USA TODAY International Edition
‘ Only a small fraction of the bigger picture’
Derek Chauvin is going to prison for George Floyd’s death, but systems remain. There is much work to do in America.
MINNEAPOLIS – On the morning of May 26, police spokesman John Elder sent a news release to media outlets that a forgery suspect believed to be in his 40s had died after a medical incident during a police interaction.
The release described the arrest: “Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress.
“At no time were weapons of any type used by anyone involved in this incident,” the release said. Weapons? No. But a knee. And so much more. George Perry Floyd Jr. died under the crush of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee. He died under the crush of systemic racial injustice. He died under the crush of police misconduct. He died
under the crush of excessive force. He died under the crush of indifference for Black bodies, for Black life.
“Please, I can’t breathe,” Floyd pleaded. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”
The agonizing nine minutes and 29 seconds of broad- daylight brutality we all witnessed – thanks to bystander video, police body cameras and private surveillance footage revealed during Chauvin’s three- week trial – are seared into the fabric of America. The public lynching is a part of us. It is rooted in our legacy.
I had to record this slice of history, no matter how painful it has been for me. I needed to come to Minneapolis – as a journalist, as a Black woman, as an aunt to two young Black men, as an American. I landed here March 6 with zero intentions of covering the trial but with the desire to listen and learn from those who live here. Residents told me that history had shown them how rare it is for a white police officer to face consequences for killing a Black man. I heard their hurt, their frustration, their anger, their fear – on front stoops, in church basements, at political rallies, inside community centers, during marches and in front of the courthouse.
Chauvin, who was convicted of second- and third- degree murder and second- degree manslaughter April 20, sits in Minnesota’s only maximum security prison, in Oak Park Heights, a suburb of St. Paul. The former officer will be sentenced in June for killing Floyd. He probably faces 12 to 30 years in prison. Chauvin will be held accountable for his evil actions.
Work ahead – slow, tedious work
Relief reverberates, however fleeting. Because George Floyd changed how some view America, but America has not yet changed.
How will this country begin the daunting task of dismantling the systems that contributed to Floyd’s death, the foundational systems that incubate disparities in health care, in education, in infant mortality, in homeownership, in employment, in wealth, in the workplace, in political representation and voting and in criminal justice?
These deep- seated racial inequities reach beyond individual attitudes and behaviors; public policies, patterns and practices are at play, too.
“This is only a small fraction of the bigger picture,” St. Paul resident Alexander Bourne, 31, told me moments after hearing the verdict. “It’s a fresh breath of air, but this is just the beginning. We are one step closer to having policies that truly reflect us as a community.”
The dozens of people with whom I spoke view Chauvin’s conviction as a new starting point for America. Work lies ahead – slow, tedious work. Because true justice for all can be achieved only when the sleeves of all are rolled up. For many, that work includes organizing, protesting, resisting and marching.
“I think we have already been shown the way by the likes of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement how to go about doing these things the right way,” Haji Yussuf told me. “Because I think that this is the moment now where we need to start thinking the way our forefathers did and fight for some of these rights.
“We need to start fighting to change the whole criminal justice system to be able to accommodate our brown, Black and Indigenous communities and immigrants, so that our children are able to grow in a place where they can call home,” Yussuf continued. “Where they will have the dignity and respect and where they have a chance to live like any other child.”
‘ Say their Names’ cemetery
After Chauvin’s conviction, there were celebratory utterances that the system finally worked. I would argue that the system didn’t work, but people did. The millions of boots on the ground at protests; the thousands of people who registered voters; the hundreds of activists pushing policy in their communities – those personal investments are what’s working in pockets of America. It must continue.
Because no one should be able to turn a blind eye to the societal and institutional barriers that more often affect people of color. Not since the civil rights movement has there been such robust national discourse about anti- racism. It started the day Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck. And unless one chooses to be willfully ignorant, willfully apathetic or both, it’s hard to ignore these salient conversations about social justice and policing nationwide.
Throughout Minneapolis, not just in George Floyd Square, Floyd’s face is everywhere – on windows, in yards, on buildings and billboards. He’s this city’s fallen hero. A block from George Floyd Square, in an open field, a graveyard with headstones of Black people killed by police serves as an art instillation of agony. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Alton Sterling. Tamir Rice. Laquan McDonald. Philando Castile. Mike Brown. Jamar Clark. Eric Garner. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray. Daunte Wright. It’s called “Say Their Names” cemetery, and it seems to grow every day.
As activist Al Sharpton said: “Derek Chauvin is in the courtroom, but America is on trial.”
“There was a video in 1991, when they beat a man in LA called Rodney King. And they took that to court, and the jury let them go,” Sharpton said at a news conference the night before the Chauvin trial began. “There was a video of Eric Garner, and they wouldn’t even take that to court. There was a video of Michael Brown laying on the ground in Ferguson, and they never took that to court. We have at least gotten this to court.”
Police accountability and reform are big topics. These residents have lived the trauma and aftermath since Floyd died. Somehow, they must piece their community back together. As I sit writing in my hotel room with the windows open, I hear the steady drone of drills as plywood is removed from downtown storefronts and buildings. The military Humvees parked on every corner, with guardsman standing outside, their long guns strapped across their bodies, are gone.
Work remains.
Jake Mohan, 44, who lives in the Longfellow neighborhood in southeast Minneapolis, moved from Iowa 16 years ago. Like many neighborhoods, qualityof- life crimes – vehicle break- ins, public intoxication, drug dealing, petty theft and graffiti – can be frequent. But Mohan, a writing instructor at Macalester College in St. Paul, refuses to call police because since 2015, “there’s just been a pretty consistent pattern of police violence in this town.”
Mohan said he felt compelled to get involved, and is exploring a new crop of political candidates running on platforms that include reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies that offer social services. Law enforcement is broken in Minneapolis, he said, and change is needed.
“I think it should be a lot less ubiquitous,” Mohan told me. “There is a police car showing up for almost anything, even if someone’s porch light is out. It just feels like a single, one- size- fits- all approach to everything. There are things in my neighborhood like mental health issues, and the unhoused, theft, petty crimes. And I’m not going to call the police for any of that because I know it’s only going to make the situation worse.
“So we’re just kind of left feeling helpless, knowing that the one solution we’ve been given – we’ve always been told to call 911 – is almost certainly just going to make things worse,” Mohan continued. “I think we need a police force that only shows up with guns when there is an immediate and violent threat. For anything else, we need experts who are actually trained to respond to mental health crises, people without homes, people who are hungry, people who have health concerns. All those things do not need to be answered with a squad car and a person with a gun.”
I’ve found so many bright spots in Minneapolis. The people are resilient, they want to do the work. They’ve learned to turn inward, to lean on each other. They know politicians don’t have all the answers, and maybe none of the answers. During the Chauvin trial, I could sense the weariness of the residents. But in nearly every nook and cranny, I found folks trying to improve their community – even when city hall fails them.
“Community engagement can no longer be optional,” said Carmen Means, executive director of the Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization in south Minneapolis. “There has to be a shared power. I think too often that we ask for things that we really have the power to achieve within ourselves. We’re seeing in the middle of the uprising community empowerment like crazy. We’re seeing community meeting the needs of community.”
‘ No justice, no streets’
What does justice in Minneapolis look like?
Chauvin is going to prison. Floyd is still dead. The intersection where he was killed, 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, remains closed – a memorial to Floyd’s life and to a neighborhood overwrought with grief. If one bypasses the concrete barricades and makeshift checkpoints – as I did dozens of times to enter the square – the atmosphere is surreal. There are people going on with their everyday lives, shopping at the convenience store where outside an artist painted a bright blue image of Floyd’s body with white wings. There are outof- town visitors who take pictures with the large black- and- white painting of Floyd. There are people hawking signs with Floyd’s face or raised fists with the neighborhood activists’ rallying cry: “No justice, no streets.”
That infamous intersection is where four neighborhoods – Bancroft, Bryant, Central and Powderhorn Park – meet. It is also the site of an occupation protest. Those who live in the neighborhood are free to come and go, once they are cleared by activists and volunteers who sit in weatherproof stalls erected to aid in monitoring traffic. They pledge to keep the area closed until city leaders meet 24 demands.
Marcia Howard, a primary caretaker of George Floyd Square, is a high school English teacher and a former Marine. She had resided in the neighborhood for 23 years; it was important for her to live in the same community as her students.
She hasn’t taught this school year. For her, it has been a year of activism. These days she counts steps – roughly 260 steps from her front porch to where Floyd died.
Howard explained to me how since last May, George Floyd Square has become a so- called autonomous zone. Socalled because she won’t call it that. She says city employees come in to pick up trash, clear snow and attend community meetings. There’s nothing autonomous about that.
“The people refused to leave,” Howard told me. “They were encampments here and everything. People literally lived in the square. And they said, ‘ Why won’t you leave?’ or ‘ Why are you staying?’ And we said, ‘ For justice.’ And they asked us ‘ What does justice look like?’ So we literally ran up and down these streets, in and out of homes, in and out of the businesses. We talked to the fellas in the cut. ‘ What would you need to thrive? How do you address historical inequities?’ Because we’ve always been disenfranchised, over- promised, under- delivered over- criminalized, over-policed.
“This four- corners neighborhood has seen the brunt of all the transgressions of 3rd Precinct of the city of Minneapolis,” Howard continued. “We had to live through Operation Blood Drive, which took an entire generation of Black men out of this neighborhood. We had to live through the Gang Task Force, which was since disbanded as being corrupt. They were the biggest gang in Minnesota. With forfeitures they would just stop Negroes on the street and take their car. ‘ Oh, and that chain looks nice,’ they’d take that, too. This is no secret. This is Minneapolis. And so this neighborhood said, ‘ We got the streets. Let’s use it as leverage.’”
Andrea Jenkins, vice president of the Minneapolis City Council, has lived in a house two blocks from George Floyd Square for 23 years. Jenkins, a poet, educator, former policy aide and the country’s first openly transgender Black woman elected to public office, said the square contributes to the trauma the community feels.
“I do recognize the need for grieving, for healing, for trauma relief,” Jenkins told me. “And I believe we can do all of those things. We don’t have to have the street closed to do those things. And if it’s necessary to close the streets, we can do that. But we do not have to disrupt this community. What’s happening in the square right now is a lot of criminal activity that was happening in other parts of the city. Like they come here, because they feel like they are not going to be caught by the police, like the police won’t come in, can’t come in, are disrupted from coming in. And so in it is harboring this criminal activity, criminals. It’s allowing for drug sales to go unfettered. It’s creating all other kinds of unsafe, unsanitary issues. It’s harming the businesses. It’s really destroying the mental health of the community. ... It’s just a really unstable situation at night. During the day, it can be a beautiful thing. I have no denying that. There’s community being built, but I believe that can happen without the square being blocked off and barricaded.”
I don’t know what’s best for this south Minneapolis neighborhood moving forward, but I do know that this activism, this personal investment, this movement isn’t just about holding officers accountable when they harm or kill Black people. The goal should be, and is, much deeper.
“Minneapolis has been an example of what not to do,” said Katie Steller, 31, a downtown resident and salon owner. “We’ve been an example of racial inequities. We’ve been an example of police brutality. And so now we have the opportunity to be an example of continuing to stand for what needs to change. You know, this isn’t a one- time thing; this is not going to end today. We’re not going to go back to business as usual in Minneapolis. No, this is a day- in and day- out, constantly showing up in whatever way possible, and I hope that the world is watching us. They’ve seen the destruction of it. I want them to see the growth and the healing from it, too.”
Healing takes time. After all, this is a country where when a Black man kneels on a football field to quietly protest inequality, he’s called a “son of a bitch.” Yet when a white man kneels on a Black man’s neck, crushing the life out of him, he can be viewed as a hero in some circles.
Yes, America, there’s a lot of work to do.