George Floyd's murder is still forcing the Bay Area to face hard truths
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Photo illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios. Photo: Jeenah Moon, Bill Pugliano via Getty Images
The America that marched for George Floyd five years ago is gone, buried beneath a backlash that has hardened — for now — into a new political and cultural order.
Why it matters: Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer shocked the national conscience. But what looked like historic momentum for racial justice has slowed in the Bay Area and around the country — eclipsed by a reactionary movement backed by the U.S. government.
Flashback: As footage of Floyd's murder went viral online, people across the Bay Area quickly mobilized to protest, with one rally at Dolores Park drawing an estimated 12,000-16,000 people.
- It also renewed scrutiny of the Bay Area's own history of police violence.
By the numbers: From 2013 to 2017, police killed Black people in the San Francisco metro area at a higher rate than any other U.S. metro except for Oklahoma City, a 2020 study found.
- Despite reform efforts, 2021 data reported by the San Francisco Police Department showed that officers were 17 times as likely to use force on Black people than on white people.
- While San Francisco's share of Black residents has steadily declined over the last few decades to roughly 5%, the proportion of Black people killed by police has stayed at around 40% since the 1980s.
- SFPD itself acknowledged in 2021 that officers failed to try nonlethal force first in the majority of fatal shootings.
State of play: Floyd's murder led dozens of cities and states to bar no-knock warrants, expand crisis response teams and introduce civilian review boards.
- California banned certain life-threatening, face-down holds that can lead to asphyxia, while San Francisco itself reallocated $120 million from the SFPD to Black communities and established the African American Reparations Advisory Committee.
- Many of those policy moves, though, stalled or faced backlash as concerns about crime and budget deficits reached new heights during the pandemic.
- That only worsened once President Trump took office. He immediately ordered a government-wide purge of DEI programs and offices, one that has had far-reaching consequences in the Bay — an opening salvo in a systemic effort to dismantle the racial justice agenda that emerged in 2020.
Yes, but: Activists aren't giving up. They're recharging and refocusing their efforts — shifting from mass protest to defending what remains, and planting the seeds for what's next.
- The fight has moved from the streets to the margins: In courtrooms, classrooms and city councils, a quieter form of resistance is taking shape — often out of the spotlight, but no less determined.
- Civil rights groups like the ACLU, Urban League, and NAACP are investing in long-term infrastructure — working to build durable political power and economic resilience in Black communities.
- Atlanta Rev. Jamal Bryant's boycott of Target over its rollback of DEI commitments — which dented the retailer's Q1 sales — shows how economic pressure is becoming a central tool of resistance.
What they're saying: "Progress isn't a straight line. It swings like a pendulum," NAACP president Derrick Johnson told Axios.
- "We've earned the right to reflect. But we are still organizing, still fighting — because not only do our lives depend on it, this democracy does too."