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Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA – With a sunny spring day inhabited by Minnesota people, with low humidity, George Floyd Square is crowded with locals and visitors from all over the nation. They are here not only to make Floyd cry murder A Minneapolis police officer a year ago today, but also to celebrate his life.
“One of the organizers invited us to stay here and celebrate George’s life,” John Williams, director of the Center for Racial Reconciliation at Fellowship Church in Monrovia, California, told Al Jazeera.
“The celebration is a memory for me, not to erase her life, not to erase what happened,” said Williams, who came to Minneapolis with her church members to be at the epicenter of last year’s events. “This is one of the first times a police officer has been held accountable nationally, but even with that there is no real justice in that. George is not here.”
With loneliness in the middle, people kneel in moments of silence in front of the mural of Floyd on the outside of Cup Foods; he allegedly tried to spend $ 20 on fake bills, leading to the loss of his life within minutes. it still has buoyancy.
Various types of music fill the air, from R&B and jazz on one side of the memorial to the notes of the indigenous dance ceremony on the other. Cooking the meal as the tasty smoke from the meals flashed like drops of liquid shrapnel from the sky, sitting in a slice of shadow as a water pistol for children armed with Super Soaker overflowing people became a territory of mobile warfare.
Cabins that offer everything from community duvets and lemonade to fill the edge of the square with bubble-absorbing spheres that the bubble machine absorbs, Amira, four, swims in a colorful pink swimsuit to withstand the heat of the day.
He and his father, Shaun, live a few blocks away and stop at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. calculation with racial injustice and police violence it accelerated a year ago today.
Four-year-old Amira and her father, Shaun (right), live a few blocks from George Floyd Square [Cinnamon Janzer/Al Jazeera]
“It’s been amazing to have spent a year there,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s nice, peaceful. People are here to celebrate the life of George Floyd. “
A long way
Despite the quiet and conventional memory, the violence at the beginning of the day frustrated the scene. On Tuesday morning, a shot was fired at a block of George Floyd Square and police said a man believed to have been involved in the shooting was later hospitalized in serious condition with a gunshot, The Associated Press news agency reported.
Entrepreneurs and community members say there is a very long way to go – not only to achieve justice, but also to process the ongoing pain of the community.
“This is a sacred space. It’s sacred because people sanctified it, ”Williams says. He hopes the evening vigil will be more humble. Asked by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey about his intentions to reopen the plaza,“ people should wait until mourning and sadness is over because this process is over, ”Williams said. “I think there will be a lot of resistance, as it should be, to make these people really upset and cry.”
Two blocks from George Floyd Square is below Sam, who has decided to come to the square near Hopkins today to watch what is happening instead of watching TV.
Sitting on a folding chair in the shade next to his wife, Sam said the last year was really chaotic and paranoid.
Sam George came to Floyd Square from Minnesota near Hopkins, Minnesota, to pay his personal tribute [Cinnamon Janzer/Al Jazeera]
“When you pull me … I know what will happen. I hope to go to jail and pray, but I could die. It’s a model,” he says. “If officers aren’t trained to deal with people of color and those with disease or disorder or whatever, then you got the wrong job. “
Gloria, a 70-year-old woman, is also sitting in a grass chair but outside the house where she has lived for the past 27 years. The sidewalk panels are painted in the colors of the Jamaican flag. “I see everything,” he says. He says he witnessed Floyd’s murder from a bus stop on the street after buying lottery tickets.
He often cooks for the community, as he does today, with chicken curry, chicken jerk, fried fish, and pedestrian rice and beans. He hopes to be in the same place all day and all summer, a few steps away from a flower-decorated souvenir, he says his son-in-law was killed a few years ago. He still doesn’t know who was responsible.
Walking through Gloria’s house, along with Signe Harriday and Maria Asp, the Million Artists Movement, a collective of black and brown activist artists, are seated on grass chairs under a blanket of fabric draped from the southern intersection of the plaza. Harriday and Aspe have been bringing the project to leave the community to the square since last year. Organizers have asked them to be there today.
“It allows people to experience moments of pain and trauma and sometimes sit back and put their hands on something and return to how you feel when you join another quilt box touched by another member of the community. It goes on,” Harriday told Al Jazeera. they are a visual representation of the ways we want to love and help each other, ”he added.
George Floyd Derek Chauvin was killed by former Minneapolis police last year in this place, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 25, 2021 [Cinnamon Janzer/Al Jazeera]
“It also connects us,” Aspe said. “People feel very disconnected from everything that’s going on and what we want and strive for is connection and relationship. Most of those quilts are here,” he added, gesturing to the surrounding fabric walls, “they all came up here! These are the moments to sit down and put your feelings in the fabric. a community that embraces “.
Working on quilts and being in the square today helps you “know that you are part of something greater than yourself”.
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