Five years after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd on camera, activists on the ground are preparing for the possibility that President Donald J. Trump will pardon the convicted former law enforcement official.
For Minneapolis-based civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, the current state of affairs speaks to the work that must continue, especially since, as she pointed out, corporations, politicians, and even some activists appear to have capitulated to the second Trump administration.
“Chauvin would still have his state sentence, but this is further evidence of us going backwards as a society in the aftermath of George Floyd getting killed,” said Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and founder of Racial Justice Network, a Minneapolis-based multiracial grassroots organization centered on racial and socioeconomic unity. “We cannot be silent in the midst of what’s happening. We have to figure out our own ways of fighting against oppression and holding our current elected officials accountable for their jobs and not acting helpless. If they’re helpless, what’s the point of their jobs?”
Levy Armstrong, a well-known activist in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul), said she first learned about Floyd’s death on Memorial Day of 2020 when a comrade tagged her and others on a Facebook post about the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) “kill[ing] someone by crushing their throat.”
As Levy Armstrong recounted, she soon after called then MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo who confirmed Floyd’s death, albeit as a result of a medical emergency that occured while in police custody. However, smartphone footage captured by then-teenage bystander Darnella Frazier showed Chauvin placing his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds as Floyd pleaded for his life and, at one point, called out for his mother.
The next day, Arradondo, who received the footage from Levy Armstrong, announced the firing of Chauvin, along with Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane during a press conference. Months later, after millions of people took to the streets of Minneapolis-St. Paul and other U.S. cities during several days of civil unrest, the four former officers received federal and state-level indictments that would ultimately lead to their conviction.
These outcomes, Levy Armstrong told The Informer, didn’t occur out of thin air, but through a combination of the several factors, including the pandemic and what she called the barbarity of Chauvin’s actions. “People saw Darnella Frazier’s video [of] eight or nine minutes of a defenseless Black man begging for his life,” Levy Armstrong said. “It wasn’t the typical way we see police kill someone. Everyone being home means we had a captive audience. People became so outraged and it was so undeniable that there was no way this was justified.”
In years past, Levy Armstrong, whose organizing experience includes stints as Minnesota NAACP chapter president and spokesperson for the Minneapolis chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement, has responded to police brutality with an 18-day protest in front of MPD headquarters.
Shortly after Floyd’s death, she counted among more than 3,000 people who converged on Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota as an act of civil disobedience. Following the release of a scathing report by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, the city of Minneapolis, MPD, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) solidified a consent decree earlier this year that’s intended to help MPD prevent excessive force, stop racially discriminatory policing practices, and improve officers’ interactions with youth.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the second Trump administration, which started less than three weeks after the formation of the consent decree, will conduct oversight of police reforms as outlined in the document.
“It took so long for the city and DOJ to reach an agreement that by the end of the year, as they submitted the decree, we raised concerns that there was a great likelihood it would never happen,” Levy Armstrong said. “That appears to be the case now under the Trump administration, the federal judge doesn’t intend to sign that decree.”
That’s why, in the midst of a nationwide boycott that’s decimated Target’s profits, Levy Armstrong insists that organizers take extreme measures to counter the rollback in reforms that have taken place since Trump’s return to the Oval Office.
“The long-term strategy should be focused on how we as a people harness our political party,” Levy Armstrong said. “The Republican Party is not an option so how long are we going to be in limbo when it comes to our community’s interests not being front and center?”
Levy also advocated for a greater embrace of the Second Amendment.
“The Trump administration is essentially opening the door for police officers to engage in brutality,” she said. “Given the rhetoric and attacks against Black people, it may be time for us to arm ourselves.”
Coming Soon: A Vigil Five Years in the Making
At the time of his death, George Floyd was 46.
Originally from Fayettsville, North Carolina and then Houston, Floyd moved to the Minneapolis area in 2014 and set roots in the suburb of St. Louis Park. He often shopped at Cup Foods convenience store in the Powderhorn Park section of Minneapolis. That’s where, on May 25, 2020, a store clerk called MPD, alleging Floyd’s use of a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase cigarettes.
That call led to Floyd’s deadly encounter with Chauvin, and a global movement that led to, among other things, the passage of police reform measures in the nation’s capital and the creation of “Black Lives Matter Plaza” just feet from the White House. Amid an uptick in youth crime, the D.C. Council would later approve legislation softening some police accountability measures.
Earlier this year, the Bowser administration, under the scrutiny of the Trump administration, upped the ante by removing all vestiges of Black Lives Matter Plaza, including the world-famous street mural that artist and D.C. native Keyonna Jones painted.
Though he expressed empathy for the loss of a prominent landmark, Kymone Freeman, an activist and onetime candidate for D.C. delegate, called Black Lives Matter Plaza one of several empty gestures intended to lull an awakened people to sleep.
“These were things that was given to us, to appease us, to quell these protests and to calm us down,” Freeman said. “If they didn’t do it, D.C. would have burned down.”
Earlier this week, Freeman announced a vigil scheduled to take place on May 25– the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s death– in front of the Target in Columbia Heights. That event, he said, coincides with a local boycott and education campaign that the Rev. Graylan Hagler and others launched during the earlier part of April in response to the Target Corporation’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion investments made after Floyd’s police-involved murder.
“They literally have their knees on the neck of Target,” Freeman said about the group led by Hagler, a man he called one of his favorite elder revolutionaries. “[Target is] definitely suffocating…and they’re going to…have a meeting right now. They’re going to save face to appear to have appeased protesters and try to figure out how they stand in good graces with the dominant society.”
In the summer of 2020, Freeman counted among several activists who converged on the White House in response to Floyd’s death. He’s since stood in solidarity with District residents who’ve demanded justice for Black men and women killed by the Metropolitan Police Department.
Despite his disdain for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and what he called other performative political acts, Freeman acknowledged Floyd’s death as the moment that sparked the consciousness of the masses.
“Malcolm X said that one of the biggest mistakes in the movement is trying to organize people around a common goal, but you haven’t woken the people up,” Freeman said. “George Floyd is one of those unique flashpoints where people wake up for a moment because…we saw a slow agonizing death where the other times where we were able to witness something quick. You empathize[d] and felt some of that pain and that triggered something.”
Five years later, District residents, particularly those with federal government employment, face a different kind of obstacle in the form of Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency. For Freeman, this dilemma can lay the foundation for a new movement that includes the middle class — a demographic he said has some tough decisions to make.
“We have the highest concentration of bougie Negroes in America, and because of that, they are more conditioned to do whatever it takes to preserve the status quo and to preserve what they have,” Freeman told The Informer. “They’re not going to be activated until the pain has been redistributed and these bougie Negroes are now being financially affected, which is coming, trust and believe.”
In the interim, Freeman is mulling how best to engage marginalized youth in some of the District’s impoverished communities. He said they possess the zeal necessary to destroy the system of white supremacy while it’s on its last leg.
“They just need a catalyst to politicize their efforts so they can distinguish between criminal behavior and revolutionary behavior,” Freeman said. “But [ignorant people of color] are emotionally and physically equipped to deal with the hardships of revolution…surviving off of wings and mumbo sauce. They’re just misguided warriors.”
Bracing for Civil Unrest in Minneapolis as the Movement Continues
On Monday, current Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara attempted to allay concerns that Trump would follow through with a pardon of Chauvin.
“Because there’s all these rumors, we’ve been in communication with our partners at the state, at the federal level to ensure that we and all of our partners are prepared in the event something like that happens, and it causes some type of civil disturbance,” O’Hara told reporters during a press conference marking the installment of civilians in the local department’s internal affairs and major bureaus.
“To be clear, there is no credible information that something like that will happen,” O’Hara continued.
In the Twin Cities, many of the adult adolescents watching for Chauvin’s pardon became politically conscious as they watched their neighbors take to the streets five years ago after Floyd’s murder.
As they prepare for the possibility of Chauvin’s pardon, some activists, like Chauntyll Allen, are working to keep up the momentum of a movement that she said is in danger of losing steam.
“It feels like we’re in the same spot as we were five years ago, which doesn’t settle the souls of the people that experienced the uprising,” Allen, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Twin Cities, told reporters on the afternoon of May 20.
This weekend, Allen and several others will converge on the area known as George Perry Floyd Square, where they will host a festival, which will be followed by a gala and concert. Other plans in the works include a protest at Minnesota state capitol and the continuation of efforts to abolish forced labor in state correctional institutions.
“This is a movement. It’s not a moment,” Allen said. “And even in that moment, we should have recognized that it was a movement, because a lot of folks thought we’re getting justice. But we have to remember that things go up and down and God calls us to these spaces to be organizers, because he wants us to continue to fight for righteousness.”
The youth, Allen said, will carry on that fight, but only with the right tools, most of which they will acquire through organizer training.
“We’ve been trying to make sure that we educate the younger generation so that they know what they’re stepping into,” Allen said. “We’re also trying to mobilize security…so that we’re prepared to support young people when they do and if they do hit the streets.”
With so much in the air during these precarious times, Allen said it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“I can’t determine when that happens,” Allen said, “but educating them, I hope, will prevent them from doing things that…puts them in harm’s way.”
