Six years after George Floyd\u2019s murder pushed Minneapolis into the center of a global reckoning, community leaders gathered at George Floyd Square with a message that was both memorial and mandate: remember, organize and build.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The conversation took place on Radio KFAI 90.3FM\u2019s popular public affairs show The Conversation With Al McFarlane<\/em><\/a>, which features discussions with community leaders about issues affecting the Black community and the broader public. Broadcasting live from Worldwide Outreach for Christ Church at 3808 Chicago Avenue South, near the corner where Floyd was killed, host Al McFarlane opened the station\u2019s \u201cAmplified Voices\u201d series by calling 38th and Chicago \u201csacred ground, sacred space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The broadcast came as Minneapolis prepares for major reconstruction at George Floyd Square. The city says 38th Street and Chicago Avenue will close to traffic on June 8, 2026, and remain closed through late 2027 as part of the 38th & Chicago Re-envisioned project<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ll be doing shows that commemorate where we are,\u201d McFarlane said. \u201cThis is sacred ground, sacred space, 38th and Chicago, George Floyd Square. Legislative systems are moving forward to look at how this community is going to recover, revive itself from the trauma.\u201d McFarlane said the week\u2019s programming was intended to lift up people who were \u201cwitness and victims, but also victors,\u201d describing them as community members who reveal \u201cthe resiliency of spirit and of heart\u201d and remain committed to \u201cbuilding a future in which the best of us emerges.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His first guest, Marquita Stephens, president and CEO of the Urban League of the Twin Cities, said time has not softened the pain of Floyd\u2019s murder. \u201cIt is, those six years later, still a fresh memory,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cIt was an impactful incident that occurred here, far-reaching, worldwide and not easily forgotten. The hurt of the murder of George Floyd lingers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked what she remembered from first hearing about Floyd\u2019s killing, Stephens said she was shocked that the death had been captured on camera, but also grateful for the young woman who recorded it. \u201cMy first thought was aghast, certainly, that this could be caught on tape like it was,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cBut I was really grateful that the young lady who filmed it was calm, and that she could stand in her space and actually record it for the length of time it occurred. Had it not been for her, we would not have had the opportunity to witness and to share that witness throughout the world in the same way that we did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Stephens, the video did not allow viewers to remain detached. \u201cShe brought you into the moment when you\u2019re watching it,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cSo you might have a fresh reaction: get off of him, as though you were there in the crowd. I wondered if I might have been one of those people who tried to approach it, to try to intervene, because it just seemed to be that unfair. You couldn\u2019t watch it without feeling a sense of unfairness, a sense of wrong, a sense of having gone too far.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The discussion quickly turned to policing and accountability. McFarlane asked what the killing revealed about law enforcement and Black communities in Minneapolis. Stephens said it exposed a failure inside the police system itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt pointed to a lack of checks and balances, internal checks and balances,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cThis was not Chauvin\u2019s first rodeo. Apparently, there was no process for checking his behavior. This was not his first time doing improper policing. And it called into question the ability internally of the police department, the police mechanism, to be able to check its own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That question remains current in Minneapolis. The city approved a federal consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice in January 2025, but the Justice Department later moved away from the agreement. Minneapolis says a federal judge dismissed the proposed federal consent decree in May 2025, after which Mayor Jacob Frey signed an executive order committing the city to implement reforms from the proposed decree that are not already included in or in conflict with the state settlement agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McFarlane placed Floyd\u2019s death inside a longer history of violence against Black people in America. \u201cThis is something that we, as African people, as Black people, have seen again and again and again,\u201d he said. \u201cOur history in this country, in fact, is a history of watching ourselves be lynched, beaten, destroyed; families, communities, relationships, children, parents, wives, husbands. We\u2019ve been through this. And it\u2019s not a figment of our imagination. It\u2019s the history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stephens said the video gave younger generations a contemporary view of what many had only read about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was an opportunity for every generation to be able to see what perhaps most of the living generations now have only read in books,\u201d she said. \u201cParticularly if you were born and socialized in northern cities throughout the country, it gave you an opportunity to really witness and to feel how these matters were handled in earlier African-American history in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kenya McKnight Ahad, founder and CEO of the Black Women\u2019s Wealth Alliance, joined the conversation as McFarlane turned to intergenerational leadership. She said she was conducting a staff training on Emerson and Broadway when one of her team members began crying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe said, \u2018You didn\u2019t see the news?\u2019 I was like, \u2018No.\u2019 And she said, \u2018I\u2019m not able to work,\u2019\u201d McKnight Ahad recalled. \u201cShe explained what happened, and so we all took a step back. None of us finished work. We were just there with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first, she said, the news landed inside a familiar numbness. \u201cWhen you interface with so much death, I didn\u2019t get initially that it was something different,\u201d she said. \u201cI was just like, \u2018Oh, the police killed somebody else again.\u2019 There\u2019s some kind of numbness that was there, that was just like, \u2018Oh, this is what be happening.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then she saw the video. \u201cWhen you start watching it, that felt different than just the police killed somebody,\u201d McKnight Ahad said. \u201cIt went from the police killing somebody to, in my mind, a public lynching happened, which I hadn\u2019t seen in my lifetime. I see this. It\u2019s recorded. That\u2019s how I felt. It was a public lynching.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said Floyd\u2019s killing made her feel unsafe in Minnesota. \u201cI felt eerie. I felt like, where are we?\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re in the North. It\u2019s not as many Black people up here. They outnumber us here in a different way than if we were in the South or even in the lower Midwest where I\u2019m from. I felt like we were in some times that we hadn\u2019t faced before, and that this was a snippet of what our ancestors had to face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKnight Ahad connected Floyd\u2019s death to other police killings in Minnesota, including Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. She rejected the idea that Black communities become indifferent to repeated violence. \u201cWe mourn. Of course, we care,\u201d she said. \u201cWe all show up. We cry for them. We hurt for them. We are angry. But at the end of the day, everybody\u2019s still got to take care of the things you\u2019re responsible for. You have to keep moving on with your life. But it doesn\u2019t mean that we\u2019re not concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the conversation shifted toward solutions, Stephens described the Urban League as a civil rights and advocacy organization that has served the Twin Cities for 92 years through workforce, family stabilization and education programs. \u201cOur mission is that through services, advocacy and community mobilization, we advance the social, political and economic success of African-Americans in the Twin Cities,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cWe live up to that each and every day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n McKnight Ahad said her work is rooted in Black women\u2019s economic power. \u201cIn my world, a nation rises no higher than its woman, and the conditions of Black women will always dictate the conditions of the Black nation,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s to our benefit to make sure that she\u2019s good. She\u2019s stable, because if she is, then our nation is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The conversation also touched on DEI rollbacks, voting rights and economic pressure on Black-led organizations. McKnight Ahad pointed to Louisiana, where Republicans approved a new congressional map eliminating a Democratic-held majority-Black district<\/a>, as a warning that communities must organize for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n