Mr. Barry took the oath of office for the first time as mayor of the District of Columbia, having defeated the city’s first elected mayor, incumbent Walter E. Washington, and D.C. Council Chairman Sterling Tucker in the Democratic primary the previous September.

Mr. Barry ran strongly among white voters west of Rock Creek Park and on Capitol Hill, less so in poor, black areas — just the reverse of what would happen in the years ahead.

In a ceremony rife with symbolism, he was sworn in by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the high court, and Mr. Barry led an inaugural parade down the 14th Street corridor hit by rioting after the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

His election coincided with a wave of African American political activism that swept black politicians into the mayor’s office in such cities as Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans and Atlanta, as well as Birmingham, Ala., Gary, Ind., and more than 200 smaller cities in the years between 1965 and 1985.

Family of sharecroppers

Marion Barry Jr. was born March 6, 1936, into a family of sharecroppers in the rural hamlet of Itta Bena, Miss. His mother, Mattie Carr, was just shy of her 17th birthday when she married Marion Barry Sr., a strapping sharecropper about 25 years her senior. The marriage disintegrated in conflicts over money and her ambition to flee a life of chopping cotton.
After leaving her husband, she settled in Memphis, where she worked in a slaughterhouse and as a housemaid.

Growing up, the future mayor worked hard at a variety of jobs. He had two newspaper routes and sold a third newspaper on street corners. He waited tables, bagged groceries and inspected soda bottles. He also went to choir practice.

In school, he was a good student. He was also an Eagle Scout.

The work ethic would remain throughout his career. In the early 1970s, when Mr. Barry was on the school board, it was said of him, “While you are sleeping at night, Marion Barry is up planning his next move.” Later, there was another axiom: “The mayor will spend more time cultivating his enemies than his friends.”

In 1958, Mr. Barry graduated with a degree in chemistry from LeMoyne College in Memphis, where he had been president of the student chapter of the NAACP. It was during those years that college fraternity brothers gave him the middle name Shepilov, after Dimitri Shepilov, a purged member of the Soviet Communist Party. Occasionally, he was called “Shep,” but he never officially made it part of his name.

In 1960, he received a master’s degree in chemistry at Fisk University in Nashville. He helped organize an NAACP chapter at Fisk and was a leader of Nashville’s first lunch counter sit-ins. He also participated in a 1960 meeting of black college student leaders that led to the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a civil rights organization known for demonstrations, sit-ins and boycotts. Mr. Barry was its first national chairman.

At the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where he was working on a doctorate, he met Blantie Evans, who would become his first wife. They were married in 1962 and later divorced.
D.C. debut

In 1965, Mr. Barry arrived in Washington to direct activities for the SNCC. This came at a critical juncture in D.C. race relations.

Nationally, the civil rights movement was heating up. There had been riots in the black enclaves of several urban centers, and more were to come. In Washington, the post-World War II flight of whites to the suburbs had given the city a population that was majority African American. But the local government was dominated by whites and subject to the oversight of white-dominated congressional committees. There was no home rule.

The stage was set for Mr. Barry’s D.C. political debut. Clad in a dashiki shirt and speaking in inflammatory rhetoric, he established himself as a visible presence with a forceful voice that could not easily be ignored.

In January 1966, he led a one-day bus “mancott” to protest a fare increase requested by D.C. Transit. He organized a “Free D.C. Movement” to press for home rule. He called the D.C. Police “an occupation army.” In 1969, he tore up a parking ticket, struck the officer who had placed it on his windshield and was charged with assault. The case ended with a hung jury.

Rep. John L. McMillan (D-S.C.), the chairman of the House Committee on the District of Columbia and one of the most influential men in Washington, was among the targets of his rhetoric. “The citizens of the District of Columbia,” Mr. Barry declared, “are tired of living on the McMillan plantation.”

In the winter of 1967, Mr. Barry resigned as director of SNCC’s Washington office, declaring, “Now we must concentrate on control — economic and political power.”

With financial support from the Department of Labor, he organized and directed an organization known as Pride, which put more than 1,000 inner-city youths to work clearing alleys of trash and debris, killing rats — and later running gas stations and a landscaping business and managing an apartment building.

In 1971, Mr. Barry won his first election for citywide office, defeating School Board chair Anita F. Allen for an at-large seat on the board.

From 1972 until 1974, Mr. Barry was the school board’s chairman. In 1974, he was elected to an at-large seat on the D.C. Council, receiving more votes than any of the four other at-large council members. At that point, he resigned as director of Pride Inc. to become a full-time politician.

He turned over the management of Pride to his second wife, Mary Treadwell, a Pride colleague whom he met at Fisk. They would later divorce. Treadwell was convicted of conspiracy to defraud in connection with the theft of federal money from an apartment building managed by Pride, and she received a three-year jail sentence. Mr. Barry was not implicated in that case.
A change in the man

On the D.C. Council in 1975, he was instrumental in defeating a 1 percent gross-receipts tax on all city businesses, winning the gratitude of the business community. He helped get a pay raise for the police department. He was among the early supporters of equal rights for gays and lesbians. Voters in these constituancies supported Barry at the polls. When he ran for a second term in 1976, he was overwhelmingly reelected with 78 percent of the vote.

Two years later, he ran for mayor.

But this was a different Marion Barry from the militant, confrontational street activist of the 1960s. Gone were the dashiki and the threatening scowl. The Barry of 1978 wore business suits and smiled pleasantly, bending his powerful frame forward ever so slightly to hear the complaints and observations of the little old ladies whose votes he sought.

“I’m a situationist,” he said at the time. “I do what is necessary for the situation. If I walked around in a dashiki now, people would say I’m crazy.” This was a tactic he’d learned years earlier as a civil rights worker with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: It had been an SNCC principle that in the country, you dressed like country folks, and in the city, you dressed like city folks. That way, you could fit in.

In his first mayoral candidacy, Mr. Barry won the backing of Washington’s police, firefighters’ and teachers’ unions, and his cultivation of various interest groups across the city paid dividends at the polls. He also won an endorsement from the editorial board of The Washington Post.

In this first campaign, he ran as an outsider, inveighing against a city bureaucracy that he repeatedly described as “bumbling and bungling.” He outlined a “hit list” of department heads — many of them black — whom he said he would fire, and he lambasted real estate speculation, which he said was displacing elderly blacks from their homes.

“What Mr. Barry seems to value, and to be offering . . . is precisely what we think the people of this city need and ought to be looking for . . . energy, nerve, initiative, toughness of mind, and active concern for people in distress,” The Post said in an editorial.

With about 35 percent of the vote and a margin of less than 2,000, Mr. Barry won the Democratic primary that September. Not because of his appeal in the low-income black community, but because he carried the white wards of the city while his two chief opponents — former mayor Walter E. Washington and Tucker, the former council chairman — split the black vote. It was only after taking office that Mr. Barry consolidated a black base of support, not just among the poor and downtrodden but within the middle-class black and business community.

In November’s general election, he had no trouble defeating Arthur A. Fletcher, a Republican who had been an assistant secretary of labor in the Nixon administration and a deputy assistant for urban affairs in the Ford administration.

As the new mayor of the nation’s capital, Mr. Barry made it one of his first acts to buy new clothes. Now he had a new image to fit.

Friends took him on shopping trips for the power suits and the red ties he usually wore. During his first term in office, he once stopped at a neighborhood Popeyes for a box of fried chicken, and he carried the box back with him into his office at the District building. “Mr. Mayor,” an aide protested, “you can’t be walking around with a chicken box in your hand.” The mayor assigned a security officer the task of toting the mayoral chicken.
City problems fester

Early in Mr. Barry’s first term, stringent controls were imposed on city spending and a bloated payroll was trimmed by 10 percent, largely through attrition. The city’s financial records were sufficiently organized to permit the first successful audit in history. There was a downtown office-construction boom, and the mayor took pride in helping developers cut through red tape to obtain building permits. Hand-in-hand with the cutting of red tape was an emphasis on the inclusion of minority contractors in works and projects sanctioned or supported by the city government.

But beneath this veneer, serious problems continued to fester. Crime and unemployment increased. There was only minimal improvement in the efficiency of city agencies.The infant mortality rate remained high, and abandoned homes remained boarded up in blighted neighborhoods throughout the city. Mini-scandals seemed to occur with disturbing frequency, and there was increasing talk of the mayor’s personal indiscretions.

Facing another election in 1982, Mr. Barry abandoned the fiscal restraint of his first years in office for $180 million in new spending for jobs, housing and programs for the elderly. He faced a seemingly tough opponent in the Democratic primary, Patricia Roberts Harris, who had served in the cabinet of President Jimmy Carter as secretary of housing and urban development and secretary of health, education and welfare.

But Marion Barry the progressive reformer of 1978 had become Marion Barry the power broker by 1982. He had tightened his political hold on the city, raised more than $1 million and put together a solid campaign organization. He was engaging on the stump, and he had a winning way with voters. He beat Harris with 59 percent of the vote.

At a party in 1985, Mr. Barry met an unemployed model named Hazel Diane “Rasheeda” Moore in what would become one of the more fateful encounters of his career. Moore would later testify that she had a two-year love affair with the mayor, who by then was married to the former Effi Slaughter Cowell, his third wife.

Moore subsequently received $180,000 in city funds over the next three years to run an “image consciousness” program for city youths — at the same time she was meeting Mr. Barry for exotic trysts that she said often included drugs.

Whatever difficulties attended Mr. Barry’s second term, their effect at the polls was negligible when he ran for a third term in the fall of 1986. In the Democratic primary, he crushed former school board member Mattie Taylor, winning 71 percent of the vote. Carol Schwartz, a Republican on the D.C. Council, ran against him in the November general election. Mr. Barry captured 61 percent of the vote to her 31 percent.
The sting

Mr. Barry had said in August 1989 that he’d made an “irrevocable decision” to run for a fourth term as mayor. On Jan. 18, 1990, the mayor received a telephone call from Moore. She was staying at the Vista International Hotel on Thomas Circle in Northwest Washington, and she invited Mr. Barry to her room. He accepted.

Captured on FBI videotape, the scene at the Vista would later be played on television newscasts around the world: the mayor reaching out to fondle Moore’s breast and leg, asking about drugs and taking two long drags on a crack pipe, the storming of the room by FBI agents, the mayor placed against the wall with his arms outstretched, handcuffed, being read his rights.

“Bitch set me up. . . . I shouldn’t have come up here,” the mayor repeated.

Three days later, instead of a planned declaration of his candidacy for a fourth term, Mr. Barry, tearful and contrite, announced that he had “weaknesses” for which he would seek help. “I’m going to find a way to begin to heal my body, mind and soul. . . . I realize I’m going to have to walk this journey by myself. . . . I have come face to face with my deepest human frailties. I’ve had to look my human weaknesses straight in the eye . . .”

A few days later, Mr. Barry left town for a seven-week rehabilitation program in Florida and later in South Carolina.

Early in June, he went on trial in federal court on perjury and drug-possession charges. While the jury was still being selected, he announced that he would not seek reelection. (In January of 1991, Sharon Pratt Dixon would succeed him as mayor. )

After a two-month trial and eight days of jury deliberations, Mr. Barry was convicted on Aug. 10 of one count of cocaine possession — at the Mayflower Hotel in early November 1989. This was based on the testimony of an Alabama businesswoman who testified that she had used cocaine with Barry there.

But the jury was unable to agree on the charge stemming from the FBI sting at the Vista, where Mr. Barry had been videotaped smoking crack and arrested on Jan. 18, 1990. He was acquitted on a second count of cocaine possession. On the remaining charges, including three felony counts of perjury before a federal grand jury, the jury was also unable to reach a verdict.

This was a major victory for the mayor. Acquittal on the felony count appeared to remove a potential legal barrier to the possibility of his holding public office in the future.

Within 30 minutes of the verdicts’ announcement, his supporters were driving past the federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue in Northwest, honking their horns and shouting in celebration.

On Oct. 26, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who had presided over his trial, declared that Mr. Barry had “given aid, comfort and encouragement to the drug culture.” The judge sentenced him to six months in prison and a year on probation, and he fined him $5,000.

Coming in third

At the time, Mr. Barry was running as an independent for an at-large seat on the council, having announced his candidacy five days after his trial ended. But less than two weeks after his sentencing, he suffered the first defeat of his 20-year political career, finishing third with just 20 percent of the vote.

It would be another year before he began his prison sentence. In October 1991, his appeals exhausted, Mr. Barry reported to a minimum-security federal prison in Petersburg, Va., to begin serving his six-month sentence.

Even while incarcerated, he made news. Late in December, an inmate reported having seen a female visitor perform oral sex on the former mayor in the prison’s family reception room. Mr. Barry denied it, but prison authorities ruled that he had engaged in sexual misconduct with a visitor and moved him to a medium-security prison in Loretto, Pa.

When he was released in April 1992, he returned to Washington like a hero, riding home in a limousine followed by six buses packed with praying, celebrating supporters.

Back home, he hit the ground running, seeking the Ward 8 council seat — in far Southeast Washington, the poorest, most isolated ward in the city and the only one he had carried in his failed 1990 bid for an at-large council seat.

By a margin of 3 to 1, he crushed the incumbent, former political ally Wilhelmina Rolark, in the Democratic primary, then won handily in the November general election.
Rebounding

In May 1994, he announced his candidacy for a fourth term as mayor. “I’m in recovery,” he said, “and so is my city.”

For the critical Democratic primary, he faced veteran council member John Ray and the incumbent mayor, who by then had married and was known as Sharon Pratt Kelly. Neither was a match for the charismatic Mr. Barry, who was campaigning night and day, preaching a message that the “God-force” within had taken control of his life and helped him clean up his act.

His 12-year marriage to Effi Barry having ended in divorce, Mr. Barry had married Cora Masters, a political science professor at the University of the District of Columbia, early in 1994. She was communications director for his campaign.

On the day of the primary, Mr. Barry won easily, taking 47 percent of the vote to John Ray’s 37 percent and Kelly’s 13 percent.

Two months later, he beat Republican council member Carol Schwartz in a rematch of the 1986 general election, with 56 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Schwartz.

In January 1995, 16 years after he first took the oath of office as mayor of the District, Mr. Barry was sworn in for his fourth term. This was a smaller, poorer city than the one he led in 1979. The District was beset with such problems as an AIDS epidemic and crack cocaine that were unknown when he began his first term. Courts had already taken over the city’s prisons and foster-care programs, and a takeover of public housing was underway. City finances were in disarray, and judges had threatened contempt citations to force payment of its bills.

Beaming as he took the oath of office, Mr. Barry proclaimed the “dawn of a new day” for the District of Columbia, and he said he was beginning a “second chance” as the city’s mayor. Maya Angelou read a poem affirming that “strong men . . . get stronger.”

Control of D.C. shifts

Three months after his return to power, Mr. Barry unveiled his “miracle budget,” which essentially relied on Congress to provide hundreds of millions of dollars to bail the city out. On Capitol Hill, it sank like cement. A month later, Congress created the D.C. financial control board and gave it total control over the city’s spending.

For the rest of Mr. Barry’s term, he would feud with the control board and its chief financial officer, Anthony A. Williams, who in 1999 would succeed him as mayor. In July of 1997, Congress enacted a reform package for the city that stripped Mr. Barry of almost all of his remaining power, handing over day-to-day control of nine major operating departments to the control board.

The mayor called it “a rape of democracy” and a “bloodless coup,” proclaiming that it wasn’t just about Marion Barry. Republicans, having seized control of Congress in 1994, had been looking for an excuse to curtail home rule in the nation’s capital, he said.

But it was common knowledge on Capitol Hill that Mr. Barry was, in fact, the primary player in the contretemps and that a restoration of home rule for the District was unlikely as long as he was mayor. Mr. Barry admitted as much in May of 1998, when he announced that he would not seek a fifth term. As his successor in the mayor’s office, Anthony Williams would regain almost all the powers that had been taken from Mr. Barry.

Reviewing his years as mayor, Mr. Barry said he was especially proud of the construction of 23 million square feet of office and retail space in the new downtown, a smattering of new housing and what then was known as the MCI Center. His years as mayor also had seen a dispersal of D.C. government offices across the city — to locations along the 1968 riot corridors of 14th Street NW, H Street NE and Martin Luther King Avenue SE. On 14th and on H streets, this helped spark revitalization of once-blighted neighborhoods.

Spotlight never faded

On Jan. 2, 1999, Mr. Barry left the mayor’s office for the final time. On the dais at his successor’s inauguration at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, he embraced Williams and formally relinquished leadership of the city to him. Then he left the ceremony as a private citizen.

Never again would he hold the power and influence he once commanded, when he was at the top of his game. But he remained a celebrity. He would still be greeted with standing ovations at certain clubs and nightspots in the city. Well-wishers, seeing him on the streets, would rush to shake his hand.

He remained prominent and frequently in the media. He was elected twice more to the council, each time as the representative from Ward 8.

His fourth wife, Cora Masters Barry, left him, and his third wife, Effi Barry, died in 2007. Marion Christopher Barry, his son with Effi Barry and his only immediate survivor, pleaded guilty to drug possession in 2011 and received a suspended jail sentence. Effi Barry’s mother, Polly Harris, was quoted in The Washington Post as saying that the former mayor was responsible for Christopher Barry’s drug use.

“All of my grandson’s problems are laid right at the feet of his so-called father, Marion Barry,” she said. “He was never a father. He was never at home.” Mr. Barry called his mother-in-law’s comment “totally unfounded.”

At times, he spoke openly about his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. In a court-ordered screening in 2005, the former mayor tested positive for cocaine and marijuana use. These were not his only personal issues: He was placed on probation for failing to file D.C. and federal income taxes.

He had myriad health problems — high blood pressure, diabetes, prostate cancer, and he underwent a kidney transplant. There was a $35,000 judgment against him stemming from a lawsuit filed by a custodian at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, who said that Mr. Barry shoved her and exposed himself to her in an airport restroom in 2000.

In 2010, Mr. Barry was censured by the council, stripped of his chairmanship of the council’s Committee on Housing and Workforce Development and removed from the Finance and Revenue Committee. That vote stemmed from a $15,000 “personal service” contract that Mr. Barry, in his capacity as a council member, had awarded to Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, an on-again, off-again girlfriend to whom he had lent money. She repaid him with money from that contract.

In an interview with Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy shortly after his colleagues voted to censure him, Mr. Barry declared he was “feeling great. . . . I’ve been through worse. . . . The reason I survive is because I have an abiding faith in God.

“Having faith doesn’t mean you don’t have to use good sense. God doesn’t expect you to act like a fool. But God did give us a secular side and a human side. There is a constant fight between the Devil, which is the flesh, and the spirit, which is God. It’s a total, all-out war.”

AMIRI BARAKA Is Dead At The Age Of 79....R.I.P. (Former Poet Laureate Of NEW JERSEY)

#BARAKA


AMIRI BARAKA, (Leroi Jones) former NEW JERSEY Poet Laureate & Father of NEWARK's next Mayor RAS BARAKA, has died at the age of 79.

After a long illness, he was admitted to BETH ISRAEL Hospital Monday night & passed away Thursday.

AMIRI BARAKA was a U.S. Military Veteran, whose Gift of Poetry & Love for Literature will be missed.

Thank GOD for books. He has written many.

R.I.P.




ARTICLE: "Amiri Baraka, Former N.J. Poet Laureate & Prolific Author, Dead At 79"


Amiri Baraka, the longtime activist and former poet laureate of New Jersey died today, officials confirmed. He was 79 years old.

Baraka was placed in intensive care at Beth Israel Medical Center last month for an unknown reason, but a spokesman for his son's mayoral campaign said his condition was improving late in December.

Newark Mayor Luis Quintana said Baraka will be sorely missed.

"I went to visit him at the hospital about two weeks ago," Quintana said by phone. "He was more than poet he was a leader in his own right. He's going to be missed and our condolences go out to his family today."

Quintana recalled Baraka's role in the 1969 Black and Puerto Rican convention, a landmark political meeting that resulted in the election of Ken Gibson, Newark's first black mayor.

"We're going to remember him always for his contributions to Newark, New Jersey and America," Quintana said. "In this time of pain, the citizens of Newark and I are with him."

Baraka had long struggled with diabetes, but it was not immediately clear what the cause of death was.

A Newark native and resident formerly known as Leroi Jones, Amiri Baraka has published dozens of poems, essays and works of non-fiction.

In 1963 Amiri Baraka wrote "Blues People," an in-depth history of music from the time of slavery throughout the various incarnations of blues and jazz, with integrated social commentary. The book's 50th anniversary was recently celebrated during an event at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

In 1964, Baraka published the book of poetry, "Dead Lecturer" that marked a significant transition in his career. Also written under the name Leroi Jones, the book featured more traditional poems but also laid the groundwork for the more radical, experimental work that would come to define his later career.

"He was able to put music into the work, even reading the work," said Maria Maziotti Gillan, a poet and the director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. "Mostly he was able to capture an audience when he spoke. He was a able to capture an audience through his poetry but also through what he had to say."

Kenneth Gibson, Newwark's first African American mayor said Baraka was the spiritual leader that helped enfranchise Newark's black and Hispanic community in the city's

"He was really a man ahead of his time in many ways," Gibson said by phone. "He was a spiritual leader of the group that we put together to develop the black and Puerto Rican convention."

Gibson and Baraka were close allies when Gibson was elected mayor in 1970 but Gibson said governance was not something Baraka took to easily.

"He was much more artistic than political and that was his nature," Gibson said. "But I never lost respect for him and he never lost respect for me."

Gibson said despite his outspoken nature, Baraka "kept a lot of things internal," but added, "He was a visionary. A visionary is sometimes misunderstood and sometimes they are understood, but he was in a class by himself."

Baraka was the state's second poet laureate for a short time in 2002 and 2003.

In 2002, Gov. James E. McGreevey called for Baraka’s resignation as New Jersey’s Poet Laureate after a Jewish group condemned “Somebody Blew Up America.” The poem, written shortly after 9/11, included a passage claiming thousands of Israelis knew there was going to be an attack and stayed home from work — an Internet rumor not based in fact.

In typical fashion, Baraka defended his free speech and wrote an essay entitled, “I will not apologize, I will not resign.”

Newark City Council President Mildred Crump, a longtime friend of the Baraka family, said the world lost one of its pre-eminent literary figures today.

“Not only has New Jersey, but the United States of America, has lost a great human being. He was a legend in his own lifetime," Crump said. "It is such a loss, such a great loss."

Crump said Baraka's condition had been improving, and he was breathing on his own when she last visited him on Sunday. The Baraka family has been lining Beth Israel Medical Center for weeks, according to Crump.

“He fought a good fight. I was there the first night he went into the hospital," Crump said. "I was there when he was breathing on his own, I was there Sunday."

Crump said her first association with Baraka came in the 1970s, when he led the charge to build Kawaida Towers, a planned 100-acre housing project that was meant to embody the Black Power movement that Amiri had long been a champion of.

"That's when he became my hero," Crump said.



Sources: AP, NJ.com, Youtube

CHRIS CHRISTIE PRESSER: He Apologizes, Takes Responsibility, Fires Key Staffer Bridget Kelley (GREAT DAMAGE CONTROL!)

#BRIDGEGATE


HOW TO CORRECTLY HANDLE POLITICAL SCANDALS 101:

GREAT DAMAGE CONTROL GOV CHRISTIE!

Today I was extremely Impressed with the way Gov CHRIS CHRISTIE handled his "BRIDGEGATE" Scandal during his Press Conference.

All eyes were on him as America listened intensely to his comments.

I have to be Fair & award KUDOS to CHRISTIE for how well he handled himself this morning on the National Stage.

He publicly APOLOGIZED.

He accepted Full RESPONSIBLITY.

He took Swift ACTION.

He is working to quickly regain the TRUST of his CONSTITUENTS.

He was Polite to REPORTERS & JOURNALISTS.

and......

He did NOT Protect His CLOSE FRIENDS!

These attributes demonstrate a great level of INTEGRITY & LEADERSHIP.

The OBAMA Administration should have done the same when faced with the IRS Targeting Scheme.

I'm just saying.








Sources: Gov Christie's office, NJ.com, Roll Call, Youtube

BILL DE BLASIO Shovels His Own Snow After Brutal Blizzard Strikes The Northeast (A Man Of The People)

#BillDeBlasioNYC

It's a welcome change to see NYC Mayor BILL DE BLASIO Shoveling his own snow during this Brutal Blizzard which has almost Paralyzed the Northeast.

I can assure you MICHAEL BLOOMBERG has NEVER shoveled snow!

At least NOT while he was Mayor of NYC.

BILL DE BLASIO is truly a Man of THE PEOPLE!

I will continue to Pray GOD'S Blessings on this Man....his Family....and his Administration daily.





"Blizzard Blasts Northeast With Snow, Wind And Bitter Cold"


The heavy snow falling along much of the mid-Atlantic Coast into New England is expected to taper off Friday as a nor'easter heads into Canada, leaving bitter cold in its wake, the National Weather Service said.

By early morning, the snowfall was nearly finished in the nation's capital; it was expected to stop by late morning in New York City, where 6 inches were covering Central Park, and by early afternoon in Boston, which got socked by nearly 15 inches.

North of Boston, residents of Topsfield, Massachusetts, got nearly 2 feet of snow.

The combination of cold and winds gusting more than 30 mph was expected to lower wind chill temperatures to less than 10 degrees over the mid-Atlantic and into the teens in New England.

And not just the Northeast will be hit, forecasters said.

About one-third of the nation -- approximately 100 million people in 22 states -- is in the path of this storm.

Snow was also predicted from the Upper Midwest into the Great Lakes, with as much as 8 inches expected in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and additional snow possible along a cold front that extends through the Midwest and into the Central Plains, the service said.

Across the country, the weather has snarled travel plans for many.

FlightAware.com, which tracks cancellations due to weather and mechanical problems, said more than 2,000 flights had been canceled for Friday within, into or out of the United States. That's after more than 2,600 U.S. flights were canceled Thursday.

Flights were expected to resume later Friday in much of New England, though delays were predicted at some airports. Ticket holders were urged to check with their airlines.

Barb Plooster had planned to fly Friday from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Grand Rapids, Michigan, but her flight was canceled. She told CNN affiliate WICU that she was on the phone with United Airlines for five hours trying to find a way to get home but has concluded that she will have to wait until Monday. "We got a warm place to stay, get to visit the kids, the grandkids, so it's OK," she said.

Here's a breakdown of what to expect where:

New York and Long Island

A winter storm warning was to remain in effect across the five boroughs until 1 p.m., with wind gusts dropping wind chills to as low as 15 below, the mayor's office said.

"This has been and remains a dangerous storm," newly sworn-in Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday in a prepared statement. "The best things people can do are to stay off the roads so we can clear them as fast as possible, and to check in on elderly and vulnerable neighbors who might need help this morning."

New York City had gotten nearly 10 inches of snow by the time it abated late Friday morning, de Blasio told reporters. "It's hard to drive out there," he said. "If you do not need to travel today, please stay home."

Sanitation workers were on 12-hour shifts to clear the city's 6,200 miles of roadways, he said.

Long Island will be under a blizzard warning until 1 p.m. Friday, with wind chills as low as 10 below zero and sustained winds of at least 35 mph.

Flight operations resumed late Friday morning at John F. Kennedy International Airport; they were continuing -- despite hundreds of cancellations -- at LaGuardia Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.

Temperatures in the single digits were predicted for Saturday morning.

New York City public schools were closed Friday.

Upstate, the capital city of Albany could get buried under 14 inches of snow, with wind chills of 15 to 25 below zero, the National Weather Service said.

The weather had its fans. In Rochester, New York, CNN iReporter Blake Sampson, 29, took a picture from his apartment window. "I grew up in Minnesota, so I'm used to it," he said. "I like how quiet things get when there is a fresh blanket of snow."

Massachusetts

That blanket covered Boston, which expected to see 10 to 18 inches of snow and temperatures as low as 6 degrees below zero by Friday night.

But limited flights were continuing into and out of Boston's Logan Airport.

The state's emergency management agency predicted up to 2 feet of snow on parts of the North Shore, South Shore and Cape Cod.

Students in scores of school districts were told to stay home Friday.

"I guess Mother Nature wanted to give me one more gift," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said Thursday, one of his last days in the office he has held since 1993.

Blizzard warnings were in effect for parts of nearby Essex and Plymouth counties -- including the communities of Gloucester, Brockton and Plymouth -- as well as Cape Cod.

The state warned that midday high tides could produce "significant flooding" along the coast. The towns of Scituate and Duxbury requested voluntary evacuations of certain low-lying areas.

Connecticut and Delaware

Wind chills in parts of Connecticut were expected to range from -5 to -20 degrees Friday, and the National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for most of the state through Friday morning.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy urged residents to take it slow and give themselves extra time for their commutes Friday. He said he expects delays but not cancellations in public transit.

Delaware said state offices were closed for all but "essential employees."

Chicago and points beyond

In the Windy City, wind chills Friday will creep down to minus 12, with more snow possible over the weekend.

The arctic blast was expected to be the coldest in 17 years, with temperatures predicted to drop below zero Sunday evening and not return to positive digits until Wednesday.

Though snow in Chicago in the winter is a common event, it "can still wreak havoc on daily routines," city emergency director Gary Schenkel said.

Next week could be no better for some U.S. residents.

A new shot of colder air will start to move into the northern Midwest by Saturday and will dive south Monday and Tuesday, carrying zero-degree cold as far south as Nashville. "That's the coldest air we've seen that far south in several years," CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen said.

The cold air will kick off a new storm Sunday into Monday that could affect a number of NFL playoff games this weekend. In Wisconsin, the Green Bay Packers will give a cold welcome to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, when temperatures could bottom out at -17.

The U.S. weather had international implications, too: All meetings were canceled Friday at the United Nations headquarters complex on New York's East Side.


Sources: CNN; USA Today, Youtube