After George Floyd’s homicide in May 2020, the location the place it occurred – the intersection of thirty eighth Street East and Chicago Avenue South – grew to become a neighborhood focus. People from throughout got here collectively to pay their respects, mourn and picture a greater world. Protest indicators, flowers and artwork stored amassing – till folks started taking them from the memorial.
This is the place Jeanelle Austin – now the chief director of the George Floyd Global Memorial – and different neighborhood members stepped in. They reclaimed choices that acquired thrown away and created requirements and guidelines for the every day caretaking of the location now referred to as George Floyd Square. But even then, the size of the memorial was nonetheless changing into an excessive amount of. So they reached out to George Floyd’s household to see what they’d like achieved with it.
The reply that they got here to was to determine a brand new group, known as the George Floyd Global Memorial. In addition to the preservation and conservation of the greater than 5,000 choices left on the intersection, the group works to attach folks to their significance by means of guided pilgrimages and public installations. On this episode of the Off the Charts podcast, Jeanelle and Methodist Hospital president Jennifer Myster be part of us to debate the method of this work and the way the hospital got here to host an exhibit. Listen to the episode or read the transcript.
By the folks, for the folks
Since George Floyd Square was a public set up created by the neighborhood, George Floyd Global Memorial wished its work to be an extension of that dynamic and spirit. They allowed native organizations to bid on internet hosting an exhibit, with the one requirement being that the area be freely accessible to the general public. HealthPartners received the bid and chosen Methodist Hospital because the venue.
To maintain the spirit of neighborhood within the course of, volunteers from Methodist Hospital collaborated with Angela Harrelson, George Floyd’s aunt, to determine on the items that might be displayed and the way they’d be displayed. The exhibit, titled “I Am Not You. You Are Not Me. Healing Begins with Acceptance.” ran from January to March 2023 and included greater than 100 choices and artwork items from George Floyd Square. Jeanelle and Jennifer noticed it as a productive, subversive type of disruption: folks had been drawn into the area, into reflection and into dialog.
Looking again to maneuver ahead
Jeanelle makes the purpose that we will’t take a look at Black wellness within the United States in a vacuum – the discrimination Black folks expertise within the U.S. is systemic and historic. Therefore, Jeanelle argues, we’ve to know the previous with the intention to make progress within the present.
In the case of health fairness, meaning understanding the elements which have traditionally knowledgeable Black health and the connection that Black folks have with health care. We can’t assess Black health with out accounting for the truth that Black slaves had been primarily fed food scraps and animal intestines. We can’t undo the mistrust that some Black folks have for care techniques with out understanding the historical past of unethical medical experimentation that Black folks have been subjected to.
The similar goes for George Floyd, and for police violence in the direction of Black folks typically. We have to know that George Floyd and different victims of police violence are modern examples of lynching, a lot in order that Jeanelle advocates for utilizing that phrase particularly. It refers back to the public, symbolic which means of the violence: in case you are Black in America, that is what can occur to you.
But George Floyd additionally demonstrates the methods we’ve to work towards historical past. Where lynchings had been as soon as used to regulate folks by means of worry, the homicide of George Floyd impressed anger, revolt and an outpouring of affection. People throughout the globe responded by protesting the system that enabled his demise, and other people nearer to dwelling additionally responded by building neighborhood. Even now, George Floyd Global Memorial sustains these energies and encourages folks to replicate on the importance and affect of his demise.
This work can not happen solely in response to excessive examples of discrimination – it should prolong proactively to each type that discrimination takes, in each system the place it’s enabled. It’s rather a lot, and it may be uncomfortable, but it surely’s how we develop in the direction of one thing higher. To hear extra from Jeanelle and Jennifer about collaboration, neighborhood and what internet hosting the George Floyd Global Memorial Art Exhibit has meant for Methodist Hospital, take heed to this episode of Off the Charts.
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