Posted on 03/03/2018 10:33:02 PM PST by wmileo
To some in Washington, D.C., he was a “living legend” who advocated for the city’s poor. To others he was a controversial figure remembered for being re-elected mayor despite serving a prison sentence for possession of crack cocaine.
On Saturday, an 8-foot-high bronze statue of former Mayor Marion Barry was unveiled on Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capital, just blocks from the White House. The statue, designed by artist Steven Weitzman, was ordered by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Washington's Fox 5 reported. The estimated $250,000 cost was covered by a combination of public and private funds, the Washington Business Journal reported.
The move to honor Barry, who died at age 78 in 2014, may seem mystifying to non-Washingtonians. But among Barry's supporters, the statue is an appropriate tribute to a legitimate D.C. icon — a man so popular and influential that he walked out of federal prison and immediately began winning elections again with one of the most improbable comebacks in American political history.
"He was a living legend," said City Councilman Trayon White, during an appearance Thursday on an influential local radio show hosted by Kojo Nnamdi. "Marion Barry was an integral part of getting D.C. where it is today. ... To honor a man like that who touched so many people — it's right for the city.” Not everyone views Barry so fondly. When the radio show started taking phone calls, the first caller blasted Barry as an "abysmal mayor" who presided over an era of corruption and mismanagement but now benefits from what the caller referred to as "convenient historical amnesia."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Someone pleeeeese weld a bronze crackpipe to its mouth.
Isn’t putting up this statue a slap in the face to Asian people who live in DC?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dcs-marion-barry-widely-rebuked-for-comments-about-asian-business-owners/2012/04/05/gIQA27SVyS_story.html?utm_term=.1927b771e59e
Liberal Blacks ONLY care bout other liberals.
A shameful man, from a shameful party, for a shameful city.
“A shameful man, from a shameful party, for a shameful city.”
Then it is actually apropos.
Where’s that statue at? The NY Times headquarters in front of their statue of Lenin? Or CNN’s statue of Mao?
Can we paint white paint under its nose... to represent cocaine?
He is someone black yoots can aspire to.
Some day that could be me.
Marion Barry was the Snow King of DC who had so many wives you wondered who was next.
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