Five Years Since George Floyd’s Murder
Wednesday 4 June 2025, by Malik Miah
GEORGE FLOYD WAS murdered on May 25, 2020 when a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for 9-1/2 minutes while Floyd was handcuffed, pleading that he couldn’t breathe.
Floyd’s death was captured on video by a young female bystander, as other Black people shouted at the police to release Floyd.
His murder led to nationwide and international protests and a reexamination of societal and institutional racism, including policing. Five years later what is the legacy of Floyd’s death and movement for justice and police accountability?
From BLM to Counterrevolution
Simply put: the rise of the Black Lives Matters Movement (BLM) that won some modest gains, and change in consciousness for millions, is now in the crosshairs of Donald Trump’s MAGA counterrevolution.
Trump is a lifelong racist who says diversity, equity and inclusion is “reversion discrimination” and “white genocide.” Yet it was in his first term that Floyd was murdered. He supported excessive police brutality including against BLM protesters.
President Joe Biden and the Democrats, who depended on the Black vote, promoted limited police reforms while praising cops “doing their jobs.” The modest changes included Biden’s Justice Department imposing a consent decree for the Minneapolis police department.
The cop who murdered Floyd, Derek Chauvin, was convicted in both state and federal trials. It is significant since President Trump cannot issue a pardon on the Minnesota conviction.
Trump’s new Justice Department recently ended consent decrees in Minneapolis and other cities and is pushing anti-Black lies calling teaching of truth about racism as “racist.”
Five years later, much of the progress won through mass street protests is either rolled back or under fire. White supremacists openly run the White House and Congress.
Long History of Denial
Soon after Trump returned as president, he forced the Washington, DC city government to remove George Floyd Plaza.
But today’s openness to defend white privilege against Black rights is not new, but a return to what existed for most of U.S. history. Only during two periods in 400 years were Black Americans hopeful of being accepted as full citizens: for 20 years after the Civil War, and the 50 years following the Civil Rights revolution.
There is broad agreement in the Black community about racist violence by police and the need for real reform — little of which happened over the last five years. It became lip-service support for reform by Democrats and liberals, knowing it would never really succeed.
Both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s pointed out how white segregationists at least were open about their racism, while most white liberals lectured Black leaders to “slow down” the fight for fundamental change.
Minneapolis Today
The Minneapolis site where Floyd was murdered faces tense debate over how best to honor his legacy, according to Melissa Hellmann of The Guardian, who joined many out-of-town reporters on the May 25 anniversary date.
A mural is at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, the area called George Floyd Square.
“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.’”
“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.”
The Guardian reporter added: “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.“
Michael McQuarrie, the director at the Center for Work and Democracy at Arizona State University, who conducted research at the Minneapolis 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. But some community members, city council members and members of Floyd’s family say there’s no way to rush healing.
Council member Jason Chavez of Ward 9, where part of the square is located, said it needed to be recognized as “a historical component in our city history that will never be forgotten.”
“We can’t sanitize what happened here in the summer of 2020,” Chavez said.
Fundamental Reckoning Must Happen
Keka Araujo of Black Enterprise magazine explained the sentiments of many African Americans:
“Five years after Floyd’s tragic and preventable murder, the struggle for authentic accountability and equitable justice is far from concluded; indeed, in many respects, it feels like it is recommencing, with exigencies more pressing than ever…
“May 25, 2020, remains a stark inscription in our shameful shared history, igniting a worldwide insurrection against racial inequity and law enforcement malfeasance that only a fundamental reckoning could fix.
”Yet, as this somber anniversary arrives, the initial fervor of outrage and the urgent calls for systemic overhaul have yielded mainly to a troubling stillness, a creeping tide of regression that leaves many to question if the very conditions leading to Floyd’s death are being tacitly allowed to re-emerge.”
Araujo eloquently reminds us:
“(A)s history consistently reminds us, the path to justice is rarely linear. The nascent impetus for comprehensive police reform at the federal level largely stalled, with legislative efforts failing to gain bipartisan traction…met by a persistent counter-current, a discernible pushback against the very conceptualization of systemic racism and the demands for accountability.”
What he and many others don’t identify is the root of the source of racism, police violence and white supremacy practiced by the state: the capitalist system. There can never be an end to racism including police violence, unless the system is overturned.
Until that reckoning of the system takes place, we must continue to fight and resist — and we must do so with our eyes wide open. That’s the chief lesson of the legacy from May 25, 2020 to today. The Black community knows this better than any other oppressed population.
Source: Against the Current.
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Malik Miah is a retired aviation mechanic, union and antiracist activist. He is an advisory editor of Against the Current.
International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
Imave by EV.
It seems the public has forgotten the clarion call to defund the police. Ever since the deeply tragic 2020 murder of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed, a radical reimagining of public safety has swept through society. Rooted in critiques of systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence, the demand to defund the police has stood as a challenge to the foundations of policing as an established institution. But the demand has faltered, and it is time to reawaken the masses before they become complacent and fall for President Trump’s antics.
A country with trigger-happy law enforcement officials must look elsewhere for lessons on policing. As it exists today, policing is inherently tied to enforcing biased racial and economic hierarchies. Europe offers an alternative model that, while imperfect obviously, provides lessons for how America can re-envision a law enforcement system that is community-led and fair. Defunding a police force that perpetuates capitalist and racial oppression is not just about cutting budgets. Instead, the entire system must be rooted, cleaned out, and replaced with transformative policies that invest in the community – not kill it.
What America needs is the radical overhaul and restructuring of public safety to prioritize the welfare of citizens over state (and federal) control.
Conservatives in America believe the police exist to protect private property and capitalist interests. This results in police disproportionately targeting marginalized communities – mostly Black, indigenous, and low-income groups. Over policing in these communities has led to the widely-known skewed incarceration rate of Black Americans – nearly five times the rate of whites. For this reason, many activists have called for reallocating police budgets toward social services including housing, healthcare, and education.
Indeed, Minneapolis did try to launch a pilot after Floyd’s murder by redirecting $8 million from the police budget to community programs. However, the experiment failed due to budget issues and political pushback, highlighting the challenges of implementing radical change within a decades-old framework.
Yet without radical change, nothing will change. Incremental reforms such as training or bodycams simply do not address the core issue: policing as we know it today is a tool of state repression. Instead, community organizations should have the power to hold public education classes and train mediators to deescalate conflicts. This type of soft policing will almost certainly demonstrate success in reducing gun violence.
Still, the defund movement faces fierce opposition from moderate Democrats and conservative groups who argue that reducing police budgets risks public safety. This pushback stands in contrast to a 2020 Gallup poll which showed that 58% of Americans said they believed policing needs major changes.
Those in opposition to change are fearful of alternatives and cannot bring themselves to imagine a better future for the country’s citizens. How are they able to justify the bloated budgets of police departments? In 2021, state and local governments spent $135 billion on police (4 percent of state and local direct general expenditures), $87 billion on corrections (2 percent), and $52 billion on courts (1 percent). Do these numbers not indicate misplaced priorities in a country with 580,000 homeless people and 32 million without health insurance?
For this reason, we need to turn to Europe for inspiration on how to implement better policing in our communities. Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands for instance emphasize de-escalation and focus on community integration rather than militarization, guns, and violence. Norwegian police undergo three years of training, including social work and conflict resolution, and officers often patrol unarmed.
This is just one example but overall Europe’s focus on the importance of social welfare should serve as a starting point for the United States. Just as Denmark invests heavily in universal healthcare, education, and housing, so should individual states in the U.S.
The idea of defunding is to reject capitalism’s reliance on bullying institutions, and instead transition to grassroots alternatives that focus on mental health and aid networks.
A reallocation of police budgets to instead fund universal basic income, affordable housing, and better mental health care will reduce the conditions that lead to violent crime and bring down the crime rate. Violence is a symptom of neglect – not an excuse to use more force and police aggression. Policing, as it exists today, more often than not, exacerbates harm rather than prevents it.
It is time to reimagine public safety by dismantling these decaying systems and replacing them with better alternatives that serve the people with equality, fairness, and a hope for the future.
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