Joe Soucheray: George Floyd Square is an embarrassment to the man it’s supposed to honor

Events memorializing the May death of George Floyd include this weekend concerts prayer services moments of silence art displays a dance and candlelight vigils Of at least a dozen events on this Memorial Day weekend of solicitude and celebration at least six are to be held at George Floyd Square at th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis In fact on the night itself May there will be a gospel concert followed by a candlelight vigil at George Floyd Square It s been five years five long years certainly an acceptable duration of residents grief And yet one thing has been forgotten one crucial element forgotten over the five long years of institutionalizing the memory of Floyd A can of paint Not a single example of aesthetic pleasantry has come to that intersection The adult political children and professional activists who run Minneapolis have burned through millions of taxpayer dollars on planning Planning what You haven t accomplished anything Neighbors have been heard leave us alone and then ignored Barricades come and go Graffiti is the common language as is a malignant idleness so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife What businesses remain have apparently just run out of options and they hang on tired and careworn In the early days the square was run like a protection racket by self-appointed kingpins Say the magic word and you could get past the sawhorse gate But it was merely an entrance to a dystopian nightmare of disfunction Police were eyed with contempt Rules for the corrupt ghost town were made up on the spot and changed just as briskly There was no order and no apparent goals Evidenced by the lack of paint If Floyd was to be truly respected there would be paint There would have been scrubbing and polishing and power washing until the concrete sparkled If the memory of the man is supposed to point to a worldwide revolution in policing you would think that such a milestone might be marked by more than litter and gutters full of dirty rain water George Floyd Square is an embarrassment to Floyd to the residents near it and to the citizens of the Twin Cities who expect more and continue to get less First of all it isn t a square Why not make it one Thus the paint Five long years of city council committees and hearings and listening sessions and political activists walking around with their iPads and their latest pedestrian mall brainstorm And then all you got was something from a song another day longer and deeper in debt The original sin happened five years ago when the city was alight with rioting and destruction The mayor and his like-minded ideologues from the governor on down let a police precinct burn and stores get looted They had trouble reaching for the phone to call the National Guard They certainly weren t intending to demand that rioters behave After all we were recounted those were peaceful protests The powers that be had neither the courage nor the intelligence to put a stop to the Wild West shenanigans at th and Chicago They just let it go and it s still going going gone A square suggests sidewalk tables and shade trees A respite a place of quietude and reflection usually uncovered in the middle pockets of sprawling cities But not here Here we have the stain of ineptitude and malfeasance passed off as a few sort of virtue None of the ideologues are capable of embarrassment or shame And that leaves the man they hide behind memorialized by nothing more than litter and dirty rain water in the gutter Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray pioneerpress com Soucheray s Garage Logic podcast can be heard at garagelogic com Related Articles Letters What s your plan Democrats It s so much safer to just criticize Kendall Qualls Here s why I m running for governor of Minnesota Matt Ehling This open-meeting law change is a complication Undo it legislators Real World Economics Tax bill full of perverse incentives Skywatch Virgo the Virgin a large but faint constellation