Photo: Press
Rapper Common has said that Chicago “doesn’t need” President Trump’s suggested martial law intervention to deal with its violence issues.
Having attacked “the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential,” during his inauguration speech and promising “this American carnage stops right here and stops right now”, Trump Tweeted on Tuesday morning that "If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!"
Speaking to TMZ at LAX airport yesterday, Common dismissed “that kind of mentality” as unhelpful and irrelevant. “To help Chicago we’ve gotta take care of our own,” he said. “Within the community we’ve gotta do things, there’s a lot of people already out there already organising and doing things, we need local people to do things. We don’t need that kind of mentality, so I’m not focussed on the President right now, I’m focussed on helping the people in the city and how we can do it.”
“We’re gonna help each other,” he added, “we’re gonna work with the grassroot groups.”
A recent Fox News report claimed that there have already been been 228 shootings and 42 murders in Chicago in 2017.
