“My reaction is, it’s disgusting,” said Bernard Demczuk, who worked with Barry on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s and later held a senior post in his mayoral administration.
“I will do everything I can to shut down that pizza place. They have no right to monetize someone’s problem that’s a big problem for a lot of people in this country. It’s disgraceful, making a profit off a man who devoted his life to helping people.”
That Barry fostered a thriving African American middle class by putting thousands of struggling Black residents in municipal jobs is sometimes forgotten in today’s Washington, particularly outside the areas that Barry represented. But many recall that Barry, in his third term as mayor, was caught on videotape smoking crack in a 1990 FBI sting. “B---- set me up,” he declared in a quote heard round the world, referring to an ex-girlfriend who was secretly working for the FBI.
It angers many of Barry’s old acquaintances that, to a lot folks these days, the public humiliation of his drug arrest and subsequent six-month prison term define his legacy more than his long-ago accomplishments do. After his release, Barry was elected to a fourth term as mayor and later served on the D.C. Council, representing Ward 8, the city’s poorest precinct.
“My phone has been ringing all day and night,” said Ronald Moten, a longtime community activist and friend of Barry’s who is organizing a boycott and demonstration at several &Pizza outlets in D.C. “People are really p---ed off,” Moten said. “They want to know what they can do. And we’re going be shutting them down Friday and Saturday night, when most people go there, when the clubs let out on U Street and H Street and up by the Rose Bar on Connecticut Avenue.
“We’re going to show them we’ve still got a voice in this city,” he said.
It’s unclear whether Marion Berry knots are being sold in all 41 &Pizza shops, in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Philadelphia and New Jersey. The company’s chief executive, Mike Burns, did not return a phone message seeking comment. A public relations firm representing &Pizza did not respond to a list of emailed questions, releasing only a brief statement from Burns.
“We’re talking about a marionberry, that’s spelled with an ‘e,’” the statement said. “We stuff that into a knot, drizzle it with icing and then top it with powdered sugar. It’s delicious — we can’t wait for D.C. to try it.”
Erik Bruner-Yang, who said he and other chefs created &Pizza’s original garlic knots when he was the company’s executive corporate chef, from 2018 to 2020, panned the updated dessert’s rollout. “I am upset, regardless of my previous employment, because it’s racist and insensitive,” Bruner-Yang, who owns an Asian restaurant, said in a text message.
Barry’s widow, Cora Masters Barry, was “blindsided” by the pastry’s debut this week and has “expressed disappointment and outrage by the promotion’s inference,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. The former D.C. first lady “has requested that the attorneys for the Estate of Marion Barry Jr. look into the matter and act accordingly.”
Local activists also voiced anger. “This has caused hurt and harm to his family, his legacy, and the entire Black DC community,” Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a Black-led mutual aid and community defense organization, wrote in an Instagram post. Akosua Ali, head of the NAACP DC, said in a statement that the late mayor “deserves to be remembered as a pioneer for economic development, real-estate development, black business empowerment, youth employment and as the Mayor of the people.”
Among other projects, Barry oversaw the revitalization of a swath of downtown from Metro Center to Chinatown, sparked by the opening of the Verizon Center in 1997 (now Capital One Arena), during his final stint as mayor. Years earlier, in a majority-Black, newly self-governing city, he set aside government contracts for minorities, giving an economic leg up to a generation of Washingtonians. His summer jobs program for young people gave paychecks to thousands of city teenagers.
This pizza dessert ad campaign recalls none of that, but rather the Barry of human weakness, the “night owl” mayor, as he sheepishly called himself. It suggests the Barry of wee-hour extramarital affairs, of unpaid taxes and unpaid parking tickets, of an infamous coke habit. His supporters back then tended to forgive that part of him, perhaps seeing in their flawed mayor aspects of themselves or people they loved.
“All of us have demons,” Demczuk said. “All of us have issues that could be dragged into the light and made embarrassing, especially when we’re gone. … You have to judge a person by their whole life. Marion Barry was just a kindhearted person who had some issues. That’s what I want people to remember, that he was a good person.”
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