A Baltimore social activist has a message for U.S. President Donald Trump: “stop tweeting, start working.”

Trump tweeted last week about Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings’ majority-black Baltimore district, calling it a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” before concluding that “no human being would want to live there.”

Baltimore-born-and-raised activist Kwame Rose says he wants to see his city “turn the tide” on portrayals of his city such as the one given by the president.

“We should not look at people who live in low-income environments as less than,” Rose told CTV News. “They are human beings, and they do want to live here, contrary to what the president said. We should be, if anything, providing resources to those individuals so that they can … play a role in contributing to society, more so than what they have the ability to right now.”

Trump claimed Tuesday that he was receiving praise from Baltimore residents for “pointing out the tremendous corruption that’s taking place in Baltimore and other Democratic-run cities.”

He has been retweeting pictures of ruined buildings and garbage allegedly in Baltimore since his tweetstorm went viral.

Rose said that there are areas and housing projects in Baltimore where residents do live in conditions with rodents and cockroaches, and that this is “not normal,” but that “people are subjugated to those types of conditions.

“I think it is right that we talk about the challenges, but not just in the sense to say ‘oh, this place is a dump,’ no, we should talk about the challenges and create solutions,” Rose said.

Rose pointed out that ironically, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who is now a senior Trump advisor, owned buildings and housing projects in Baltimore, a fact Trump seems to have forgotten when placing blame.

“Jared Kushner’s family makes their money the same way Donald Trump’s father made his money, by owning housing projects throughout the country, and several of those buildings which are in deplorable conditions are owned by Jared Kushner himself,” Rose said.

In 2017, Baltimore Country once found that Kushner Cos. had racked up 200 code violations with apartments within just 10 months.

Rose believes the word “infested” was used in a “racial context,” and that Trump’s comments were not aimed at truly helping the people who live in Baltimore, but were a “tactical election strategy.

“There is a significant base here in America of white individuals who come from the same conditions in which Donald Trump was talking about (with Baltimore),” Rose said. “You have poor white people who blame black and brown people for their lack of economic success. So, Donald Trump is speaking to a silent majority.”

Rose is unafraid to ask politicians to do better in light of these comments.

His activism first came into the public eye after footage surfaced in 2015 of him confronting a Fox News reporter for the media’s representation of Baltimore and of protests happening in the city after the homicide of Freddie Gray, a black man who died while in police custody.

“2019, and are we really invoking racism as a political tool to win an election?” Rose said. He said it “calls on Democrats,” to be actively anti-racist, and condemn the president for using “racist rhetoric.”

The answer to Baltimore’s struggles isn’t tweets, according to Rose. It’s investment in the people who live there.

“We need investment in violence prevention programs, we need serious investment in drug rehabilitation centers,” Rose said.

“We don’t need more criticism, we need more helping hands.”