September 22, 2025

Congress passed a bill on Sept. 19 declaring Oct. 14 as a “National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk.” The October date is Kirk’s birthday. The House of Representatives vote was 310–58, with 95 Democrats joining all 215 Republicans in voting yes on the nonbinding resolution. The 58 no votes all came from Democrats — mostly members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses — and another 38 Democrats voted present. An additional 22 Democrats did not vote.

The Senate shockingly voted unanimously for the bill. Kirk, an ultraright winger, was assassinated on Sept. 10 during a MAGA rally at a college in Utah. President Donald Trump had flags flown at half-mast all over the country on the same day and through Sept.14 to honor his fellow white supremacist. Ironically, there were no flags at half-mast flown in remembrance of the Birmingham, Alabama, church bombings that occurred on Sept. 15, 1963, when four Black girls were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan — a seminal event for the Civil Rights Movement.

White billionaire owners of National Football League teams held a moment of silence for Kirk prior to the playing of the militaristic, racist Star-Spangled Banner anthem before games. The popular late night host Jimmy Kimmel had his show suspended until Sept. 23 by ABC executives for his opening monologue making remarks about Kirk’s alleged killer. It appears that the much heralded right to free speech is mainly reserved for MAGA loyalists.

Remembering victims of police brutality

But hold on. Oct. 14 is the birthdate for another high profile figure — George Floyd. Floyd died at the age of 46 on May 25, 2020, when he was strangled by a white police officer in Minneapolis; the murder caught on a phone and spread on social media. This lynching of a Black man led to a summer of unprecedented protests throughout the country against police violence and made the cause of the Black Lives Matter struggle a national issue. Never to be forgotten is when Kirk had the audacity to publicly demonize Floyd following his death.

The powerful impact of the Floyd protests forced the Joe Biden administration to have the Department of Justice establish police “reforms” with police departments to help bring about some accountability for their actions toward communities of color. These moderate reforms have been virtually eliminated since Trump took office.

To make Oct. 14 a day of remembrance for an outright white supremacist goes way beyond being an outrage. It is a slap in the face for every progressive gain won by mass movements for social change. This congressional vote pushed by the White House and backed by the billionaire ruling class is a political declaration of war on the multinational and multigendered working class.

To counter honoring someone as despicable as Kirk, the U.S. left should declare Oct. 14 as a national day of remembrance for George Floyd and other well-known victims of police and other forms of neo-fascist terror. These people include Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown and countless others.

And now, Trey Reed most likely can tragically be added to this list. Reed was a young Black college student whose body was found hanging from a tree at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Authorities immediately tried to bury Reed’s death as a suicide, but many Black activists find this ruling more than suspicious. There has been little to no mention of this crime in the corporate media.

Trump seeks to wipe away every institution that even mentions past crimes against humanity under capitalism — and resistance to them — including the genocide of Indigenous nations, enslavement of African peoples and the oppression of trans people. Honoring Kirk is meant to divert attention away from any of these criminal acts that highlight the already corrosive image of U.S. imperialism.

The International Action Center calls on the movement to popularize the call, in word and deed, for honoring George Floyd on what would have been his 52nd birthday and make the day a significant symbol for the ongoing struggle against racist repression.