Minneapolis Uprising – April 2025
Rallies at the Minnesota State Capitol, streets of Uptown, and memorials at George Floyd Square in spring 2025
On April 5, 2025, an estimated 25,000 people gathered on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul for a "Hands Off!" rally, one of hundreds held across the country that day in opposition to the Trump administration and the influence of Elon Musk over federal policy. Senator Amy Klobuchar addressed the crowd, which the Minnesota State Patrol confirmed as one of the largest political assemblies the Capitol had seen in recent years.
The rally was the most concentrated moment of this instalment, but the period it covers stretches across the wider life of Minneapolis in early spring. Yard signs along residential sidewalks in South Minneapolis carried messages about democracy and belonging. Bars and rooftop patios on Nicollet Mall and in the Warehouse District were filling again with people. On Hennepin Avenue, the Metro Transit Blue Line — running since 2004 — moved through downtown after dark, and at Hennepin and Lagoon, a street vendor worked the sidewalk outside the Uptown Theater, which has anchored that corner since 1939.
The Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct station on Lake Street, burned on May 28, 2020, during the unrest that followed George Floyd's murder, remained under active work. Crews removed the front vestibule in late April — a visible step in a redevelopment process that has moved slowly across nearly five years. A few miles away, George Floyd Square at Chicago Avenue and East 38th Street continued to function as a community-maintained memorial.
A panel discussion at the MSP International Film Festival brought together Minneapolis City Council Member Robin Wonsley, Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley, activist Toshira Garraway, and Jeanelle Austin of the George Floyd Global Memorial to discuss the film "The People's Way" and what has and has not changed since 2020. That conversation — happening alongside construction equipment at the precinct and crowds at the Capitol — defined where this stretch of the larger story sits: the uprising's causes still present, its consequences still being negotiated.
