The Americans remember George Floyd on the fifth anniversary of his death

The Americans across the country remember George Floyd five years after the police killed, with special meetings in the city in which he grew up, and the one in which he died.

The murder of Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin led to nationwide protests against racism and police brutality.

On Sunday, Floyd’s family gathered in her hometown Houston near Floyd’s Gravesit for an event, which was led by Rev. Al Sharton, while Minneapolis kept several commemorative celebrations.

What many have celebrated as a national “billing” with racism after Floyd’s death seems to fade when President Donald Trump throws the police reforms back in Minneapolis and in other cities.

In Minneapolis, parishioners planned a morning service on Sunday, a vigil for the candlelight and an gospel concert in the evening.

The events were part of the annual promotion and souvenir festival at George Floyd Square, the intersection where Floyd was murdered and which has been named since then to honor him.

“Now it is time for people to rise and continue the good work that we started,” said Angela Harrelson, Floyd’s aunt and co-chair of the promotion and memory, in an explanation of the festival.

In Houston, where Floyd grew up and where he is buried, local organizations planned poems, musical achievements and speeches of local pastors.

Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis during a police in 2020 when Chauvin, a white policeman, was on his neck for more than nine minutes.

The killing – experienced on the phone camera of a viewer – triggered a global outrage and a wave from demonstrations against racist injustice and police use of violence.

Chauvin served a 22-year sentence after being convicted of murder to the 46-year-old. Other officers were convicted because they had not intervened in the murder.

In a post on X, Rev. Sharton said that Floyd’s death “forced a long overdue settlement with systemic racism and brought millions on the streets”.

“The conviction of the responsible official was a rare step towards justice, but our work is far from over,” he said.

After the death of Floyd, the Ministry of Justice opened civilian investigations into several local law enforcement agencies, including Minneapolis, Louisville, Phoenix and Lexington, Mississippi, where the investigators found evidence of the systemic police.

The department achieved agreements with the police authorities Louisville and Minneapolis, which included supervisory measures such as improved training, accountability and improved data acquisition of police activities.

But last Wednesday the Trump administration said that these results were based on “faulty methods and incomplete data”.

Administrative officers said the agreement were “handcuffs” local police stations.

The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, said this week that his city still keeps “every sentence, every paragraph, the 169-page declaration of consent that we signed this year”.

Since his return to the office, Trump has also followed measures for Equity & Inclusion (Dei) for Diversity Equity & Inclusion, with which racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are to be reduced. At the beginning of his term, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate the DEI policy in the Federal Government, some of which were the result of protests during the so -called “Black Lives Matter Matt Summer”, which were held after the death of Floyd and others.

Critics, including Trump, say that such programs can be discriminatory themselves. When he spoke to West Point on Saturday, he said that when DEI ended in the military, the administration “gets rid of the distractions” and “our military focuses on their nuclear mission”.

In the meantime, the mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, Black Lives Matter Plaza, removed a street strip that was decorated with the expression near the White House. According to Houston Public Media, a famous Floyd murals in Houston was also destroyed this week as part of a breakdown.

The latest surveys indicate that the Americans believe that in the United States there have been only a few improvements for the life of Blacks in the USA five years after the death of Floyd, including a survey by the PEW Research Center, in which 72% of the participants gave, no meaningful changes.

The number of Americans who expressed support for the Black Lives Matt movement has dropped by 15% since June 2020, according to the same survey.