Editor’s note: Excerpts below are from comments made by community defenders at George Floyd Square (GFS) in Minneapolis, a space of protest and autonomous zone in the area where George Floyd took his last breath.
See Unicorn Riot’s:
Beyond the Barricades: A Look At George Floyd Square
“No justice, no justice. Let me tell you that the city killed a man. And that is why we are here. That is why the community is standing for justice and asking and demanding for justice. This street does not belong to you anymore, City of Minneapolis. You will have to negotiate. You will have to give us some justice if you want that street back.”
“George Floyd was murdered. The barricades went up and the demand went out. And those demands, the justice resolution, played a key role to establish this as a space of protest and establishing this as an autonomous zone. That’s the reason the barricades stay up, for holding the police accountable.”
“It’s for demanding justice, and it’s also demanding structural changes and investments into the future. It isn’t any one individual’s demand. It is a collection of needs and wants from this community saying: these are the things that we need in order to move forward to heal. And it’s just talking about the beginning steps.”
“We’re not asking you; we’re demanding. Play your role. Bring the resources. We have the healers. We have the teachers. Quit pimping us. Quit prostituting us, expecting us to run into a burning building with a water gun. Give us the resources so that we can now heal our own land with our own bodies, people who look like us, sound like us, move like us and beat like us.”
“We say we hold the space until the demands are met, and the city certainly does not want to meet the demands. And so they won’t take back the space. They’re going to have to meet those demands before we give up 38th street. We’re not giving it up! We not giving it up! We not giving it up.”
“No Justice, No Street!”
“Every day there’s a meeting in the morning and a meeting in the night. And that has been one of the ways that community has really, really developed. . .. You look around here, you see bus stops turned into storage and bus stops turned into people’s closets. You see bookshelves going up; you see we’ve got a medical shed; we’ve got a greenhouse.”
“612 Mash is a medic organization that operates out of the square the people’s way. This is a public space. You know, it’s a public meeting space and it’s a public space of real community, and joy, and unity. It’s a sacred space, and it’s a space of grieving, and also of liberation for people who are coming in here.
“People come from all over. It’s almost a pilgrimage site in that way. I think there is something really to be said about how the common spaces and collectively maintained spaces have been eroded by capitalism. You can see this as a return of the commons in a lot of ways.”
“This is a blueprint for how society can be: how society can be organized, how we can develop community and come here together and meet the needs of the community.”
“Every day there are people who are unhoused, who will come here to find sanctuary. They’ll come here and they’ll get fed. They’ll get clothes and they’ll get resources to get housed. And that’s a thing that the state has been unable to provide. And the fact that community has been able to come in and fulfill that role, spells out exactly why this is the way of the future and not the way of the state.”
Witnessing a Murder
http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/2021/04/witnessing-a-murder/
