Opinion: The unfulfilled promises of George Floyd’s legacy

This column is syndicated by Beacon Media and is available to republish for free on all platforms under Beacon Media’s guidelines.

The gym’s deadlift bar settles at my feet, my mind racing as I scroll through George Floyd’s five-year anniversary articles I refuse to read. The last American death associated with vultures involved a Texas woman who donated her body to science, eventually landing at a facility that studied the carnivorous bird and the body after death.

The other was George Floyd, whose body, legacy, and image were picked apart for economic, social, and political gain.

I glanced at the mirror, checking my composure, then resumed my set, wondering whether these conversations seek to honor his memory or strip his bones of any remaining value.

George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, after officers were called when Floyd bought cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill.  His murder sparked anti-police violence protests that spread across the globe.  For me, it marked the full realization of disaster capitalism’s claim on the fight against racism.

Since Mike Brown’s 2014 killing by police in Ferguson, Mo., the language of anti–police brutality has morphed into the safer descriptor of “racial justice.” This transformation allows almost any effort to be seen as addressing police violence, inviting symbolic co-optation and exploitation.

Billions of dollars devoted to racial justice were raised in 2020 alone. Over the past decade we’ve seen each viral Black death due to police violence met with a mad dash for donations from progressive organizations. Victims’ families were claimed as territory by organizations seeking legitimacy via spokespeople.

As a Black Lives Matter organizer, I watched the desecration in horror, trying to stop the feast but not knowing how. I watched victims be exploited. I watched money vanish. I watched hostility toward Black men metastasize. We could not lead advocacy in our own defense without being labeled “problematic.” Our bodies were always valuable, because they could be used to gain social capital.

As I stepped back from frontline organizing, a new wave of activists emerged, galvanized by the uprisings of 2020. I’m encouraged by their energy, but I worry they’ve been told a false story: that the movement’s visibility equaled success. The core goal, to reduce police violence, was not met. There is more work to be done.

Despite years of outcry, police killings held steady from 2015 to 2021, data show. In 2024, the crisis worsened. The Washington Post police shooting database indicates that 248 Black men were killed by law enforcement last year. Overall, despite the fact that Black people make up 14 percent of the population in the U.S., they are shot at nearly twice the rate of white people, according to the database. Similar countries to the U.S. around the world have far fewer police killings.

When the language shifted from “police brutality” to the brand-safe “racial justice,” it signaled that victims and their families would be sacrificed. They were rarely provided legal support, long-term campaigns, or protection from police retaliation. Even now, most Americans can’t name even one organization actively fighting police brutality because they don’t directly confront the issue with that language. Real efforts such as direct action, protest campaigns, and ongoing victim support, were swapped for slogans and election-season optics that didn’t appear controversial.

Racial animus toward Black men evolved into patriarchal concern, flattening us into symbols while excluding us from leadership. Without narrative ownership, exploitation always followed.

I knew deeply that if George Floyd had survived his encounter with police, that same racial animus would have kept him from leading advocacy in his name. The movement space had no room for the intersections he embodied: working class, formerly incarcerated, in recovery, and most of all, a Black man.

Dead, George Floyd was worth billions. Alive, he was worth nothing.

The barbell’s weight is unrelenting, but at least it’s honest. Its difficulty is something I can control. The consumption of George Floyd, the Black male body, is what I lift against.

I was one of the last Black men to survive an organizing landscape eager to exploit us. I feared not my death, but what would happen after. In the gym, I’m not brought back to protests or marches. I still feel the vultures circling, waiting for me to die of exhaustion or violence so they can feed.

I learned the hard way that advocacy had become an enterprise—an opportunity, not a responsibility.

Now, I move through the world as a cynical movement veteran, reframing Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex into a new one: beware the nonprofit-industrial complex, which consumes the very people it claims to protect.

The weight never feels light, but it gets easier to lift. I’ve never stopped advocating for George Floyd. I’m encouraged by those who still fight state violence. The weight doesn’t leave. I’m not done with this set.

I have to be strong enough to stay alive and strong enough to keep the vultures away.