Christopher Rufo of the City Journal returns to the scene to see what’s changed (nothing) at the famous site in south Minneapolis.
I, too, have taken to making an annual video pilgrimage to the site, near the late May anniversary of the event. See my 2025, 2024, 2023 and 2022 visits. I can confirm that nothing ever changes, except for more decay.
Inevitably, each year when I post the fresh video, some commenter accuses me of posting old footage in a partisan effort to smear a city on the comeback trail. Nope.
The truth is that few people, even residents of the city, visit the area. Before the events of Memorial Day 2020, the intersection, off the beaten path in a mostly residential neighborhood, didn’t see much through traffic. In the years since, it’s easy enough to bypass the area entirely, by just jogging over a couple of blocks.
Rufo writes in October 2025,
When I arrived in Minneapolis, the frost had just lifted, and gray clouds hung low over the horizon. I had come to make a pilgrimage to George Floyd Square, where the revolution of 2020 began. It has been more than five years since Floyd lost his life and became a patron saint of the Left, and I wanted to see what had happened here since then.
And now?
The scars of the revolution remain. The intersection at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue now has an eerie feeling, as if the George Floyd moment were frozen in time.
As they say, read the whole thing.
