Has America learned anything from the George Floyd uprisings?

The Guardian

13-07-2025

Five years ago, the entire world changed when we saw George Floyd's body on the pavement, a knee pressed into his neck – a murder, in broad daylight. Others might have simply witnessed a horrific incident, but Black people saw ourselves, and what it's like to live with a knee on our necks at all times. Because George Floyd wasn't the first – and unless we uproot this system, he won't be the last. The police have gone so far as to remind us of this by killing more people each year since George Floyd.
But the uprisings of 2020 didn't erupt because of one killing. They were the breaking point of centuries of violence and neglect. Trayvon Martin. Freddie Gray. Sandra Bland. Oscar Grant. Breonna Taylor. Dreasjon Reed. Ma'Khia Bryant. Ahmaud Arbery. And far too many others whose names never trended. The message was clear: we've had enough.
Diversity statements flooded inboxes. DEI initiatives exploded. The country saw its first woman of color as vice-president. We even saw Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leaders make symbolic gestures, such as kneeling in kente cloth. It seemed like maybe, just maybe, we were being heard.
But in hindsight, those gestures weren't signs of transformation – they were proof that we weren't being heard at all.
We weren't asking for slogans painted on the streets, Pepsi commercials, or Black and brown faces in high places. We were demanding something much deeper: a total transformation of our economy, our politics and our communities. We were demanding the right to live long, healthy lives without the constant threat of poverty, policing, racism or abandonment.
Instead, we got a Biden administration, elected in large part because of the largest protest in American history for racial justice, telling us: 'Nothing will fundamentally change.'
The so-called allies may have ignored us. But our demands were not ignored by everyone.
The oligarchs – and Trump's new regime – didn't ignore us. They heard us loud and clear and prepared for war. Their greatest fear was that our uprisings might become a revolution. And that fear has shaped their response ever since. That's how we entered this new era of authoritarianism and counterinsurgency, on a road paved by Democratic administrations that sought to suppress and co-opt the very movements that put them in power.
Police are killing with impunity. 2024 was the deadliest year for police violence in more than a decade: 1,375 lives taken. In spite of liberal efforts to make police more accountable with oversight boards, consent decrees and 'community policing', the police have seen their budgets increase by billions of dollars nationally.
While we demanded better wages, affordable housing, divestment from fossil fuels, and community-based solutions rooted in healing and care, elected officials, even in some of the nation's most 'progressive' cities, answered with punishment and surveillance. In 2024, when young people wanted their colleges to divest from war and genocide, they were met with brutality and police repression.
We wanted peace, and we were met with violence. They continue to meet us with tear gas, armored vehicles and curfews. They are banning books, censoring classrooms and undermining democracy at every turn.
Now, in the streets of Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Chicago and all across the country, people are rising up to resist Ice. The people are back outside, losing their fear of standing up to a self-fashioned oligarchic dictator.
Some say Trump is borrowing from the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's authoritarian playbook. But the truth is, these tactics weren't borrowed – they were made in America. The United States has long perfected the machinery of repression, exporting it abroad and inspiring apartheid regimes and fascist movements across the globe.
What's changing now is the scale – and the widening net of American fascism. The technologies and tactics once used to crush resistance in marginalized communities are being expanded and deployed against anyone who dares to dissent – even white liberals and poor and working-class white communities who once believed Trump would shake the system in their favor.
We are not witnessing the arrival of fascism. We are watching it evolve and expand.
And let's be clear: this authoritarian turn didn't begin with Trump. It was built – brick by brick – in Democratic strongholds.
Our home state of California helped lay the foundation with its prison boom and decades of 'tough on crime' policies, ranging from the Step Act of 1988 to 'counteract gang violence' to the Los Angeles police department's Operation Hammer, which devastated Black communities. Even Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing – a so-called reform initiative – helped entrench modern policing by giving it a friendlier, and in many cases deadlier, face.
While Trump didn't create this system, he is accelerating it – weaponizing the bipartisan machinery of policing, surveillance and incarceration into one of the most militarized domestic regimes we've ever seen.
Just look at what's in the federal budget:
$46.5bn to build border walls through cities and ecosystems
$45bn for immigrant detention – enough to quadruple Ice's capacity
$15bn for mass deportations, even of unaccompanied children
$16.2bn to hire thousands of new Ice and border patrol agents
$12bn to reimburse states such as Texas for violent anti-immigrant programs like Operation Lone Star
That's more than $130bn for locking people up, tearing families apart and building walls. That kind of money could cancel student debt. End homelessness. Fully fund universal childcare. But that's not where their priorities lie.
Because this was never about public safety – it's about control.
And now, with Trump promising to eliminate consent decrees – those rare federal checks on violent police departments like Minneapolis's – it's clear what direction they're headed: more fear, fewer rights, less oversight and more power in the hands of the few.
But, after the largest protest movement in modern American history, how can so much money go towards punishment? What happened from 2020 to now?
Some say it was effective counter-organizing. Others suggest that it was the backlash against racial justice movements gaining ground. Here, it's also important to assert another part of the story, animated by liberals and exploited by conservatives: copaganda.
The state doesn't just expand power through budgets – it does it through stories.
In the book Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, we're reminded that police departments aren't just enforcers; they're storytellers. They spend millions shaping public narratives: crime is everywhere, cops are heroes, the system is broken but fixable.
Grassroots organizers are scraping together funds for one communications hire, if that. Police departments, on the other hand, run full-blown media operations.
The New York City police department spent more than $4.5m in 2023 on its public information office alone, with staff dedicated to managing press, cutting footage and shaping public opinion. The LAPD has its own media relations division with more than 25 PR officers. Ice and Customs and Border Protection pay multimillion-dollar firms to launder their image.
These agencies aren't waiting for a crisis. They're controlling the narrative before it even happens.
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And corporate media? Too often, they act as stenographers. Repeating police press releases. Airing body-cam footage edited by the departments themselves. That's not journalism. It's marketing.
Copaganda is how initiatives such as Proposition 36 passed in California, when liberal media played right into the hands of the powerful, manipulating votes for a 'smash and grab' crime wave that is overblown. The Yes on Prop 36 coalition spent a combined $16m on ads and organizing to get Californians to undo decades of progressive criminal justice reform.
We lost progressive district attorneys. Police budgets continued to grow. And somehow, even with all of this, our streets are no safer because of it. Because we know that the punishment bureaucracy does not keep us safe.
But we saw something else, too.
In the middle of collapse, when the system failed us here in Los Angeles through the climate catastrophe of the fires, and five years before that with Covid, it wasn't the police who kept us safe. It was us. Regular, everyday people.
We showed up. We cooked for each other. We ran mutual aid. We protected elders. We de-escalated conflict. We passed out masks and sanitizer. We built safety while the state built walls. That wasn't just survival. It was vision.
Some of that vision is still being built.
In Oakland, the local community justice group CURYJ launched the Youth Power Zone, a community-designed hub offering workforce development, healing spaces, and leadership for formerly incarcerated and system-impacted youth. It's what public safety looks like when it's rooted in love, not punishment.
In Los Angeles, grassroots formations such as CAT 911 (Community Alternatives to 911) were leading trainings on how to de-escalate conflict, treat bullet wounds, administer aid to people overdosing and keep our neighbors safe.
Across California, the Crises Act is funding community-based emergency responders who show up for people in mental health crises, without a badge or a gun. It's a life-saving alternative to 911, and proof that we don't need armed police to keep people safe.
These aren't theories. They're happening. And they deserve full public funding – not just pilot grants, but sustained resources that match the scale of the need.
George Floyd left his house on 25 May expecting to come home. Breonna Taylor was going to wake up the next morning beside her beloved partner. When the SEIU leader David Huerta was abducted by Ice during the LA immigration raids on 6 June, he was fully expecting to go home that evening. Mahmoud Khalil was expecting to be there for the birth of his son. The system made sure they didn't. That wasn't just a tragedy. It was a reflection of what this country is designed to do to Black people. To poor people. To immigrants. To anyone deemed disposable, or a threat to the established order. Everyone is disposable under imperialism.
This current administration does not care if you are a poor immigrant who wants to find work, a first responder, a father just trying to get by, an Ivy League graduate student or a labor leader for one of the largest unions in the country. If you are in the way of the order of things, you are a problem, a threat, a target. They go out of their way to remind us that we are less than human. All of us.
We don't just need better laws; we need a different foundation. One rooted in care, not cages. In justice that heals, not just punishes. Because justice without care is just control by another name.
The uprisings of 2020 were a rebellion. The question now is: will we do the revolutionary work?
Organizing is so important in this moment. We've seen everyday people stand up to Ice and prevent deportations. We've seen students demand accountability from their institutions. We've seen school teachers defend their students, unions go on strike and abolitionist organizers building wherever they are.
The powers that be are afraid, and they should be. This means we have to fight. It means we have to go outside. It means we must resist them. They can't kill a resistance. You can't kill an idea.
That means not just resisting state violence but taking responsibility for building the world we actually want. It means feeding people. Holding space for healing. Creating alternatives to policing. Protecting trans kids. Fighting fascism in our schools and streets. And refusing to let our elected officials trade our lives for talking points.
We have to organize. Fund community safety. Back mutual aid. Tell better stories.
And keep fighting like our lives depend on it – because they do.
2020 wasn't the end. It wasn't just a flashpoint. It was the beginning of a new era. The messy birth of the world we want to create, and the death of the current one.
The people haven't stopped fighting. Whether it's students standing up to police repression, neighbors running mutual aid, community members defending immigrants against Ice or organizers building community safety from the ground up, we're still here. Still resisting. Still building. And we haven't lost our belief that another world is possible, even when the system slides deeper into fascism.
Eric Morrison-Smith is executive director of the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color. Dr David Turner III is assistant professor of Black life and racial justice in the department of social welfare at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs