I lived just a few blocks from 38th and Chicago when I got the call: police were everywhere near Cup Foods, and someone had been killed. I was skeptical. I hadn’t heard sirens. My block was still. Quiet. But something in me stirred. I decided to walk over and see what, if anything, had really happened.
At the time, I was an organizer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota, leading the Smart Justice Campaign focused on legal system accountability. I also served on the governor’s task force on reducing deadly force encounters by law enforcement. Part of my job was confirming these situations, interpreting what was true, and pushing for justice when it wasn’t being served.
When I arrived, the scene was swarming with squad cars and lined with yellow tape. Still, no sirens. I approached an officer and asked what happened. He said he didn’t know and averted his eyes. That’s when a bystander locked eyes with me and said something I’ll never forget:
“They stepped on a man’s neck and killed him.”
I immediately called Nekima Levy Armstrong. She reached out to the police chief. When we asked what happened, he said a man had suffered a “medical emergency.” We told him the streets were saying something very different — that video evidence existed. He promised to look into it, but had nothing more to offer at that time.
Later that night, I received an inbox message that would change my life. I opened the video and watched George Floyd beg for his life under the weight of an officer’s knee. I watched him die — slowly, agonizingly. His cries for his mother, his declaration that he couldn’t breathe, those sounds tore through my spirit. I screamed. Something broke in me. And I haven’t been the same since.
That moment shifted something in all of us. George Floyd’s murder didn’t just expose the violence of one officer, it exposed the violence of a system.
In the days and weeks that followed, I was in the streets with our people and in the rooms where decisions were being made. We experienced mass protests not only in Minneapolis, but across the globe. The world had finally stopped to witness what we’d known for generations: that policing in America is too often fatal for Black bodies.
Eventually, Derek Chauvin and the other officers were charged and convicted. Something we rarely see. Institutions rushed to release statements, to paint murals, to promise change. Some of those promises bore fruit. Most of them faded as quickly as they came.
Still, we are not where we were before. There is a generation of leaders and young people who carry this truth in their bones now. People who were moved to stand up in the summer of 2020, who refuse to look away, who continue to fight for a world where justice isn’t selective and human dignity is non-negotiable.
I didn’t ask for this fight — but it found me. And like so many of us who stood witness to that moment in time, I made a decision.
I’m not backing off. I’m not backing down. And I’m not alone.
Elizer Darris is the executive director of Minnesota Freedom Fund. For more information, visit www.mnfreedomfund.org.