TRUMP'S 'SAFER, MORE BEAUTIFUL' D.C. INCLUDES NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS

Originally published Aug 11, 2025 at 11:45 AM EDT

"Mayor for life" Marion Berry was re-elected after he was videotaped smoking crack

WASHINGTON — "God bless Chocolate City and its vanilla suburbs."

That line is taken from the song "Chocolate City" which was released by the funk band Parliament in 1975 on their third album, also named Chocolate City. On the track, the band's leader, George Clinton, tells his black listeners, " We don't need the bullet if we have the ballot," then warns his white listeners that blacks were "gaining on you."

Fifty years later, the Trump administration is promising a sweeping crackdown on crime and homelessness in Washington, D.C. in a proposal that could include deploying the National Guard.

The city has experienced several days of heightened federal law enforcement patrols and the president has vowed to make the district “safer and more beautiful than it ever was before.“

In 2011, the District of Columbia's Black population slipped below 50 percent for the first time in over 50 years. At its peak, in 1970, the Black residents were 71% of the total population. That's what enabled "mayor for life" Marion Berry to be re-elected after he was videotaped during a sting operation smoking crack cocaine and arrested by the FBI on drug charges.

Black control of our nation's capital has always been the real issue for some, but competent leadership should've been the focus of Black voters when the numbers were in their favor. Berry's successor, Tony Williams, moved D.C. from a $355 million deficit to a $185 million surplus.

Since then, the city has lost its ability to spend its own locally raised funds, homicides skyrocketed under Muriel Bowser and now Trump is talking about sending in troops .