The Five Assumptions: Police Abolition and Community-Based Justice Approaches at George Floyd Square

• In Event: Community-Based Interventions: Justice and Reentry

Abstract

On May 25, 2020, four Minneapolis police officers lynched George Floyd, setting off the largest and most diverse social movement in U.S. history. In the nearly five years since, a group of activists occupying the space where Floyd was killed have settled on goals and logics that are consistent with abolition. Abolitionism consists of dismantling oppressive institutions and practices while simultaneously creating and extending liberatory ones (Du Bois 1935; Davis 2005). Daily collective practices taking place at George Floyd Square (GFS) demonstrate how abolition is a practical and instantiated paradigm. Relying on interviews with more than fifty activists at GFS and five years of ethnographic and visual data, I find that the protest occupation at GFS has been sustained through clear abolitionist logics and community-based methods that are reflected in five core assumptions. Those five assumptions are: (1) assume everyone has COVID; (2) assume everyone is armed; (3) assume everything you say and do is being recorded; (4) assume not everyone has your idea of liberation in mind; and (5) assume everyone is a little crazy. These assumptions, and the calls to action that each carries, are essential for achieving local activists’ community-based visions for safety and justice.

Author

• Anna Dalcortivo, University of Minnesota