top of page
Search

What Happened at George Floyd Square?

  • Writer: Telling their Stories
    Telling their Stories
  • Jun 14, 2021
  • 6 min read

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered in a Minneapolis intersection. From that day, more than a year has passed. In that year, many things have occurred. Soon after the incident, protests began to spark from the disturbing video uploaded on the internet. "I knew that he was in pain," said Darnella Frazier, the woman who recorded the video. "I knew that he was another Black man in danger with no power." Four officers involved in the arrest of George Floyd were fired and hundreds of protestors took to the streets of Minneapolis. Quickly, protests began to spread to new places.

Not all of the protests looked the same, but they all had the same objectives. In Portland, Oregon, protestors lay on the street while reciting “I can’t breathe”. The Minneapolis art community used their talent to keep his memory alive. “We wanted to portray him in a positive light, not as a martyr but as a hero,” explained Cadex Herrera. “We wanted to make sure that his name was remembered.” His mural was painted on the side of a grocery store along with artists Greta McLain and Xena Goldman, saluting other black people who had been killed due to police violence, including Sandra Bland, Freddie Grey, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner. However, according to ARTnews, there wasn’t even enough space on the art to write all the African-Americans who had died in police custody.

For as long as year, the region around the crossing point of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue has been forbidden to vehicles, and, generally, liberated from cops. A multiracial local gathering driven by black women has been meeting twice every day at George Floyd’s square for a year. They have said that they will keep on occupying the square until the city meets a rundown of 24 requests for equity. Yet, many might want to make the commemoration and passerby access permanent. One of the listed requests is to keep the zone until the preliminaries of every one of the four officials engaged with Floyd's death are finished.

The square is a place where volunteering teams, neighbours, and nonprofit groups can band together, creating a small but independent and flourishing community. Volunteers fix potholes, rebuild broken structures, and more. In the square, the volunteer’s creativity can be seen through a “clothing library and a community book shelf; volunteer medics and informal patrol groups”, as well as a garden with colorful flowers and herbs. The area has become a symbol of remedy and resistance.

Before the one-year memorial, an organizer named Marcia Howard recited five “assumptions” to promote a sound and secure remembrance. “Assume that everybody in this square may be carrying Covid,” she spoke. “Mask up or back up. Number two, assume everyone in this square is armed. Please be patient and polite.”.

The next day, the reasons for this speech could be seen. There were reports of gunfire near the area. The results of the gunshots were a broken window at a barber shop as well as a person being transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center due to a gunshot wound. This event, however, did not stop the anniversary. Volunteers who panicked while preparing for the busy day were guided away from the square. Instead, they were moved to a park in Minneapolis about 3.5 miles away from the reports of gunfire.

At that point, the scorching-hot afternoon turned into a lively and passionate celebration. Music played over speakers, and people "breakdanced, chanted, laid flowers under the names of others lost to police violence, ate barbecue and rollerbladed". One crowd knelt before Cup Foods for precisely 9 minutes and 29 seconds, reminding others of the exact time when Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck. A quilt from Durham, North Carolina cherishing black individuals affected by gun violence was spread out. At dusk, candles lit up a vigil.

While there are countless people whose contributions allowed the anniversary to happen, there are a few special people who worked especially hard for this memorial to come to life! The names of these people are Jeanelle Austin, Marcia Howard, and Madi Ramirez-Tentinger.

Jeanelle Austin was known as the lead caretaker of the memorial. When the offerings at GFS Memorial were being improperly removed in 2020, she intervened and sifted through piles and piles of city waste to preserve the important offerings. She said, “I would’ve brought the caretakers to do it properly. We wanted to compost the flowers. You know, everything in the memorial mattered, and how we recycled things and disposed of things mattered”. Moreover, she played a principal part in the ‘Say their Names Memorial’, bringing light to the lives of black Americans who had been unjustly killed. Upon seeing it, Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston, remarked “You simply cannot take that walk without feeling their spirit and in so many ways they are very much alive,”.

Marcia Howard is a retired Marine in the Powderhorn Neighborhood. She was a teacher up until last year, at the time of George Floyd’s death. “I am a resident and volunteer and protestor,” explained Howard. Austin added that “38th and Chicago has become her classroom”. Six of Howard’s own students have passed away due to violence in her neighborhood. This is one of the many reasons for her activism. “I’m angry because I’m 47 and I have to stand on a street corner and say my life matters, and have people argue with me”, she said. “I’m angry because my mother had to go to a segregated school until the ninth grade. My dad couldn’t vote when he turned 18, and it’s 2021 and I’m still fighting the fight that my grandmother fought,” said Howard. Her alert nature helps maintain a safe environment in the George Floyd Square.

Madi Ramirez-Tentinger is a bubbly and sociable stand-up comedian whose genuine connection with others strengthens the community each day. They said, “People are never going to stop coming here. It’s a space of Black pain and Black mourning as well as a place of community. But this place is first and foremost a space of protest against a system that allowed the city to kill a man and so many Black and Brown people before George Floyd”. One example of Ramirez-Tentinger’s thoughtful and kind behavior is the time they showed up at the memorial with homemade caramels for everyone! It is this trio of heroines’ passion and strength that has allowed so much growth.

Unfortunately, the intersection has been cleared from its memorials in very recent times. The bulldozers showed up before sunrise on Thursday at the South Minneapolis crossing point. Moving rapidly, city laborers in neon vests pulled away flowers, work of art and huge concrete blockades that have permitted the corner to serve as an ever-developing dedication to Mr. Floyd for over a year. By the time hundreds of activists and neighbours arrived at the scene in protest, a considerable lot of the offerings given to the George Floyd Square were no more. The enormous metal fist that sprouted from the center of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue remained in its place. However, the obstructions that activists used to hinder traffic had been taken out and the city had put a large portion of the things respecting Mr. Floyd away.

Residents complained about the dangers of the square and the detrimental effects to nearby businesses. Several shootings have erupted in the area. In a news conference, Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis promised that “the city was investing in Black-owned businesses in the area and that reopening the streets to traffic was just one part of creating an accessible and prosperous neighborhood”. In response to the criticism, he affirmed that, “We will be putting our money where our mouth is,” he said. “I think it’s wrong,” one community activist named D.J. Hooker said. “This is not what they should be doing while people are trying to still heal.”.


Sources:

 
 
 

Comments

Post: Blog2_Post
  • Instagram

©2021 by Their Stories. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page