As protests calling for police reform and an end to systemic racism continue, activists and community leaders say the energy on the streets is shifting into local grassroots organizing focused on changing policies.
Attending George Floyd’s funeral — and coming face to face with the open casket — Rev. Stephen A. Green was overcome with emotion but also a renewed sense of purpose.
“Walking in and seeing George Floyd lying in that casket, I saw myself,” said the community organizer and pastor with the Greater Allen A.M.E. Cathedral in New York.
“I got back on a plane and landed in New York even more fired up for the work ahead so that there are no more George Floyds and Breonna Taylors and Ahmaud Arberys.”
Taylor was fatally shot by police in her Louisville, Ky., apartment in March while Arbery was killed during a confrontation with two white men in Georgia in February while he was jogging. The men, a father and son, and a third man who filmed the confrontation have been charged with murder.
After more than two weeks of ongoing protests across cities large and small in the U.S. following Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on May 25, his funeral in Houston on Tuesday was a moment of pause for many like Green to take account of what’s been achieved and look ahead to where the movement for racial justice is going.
Floyd, who is Black, died after a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck while detaining him outside a convenience store for allegedly paying with a counterfeit bill. Derek Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and three other officers who were present on the scene face charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder.
A shift in the movement
Green said the movement will start to see a shift in tactics from mass protests in the streets to grassroots community organizing that includes voter registration and canvassing.
“I think this is now a transformative moment for the movement as we focus on moving from protest to the polls and really leading to November and beyond,” Green said, referring to the upcoming presidential election.
A view to the future was what swept over 16-year-old Jalen Keys, who came to Houston with her family from San Antonio, Texas, to watch the final leg of the funeral procession as Floyd’s casket, in a horse-drawn carriage, passed by.
“I want to be a part of something … that can be really big,” she said. “This whole situation is changing the world, and I’m just glad that we can be out here and be a part of it.”
Change has begun
Already the demands by protesters for change in the U.S. have found a receptive ear in the chambers of city councils and state legislatures.
In New York, for example, the state legislature passed a package of police reforms that had been stalled for years.
Among the new measures signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday is a provision that criminalizes the use of chokeholds by police officers that lead to serious injury or death. It would be punishable by u