Marking one year since George Floyd’s death
“Today I just felt a day of relief,” Floyd’s aunt Angela Harrelson told CNN. “The support that we have received, the love to get to this day. I am just overwhelmed with joy and hope and I feel like change is here.”
Several members of Floyd’s family, including Floyd’s daughter Gianna; Gianna’s mother, Roxie Washington; and his brother Philonise Floyd, were in Washington today to meet with President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers.
The family meeting with Biden was arranged as a private one so the President could have a “real conversation and preserve that with the family,” press secretary Jen Psaki said.
“He has a genuine relationship with them, and the courage and grace of this family and especially his daughter Gianna Floyd, has really stuck with the President …” Psaki said. “So, he’s eager to listen to their perspectives and hear what they have to say.”
The bill includes provisions to set up a national registry of police misconduct, a ban on racial and religious profiling by law enforcement and an overhaul of qualified immunity for police officers.
“What we hope to do at all of those meetings, is to continue to say, let’s don’t lose this moment,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump told SiriusXM’s “The Joe Madison Show.”
“It’s been 57 years since we’ve had meaningful police reform. And this is our moment to finally pass some federal legislation with teeth in it,” said Crump.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Tuesday recognized the Minnesotans that demanded “meaningful change” following Floyd’s death.
“Those calls for action spread across the world as his memory sparked a global movement,” Walz said in a statement. “George Floyd didn’t ask to be an international symbol of the pain that Black Americans have faced for generations, and yet, in the words of his daughter, he changed the world.”
Shareeduh Tate, Floyd’s cousin and president of the George Floyd Memorial Foundation, told CNN on Tuesday that the family feels uplifted by the racial reckoning, the conviction of Chauvin, and the federal indictment of the Chauvin and the other three officers involved in Floyd’s death.
But, she said, “It was almost immediately seeing the fact that people were able to have conversations across diverse lines, people were able to talk about things that we never had a conversation about before.”
Members of Floyd’s family were also expected to attend memorial events in Minneapolis on Tuesday, according to a family spokesman. One of those events is a “Celebration of Life” which includes a day of games, food, inflatable attractions for youth and special performances by Grammy Award-winning artists and local talent.
Several other events honoring Floyd have been held in recent days. Bridgett Floyd spoke during a rally Sunday in Minneapolis where she vowed to be a voice for George Floyd and advocate for change. She was joined by civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Rev. Al Sharpton.
“It has been a long year. It has been a painful year,” Bridgett Floyd told the crowd on Sunday. “It has been very frustrating for me and my family. For your life to change within a blink of an eye. I still don’t know why.”
The foundation urged supporters to use Tuesday to call their elected officials — particularly their senators — and demand that they pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act; register to vote; help promote the foundation’s work on social media and donate to the foundation’s programs that support the Black community.
CNN’s Arlette Saenz, Jasmine Wright and Devan Cole contributed to this report.
