George Floyd and I share a birthday. I was alive for mine

Checking my horoscope on my birthday, Oct. 14, was routine, searching for historical events and new individuals who were also born on the same date is already a habit. As time passes, for instance, new celebrity names appear on birthday lists.

This year, a new name was added to the Oct. 14 birthday list. My personal favorite is Dwight D. Eisenhower, however, the date was also George Perry Floyd Jr.’s birthday.

Floyd became famous under unacceptable circumstances, and the eight minutes and 46 seconds that a police officer knelt on his neck highlighted the abuse and need for reform in various systems. Floyd’s birthday has been ringing in my ear for months. When I was younger, I also was arrested. I was also dumb enough to resist arrest, yet here I am, alive.

As a lost young man lost trying to find his way in Miami in the ‘80s, l made decisions that I profoundly regret, experiences that allow me to empathize with Floyd.

The pandemic and social-justice protests have forced me to come to grips with stress and changes I could not have foreseen. Simply put, bourgeois culture disgusts me more than ever, the arrogance, rhetoric and condescension embrace a newly discovered entitlement reinforced by social media and algorithms. Like revolutionary Cuba, we are seeing families divided by the kind of identity politics that have created larger generational gaps, accelerated by unprecedented forms of our new digitized work habits, communication and daily routines.

Inspired by Floyd’s death, the movement has taken extreme measures and questionable directions over the past few months. A significant and timely exhibit that opened in March at the Guggenheim museum in New York encapsulates these shifts. “Countryside, the Future,” curated by Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal, is an exhibition that gives form to the global changes occurring in our relationship with urban centers, technology, food, water and the inevitable consequences to the landscape and how we live as a species.

Last fall, after installing my sculpture at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, a work of concrete poetry that simply reads “AMERICANA,” I embarked on road trip to Abilene, Kansas, where the Eisenhower Presidential Library is located. Eisenhower was born poor and reached the presidency after he masterfully carried out his role as Supreme Allied Commander in charge of all forces involved in the invasion of Normandy. The trajectory of Eisenhower’s life should give all of us hope in the realization of what someone from humble beginnings can accomplish and what it means for our nation.

Eisenhower’s legacy is formidable, yet not perfect. During his tenure, the Federal Highway Act was created, but it decimated African-American communities throughout the country, a topic that is only now being addressed because of the upgrades our national infrastructure system desperately needs.

I share a birthday with millions of men and woman who have walked this Earth, but this week, two of them stand out for me, Eisenhower and Floyd.

My heart bleeds for Floyd’s family. This year, they did not receive a phone call or visit from him on his birthday. I thank the Floyd family calling for civil and peaceful protest. On my birthday, I prayed to the memory of “Ike” who warned us of the “military industrial complex” and that we need to come together and never cease working toward liberty and justice for all. And from one George to another, rest in peace. We will slay these dragons together, brother.