Friend,

This weekend, I attended a rally and march in Minneapolis to commemorate the murder of George Floyd, one year ago today. I was hit hard by the reality of the long struggle we have ahead of us, and also the strength of the movement sparked by George Floyd’s tragic murder.

There is no doubt that the movement is strong.

After George Floyd’s murder, millions of people, led by young activists, took to the streets to demand justice, refusing to accept the daily trauma of white police officers shooting unarmed Black people.

They demonstrated not only for more justice in policing, but to change ways that systemic racism creates inequity in housing, environmental quality, health care, and wealth. Reverend Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign has called for a Third Reconstruction to right these wrongs, and it feels like this movement was galvanized in the past year.

In my home state of Minnesota, the vivid and horrifying video of George Floyd’s last moments of life was impossible to unsee, and has irrevocably shifted white people’s understanding of racism and its relentless corrosion of our values.

We’ve taken steps toward justice in the past year, important but too few. In the Senate, our work continues on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and I’m grateful for my colleague Senator Cory Booker for his determination to find a way forward.

But the path to justice is slow and harrowing.

Systems built up over 400 years to devalue Black lives will not change easily. Entrenched power fights change as it always has.

For me, the most vivid illustration was sitting in the Senate Chamber and realizing that white supremacist insurgents whipped up by the former President had stormed the United States Capitol to overturn our election, and stood just outside the Senate chamber waving a confederate flag.

Change is fatally slow coming to Black communities in Minneapolis and around the country. Police killed more people in 2020 than in any year where we have data except 2018.

An epidemic of gun violence surges around the country and in Minneapolis, where it has taken the lives of 31 people so far this year, including Aniya Allen, who died after a stray bullet hit her while she was eating lunch in her Mom’s car.

My beloved Minnesota has been torn and divided by the last year — the economic and health earthquake of COVID-19 and a reckoning around racial justice that is not yet a reconciliation.

A year ago, I stood with friends and Black leaders in North Minneapolis and talked about how we must not let this moment go to waste. I expressed optimism about the power of this movement, led by young people, to tilt our state and country toward justice. My friends looked steadily back at me, and told me to temper my optimism and fight harder.

Change is hard. They had seen moments like this come before, and they had seen them fade before the real work started.

This week, as we consider what has changed and what has not since the death of George Floyd, I see even more clearly the work we need to do to reimagine public safety, and all the systems that steal opportunity and deny the value of Black lives.

It is hard, but we know what to do. We need to use the power we have to make change, and we need to build the power to make the change we need.

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Tina Smith
U.S. Senator, Minnesota

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