CITY SEEKS TO REOPEN INTERSECTION WHERE GEORGE FLOYD DIED
Some upset at idea of dismantling much of public memorial
Jeanelle Austin is out the door around dawn most mornings, walking the three short blocks from her Minneapolis home to the street corner where George Floyd gasped his final breaths.
Floyd’s killing in May after he was pinned to the asphalt by a White police officer’s knee hangs like an emotional weight on this community, a diverse and deeply progressive neighborhood of working-class people where handmade signs demanding justice for his death decorate front lawns.
For Austin, 35, it’s why she wakes up early to join a handful of neighbors who carefully tend to a makeshift memorial that draws hundreds of people weekly from all over the world to the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue to grieve and protest. Rarely a day goes by that Austin doesn’t see someone in tears here.
“Maybe they cry for George Floyd. Maybe it’s for someone else,” she said on a recent afternoon. “Some are grieving the pain and suffering of what it means to be Black in the United States of America. That pain runs deep, and that pain has brought them here, to this place.”
But an emotional debate over what should happen to 38th and Chicago has sharply divided this community, pitting neighbor against neighbor over the future of a street corner where the viral video of Floyd’s excruciating final moments propelled millions of Americans into the streets in historic protests.
Questions about what to do with this space — the epicenter of a national reckoning over race, social justice and policing — have reignited tensions between residents and a city that has long struggled with those very issues.
City leaders want to remove the barriers that have closed the intersection to vehicles, to help boost local businesses and address the dramatic uptick in crime there. But many local residents fear that will mean breaking down a memorial that serves as a potent reminder of the calls for justice and police reform that they say have gone unanswered.
“This isn’t just a place of grief. This is a place of protest,” Austin said.
The City Council is expected to consider two proposals as soon as this week that would reopen the intersection but keep closed the northbound lane of Chicago Avenue, preventing cars from driving over the spot where Floyd was killed. But the plans would dismantle much of the memorial and limit pedestrian traff ic around the site.
Austin and other neighbors who have been caring for the Floyd memorial have said they won’t give up control of the intersection without some concessions from the city on police accountability and investment in Black-owned businesses. Others don’t want the roads reopened at all, a position that Mayor Jacob Frey and other city officials say is “not feasible.”
That has put Minneapolis officials in a difficult spot — torn between their fear of reigniting protests and their desire to regain control of an area where some residents complain that regular gunfire has left them feeling abandoned by the city and its police force. Residents in the neighborhood say officers have referred to it as a “no-go zone” and often don’t respond to calls there, an accusation that the police chief has said for weeks that he’s investigating.
The spot along Chicago Avenue where Floyd took his final breaths is marked by a large blue and white drawing of a human figure with angel’s wings. The colors have faded over the months, washed away by the summer thunderstorms that have revealed the oil-stained asphalt beneath. But the surrounding memorial has only grown more vivid.
The four-block area closed to vehicle traffic is now known as George Floyd Square — or Floyd Town, to some locals. Floyd’s name and face are featured in colorful murals throughout the intersection. Dozens of names of Black people who have been killed in encounters with police have been painted on the road — a list that is half a city block and growing. A garden in the intersection features a sculpture of a raised fist.
Every morning, Austin, a longtime racial justice activist, joins neighbors to pick up trash, water plants and straighten up the mementos left at the site by visitors. She speaks of the items as something holy given on hallowed ground, calling them “offerings.”
In a city where Black residents have long complained about mistreatment from police and neglect by city leaders, Minneapolis officials say they want to honor Floyd’s life as the city looks toward racial healing and change. The City Council voted to rename the part of Chicago Avenue where he died as “George Perry Floyd Jr. Place” and has allocated $100,000 to the creation of a permanent memorial.