Meditating on George Floyd, a year after his murder
by John Scheinman
On the evening of May 25, an interfaith vigil took place in tiny Bishop Square Park, right outside my home in Tuscany-Canterbury, at the foot of the base of a statue that no longer stands — the Confederate Women’s Monument, by J. Maxwell Miller. The statue was erected in 1917 and taken down by the city of Baltimore exactly 100 years later as the country awakened to the insidious nature of the white supremacy our historical Confederate statues represent.
An array of faith and community leaders and about 100 others were there to commemorate the legacy of George Floyd on the one-year anniversary of his murder by a police officer sworn to protect. The crowd skewed older, Black and white. I can’t begin to fully relate the stirring power of the words spoken, but they brought me to tears. Eugene Sutton, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, reminded us our time on Earth is exceedingly brief and that we must act with haste and with love to make our troubled world right.
We can’t just march in protest for Black lives and then go back home; we must commit to living change. Another speaker, whose name I didn’t catch, reminded us that justice must be the foundation, at the core, of our society.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison was there. I didn’t know until his introduction that Harrison is a pastor, an ordained deacon at the City of Love Church in New Orleans, where he also served as police chief.
Harrison made brief and quietly powerful comments about the reason he came to Baltimore from New Orleans, the challenge of reforming the city’s deeply corrupt police department, the one responsible for the death of Freddie Gray.
“You have the right to have an expectation of a department that serves you with dignity and respect,” Harrison said. “With humility, with professionalism, with courage and honor. Tough on crime. Not tough on people.”
Our group, Sunrise Movement Baltimore, supports efforts to defund the Baltimore City Police Department, yet the new budget from Mayor Brandon Scott gives more, not less, money to policing — $555 million. Our city is on target for yet another year of more than 300 murders, mostly young Black men. All the money in the world can be given to even a reform-minded police department and not change systemic racism. Yet, I believed in the sincerity of Harrison’s words, and in that moment they made me want to give him a chance.
We were reminded that being well-meaning white people is not good enough. As Adam Jackson, the CEO of grassroots community organizer Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, said to the crowd, white people also must cede power. Companies can’t just hire Black people to make themselves feel better about being inclusive. Only control, true agency, leads to self-determination and strength for struggling communities that have been oppressed by racism and redlining since the first slaves were brought here in 1619.
We also were reminded that white supremacy isn’t focused exclusively on Black people; Asian, Latinx, Muslim and people with different sexual orientation and gender identies are attacked daily in this country. The speakers should have included Jews as well.
One woman who spoke, a faith leader, asked us to put a hand on our chests to feel our hearts beat, and to close our eyes and just breathe, and we all did. I looked at the police commissioner, with his detail in the distance behind him, hand on heart, head bowed, his face — like everyone’s — full of emotion. How complicated the plague of police violence must be for him, a police commissioner, a pastor, yet also a Black husband and father. All you could hear was the breeze, the city traffic and the cicadas as we stood there silently.
When the event broke up, people huddled in small groups to catch up and make small talk. Many hadn’t seen each other in person since the pandemic began. I didn’t know anybody, so I did what I did last year at a gathering down in Curtis Bay, in South Baltimore, after George Floyd was murdered: I got down on one knee for 9 minutes, 29 seconds — the time it took a racist white cop to choke away his precious life — and meditated on his death. I recited to myself a sad list of others killed by police: Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and Sandra Bland. It hurt staying down that long in one position. So, imagine what it feels like to have a knee pressed on your neck for the same amount of time, while you plead for air and then your mother in the moments before you die.
I’m just a single voice, and everything I do isn’t centered on justice and change — I wouldn’t dare pretend otherwise — but I always have to be for it, and always must support the leaders in the fight, and speak out when I see injustice and hate, and try to heal myself and deepen my understanding and empathy for the plight of others who have to live this shit every single day, and reach out.
I’m not trying to be a saint, but I know every step I take forward for justice is a good step. A year after George Floyd’s murder, Republican legislatures around the country are furiously enacting laws rooted in white supremacy. Seeing that, sometimes I wonder and worry whether his death was in vain. Every one of us has to decide if we want to be part of the only response imaginable: No.
John Scheinman is a Communications team member of Sunrise Movement Baltimore. Follow him on Twitter under @ScheinmanJohn
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