A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm A Martínez in Culver City, California.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
And I'm Michel Martin in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where, on a bleak, cold day earlier this week, our MORNING EDITION team drove to 38th Street East and Chicago Avenue, the intersection where George Floyd was killed. With a hard rain coming down, there weren't many people there, but the street itself was showing the tension between preserving livelihoods and a legacy. It's a tension, which remains unresolved five years on, and which became clearer when we met the Reverend Jia Starr Brown.
JIA STARR BROWN: We'll make a right and cross the street.
MARTIN: OK, and just what are we looking at here? I'm seeing a - it's a fist with a...
STARR BROWN: Yeah.
MARTIN: There's a Black liberation flag. It's surrounded by sort of pylons.
STARR BROWN: And there's another one at the other corner. Look at this.
MARTIN: OK.
STARR BROWN: We're walking. There's another fist up here...
MARTIN: OK.
STARR BROWN: ...That's right at the central point of what we call the square. So this is considered the square.
MARTIN: The square - George Floyd Square.
Reverend Jia, as she's known, is a pastor and an activist who dedicates time to preserving George Floyd Square. She is among those who want to close the street to traffic and make it a pedestrian walkway.
STARR BROWN: And so as you see here, there's some blue painting. And if we were to walk a little bit...
MARTIN: Yeah, sure.
STARR BROWN: ...You can see that these are names - right? - of people. And I wonder if no one's coming, we can walk just right here. I don't see anybody coming.
MARTIN: OK.
STARR BROWN: But see, these are names.
MARTIN: These are police encounters.
STARR BROWN: Yeah, yeah.
MARTIN: Police or vigilante...
STARR BROWN: Traffic, yeah.
MARTIN: ...Encounters or something like that. OK.
STARR BROWN: Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted just to show you that.
MARTIN: Yeah.
Her goal is a shrine and memorial to what happened here five years ago.
STARR BROWN: We have seen so many of these videos and so many of these stories, but there was something different about this experience that literally gripped my heart. I was the pastor at the time of First Covenant Church in Minneapolis and found myself in this deep space of lament and just listening. I just sat over and over, listening to that video, listening to him call for his mother.
MARTIN: And you're a mother.
STARR BROWN: And I'm a mother...
MARTIN: Yeah.
STARR BROWN: ...Of five.
MARTIN: Right.
STARR BROWN: And a grandmother.
MARTIN: Right.
STARR BROWN: To hear that, it just - it broke my heart.
MARTIN: What about now, five years later, do you think something's changed?
STARR BROWN: Quite a bit has changed, and quite a bit has stayed the same. And what has changed about this is the reality, first of all, that there are multiple ways of expressing grief. There are multiple ways of telling the story. This space has grown and evolved to be a space that has been a space of sanctity and for protest for people of all different backgrounds that are either allies or who have been connected to injustice by institution. Hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world come here to hear the story. There are storytellers here because there is a hope that by hearing these stories, tomorrow will change.
MARTIN: Listening to you, in many ways, you sound very hopeful, even in the wake of a tragedy. But do...
STARR BROWN: Even in.
MARTIN: Even in.
STARR BROWN: You know, I appreciate that. I think that in spaces and times like these, we have nothing but our hope to hold on to. You know, there's always a temptation to step in and to say it isn't possible to bring change. We can't move forward, but what else do we have?
MARTIN: But the vision that Reverend Jia Starr Brown and others see is other people's nightmare. The owners of a dozen small businesses located near the flowers, signs and sculptures that line the streets around 38th and Chicago are suing the city. Edwin Reed, who owns Sincere Detailing Pros, is one of them. He said he and his small business had become what he called collateral damage.
EDWIN REED: Since this street has become a national landmark, tens and thousands of people are coming here to visit, and it makes sense for them to fix this area and put infrastructure here for people to come and visit. Now, if you're going to name the street, I don't have a problem with that. But if you're going to continue to have things out here to symbolize this to be a museum for a man that the city killed, I totally disagree with that.
MARTIN: What do you want to see happen here?
REED: Well, I want to see them treat us fairly as businesses - we're Black-owned businesses at that. And it's historic to have 12 Black businesses in one area in the whole state of Minnesota, and they want us to walk away quietly.
MARTIN: Reed told me he's been struggling since George Floyd was killed, first because of crime that he says seemed to explode during and after the protests. And then he said because many of his customers no longer want to come to the area so he has to go to them - either his mobile detailing van or to pick up their cars and trucks and bring them back for detailing. Reed joined a lawsuit against the city with other business owners, including the new owner of the corner grocery store where George Floyd was accused of trying to pass a counterfeit bill, leading to that fateful police call.
What do you want the city to do, and what do you think the other business owners want?
REED: I want to leave this area because if I stay here, it only reminds me of what I went through. And I want respect. I want respect for us because they don't know what we've endured. They don't know what we went through. And we sat here, ma'am, and we're collateral damage now to what took place here. And we just want to be respected.
MARTIN: So it's a place where a lot of people come to commemorate. It's a place that people come to acknowledge what happened in May of 2020, but it's not a place that people are coming to shop and get business and get services anymore.
REED: Absolutely.
MARTIN: And that's killing your business. It's...
REED: It's turned into that. Absolutely.
MARTIN: Yeah.
Within a block or two of Reed's business is that assembly of mementos we mentioned earlier - planters with flowers, a makeshift greenhouse, posters and handwritten notes - all surrounded by painted concrete barriers.
Well, how do you feel about the way the memorial itself is structured? It's certainly not, like, a professional art installation.
REED: Well, just to be frank with you about it - and no disrespect to anybody who's grieving - I feel bad that they killed a man up there, such as George Floyd, when they had an opportunity to bring that man to jail. They had him in the car. They took him back out. It just doesn't make sense to me. And so what I would say is, I would like to see them lose out what we've lost out - all of our businesses - to understand where we're coming from. These people live far away. They live up the street. They don't know that we've lost something. You guys may have lost George Floyd, but you guys haven't lost your businesses. You're not on the brink of that.
And that's my point in taking, you know, like, you - if you guys want to grieve, OK, I get it. But guess what? Let the street be what it is. Clean everything up. Come back here and grieve. You know, the next year, come here and for his anniversary, if you want. I get that. But you guys are harming our businesses by having that in the way, having all the shrines in the streets. I just feel totally disrespected. I care about the people. I care about George Floyd. I care about people in America, how they feel, but I want them to understand how these business owners feel. We worked our whole lives to build what we have. We have a family to support. Everybody's got jobs. We've lost our jobs. I'm so emotional over what took place because, you know, I care about people. I care about these businesses. Every business from Lake Street on down to Hennepin, they're losing their dreams.
MARTIN: That was business owner Edwin Reed, who wants the city to acknowledge the lost livelihoods. We also spoke with Reverend Jia Starr Brown, who wants to preserve George Floyd Square as a lasting memorial. Three days of remembrance begin today for Floyd and for others who organizers say were, quote, "lost unjustly to the pervasive impacts of systemic racism." Events will include a candlelight vigil and a street festival meant to highlight healing within the community. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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