Tuesday, May 25 marks the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder.
There are protests and memorial events planned in several Michigan cities to mark the occasion and continue calls to fight racism and police brutality.
A protest honoring George Floyd and others killed by police in Dearborn is planned for 6:30 Tuesday night in Dearborn, an hour before Dearborn’s city council meeting. The group organizing the event Accountability Dearborn is encouraging people to “show up and speak out” at the Dearborn Administrative Center starting at 5:30 p.m., not just in the name of George Floyd, but for all people who have been killed at the hands of police -- including locals Kevin Wilson and Janet Mathews.
Also Tuesday, organizers in Kalamazoo have planned a memorial event to include nine minutes of silence to remember Floyd and others killed at the hands of police.
At noon Tuesday the University of Michigan’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion department will host a moment of silence and remembrance for victims of law enforcement violence. There will also be remarks.
Floyd’s death at the hands of former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin sparked a summer of protests last year that took place across the state -- from urban centers to the U.P. and small towns.
Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd this spring. The vast majority of protests last summer were peaceful and non-destructive. A few high-profile instances of destruction, as in Grand Rapids, were seized on by conservative politicians and activists to demonize the Black Lives Matter movement. Days of consecutive protests in Detroit last June led to dozens of arrests, a short-lived city curfew, and police forcefully dispersing protestors.
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