[Editor's Note: The following article is part of BlackOut: A Five-Year Retrospective on Portland’s Racial Justice Movement, a joint publication from Donovan Scribes and the Portland Mercury. Written exclusively by Black Portlanders, the purpose of BlackOut is to remember and reflect on the May 25, 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, and the 100+ days of protests in Portland that same year. You can find BlackOut in print at more than 500 locales citywide, inserted inside the Mercury's Food Issue. You can read all the BlackOut articles here.]

"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." -Martin Luther King, “Letter from A Birmingham Jail,” 1963

I’m going to be honest: I’ve always been skeptical about the term "Black Lives Matter." Not the intention behind it, but the phrasing. With all due respect to Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors, the Black women who gave birth to this term, it has always felt like a rallying cry of “Water is Wet!” or “The Stove is Hot!” or even “Make America Pay Reparations!”—oh wait. “Of course my fucking life matters,” I’ve always thought. No matter what outside forces try to convince the masses, melanin is magic, majestic, ordinary, and ornery. I don’t subscribe to the idea that Black lives are less valuable. We matter. I know it.

But for over a decade, this phrase has served as the go-to banner for a movement pushing for our lives to exist fully, without threats, barriers, and degradation. It’s with this knowledge I must acknowledge that every movement transforms, after all. From “I Am a Man” to “Black Lives Matter.” From “In God We Trust” to “Make America Great Again.”

On June 5, 2020, the city of Washington, DC, commissioned a mural stretching two city blocks with the simple phrase “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in bold yellow letters. This street painting, located just three minutes from the White House, emerged amid the national outrage sparked by George Floyd’s brutal murder by police less than two weeks earlier. The streets were on fire—some precincts literally were. The pandemic had just forced millions to witness the horror of a man being killed while his brothers in blue stood by. The dots were starting to connect for some: Maybe this wasn’t just a series of isolated incidents. Maybe this was part of a much larger problem.

The mural, which became known as Black Lives Matter Plaza, was symbolic. And contrary to the sentiments of some, symbolic gestures do indeed matter. For example, a swastika tells me a lot about a place or person in a very short amount of time. Coincidentally, so do American flags—but that’s another conversation. That line might offend my political connects. 

But I digress.

Black Lives Matter Plaza became a form of protest, but also validation. And while “Black Lives Matter” isn’t my preferred rallying cry, I have to admit it felt good to see it carved out in the concrete. Key word: “felt”—past tense. At the time of writing this, the Trump administration and his allies in Congress began dismantling the mural. The process of destroying it is expected to take between six and eight weeks. They say the mural will be replaced with “more inclusive” works. Republicans are even working on renaming the area, “Liberty Plaza.”

Symbols matter.

2020 marked a time when some began reevaluating the symbols that color, and in many ways direct, our lives. Some learned that the Confederacy wasn’t the only entity responsible for enslaving people; presidents of the Union were too. Some learned that slavery wasn’t just a moral issue—it was deeply economic, the backbone of this nation’s growth. Some learned that modern police departments in America evolved from “slave patrols,” whose primary task was capturing runaway enslaved people, who were considered above all, property. As the layers of history were peeled back, many of the symbols around us began to look more like scars than stars. And so the monuments started to fall.

The toppled statue of President Thomas Jefferson, outside of Jefferson High School in North Portland. Alex Milan Tracy

Hundreds of statues were dethroned, not by a vote, but by wrath. In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, symbols came tumbling down faster than shit in the Willamette River on a rainy day in the 90’s. George Washington fell. Thomas Jefferson was toppled in front of the once majority Black high school named after him. The 19th century co-owner and publisher of The Oregonian, Harvey Scott, felt the weight of gravity too; replaced by a bronze bust of York—the Black man who helped lead the Oregon Trail alongside Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, only to be returned to slavery at the end of the expedition. (York’s bust was later toppled too.)

Grappling with this growing phenomenon of fallen statues, I wrote an article for Street Roots around this time titled “Racist Slurs Permeate Oregon Geography,” in which I detailed how an alarming number of rivers, streams, mountains, and more across my state were originally named after anti-Black slurs like Nigger Ben Mountain and Nigger Brown Canyon – some of which have been renamed since. The point was clear: in order to topple racism, we must do so at both the head and root, for it is in fact embedded throughout the soil of this stolen land. 

George Floyd, like Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others, are now symbols—a stand-in for any Black life. We understood that what happened to them could happen to any of us at any time in this country. Because it does all the time. Sudden death. Slow death. The system loves to kill, and then throw up a shrine to your murderers. 

The Burnside Bridge in Portland is one of the many connecting points across the Willamette River, helping the city earn its nickname “Bridgetown.” Named after a white businessman active during the late 1800s, the drawbridge is one of a dozen that have been built across the river since the city was established some 17 decades ago. The bridge is one of the most accessible, whether by bus, car, bike, or foot. It connects the Eastside to downtown Portland, with the iconic Portland sign—featuring a flying deer whose nose glows red at Christmas—marking the entrance. There’s a story about the Ku Klux Klan’s involvement in the bridge’s construction. I don’t have enough ink space for that tangent right now—but do your Googles if you're curious.

For me though, the Burnside Bridge had always been little more than a channel from point A to point B. But on June 2, 2020, it became the center of the universe.

On that day, thousands of people gathered on the bridge. Estimates say more than 10,000 souls flooded the Burnside. I never watched the video of George Floyd’s final moments. I’d seen enough clips of state violence to know the horror, and I didn’t feel the need to bear witness to his murder either. While I’ve grown tired of these videos, I understand that the social media era I grew up in helped birth the Black Lives Matter movement and other adjacent organizing in my generation. Videos of the dark sides of our lives can go viral at any time, and now oftentimes do. But this time was particularly extraordinary. It was 17-year-old Darnella Frazier’s recording of George Floyd’s murder that gave the world a front row seat to his particularly cruel last moments. It was the existence of her video of his execution, paired with the hollowness of a pandemic that propelled so many millions around the globe to say his name; and thus ours. But for me, I did not need to see to know. I watched the livestream as 10,000 souls stood silently, face down with hands behind their backs for 9 minutes—the exact length of time Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck. And for a moment, watching this scene, I thought maybe, just maybe, a change might come.

"That moment on the Burnside Bridge was powerful. A symbol of solidarity. A symbol of pain. A symbol of possibility. A symbol of 400 years of oppression. A symbol of awareness. A symbol that Black Lives more than matter; and therefore a symbol that a change must come now."

I was living in an apartment in Old Town at the time, just blocks from where the scene was unfurling. I didn’t feel compelled to add my body to the mass that day. Not for any one reason, but for that moment, I felt like I was right there. I was proud. Dare I say, I was starting to feel some hope. 

The protests that followed George Floyd’s death were the largest in U.S. history. They weren’t confined to cities—they spread to suburbs, rural areas, and eventually to the world. From Portland to Poland, people joined the movement for Black lives, creating millions of new co-conspirators from all backgrounds. For a while, I wondered if the world was finally catching up to the way we’ve been catching hell. Could it be that America was beginning to “get it”?

But 100+ days later, the protests gave way to distraction. Infighting, fatigue, and the usual tactics used by three letter agencies to dismantle Black liberation movements began to crystallize their grip. My pessimism was reignited.

It’s not that the protests didn’t accomplish anything—they did. To suggest otherwise gives over-inflated credit to white mediocrity. We marched and learned. We shared stories and space. We cried, we gave. We pushed back. We reclaimed shit that’s been ours. That perfect storm, we rode it ‘til the wheels fell off. 

It’s 2025 now, and the storm has indeed passed. But the reality hasn’t. When would another moment like this come again? One where a viral pandemic sat the entire world down for months to show us our collective frailty? One where that same pandemic is paired with the death of a Black man in such a horrific way, that it compels millions to risk their health and very bodies in the midst of a global emergency, because finally we collectively understood that the emergency for Black people had been viral long before COVID-19. 

It won’t.

It won’t ever happen again. 

IT WON’T!

However, Black people will continue to die. In the five years since George Floyd, many more have, whether directly at the hands of the state or more covertly through systemic forces. Despite this, Black resistance persists. From Pan-Africans to the Panthers, the Urban League to the NAACP, seasoned activists to the next baton-carriers birthed out this leg of the Black Lives Matter movement; resistance remains varied but persistent.

I too, persist. I wake up every day and do what I do; I protest. I write. I organize. I make art. I connect. I strategize. I tell the stories of our greatness. I raise two little girls to be conscious of the world they’re coming up in, giving them the a little bit more truth with every milestone, so that they do in fact understand that water is wet, the stove is hot, and that America should pay reparations.  

But I cannot yet tell them what world they will inherit.

One of the most striking quotes from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is, “the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” I first heard these words, revived by Rev. Dr. Leroy Haynes Jr., while covering a rally against police violence across the street from Portland City Hall as a reporter more than a decade ago. They always stuck with me. The older I get now though— especially since 2020—I fear those words were just pretty prose.

The words King subsequently spoke towards the closing chapter of his life resonate more strongly these days: “I fear I may have integrated my people into a burning house.”

Quote that at your next MLK Day get-together.

As the common symbol of the Civil Rights movement and the de-facto figurehead for American progress, King’s words now feel more relevant than ever. Liberals love to blame Trump and the Republicans for the flames, but there are plenty on the other “side” who have forgotten the Burnside Bridge. There are many who have since seen the Burnside Bridge in 2020 and decided it would make for good art, a nice social media post, and “powerful” conversation, but continuous action was a step or two too far today. For many it seems George Floyd’s face is more like a Nirvana t-shirt today. The system is flawed, but not that bad. That’s the problem with symbols.

Symbols should inspire, but they shouldn’t and can never replace action.

The erasure of Black Lives Matter Plaza in D.C. doesn’t stop the work I do, but it is a reminder of the times we’re in. It's a reminder of how quickly some have sprinted from 2020, into “moderation.” 

A reminder that like unapologetically progressive (and absurdly accomplished) Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty’s replacement by law-and-order conservative Rene Gonzalez (who was mostly absurd) on Portland City Council;

Just like Oregon Democrats and Republicans teaming up to roll back Measure 110 and recriminalize addiction;

Just like Intisar Abioto raising a million dollars to reclaim the house of the Portland NAACP founder only to be undercut by a White Realtor and White buyers, 

And like the 2020 protests being reduced into  “discourse” of “riots” that we must “clean up” after—America is back to its regularly scheduled programming. And the fire is burning.

Five years later, George Floyd is no longer just a man. He’s a symbol—a reminder of America’s blood on the roots, and the leaves. I know what I see when I see George Floyd. What about you? 

Five years later, it feels like it did six years ago.

Five years later, we’ve returned to “normal.”

And now, perhaps, the fire is burning hotter than ever.

So, when I’m gray-haired (God willing), driving across the Burnside Bridge with Black Lives Matter fading in the rearview, I wonder: Will I be crossing into the ashes or a new beginning? Only time will tell.

Maybe all that “care” was just… symbolic. 

Donovan Scribes is an award-winning writer, producer, and owner of the communications consulting firm D Scribes LLC. The former VP of the Portland NAACP, he's secured major policy and investment victories throughout his career.