It's a chilly morning at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis. A group of activists are sitting around a fire pit set up between defunct gas pumps.
This gas station has been vacant ever since George Floyd was murdered across the street five years ago. And this group of people has met here, they say, every morning since.
"It started in the early days where there were thousands of people in the streets," says Star Martin, a community member. "We were just checking in. 'How is everybody? Who needs help?' And we just kept doing it."
The group views this ritual as a form of resistance — a protest that continued after the rest of the world quieted down.
"We still stand here. And it is not a mistake that five years later since the lynching of George Floyd, that we are still here," says Marcia Howard, a resident who also leads a local teachers union.
This street corner was forever altered on May 25, 2020, when Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, suffocating and killing him.
The intersection where he died is now called George Floyd Square. A sculpture of a fist towers over a garden in the middle of the road. There are murals and graffiti everywhere. The ground where Floyd died is covered with flowers and faded stuffed animals. The street is painted with the names of the many others killed by police.
For some, this is a vital community hub, a space that must be preserved. For others, the intersection feels trapped in its darkest day. That disagreement has meant this corner has remained caught in the middle of a city reckoning with its past and uncertain about its future.
"We can't go back to business as usual."
Jeanelle Austin, who leads the racial justice group Rise and Remember, is one of the main leaders working to conserve the memorial at George Floyd Square. Some of Floyd's family members are on the organization's board.
Inside a humid greenhouse set up just a few steps from where Floyd died, she lovingly pats a lush little cluster of mums.
"I think my favorite moment with the greenhouse – it must have been winter, the first year we had the greenhouse – and this little girl walks in and she takes a big sniff and she goes, it smells like spring," Austin says.
Some of the activists who tend the square are gardeners, and keeping these plants alive over the long Minnesota winters is intentional.
"We practice preservation as protest. It is this idea that as we preserve our story, as we choose to never forget what happened, it helps us understand how to move forward," says Austin, who grew up a few blocks away.
Her organization collects items — Austin calls them offerings — that people leave at the square.
"I am in a very unique position where mothers will reach out to me and say, 'Can you add the name of my loved one to George Floyd Square?' And they'll say, 'Signed a grieving mother,'" she says. "This place and space mean something to folks. And we have to be able to acknowledge that something happened here and it changed the world. We can't go back to business as usual. There's no such thing."
Struggles for the businesses that remain
Business as usual ended here the day Floyd was murdered.
Protests broke out across the U.S. Some turned destructive. In Minneapolis, hundreds of buildings were damaged, and dozens were destroyed in fires, including the police station where Chauvin worked.
At 38th and Chicago, community members barricaded the intersection so cars couldn't speed through.
"Those initial days, this became a gathering place and a sacred place," says Victoria Lauing, co-founder of the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center, a studio dedicated to art made with heat. The steel fist in the middle of the square was fabricated here by a group of volunteers and the artist Jordan Powell Karis.
The barricades stayed up, and the area became known as an autonomous zone. But residents say in the aftermath of the unrest, police — even ambulances — avoided coming here. Police officials in a statement denied that claim.
"There were times it felt nice. You could walk out the front doors and across the street and people were milling about," Lauing says. "But it also was creating a dead end where stuff could happen."
Several shootings at the square have been fatal in the years since, and that volatility has been hard for some of the businesses.
"We see that very many of our neighbors are no longer here. We see that some of them who are still here are really struggling and have a lot of pain," Lauing says.
The intersection partially opened back up about a year later. A section of the street where Floyd died continues to be blocked. The bus route that passed through it never returned.
Dwight Alexander took over running Smoke In The Pit from his parents a few years ago. The barbecue restaurant is just north of the square, and Alexander says business has suffered because of it.
"People is scared to come up here or if they do come up here, it's a different emotion, it's a different energy," he says. "I don't care if it's the best food, why would you go somewhere you don't feel comfortable?"
Smoke In The Pit and several other businesses are suing the city, saying it allowed the area to be taken over by "occupiers" and that it became dangerous.
According to the lawsuit, about a year after Floyd's murder, Sam Willis, the owner of the restaurant Just Turkey, says a shooting victim ran into his business. He helped the man, and says he was later confronted by gunmen looking for the victim.
Ralph Williams, the owner of a nearby barbershop, says in the lawsuit that he was shot in both legs in late 2021, but alleges the police never responded to his 911 call. Williams drove himself to the hospital, the lawsuit states.
The city filed a motion to dismiss the suit.
A corner "stuck in a rut"
Marquise Bowie, who grew up in this neighborhood, is often out in the square talking to people who have traveled to see it. Sometimes he leads tours.
Most people tell him they're here to pay their respects, and he's okay with that. But he doesn't understand the urge people have to visit the site of a murder.
"We don't do this nowhere else in the United States for individuals who got killed by police. A lot of people go to protests, rallies and things of that nature, but they don't go specifically where the person got killed," Bowie says. "What's so different about this one?"
To him, the corner feels stuck in a rut.
"If we're only going somewhere to feel sad about a Black man getting killed, but we're not doing anything to try to fix some of the issues, I don't see that being a good thing, especially five years later," he says.
For Bowie, progress means a healthy neighborhood: thriving businesses, jobs and housing.
Ace Rice recently opened the PLOT gallery at the square.
"There's a fundamental challenge that we face specifically in this neighborhood around what Black liberation looks like. And so there's the idea that protest and conservation will give us liberation," Rice says. "I think fundamentally the business owners are on track where we believe economy and autonomy will lead to liberation."
He says when Black-owned businesses thrive, they can use that power to fight systemic disparities.
"Obviously we want to be able to honor the murder of George Floyd and the resistance of the community," he says. "But I think the way to honor that is to honor the people who are here."
A pedestrian mall versus an open street
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says he hears the frustrations of business owners.
"We all agree this should be a critical spot, not just for that community, but worldwide, for racial healing and justice. And we've got to take the next step here. People are calling for us to move forward," he says.
The city spent more than $2 million on community outreach after Floyd's murder. In a survey conducted for the city, most respondents said they want the streets around the intersection to have full transportation access.
So last year, the mayor recommended a plan that would do that. But instead, the city council voted to look into a pedestrian mall.
Council member Jason Chavez, who represents a portion of the intersection where Floyd died, says the plan for an open street did not reflect what he heard from residents, particularly people of color and renters.
"We only get one shot," he says. "We cannot forget that this caused a worldwide racial reckoning. We can't forget that."
The mayor vetoed the pedestrian plaza proposal. The council overrode his veto. And now, that back-and-forth has resulted in a standstill.
Lauing, of the Fire Arts Center, says she feels disappointed this is where the conversation has landed five years later.
"I thought that the fight was about dismantling systems of oppression, seeking justice, real measures. And what we are talking about is the street," she says.
Residents finding their own ways forward
Russ Wigginton has seen this before. He leads the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
It took more than 20 years for the Lorraine Motel to reopen its doors as a museum. Wigginton says after just five years, he's not surprised the community in Minneapolis is still raw.
"This is one of those situations where, even though I know it feels like it's been a long time, in the scheme of things, it has not," he says. "The messiness of these situations are a reflection of the messiness of humanity. We should not expect this to be something other than who we are and how we are."
Eventually, he says, people will have to compromise.
But in Minneapolis, the community is already finding its own ways to move forward, on both sides of the argument.
Bowie, the man who leads tours, holds regular creative writing classes at an organization in the square. Austin, of Rise and Remember, organizes exhibits to showcase the artwork and messages of protest people have left at the memorial.
"I believe that the offerings that people left will be a deep source of how we heal as a nation," she says. "This is not about open streets or closed streets. This is about, who are we going to be as a people?"
Rice intentionally chose George Floyd Square as the place to open his art gallery.
"I think why I wanted to be here in the first place was because I felt like the energy that I bring with me through the gallery is an uplifting one," he says.
His first exhibit, called Gandy Dancer, examined the history of early railroad workers in Minnesota, one of whom was Rice's great grandfather.
Those workers – often immigrants and Black men – did hard labor, realigning train tracks in unison. They took care of the railway in their backyard, and left the rest to others down the line.
"It's a metaphor for the work that we're doing here to continue to push the line," he says. "It's our attempt to continue to just do our part to push the narrative, the conversation, our history, from an artistic lens, forward."
At the abandoned gas station, a group of musicians has gathered every Monday night for the last five years to play. They call themselves Brass Solidarity.
"Rain, shine, sleet, snow. We've been here in cold temperatures where horns won't work. The slides won't slide. The valves won't compress. But we show up anyway because it's bigger than ourselves," says Butchy Austin, one of the group's leaders and Jeanelle Austin's brother.
He says the music sends a message: They're still here and they still want change. But it also brings joy.
"We know that there are organizers and leaders and business owners who wish we would go away," he says. "But we also see those same people patting their feet and shaking their behind to the tunes that we play, because music does that."
On a recent Monday, the sun dipped low in the sky over the square as the brass band played. The waning daylight reflected off their metal instruments, making the space a little brighter than it would have been otherwise.
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