It was about this time six years ago that George Floyd had become a symbol for pretty much any side of America's social divide you are on: a martyr to police brutality; a drug addict whose heart was on the brink of giving out before his fatal run-in with Derek Chauvin; a victim of white supremacy; a sign of everything that's wrong with the criminal justice system in "blue" cities.
I'm not even going to suggest the correct answer.
But Floyd has achieved, rightly or wrongly, mythical status in the American left and in Minneapolis. The intersection where he died, 38th and Chicago in South Minneapolis - actually the neighborhood I first lived in when I moved to Minneapolis - has become, literally, a shrine to Floyd and, given Minnesota leftists ingrained Main Character Syndrome, to Minnesota leftists themselves (see also: their self-canonization for the three months they spent over the winter turning the city into a roaming Chuck E> Cheese in defense of human trafficking illegal aliens).
And as shrines go, it's been kind of a dismal one for the past six years:
Traveling toward the west through George Floyd Square. pic.twitter.com/hn1oZJIwJF
— Bill Glahn (@billglahn) May 21, 2025
As if a crowd of surly teenagers is "getting back at Mom and Dad" by not cleaning their room and spraying graffiti on the wall. The neighborhood without a few blocks of The Intersection was flirting with being a "Chaz"-type insurrectionary pseudo-government, blocking traffic and harassing cops and first responders - a movement that seems to have faded since the Minneapolis City Council was overtaken by Democrat Socialists of America, who treat the entire city as a Chaz, leaving the little one on the south side pretty much redundant.
At long last, the city has hatched plans to rebuild the intersection - trying to "split the baby" by making the area passable again while bowing the requisite knee to the activists, both out of and within government:
Minneapolis is set to begin a major redevelopment project at George Floyd Square, sparking mixed reactions from the community as construction gets underway at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. https://t.co/9VxjtZ3uFq
— FOX 9 (@FOX9) June 8, 2026
The city will start a multi-year reconstruction project at 38th and Chicago on Monday, with the goal of bringing vehicle and bus traffic back to the area while preserving the spot where George Floyd was murdered.
City leaders say the redesign will include new gathering spaces, improved infrastructure and the return of vehicle and bus traffic to parts of the intersection..."Most people want George Floyd's murder to be preserved and talked about, but how do we make it benefit our community as a whole, specifically the Central neighborhood, which is a black neighborhood," said Marquise Bowie, who lives near 38th and Chicago.
These sorts of city projects have a grisly history of mowing down neighborhood businesses:
"If the plan moves forward as planned, I will be closed by November of this year," said Ini Augustine, owner of Mystic Healing Stones.
"I'm not going to allow any small savings that I have to be depleted because of the poor planning choices of the people in charge," said Augustine.
KingDemetrius Pendleton, owner of Listen to Us Studio, said, "It's going to impact all the business abysmally, and not only that, we have not even gotten over the situation of what happened to George Floyd six years ago
The city's plans are going to cost money - and that's going to come from somewhere.
“This tax assessment of $636,000 is going to harm our neighborhood and harm the local businesses,” resident Julia Johnson told a Minneapolis City Council committee this week. “It’s probably going to make my rent go up. It’s going to cause people to be displaced; to be disconnected from the beautiful community that’s been built.”
It turns out that property owners near the square are being required to pay part of the bill for new area streets and infrastructure — through special assessments.
According to the Minneapolis city website, “state law and city ordinance allow assessments when a property benefits from a capital improvement… without assessments, the city would either raise other revenue like property taxes or be unable to fund the amount of capital improvements needed to replace deteriorating infrastructure. You are assessed because a portion of your property is within the project influence area.”
If you guessed "the activists", you clearly don't follow blue city politics.
