After George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, the location where it happened – the intersection of thirty eighth Street East and Chicago Avenue South – became a community focus. People from throughout got here together to pay their respects, mourn and picture a greater world. Protest signs, flowers and art kept amassing – until people began taking them from the memorial.
That is where Jeanelle Austin – now the chief director of the George Floyd Global Memorial – and other community members stepped in. They reclaimed offerings that got thrown away and created standards and rules for the every day caretaking of the location now generally known as George Floyd Square. But even then, the dimensions of the memorial was still becoming an excessive amount of. In order that they reached out to George Floyd’s family to see what they’d like done with it.
The reply that they got here to was to determine a recent organization, called the George Floyd Global Memorial. Along with the preservation and conservation of the greater than 5,000 offerings left on the intersection, the organization works to attach people to their significance through guided pilgrimages and public installations. On this episode of the Off the Charts podcast, Jeanelle and Methodist Hospital president Jennifer Myster join us to debate the means of this work and the way the hospital got here to host an exhibit. Take heed to the episode or read the transcript.
By the people, for the people
Since George Floyd Square was a public installation created by the community, George Floyd Global Memorial wanted its work to be an extension of that dynamic and spirit. They allowed local organizations to bid on hosting an exhibit, with the one requirement being that the space be freely accessible to the general public. HealthPartners won the bid and chosen Methodist Hospital because the venue.
To maintain the spirit of community in the method, volunteers from Methodist Hospital collaborated with Angela Harrelson, George Floyd’s aunt, to determine on the pieces that may 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 offerings and art pieces from George Floyd Square. Jeanelle and Jennifer saw it as a productive, subversive type of disruption: people were drawn into the space, into reflection and into conversation.
Looking back to maneuver forward
Jeanelle makes the purpose that we are able to’t have a look at Black wellness in the USA in a vacuum – the discrimination Black people experience within the U.S. is systemic and historical. Subsequently, Jeanelle argues, we’ve to grasp the past to be able to make progress in the current.
Within the case of health equity, meaning understanding the aspects which have historically informed Black health and the connection that Black people have with health care. We will’t assess Black health without accounting for the indisputable fact that Black slaves were mainly fed food scraps and animal intestines. We will’t undo the distrust that some Black people have for care systems without understanding the history of unethical medical experimentation that Black people have been subjected to.
The identical goes for George Floyd, and for police violence towards Black people on the whole. We’ve to grasp that George Floyd and other victims of police violence are contemporary examples of lynching, a lot in order that Jeanelle advocates for using that word specifically. It refers back to the public, symbolic meaning of the violence: in case you are Black in America, that is what can occur to you.
But George Floyd also demonstrates the ways we’ve to work against history. Where lynchings were once used to manage people through fear, the murder of George Floyd inspired anger, revolt and an outpouring of affection. People across the globe responded by protesting the system that enabled his death, and other people closer to home also responded by constructing community. Even now, George Floyd Global Memorial sustains those energies and encourages people to reflect on the importance and impact of his death.
This work cannot happen only in response to extreme examples of discrimination – it must extend proactively to each form that discrimination takes, in every system where it’s enabled. It’s lots, and it may possibly be uncomfortable, but it surely’s how we grow towards something higher. To listen to more from Jeanelle and Jennifer about collaboration, community and what hosting the George Floyd Global Memorial Art Exhibit has meant for Methodist Hospital, hearken to this episode of Off the Charts.