On May 22, two days before the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s death, many students attended a memorial held by the school’s Students Organized for Anti-Racism (SOAR) in his honor. Held in Park’s Auditorium, attendees at the meeting learned about the murder of Floyd, the new movement to pardon convicted officer Derek Chauvin and ICE-related social injustices the nation is facing today. To cap off the memorial, the room participated in a nine-minute and 29-second moment of silence in honor of the time Floyd was under Officer Chauvin’s knee.
SOAR member Anisa Kahin said the memorial is important to help the community heal together. She said she was grateful to have the time and space at Park to hold the memorial.
“I know this is the fifth annual one we’ve held this year for the memorial. It’s just a chance for all of us to get together to reflect on the past four or five years of what had happened, for us to gather as a community to understand one another, to feel what we’re feeling together. And so that’s why I think it’s that important. And I really do enjoy Park has this opportunity for us, and has this space, and always will hold this space for us,” Kahin said.
Junior attendee Christopher Perez-Barriga said he went to the memorial to understand what is going on in his community. He said it is important for people to be informed about the social injustices in his community.
“I attended today because I wanted to hear what other people had to say in the community, and I think it’s an important issue that people learn about and also talk about,” Perez-Barriga said. “It’s something that’s so local and such a large issue in America. I think it’s really important that people educate themselves because this is still a large ongoing issue, and I don’t think there is enough eyes on it.”
According to SOAR member Janet Kromah, Students at Park have created a strong community, which is helpful when discussing issues such as the murder of Floyd. She said she lived near where he died, and it was emotional to see her community on a national stage.
“It’s important to lead with the following generations behind us or in front of us,” Kromah said. “We have a community of change and a community of like support, and we always like to support our students and remind other people of color, athletes, just having that strong community is so important, and having Park catapult that so hopefully other schools and communities can follow by example. I grew up not even too far from where George Floyd died. I used to visit (the place he died) from time to time. And so it really hit. It was so surreal because you would never think, ‘This happened in my community,’ or ‘this could never happen in Minnesota,’ but it happened globally. It happened nationally. It happened locally. And I think. Most people completely overestimate that, because other students are just like ‘well, that happened a while ago’ but they forget that it was so close by, not even a 15-minute drive. We don’t want to overlook it, and we don’t want to rewrite the past to which it was like, ‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad, or it wasn’t that serious.’ It’s just it happened, and it can happen anywhere.”
SOAR advisor Charles Mahaffey said he aids students on creating a memorial that reflects modern-day issues. He said they take inspiration from past years when preparing for the memorial.
“The George Floyd Memorial is an event that SOAR does every year, and that’s happened since before I started here at St Louis Park High School. A lot of things I sort of just inherited as things students have done in the past,” Mahaffey said. “The nine minutes and 29 seconds of silence is something that they’ve done in the past, and so (when creating the memorial this year) we started with things that they’ve done in the past. We had a lot of discussions as an organization on how do we make this relevant to today? A lot of my role in the last couple of weeks has sort of been the facilitator of students figuring out the direction they wanted to go with the memorial this year. And sometimes that looks like stepping in to sort of ask for more clarity from students on maybe what the goal of something is, or following up with students to remind them of what their responsibilities are.”
According to Kahin, the issue of police brutality is one that will continue to be an ongoing fight. She said it’s important to keep fighting even if various circumstances change, as it’s important to share your thoughts regarding pressing issues.
“Social justice issues aren’t something that’s just gonna go away in the blink of an eye of an eye,” Kahin said. “It’s gonna continue happening. And we’ve already seen it still happening to this day. The businesses of police brutality didn’t just end after the 2020 protests. They’re still going on. And so it’s something that is still continuing and something that a lot of us probably face nowadays. It’s something that we should continue to fight on, and continue to press on, even if things change, times change, opinions change. It’s still something that’s a very pressing issue. And so those who are very passionate about these issues should definitely speak on them.”
According to Perez, Park should teach about social justice issues in class. He said it’s important to talk about people who represent social issues in class as opposed to those with fame.
“The largest areas where people kind of learn about other idols are classrooms and especially media. And I think schools (are an) opportunity to learn about other people, like other issues, and talk about people such as George Floyd, who aren’t necessarily celebrities, but still reflect large issues,” Perez said.
Kromah said it’s important to discuss the history to recognize change that’s been made or still needs to be made. She said the Floyd murder reminded her of the murder of Philando Castile when she was in elementary school and how the cycle keeps repeating.
“I think that at the very least, if you keep bringing it up, it reminds people of how close it can be and how times have been changing for better or for worse,” Kromah said. “If you bring up those issues, and you bring up those types of situations, people will start to reflect on how our society is going and how things begin to change. If you want to encourage change, you need to think back of past situations or past instances in history where something similar has happened and what was brought about it. I think back to our example, Philando Castile. And I remember I was in elementary school, I was like, ‘Why would they kill him? That makes no sense.’ We had that there was a little change. But then we took five steps back when George Floyd died. God forbid, if we have another instance of an unfair death at the hands of police, I think that people will start thinking about this happened with George Floyd. What happened with Orlando Castillo. It’s just like, this cycle shouldn’t be happening. But if the cycle is going to keep happening, we have to take something from it and learn from it, and have places to continue putting things to stop this or, like, hopefully lessen it in the future.”
Mahaffey said the students make an effort to discuss the history following the murder of Floyd. He said SOAR used the memorial to connect both past and present social justice issues.
“(SOAR was) trying to connect the murder of George Floyd to the current moment we live in, not just in policing, but in politics more broadly and social justice more broadly is super important,” Mahaffey said. “Like Anisa brought up in our presentation, there’s an active rewriting of what 2020 was and what happened with discussions of pardoning Derek Chauvin, and sort of a retelling of that story. So for us, it feels important to come back to it, not so that we never forget that moment specifically, because that’s pretty obviously the goal of it, but also so that we are making connections constantly to what’s going on right now. And that’s why students brought up criminalizing immigration and criminalizing free speech on college campuses.”
Kahin said across the nation, particularly with the new president, there has been an attempt to redefine the murder of Floyd. According to her, it’s important to recognize what’s been said and limit the spread of misinformation.
“I know specifically for my portion (of the memorial), it was about Derek Chauvin and his possible pardon. I know specifically that a lot of people are protesting and saying they want Chauvin to be pardoned, and especially Trump, who says, ‘We need to move on, Chauvin didn’t really do much. Either ‘it was five years ago’ or ‘it was a drug overdose,’ which were rumors. We don’t want to rewrite history as what had happened, because the facts are stated and the facts are hard and solid. We already know what had happened. It was not an overdose. It was asphyxiation; Chauvin killed George Floyd. We don’t want to rewrite those events. We want to state history as it is right now,” Kahin said.
Perez-Barriga said he wants to see more students show up to the memorial. He said many students could learn a lot from the memorial and feel more connected to SOAR’s mission.
“I’ve gone the past few years, and I’ve noticed that each year, slowly, more people have gone. But I still want to see a larger turnout, just because there’s so many people that could benefit from educating and learning. I think what a lot of people are missing is like an understanding, a connection to this. I think if they sat down here and sat through this presentation like other people did, that they’d just feel more remorse and want to do more,” Perez-Barriga said.
Mahaffey said SOAR is a club where students have largely different impacts, such as encounters with police. According to him, SOAR uses these differences to come to a better understanding as a community.
“SOAR is a space where students come together to support each other and process these things. A lot of students come in the door with different emotional proximity to police violence, and some students have experienced it firsthand, secondhand, and some just feel a deep empathy, sympathy or solidarity with students,” Mahaffey said. “I think that first and foremost, SOAR is a club where students can come in and process that, talk about it and then also use that experience to build things together. We try to ground ourselves in having relationships as a group and then go forward from there. And it’s not always easy. There’s a lot of different students from a lot of different backgrounds with a lot of different lives that they’ve lived, but we try to make those connections first and support each other in relationships before we think about the organizing the students do.”
Kromah said she wanted attendees to take away the ongoing fight against racism and other social issues. She said recognizing patterns of bias is key in understanding what’s wrong.
“One thing that people should probably take away from this is that it isn’t really over, a lot of cycles of abuse, either being the police department, government, they don’t ever truly stop,” Kromah said. “At the very least, you know how things have been perceived in the past. You can recognize those patterns of where it’s just bias against a certain race or bias against an institution. I think that if you can recognize those patterns and recognize when people are being oppressed, in with the power I think that you can bring about a lot of change that you think is positive and bring about your voice if you want to speak about that.”
Kahin said it’s vital to understand the impacts of police brutality. She said hearing from the families of victims can help you understand the repetition and struggle of police brutality.
“Some kids, they don’t think that police brutality is something important, or they don’t think it’s necessarily a pressing issue. And so still learning about that, still understanding those effects, is very important, especially the lasting effect it has on families,” Kahin said. “Hearing from Amir Locke’s family, George Floyd’s family, Tyre Nichols’s family, all those families who have been affected (makes you realize) his is not just like a one and done, you know, it’s things that are still happening, and so it’s important to just continue to learn about those.”
