MINNEAPOLIS — Residents, activists and community leaders across the country gathered Tuesday to honor and remember George Floyd, who was killed by police one year ago on a south Minneapolis street corner.
By Tuesday afternoon, a few hundred people had gathered at The Commons park near U.S. Bank Stadium where music played and a band warmed up at an event hosted by the George Floyd Memorial Foundation.
Around 1 p.m., some members of Floyd's family took the stage. Bridgett Floyd, George Floyd's sister, said she didn't go to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Joe Biden with other family because she felt he hasn't delivered on his promise to sign police reform legislation named after Floyd by the one-year anniversary.
"I think Biden needs to make it right," she said. He broke his promise."
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would ban chokeholds, limit no-knock warrants and institute other accountability measures, has stalled in Congress.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey addressed the crowd briefly saying "We all got to make the change," before there was a moment of silence.
Aminata Seye, a 24-year-old who recently got her master's degree from Bethune-Cookman University in Florida, traveled from her home in Houston to Minneapolis for the one-year remembrance of Floyd's death. She's on a volunteer committee with the George Floyd Memorial Foundation and was helping with Tuesday's event in downtown Minneapolis.
"It means you're a part of history," she said of her reason to visit the Twin Cities for the first time. "You get an opportunity to say you were part of organizing the first inaugural memorial for George Floyd. We're not just saying things. We're actually doing something."
At the intersection of 38th and Chicago, where Floyd was killed, a day of events are planned. "Rise & Remember," a daylong event, will include community art, children's activities and concerts. A candlelight vigil is planned at the square for 8 p.m.
Setup for the event was temporarily jarred when police responded to call of shots fired at 10 a.m. one block from George Floyd Square and witnesses saw a vehicle speeding away. One person showed up at a nearby hospital for treatment of a non-life-threatening gunshot wound, police said. Bystander video captured the sound of at least 20 rounds fired as people scrambled for cover.
However, by midafternoon the mood was one of joy and celebration.
"This is a living memorial it's not a dead memorial. in order for something to live something has to die. We are not going to mourn today, we are going to celebrate," said Marquise Bowie, 45, of south Minneapolis
Derek Armstrong, 43, lives few blocks from where George Floyd was killed and also shot one of the first videos of Floyd's encounter with police: "I watched him struggle and go through it all," Armstrong said. "I watched so many Black men getting killed in this area. It has taught me to love my people unconditionally. I'm out here to remember George Floyd as the echoing beacon for continued protest and justice."
Janerio "Idiris" Taylor, 39, exchanged handshakes and hugs with Charles McMillian, a key witness who testified in the trial of ex-Officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted of murder.
"I love you all," McMillian said. "George Floyd was my brother. I watched (the police) kill my brother."
"You all changed the definition of a hero," Taylor told McMillian. "That's the joy for me."
The scene in downtown Minneapolis on Tuesday afternoon had all the trappings of a summer music festival. A stage was set up on the grass of The Commons in the shadow of the stadium. Food trucks were hauling in ice and firing up their grills. Two bounce houses popped up across the street.
Tuesday's event at the Commons was planned to be a party to celebrate what this movement saw as its accomplishments over the past year since Floyd's murder. But organizers said it would be more than that: a time to inwardly reflect, a time to use music and art to think deeply of the seismic shifts in America society over the past year, a time to educate from the speakers who'd be interspersed with musicians, and a time to think deeply of the meaning of the guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial.
"For us to finally see what we've been working for, we finally have that glimmer of hope that we can get justice," Athena Papagiannopoulos, 25 of Minneapolis, the founder of Visual Black Justice, which was organizing the event with the George Floyd Memorial Foundation. "We have to take in these good moments. That's what I wanted this to look like that. When I heard the verdict ... it was so hard for me. We're so used to hearing no. We were so beyond prepared for that. When they said yes, guilty of everything, we just couldn't take it in. We didn't know how, because we had never seen that before. How do you react to something you've never felt? It wasn't real until we had that time to process. So This is our time where we're actually celebrating that moment."
Papagiannopoulos, who identifies as Greek, Black and Native American, said she recognized the gravity of the day.
"We are celebrating George, but we are celebrating everybody here — everybody who helped us get to this moment. It took everyone everywhere to doing this uproar to get us here, otherwise we would have never got here, it would have been all these other cases. This is our moment."
Activist Toussaint Morrison said community organizers and protesters have been pushed to action, but it remains to be seen if politicians and other leaders will push forth actual change.
"This should be happening all the time," he said as he motioned with his hands to the celebration. "There should be Black joy and Black celebration all the time and it shouldn't take a Black man dying for the city to create space for this."
Nae Totushek, 28, who is Asian American and adopted into a Czech family, was thrilled to be in downtown Minneapolis on Tuesday morning, helping set up the daylong event by Visual Black Justice.
She thought back to where she was one year ago, watching the video of George Floyd's killing just hours after his death. She didn't quite know what she was watching at the time, and her mixed-race son, then 2 1/2, was watching it with her.
"I was crying, he was crying, and it was like, 'Well, this is when we start the conversation — at age 2 1/2,'" she said.
That moment with her son spurred her on as an activist. She drove by herself from her home in Buffalo, Minnesota, to the Twin Cities for the protests in the days after Floyd's murder. She watched swaths of the city burn. She kept coming, usually by herself, and in July she connected with Visual Black Justice. It felt like fate when Papagiannopoulos encouraged her to keep volunteering with the organization.
On Tuesday morning, Totushek stood under a tent on the Commons, surrounded by buttons and T-shirts promoting social justice. She grabbed the tent as a warm wind nearly blew it over. Her son, now 3 1/2, was playing in one of the bounce houses.
"It's a really big reflection day for me. I'm knowingly aware I'm not the same person I was a year ago. It's easy to let the years roll into each other as you get older, but this is one of those days where I woke up and I paused in my life: 'Nope, this is a little bit different.' Today I woke up with the purpose of trying to be a better person ... If you wake up every day and look at yourself in the mirror, are you happy with who you see? Or is there something that bothers you? How can you better that? Where you're still you, you still recognize yourself, but it's better than it was the day before."
The foundation pledged that the Celebration of Life in the Commons would "mark the city's resilience, unity and will reinvigorate the community to continue to fight for justice for all."
Katheryn Redding, 38, flew out to Minneapolis for the first time from South Bend, Indiana, to help commemorate Floyd's life.
"I just wanted to be here and feel the vibrations ... and just to honor his legacy. His death was definitely unfortunate, but a lot of beautiful things have happened.
"It's inspiring. I traveled many miles just to be here. I know there are others who want to give honor to him and lift him up," she said.
Redding, who is Black, said the Black community has continued to persevere despite the killings.
"I'm thankful as a people that we are really resilient but our trauma has been unaddressed and until we reallocate those funds this will be the environment we live in."
Speakers include Bianca Austin, an aunt of Breanna Taylor, a Black woman who was shot by police in Louisville, Kentucky, about 10 weeks before Floyd's death. No officers have been directly charged in her killing.
Also scheduled to speak are Floyd family members Shareeduh Tate and Tara Brown, and the parents of Daunte Wright, a young Black man who was fatally shot in Brooklyn Center on April 11 by a white officer who apparently mistook her gun for a Taser during a traffic stop. Other family members who have lost loved ones during police encounters are also expected to make remarks.
Around lunch time, President Joe Biden was to host Floyd's family at the White House.
In Houston, where Floyd was born and spent much of his life before moving to Minneapolis, there are a couple remembrance events planned, including one in the evening with U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat whose district includes a large swath of Houston and has met with Floyd's family.
