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For the 5^th anniversary of George Floyd’s lynching, the National Urban League posed a provocative question: Was it a moment or a movement? It’s easy for cynics, the weary, and the brokenhearted to dismiss what happened in 2020—and the years that followed—as merely a moment. The ongoing backlash against Affirmative Action, diversity, equity, inclusion, civil rights, and even democracy itself seems to support that view.  

Yet, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously reminded us, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Movements, by their nature, organically expand and contract over time. Progress is rarely linear—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.  

In 2020 Movement Netlab created an axis framework designed not only to help map the moment we found ourselves in at the time, but also zoom out and understand our positioning today—five years later— as we navigate the exhausting reality of our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world.  

Using Movement Netlab’s framework, we can mark May 25, 2020 as the triggering event that catapulted millions of people— not just in the United States but around the world — into collective action. In the midst of a global lockdown due to COVID-19, people found themselves confined to their homes, forced to confront a painful reflection: the pervasive system of racism has been embedded in the DNA of the United States since before its founding. 

What was not new was the continued, reckless murder of Black bodies —deaths that had been witnessed, recorded, mourned, vigiled, and decried for years. These tragedies helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, but the outcry stretches back much further to generations past, with public lynchings and the resistance movements they sparked; and centuries before that, through slavery and the long fight for abolition and liberation.  

In 2020, the enduring crisis—impacting not only black men, but also black women and queer and trans people of color—ignited public outrage. What followed was the heroic phase: a story we told ourselves about a great “racial reckoning,” a moment when denial and historical amnesia could no longer be the salves for America’s “original sin.” Companies released statements and pledges. Memes, mission updates, and DEI commitments confettied across websites and social media. For a time, it seemed as though racial equity had entered the national consciousness in earnest.   

Media amplified these symbolic gestures — or flexes, if you will — and a hopeful narrative emerged in which long corporate, government, and philanthropic partners were joining long-term racial justice advocates and practitioners in a kind of honeymoon period. A short two years later, the break-up began. Enter Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, essentially gutting Affirmative Action as we know it.  

Cracks in the Looking Glass 

Despite all the pomp and performance surrounding the so-called racial reckoning of 2020—the awareness campaigns, the chest-beating, the symbolic gestures—the needle on that long arc of justice moved only slightly. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts analyzed every racial justice statement issued by Fortune 500 companies in response to George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter protests and found that “most firms stayed silent, while others made only weak symbolic responses. Just 1 in 5 made strong commitments, pledging resources and structural changes to their business practices, such as revamping hiring policies or funding racial justice organizations.” For many, the (hairline) cracks in our collective, heroic self-image weren’t yet visible. But they were already beginning to form.  

Scheduled Demolition 

Today, we find ourselves squarely in the throes of Project 2025, having stepped through the threshold of a once perceived threat of authoritarianism or the “emergence” of fascism and fully into an era marked by the active dismantling of democracy. We are witnessing a white nationalist agenda taking a wrecking ball to generations of hard-won progress. Today, just five years later, there are discussions of pardoning George Floyd’s murderer. Five years after George Floyd’s lynching, concepts to support an inherently diverse society, and advance inclusive and equitable practices, are at best misunderstood and at worst deemed “illegal.”  

If we recognize that Project 2025 has been decades in the making, what we are navigating today should come as less of a shock, although the freeze-burn hurts no less. The relentless tactic of “flooding the zone”— overwhelming the public with chaos and misinformation—is designed to numb us, push us deeper into disillusionment. However, it is imperative that we use the challenges of this moment to look ahead with clarity and courage and continue the movement. Continue to bend the arc toward justice. 

We will never forget George Floyd, no matter how hard the powers that be seek to erase, distort, or rewrite history. No act of erasure or demolition of memory and meaning can undo the truth of what we witnessed and the call to action it ignited.  

Memory vs. Martyrdom 

But let’s name a painful truth: George Floyd, like Dr. King, has become a symbol—a martyr whose legacy is often used to signal progress, rather than to make progress. Today, Dr. King is nearly universally revered. But in 1968, at the time of his assassination, he had a 75% disapproval rating. Why? Because he was unapologetically radical. He opposed not just racial segregation, but our economic system, war, and the entire ideology of white supremacy. 

Too often, we celebrate Black people only once they’ve been martyred. We quote them, paint murals of them, and make them palatable. We erase their radicalism. We forget their full humanity. And we abandon the living while memorializing the dead. 

A Call for Continued and Consistent Solidarity 

So, let this anniversary be more than a remembrance. Let it be a reckoning of our own—a reckoning of the reckoning. Because movements are made not just in the streets, but in sustained policies, practices and the everyday choices we make to confront injustice, to consistently push for change – for the better of all. 

Whether it takes five more years or fifty, we will evolve like flowers that grow from the cracks of concrete and build a new normal—one rooted in truth, repair and collective liberation. 

Onwards, 

Aba Taylor 
President & CEO 

Image: George Floyd mural Mauerpark, Berlin, 2020. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons