This editor was off on Sunday, the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's death, so forgive him for the lack of coverage of this momentous landmark. His death was the subject of church services and vigils around the world. The BBC reports that in Minneapolis, a morning church service and evening gospel concert were part of events to mark the anniversary, at the annual Rise and Remember Festival in George Floyd Square, the intersection where Floyd was murdered and which has since been named to honour him.
George Floyd Square.
Let's take a moment to remember Floyd with some video of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey breaking down and sobbing into his COVID mask as he knelt before Floyd's golden casket.
It's been five years, and we still miss Floyd's culinary flair:
So sad.
According to ABC News, activists in Minneapolis are working to preserve hundreds of pieces of "protest art."
Remember when the George Floyd mural in Toledo, Ohio, was struck by lightning and collapsed?
Deena Zaru reports:
Today, much of that protest art has been taken down. The Black Lives Matter mural painted on 16th Street in Washington, D.C., was removed in March, while other murals, many painted on plywood that boarded up closed businesses during the pandemic shutdown, were removed over the months after Floyd's death.
Advocates in Minneapolis, however, have been working over the past five years to save hundreds of pieces of public protest art, hoping to ensure that Floyd is never forgotten and that the message behind the art is memorialized, along with the movement it documented.
“Art can be used as a tool in the present to ignite and propel social movements forward, which is what we're seeing right now with this art,” said Leesa Kelly, the founder of Memorialize the Movement. The group describes itself as "a living archive dedicated to collecting, preserving, and activating the plywood protest murals that were created during the Minneapolis Uprising of 2020 and beyond."
According to Kelly, who began her efforts in the summer of 2020, the group has now collected and preserved over 1,000 pieces of 2020 protest art.
We can rest easy knowing that there are at least three to five statues honoring Floyd across the country — a 700-pound bronze statue of Floyd is located outside Newark, New Jersey's City Hall; a statue in Brooklyn depicting Floyd sitting on a park bench; and a six-foot bust of Floyd is current displayed in Union Square in Manhattan.
We like how the founder of Memorialize the Movement refers to the riots that burned down the city as the "Minneapolis Uprising of 2020."
"Much of that art was displayed at a weekend Justice for George event in Minneapolis," ABC News reports. It will eventually end up in a dedicated George Floyd museum, no doubt.