Earlier in June, I was in Minneapolis and I stopped at George Floyd Square. Immediately, I recognized the Cup Foods corner market from the images on television from 2020 when the people were rioting in protest of the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a policeman. But despite the landmarks there on the corner of Chicago and 38th, the entire location had been completely transformed and my tears flowed freely as I looked around.
Large cement barriers blocked off an entire section of the road in front of Cup Foods, and there, right on the street, was display after display of homemade memorials for George Floyd. It was an overwhelming massive garden of silk and plastic garden flower bouquets, all perpetually in bloom; with paintings on the pavement. This was the first message from George Floyd Square. This place has become a permanent memorial to a man known in the neighborhood. A man who was just one of us in his life. George had lived his life and he had made mistakes, but he had hopes and dreams, he had children who he loved. A billboard keeping watch over the square documented some of George’s last words. “Tell my kids I love them. I’m dead… ….Please. Please. Please.” (George 9:29). The square was also a memorial to others who died. There was a marker placed there for Imez Wright, a 30 year old youth mentor and advocate for change who was gunned down right in front of the Cup Foods store March, 2021. Painted all down the street in rainbow colors were the names of dozens of others who had lost their lives to the racism that is killing America. I walked down the road reading the huge list of names. I recognized many of them: Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin. I had heard their stories in the news. I did not know many others, but my heart broke as the enormity of the grief documented on the very pavement I was standing on slammed into my soul. When will our hate and the violence end?
George Floyd Square was not only a memorial, it was a place of protest and a place of advocacy. Messages of “Stop the Hate”, charges for justice and peace as well as working for change in the future were all there in abundance. A small shack of books, a lending library with a reading chair all grew in a space where raised bed gardens were growing vegetables and flowers. Murals advocating building bridges and not barriers were placed near gorgeous artwork celebrating and valuing black lives.
Then, I stopped abruptly in front of one message spray painted simply in black on a wall. It said, “My Cries are 4 humanity.” This was a terrible truth. It pulled me into a wider perspective. –Just look at who we as humanity have become. When will our violence against other humans become enough to get us to stop it? When will we learn to come at each other with forgiveness instead of loaded guns? Have we counted enough dead school children yet? How many 3rd graders do we have left? How many funerals for gunned down grocery store shoppers, movie theater goers and attendees at church potlucks can we as humanity bear to attend?
It is not enough for us to simply pray and to hope for justice to prevail. It is not enough for us to march and to demonstrate. We must vote. We must work. But most of all we must actually live our lives so that others can actually see that we love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. It all starts with me and it all starts with you. Are we actually being the change we want to see in the world? My cries are for humanity, because it seems that we have not yet even begun. I pray that we will, TODAY.
Article in Rockford Squire Newspaper 6/19/2022.
My video of George Floyd Square:
