A young man sits next to a closed gas station on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. Behind him are drawings of faces of Black men and women killed by U.S. police. A little further ahead, there is a wall with a mural on it. It reads: “You changed the world, George.”
It has been five years since George Floyd, a 46 – years-old Black man, was killed in this exact spot by Derek Chauvin, a white policeman. The body cam footage showing Chauvin pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes went viral and horrified people around the world.
It was May 25, 2020, most of us were stuck at home, facing the pandemic. However, the brutal images shocked the population into action. Thousand of people, wearing protective masks took to the streets from the United States to Europe, and around the world, breaking the pandemic lockdown rules in many countries. They wanted to make their voice loud against racism and police abuses.
The international debate ignited as clashes erupted between protesters and the National Guard across in the United States. Many people have died during or in connection with protesting the treatment of Black Americans as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement gained momentum after George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a 17 – year -old Black youth walking home from a convenience store.
Some victims were civilians with no clear political affiliation. Others, however, were antifascist, far-right and far-left activists who exploited the large-scale demonstrations to create chaos and fight against one another, shifting the attention away from the movement core mission of advancing racial justice through peaceful protest.
While on the one hand the protests for Floyd’s murder led people across in the United States and around the world to focus on the racism and the inequalities and inequities, people of color face. On the other hand, the unrest of 2020 marked a turning point in the radicalization of the MAGA movement.
Five years have passed and lingering question is: what has really changed?
“The transformation that once seemed imminent has come to an abrupt halt,” said King Pendleton, founder of Listen 2 Us Studio, who works on amplifying Black community voices. “Some police departments have reformed certain policies, but there has been no radical change during the past four years and now things are getting worse.”
