#Floyd Protests

[black-fist-order]

[brandoooom]

Five years ago in Oakland. 📸 by Brandon Tauszik for SF Chronicle

[joe-england]

There's lots of talk about how big the protests were, how No Kings Day was such a success. And I agree.

But I also remember the outcry after George Floyd was murdered. So many of us were sure that it would finally spur change.... But since then, police violence has actually worsened.

Don't let up.

Ever.

[chaddavisphotography]

The current state of the former Minneapolis police 3rd precinct police station. The station was burned by protesters following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd.

[spar-kill]

Protest art poster designed by me with a side of Pink Floyd lyrics. Printable 8.5x11” size

[justinspoliticalcorner]

President Trump thinks it is a sign of strength to send in troops to deal with protesters in Los Angeles. To that end, he has federalized a portion of the California National Guard and mobilized nearby Marines to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it confronts large protests in opposition to its efforts to arrest and deport undocumented immigrant laborers in the city. Trump wanted to do something like this in his first term, during the summer that sealed his fate as a failed first-term president. But Mark Esper, his secretary of defense, refused. The protests in Los Angeles are not nearly as large as those that consumed the country in 2020, but Trump wants a redo, and Pete Hegseth, Esper’s more sycophantic successor, is just as eager to unleash the coercive force of the United States government on the president’s political opponents as Trump is. You can almost feel, emanating from the White House, a libidinal desire to do violence to protesters, as if that will, in one fell swoop, consolidate the Trump administration into a Trump regime, empowered to rule America both by force and the fear of force. The problem for Trump, however, is that this immediate, and potentially unlawful, recourse to military force isn’t a show of strength; it’s a demonstration of weakness. It highlights the administration’s compromised political position and throws the overall weakness of its policy program into relief. Yes, a certain type of mind might see the president’s willingness to cross into outright despotism as evidence of brash confidence, of a White House that wants to fight it out on the streets with its most vocal opponents because it thinks it will win the war for the hearts and minds of the American people. [...] It begins with Stephen Miller. Last month, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the president’s senior aide confronted leadership at Immigration and Customs Enforcement with a demand: Deport more people. And while Trump promised during his campaign to focus on criminals and “the worst of the worst,�� there was no way to meet his (and Miller’s) goals by carefully selecting targets. [...] Why California? Well, Democratic-led cities in Democratic-led states have been a target of Trump’s since his first term. And given the extent to which Trump seems to inhabit a world in which the 1990s never ended, it is also possible that he wants his own crack at handling an event like the 1992 Los Angeles riots. (Here it should be said that a few years earlier, in 1990, Trump praised the Chinese government for its handling of the protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength.”) [...]  Donald Trump, not so much. He imagines himself a strongman — to back down is to be weak. And he has surrounded himself with allies who don’t just encourage but relish his worst instincts.

Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times on how Donald "TACO" Trump aspires to be a strongman, but is in reality a weak man who chickens out (06.11.2025).

Jamelle Bouie wrote an excellent opinion column in the NYT on how Donald "TACO" Trump aspires to be a strongman, but is in reality a weak man who chickens out.

[wakandan-goddess]

Here we go again with the “I wish Americans protested like the French” shit again.

I don’t know if some of y’all have memory loss but we did protest “like the French” in 2020 (George Floyd Protests) and got shit on and called thugs by the public,the media and politicians. People were seriously injured by police and other random people who wanted to be violent. We were told that peoples property was worth more than justice for a wrongfully taken like. So don’t bring that shit over here. Y’all just like the idea and look of protest but let it inconvenience or the message calls you out then then it’s not the right way to protest.

Just say what you really mean with your chest.

[black-fist-order]

Keedron Bryant - I JUST WANNA LIVE [Official Music Video]

[greatrunner]

The LRAD (The Long Range Acoustic Device), a sonic weapon that causes hearing damage and triggers a sensation of being burned, was used against protesters by the US govt during the aftermath of the George Floyd murder in the Summer of 2020 (Pitchfork).

LRADs were later used in Serbia against protesters moving against their government, which facilitated the collapse of the Novi Sad train station canopy in November 2024 (DW).

[remembertheplunge]

Beginning of an answer

9/7/2020. Monday 2:08pm 

out front. Espresso’s Coffee House: Pacific Ave, Stockton, Ca

“There were plenty of onlookers, but no witnesses.” In other words, we may log impressive miles in our travels but see nothing: we may follow all the advice in the travel magazines and still feel little enthusiasm.” Page xxi The Art of Pilgrimage

Our pilgrimage has taken us into a Land which Angela Davis said is one that she never experienced before—the confluence of pandemic and protest.

I agree with Angela—its a phenomenon—We have all awakened here on Bali-Hi.

But, as Ms Davis also said, it will pass—the mystical island will recede back into the fog of “normalcy”

Like the travelers described in the Art Of Pilgrimage (above) we have to see it—to embrace it while it is here. I feel fortunate to have lived to see this beginning of an answer—

Angela also said this is not the time to dismantle the police, but, instead, to evolve that institution.

Mavis Staples sings “Gotta change around here, say it loud, say it clear” as I write.

End of entry

Notes: 1/15/2025

Please see photos of the original 9/7/2020 entry in the next blog

Bali-Hi was a mystical island of magic in the musical “South Pacific"

The above journal entry was written in September of 2020 during the Covid Pandemic and the era of the massive George Floyd—Black Lives Matter protests. Angela Davis, a well known civil rights activist during the 1960’s, was acknowledging the power of the people’s movement then. Although she was right that it would pass and the streets would become quite, the Christian Nationalist response is now raging in the form of Trump 2.0

Kat Brooks, who hosts a show on KPFA radio, said yesterday on KPFA Hard Knock that “We are never going to get free in the halls of power. It’s in the streets…"

[chaddavisphotography]

People Over Property! The People's Way at George Floyd Square. The area has been a place of protest since the 2020 murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police.

[onlytiktoks]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/30/fbi-kneeling-photo-demoted/

[orphiicheartd]

This is giving me so many thinkings abt Azul and the tweels back in the Coral Sea

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Melissa Hellmann at The Guardian:

Last May, Roger Floyd and Thomas McLaurin walked the lengths of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, passing a roundabout with a garden, and a vacant gas station with a large sign that read: “Where there’s people there’s power.” Though it had been four years since the murder of George Floyd, their nephew and cousin, respectively, concrete barriers erected by the city to protect the area still cordoned off the corner of the street where he was killed by the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on 25 May 2020. Behind those barriers stands a memorial with a black-and-white mural of George Floyd on the side of a bus stop shelter. “That’s my blood that was laying there taking his last breath. What was he going through?” McLaurin recalled thinking as he stood in front of the mural. Flowers and stuffed animals from visitors surrounded the memorial. Roger said he was struck with a range of emotions from sadness to peace. “You think about the racist demeanor that these individuals had toward him, and it was just like his life did not matter,” he told the Guardian. “The entire space to me is just sacred.” Now, five years since George Floyd’s murder, the future of the square where he died remains uncertain, as the city council deliberates on development plans. McLaurin and Roger Floyd want the area to be commemorated as a historic site that launched a global racial justice movement and served as a rallying call for police accountability. Roger Floyd would like it to become a pedestrian plaza that includes a memorial to his nephew as well as shops and a library. [...] The square’s future has served as an existential conflict for Minneapolis as a split city council decides how best to commemorate the site of Floyd’s death and the birthplace of a global movement. Most city council members want to create a pedestrian plaza that restricts buses and vehicular traffic to emergency vehicles, local business and residents, and that will include a memorial and mall that they say will bring vitality to the area.

Meanwhile, the mayor, Jacob Frey, and most business owners want a flexible open street plan to increase vehicular traffic and reintroduce major bus routes that have not stopped in the area in several years, while also allowing for streets to be temporarily shut down for festivals and gatherings. In late February 2025, the disagreement came to a head when the city council voted 9-4 to override Frey’s veto on the square’s development. The council had asked the city staff to create a study on the pedestrian plaza, which Frey disagreed with.

For Dwight Alexander, the co-owner of the soul food restaurant Smoke in the Pit near George Floyd Square, the solution is clear: the bus routes and traffic need to return to help revive his and others’ businesses. The historically Black commercial district of south Minneapolis was home to the oldest Black-owned and operated newspaper in Minneapolis, as well as more than 20 Black-owned businesses from the 1930s to 1970s. Alexander said that the area had changed for the worse: “There’s no traffic up here, no motion, no energy up here, no life like it was before.” In the few years since Floyd’s murder, he said that the area had become tantamount to a “ghost town” that elicits somberness. When people see pictures at the square’s memorial commemorating Floyd and other Black people who have been murdered by police, Alexander said that visitors were not eager to eat food afterward.

[...] ‘We can’t sanitize what happened here’ Back in 2020, as the world watched the nine minutes and 29 seconds during which Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck, south Minneapolis was irrevocably changed. Protesters took over the square and it became the stage for regular standoffs between the police and activists protesting against police brutality. In June 2021, the city reopened the area to vehicular traffic. Yet one of the busiest bus routes in the city never resumed stops in the area. Over several years, the city spent 17,000 hours and $2m worth of staff time between listening sessions, meetings and door knocking to ascertain what residents wanted to see in the square, Frey told the Guardian. Most people from those listening sessions want a flexible open street plan that allows bus traffic to return and for the city to erect a memorial: “Everybody agrees that we need to honor the long-term legacy of George Floyd and the movement that emanated out from the space.” [...] In support of Frey’s preferred plan, Alexander said his business has been down by about 50% because of the decreased car and foot traffic: “We want this neighborhood back to where it was before.” Michael McQuarrie, the director at the Center for Work and Democracy at Arizona State University, who conducted research at the square during the 2020 protests, said the city has been divided on how to move forward with the area for the past five years. He sees the street closure from 2020 to 2021 as transformative for the community.

5 years after the killing of George Floyd, the family of the late George is fighting for the fate of the sacred ground in Minneapolis where he was murdered at.

[whatwhiteswillneverknow]

3 Years, 3 Months, 6 Days and I finally got a speck of justice... hopefully.

For those of you who followed me throughout the years, on May 31, 2020, I was attacked by the NYPD unjustly for covering the George Floyd Protests. I was held in a holding cell along with other protesters and later released literally an hour before the crack of dawn, without being charged with a crime.

A brand-new electric bike destroyed by the FDNY (no fault of their own). My phone busted, along with any evidence. My chest is forever scarred. The memories of the NYPD forever in my mind, altering my already views on policing in general to the point of abolishing the current police system.

What followed years after was me in a case vs. the NYPD and NYC. Along with other victims of NYPD's brutal tactics, we stood firm in holding the NYPD accountable.

I decided to become one of the public faces of this case, by doing interviews (under my real name of course), recalling details while trying to hold back tears mixed with anger.

I spent years reading comments about how I was "a paid actor by the Democratic Party", a "plant" by Black Lives Matter, a "crisis actor" and an opportunist when the only opportunity I wanted was to cover the protest from the protesters side, sell my work to the media and go home and have a quiet birthday.

I have to fund raised and get strangers to help me put my mental state back together in a quick manner so that I will be able to be of sound mind as I speak up for people.

Well, I'm happy to say that something came out of it.

My quote, if you don't want to read the article states:

Matthew King-Yarde, a protester involved in the suits, said all New Yorkers should support the agreement — whatever their political leanings.

“Regardless of your stance, none of us should have faced trauma, both physical and mental, for voicing concerns about law enforcement’s disregard for Black lives,”

King-Yarde said.

“The NYPD must undertake extensive work beyond what’s been done. Are they up for the challenge? One can only hope.”

(The reporter didn't do any research, just grabbed quotes from the lawyers website)

Sadly, one of the things I can't do is go into the exact details of how I feel about the settlement. I do have some strong opinions about it, but that's the problem with settlements. You can't really express them the way you want to.

However, I will in the near future talk about the impact of the settlement.

But at the very least... the very least... I can start to move on from this long and tiring court case.