Terrence Floyd led a prayer vigil Monday, calling for protesters to remain peaceful as they remember his late brother George Floyd.
Terrence stood amid a makeshift memorial built on the spot where George died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck one week earlier. He addressed the crowd that had gathered there. (RELATED: ‘He Is My President’: Donna Brazile Calls On Trump To Step Up And ‘Lead Us Into This Tomorrow’)
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“Hello. I understand that y’all are upset. But I doubt that y’all are half as upset as I am,” Terrence began. He argued that if he was not taking to the streets and destroying property, there was no reason for anyone else to be doing so.
“If I’m not over here messing up my community, then what are y’all doing? What are y’all doing? Y’all are doing nothing!” he said. “Because that’s not going to bring my brother back at all. It may feel good for the moment, just like when you drink, but when it comes down, you’re going to wonder what you did.”
Terrence went on to say that his family had always been peaceful and “God-fearing,” explaining that there was no reason to go out and destroy property every time there was a case of police brutality.
“Every case of police brutality, the same thing has been happening. Y’all protest, y’all destroy stuff, and they don’t move. You know why they don’t move? Because it is not their stuff. It is our stuff,” Terrence said, adding, “They want us to destroy our stuff. They are not going to move! So let’s do this another way. Let’s do this another way.”
Terrence then laid out what he felt they could do to effect change the right way, calling everyone to educate themselves and vote.
“Let’s stop thinking that our voice don’t matter and vote,” Floyd explained. “Not just for the president, for the preliminaries, vote for everybody. Educate yourself! Educate yourself! Don’t wait for somebody else to tell you who is who. Educate yourself and know who you are voting for. And that’s how we are going to hit them. Because it is a lot of us. It is a lot of us! It’s a lot of us!”
“And we are still going to do this peacefully,” he continued. “Because that’s when we are going to get them. We are going to fool them. They think that we are going to do something and we are going to switch it on them. Let’s switch it up, y’all. Let’s switch it up. Do this peacefully.”
Terrence concluded by invoking his brother again, mentioning how much George had loved Minneapolis since moving there from Houston.
“I highly doubt, no, I know, he would not want y’all to be doing this,” he said.