George Floyd’s legacy

An excruciation of nine minutes and 29 seconds, pleading for mercy and gasping for breath. That’s how long it took Minneapolis police officers to kill 46-year-old George Perry Floyd Jr. by kneeling on his neck on May 25, 2020, after he had reportedly tried to pass a counterfeit $20-bill at a store.

The killing, filmed by a bystander, sparked outrage across the world, as simmering tensions over incident after incident of anti-black racism and police brutality spilled over and ignited.

It would be tempting to say that now, one year later, much has changed for the better and racism has been propelled to the forefront of our conversations and our consciousness.

That’s both true and it isn’t.

There have been other Black people killed at the hands of police since, and many other incidents of overt anti-black racism.

We have far to go and there is much work to be done.

But it is true that George Floyd’s death seemed to be a breaking point of sorts, galvanizing Black Lives Matter movements across this continent and beyond, including rallies in communities through the Atlantic region.

As Deborah Douglas, Angelique Chrisafis and Aamna Mohdin wrote in the U.K. Guardian this past weekend, “The high-profile murder of Floyd… captured the parallels between police violence against Black people across the globe, and … reflected a common history of violence against Black people, from slavery to colonialism, that united protesters in a renewed global movement against the legacy of empire and its enduring racist symbols.”

In the United States on Tuesday, CNN reported that members of George Floyd’s family — his sister Bridgett Floyd, his daughter Gianna Floyd and Gianna’s mother, Roxie Washington — were meeting privately with U.S. President Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, a new piece of legislation — the George Floyd Policing Act — is before the U.S. Senate, having already passed in the House of Representatives. When it becomes law, the bill will ban racial and religious profiling by the police, allow for the establishment of a registry of police misconduct and redefine immunity for police officers.

Elsewhere in the States on Tuesday there were solidarity marches and rallies, memorial services, free concerts and a celebration of Floyd’s life.

Today, now that the one-year anniversary has passed, let’s not let the momentum for change that surged in the wake of Floyd’s death fizzle.

What can we do to ensure his legacy is a lasting one? Let’s look within ourselves and acknowledge the racial biases that exist in our society and in our systems, confront and challenge them, and call out racism when we see it.

George Floyd deserved better. He should still be alive.

We can honour his memory by acknowledging his struggle and how it was a horrible, brutal reminder of just how far we have to go.