George Floyd, five years later: Has anything really changed?

His words were ignored by police officers in Minneapolis, but the world heard them. On 25 May 2020, 46-year-old George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck after responding to a store clerk who suspected him of using a counterfeit $20 banknote.  

Video footage of the killing went viral around the world – a world in stasis due to pandemic lockdowns – and change felt like it was going to come.  

Thousands marched, toppled statues and expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. A moment of reckoning seemed palpable. But five years on, any progress has been overshadowed by renewed attacks on civil liberties and equalities and the return of Donald Trump to the White House. 

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As part of an anticipated sea change in US counterterrorism strategy, Trump has promised to designate Antifa – anti-fascist activists that would include Black Lives Matter – as a domestic terrorist organisation. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney from Minnesota, organised the first Black Lives Matter protest following Floyd’s death. Ahead of the fifth anniversary, she looks back on the moment she galvanised the world. 

Big Issue: What do you remember about the first time you saw the footage of George Floyd’s death? 

Nekima Levy Armstrong: After I saw the video, I knew that it was a very important situation. Even though we were in the midst of Covid, it was important for us to go out into the streets as we had done so many times over the years in our movement here for police accountability. After conversations with the police chief and the mayor and hearing their perspective on what happened, I just knew that as activists we needed to take action. So I reached out to one of my comrades from a different organisation and asked her to help me plan the first major protest. We were up in the middle of the night, just the two of us on Facebook putting that event page together. 

As word began to spread and people began talking about it on social media, the numbers kept ballooning and we realised that there would be thousands of people there. 

The Black Lives Matter movement became such a vital part of modern history. What made it different to movements that came before?  

There were at least two ingredients that set that moment apart. One was the fact that the world had essentially come to a standstill. In Covid, we were almost a captive audience so when the video emerged, I think it shocked everyone, caught everyone off-guard, and you couldn’t look away. The video playing nonstop on the news cycles also helped to raise awareness, but also people’s ire against policing in their particular jurisdiction. 

The second reason was the manner in which George Floyd was killed. In many cases in which police officers have used deadly force, typically the person is shot and killed. And police claim that they had a split-second decision to make, they were fearful of their safety when they decided to use deadly force. In this instance, we all witnessed the deliberate actions of the Minneapolis Police Department, almost in slow motion, hearing Floyd say, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”  

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Did it feel like it was going to be a moment of change? 

It definitely felt like it was going to be a moment of change. I would say primarily because of the sheer volume of folks here and around the world who not only took an interest but found a way to get personally involved in using their voices, taking to the streets, and fighting for justice. And for a lot of Black folks, we thought if this could happen to Floyd in broad daylight, in the presence of witnesses, while being recorded, it could happen to anyone if we don’t use our voices and stand up and fight back. We made sure that this was not going to be swept under the rug, the next morning taking to the streets and marching from the site where he was killed to the 3rd Precinct police station, which is where the officers who killed Floyd did their normal duties on a regular basis. 

Are there any lessons from the 2020 movement that the world learned but seems to have forgotten? 

The system, as we have seen throughout history, no matter what fight the people are taking on, has always found a way to resurface or reinvent itself, or a way to snuff out movements. With regard to the Black Lives Matter movement, we have experienced a lot of backlash. We’ve witnessed folks trying to downplay the impact of the movement, also trying to discredit the movement. But it is no different than what has happened historically when people have risen up. At a minimum, those four officers have to now live the rest of their lives knowing the world witnessed their behaviour and rose up and fought back against it. 

What does the legacy of Floyd’s killing look like five years on? 

One aspect of the legacy is the fact that the folks in power should have recognised before this point that they need to believe Black people. George Floyd was not the first police killing at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. We have been taking to the streets for years to raise awareness about the extra-judicial killings. But oftentimes our cries, our advocacy, our organising seem to fall on deaf ears. 

Don’t let things get to the point where there is a worldwide uprising where you have officers going to prison for killing someone when all you really need to do is uphold a system of checks and balances and accountability. 

Are there any plans to mark the anniversary in Minneapolis? 

As each year has passed, there has been some way that we have commemorated Floyd’s legacy through events, through festivals, through marches and demonstrations. This year will be no different. There’s still a huge memorial in front of the store where this occurred. It is a site that thousands of people have visited since he was killed. Some people have left mementos. There are names written on the streets of other lives that were stolen at the hands of police in Minnesota and in other parts of the country. In some ways, it seems like it was just yesterday that it happened. That community has still not recovered from what happened there.  

Is the justice system in America fit for purpose? 

I think that the justice system is doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to perpetuate oppression of those who are most vulnerable. If you look at the origins of the criminal justice system here, it has always been used as a tool to oppress and to silence certain voices and certain classes of people from socioeconomic to racial. I don’t think that the political will is there from either the Democrats or the Republicans to overhaul that system. People benefit from that system. It’s going to take a larger, more sustained, well-funded mass movement in order for that to happen… we have to fight back over the long haul and to persevere in our resistance. 

Backlash: The Murder of George Floyd is available to watch on iPlayer now. Read more from Nekima Levy Armstrong here.

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