Ronnie Lillard Remembers Friend George Floyd, Advocates For Change

Originally published on The LA Journey

Rapper Ronnie Lillard turned on CNN one morning to see an officer killing a black man. He was upset over the death of another African American man, but what he didn't recognize was that this man was his friend, George Floyd, or G.Floyd, as he liked to call him.

“It just rocked me,” Lillard said. “I can’t even watch the video without tears coming to my eyes. It’s heartbreaking.”

Lillard had known Floyd since 2013 when they met through an outreach program for Lillard’s church, the Third Ward in Houston, Texas. The events held by the church showcased Christian hip-hop music, which Lillard was passionate about due to his own rapping abilities.

“[The music] was faith-based and very much gospel-influenced,” Lillard said. “The message of the undertone of music that I was making was to reach neighborhoods and share the message of Jesus Christ in a palatable way that sounds like the streets, that sounds like the struggle of the African American experience, but the context and the world-view of it was through the Biblical lens.”

After Lillard and Floyd met, while they never became best friends, Lillard was greatly impacted by Floyd’s spirit of redemption. Floyd had a criminal record, but after he became more religious, he decided that he wanted to turn his life around.

“He quickly became somebody that was helping because he was deeply impacted by the methods of change,” Lillard said. “While he was incarcerated, he wanted to see his neighborhood change, he wanted to see the gospel advance specifically, and he wanted to be a part of that change.”

Floyd’s change in attitude was inspiring to Lillard because it was a showcase of the work that the church was trying to accomplish.

“Floyd is the best we want to see happen to men and young men when we’re doing that type of ministry,“ Lillard said. ”The goal is that people would make a decision to say, ‘The streets are behind me. The streets aren’t for me,'I think it was amazing for me to just watch Floyd embody that and be that. He was everything you hope to see happen to a guy turn his life towards the right thing.”

After having this change of heart, Floyd moved to Minneapolis as a part of a discipleship for a church. This would later be the city where he was killed in the middle of a street by former police officer Derek Chauvin.

Since Floyd's death, Lillard, along with other friends of Floyd, has felt responsible to tell his story and support the fight against racism. Lillard also feels a sense of camaraderie with Floyd due to the fact that they share the same skin color.

“I’ve had police guns on my chest, and you walk away with your life and you haven't done anything that would warrant that other than being black,” Lillard said. “I think it is definitely a call to action. You feel a permission towards making it right and all of us had already been that, but now it's even more pressing.”

As a result, Lillard has been taking action to help spread the cause. He has called upon the hip-hop, faith and white evangelical communities for assistance, and he has also petitioned, organized protests and prayed.

He believes that the work he has been advocating for requires long-term focus, which is something that he had never seen from the movements of his lifetime.

“The issues will fade but the work will remain and a lot of people, as issues fade, they pull their hands away from the work,” Lillard said. “We're dedicated to the lifelong work of what it means to have reform and social reform and social justice.”

In order for change to be made, Lillard believes that a “culture of accountability” must be created. He also thinks that it should be emphasized that the movement might last for the next five or 10 years, so he doesn’t want people to get discouraged.

“I just hope that people remain with the hearts in the right place and only, walking towards truth and justice,” Lillard said.

While trying to be a leader in the movement, Lillard has gotten upset over the great amount of focus the media has put on Floyd’s mistakes instead of his death.

“People want to know if you deserved the noose that you got, and for whatever reason, the United States [has] the appetite for ideas of, ‘Have you ever made a mistake in your life? Okay, well then you deserve death,’” Lillard said. “Everybody has things that they’re not proud of and that isn’t a death warrant.”

However, Lillard has mostly felt hope as a result of the movement because he has seen many people who have stood against police brutality and fought for the lives of people like George Floyd.

“For as many people that push that [negative] agenda, there's an entire body of humanity that says, 'No matter what race, we stand in solidarity with the worth of a human being’s life, especially a black man’s life,'” Lillard said. “That is super encouraging because I don't think at any time before in history we've seen the solidarity of other community groups saying [that] enough is enough.”