Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
When police killed George Floyd, the moment changed these NYC teens' lives
By
Samantha Max
Published Jun 1, 2025
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images
By
Samantha Max
Published Jun 1, 2025
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
It’s been five years since Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency amid widespread protests on New York City's streets after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis.
COVID-19 was coursing through the city, and the on-camera killing by police brought thousands of New Yorkers out of their homes for the first time in months, while others engaged in activism from home. For many kids and teens, Floyd’s death marked a turning point in their childhoods. Gothamist spoke with four young New Yorkers who say Floyd’s killing — and the protest movement that followed — fueled their passion for social change.
Jason Bostic as a high school graduate in 2020 and at work at the Columbia University Center for Justice in 2025
Courtesy, Jason Bostic
‘What happened to George Floyd ignited a fire in me’
After Jason Bostic watched a video of Floyd’s killing on Facebook, the then-18-year-old hopped in a car with a couple friends and headed to a protest in Midtown.
“Seeing what happened to George Floyd ignited a fire in me to be like, ‘I have to do something about it,’” he said.
Bostic remembers seeing boarded-up storefronts, flaming garbage cans and officers in riot gear. He said he felt like he was playing a part in history.
“It was a lot of power with the unity around, power in numbers,” he said. “Since it was so many of us, and since you see the passion of the people around you, it kind of made me fearless — just knowing that we are not doing this for ourself, but it’s bigger than us.”
Bostic is now 23. But in 2020, he was living in the Eleanor Roosevelt Houses, a public housing complex in Bed-Stuy, and finishing his senior year of high school from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My neighborhood is often overpoliced, so [Floyd’s death] made me a little more frightened of police officers every time I stepped outside,” he said.
Bostic said he was stopped by police for the first time when he was about 13, during a cab ride home after playing basketball in a park. He said officers pulled the cab over, told him to step out and said he matched the description of someone they were looking for. Then, Bostic said, the officers asked him whether he had any weapons on him. He said he didn’t.
“ I remember being soaking wet from sweat. I remember shivering because I was so frightened,” he said. “They kept saying, like, ‘Why are you so wet? Why are you shivering? Why are you scared?’ And I'm like, ‘Because you’re pulling over a kid.’”
Bostic said Floyd's killing motivated him to do what he could to prevent a similar fate for other Black people. In the years that followed, he joined a pilot program called Project Restore Bed-Stuy, which in 2023 and 2024 sought to prevent violence between young men who were either gang members or closely affiliated with gangs from rival housing developments in his neighborhood. He said he worked with a case manager, attended life skills sessions and met with residents from the other housing development for healing circles. As part of that program, he said, he also had the opportunity to speak with police officers and show them that he was a human being with dreams and aspirations.
Now, Bostic is an undergraduate student at Columbia University and an outreach coordinator at the school’s Center for Justice, which studied the effects of Project Restore Bed-Stuy. He said he hopes to become a professor and teach classes about mass incarceration and the marginalization of Black communities.
“I want to be the mentor that I didn’t have when I was a child, navigating what police brutality was,” he said.
Isabella Mason in 2020 and 2025.
Courtesy, Isabella Mason
‘This is not something I can just choose to ignore’
Isabella Mason was 13 when Floyd was killed. As COVID and protests raged outside, she stayed in her bedroom in East New York, constantly scrolling on social media.
“There was always more news,” she said. “There was always more progress in the social movement being made.”
Mason said she felt afraid and powerless as a Black person. But she said she also felt desensitized to the images of violence that kept appearing on her phone.
“I think it was good that we were bringing attention to police brutality, but it’s also super traumatizing for a 13-year-old to consistently see and to hear about cases of Black men and women being murdered by police,” she said.
Mason said that while she was stuck at home, social media became where she processed what was happening, which she didn't feel comfortable discussing with her family.
“If I’m speaking about it with my dad or my sister, it’s scary, because this is a reality for us. Even if we live in a liberal city like New York City, it’s still something that we have to live in fear of,” she said. “But if I’m talking about it with someone online, it’s more like, this is just something that’s online.”
Mason is now a senior at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. She said Floyd’s killing propelled her passion for social justice, and she hopes to participate in student activism when she starts classes at Northwestern University in the fall. But she said she’s also “very, very scared” of the current political climate on college campuses under President Donald Trump’s administration.
“I will never, never stop being passionate about social justice and advocacy,” she said. “In the same breath, though, the way that I’ve seen online students being targeted for being at a protest, I think in that sense it might discourage me.”
Rainier Harris during the COVID-19 pandemic and at college graduation in 2025.
Courtesy, Rainer Harris
Making sense of protests through journalism
Rainier Harris remembers being at home in Jamaica when he watched the video of Floyd’s killing online. He was 16 at the time.
“I watched it, because I didn’t feel comfortable drawing conclusions from other people’s view of the video,” he said.
Harris remembers feeling horrified. It was a fear he’d felt before, growing up with the stories of other Black people killed by police, like Michael Brown.
“ That could also be me. That could be my fate too,” said Harris, who is Black. “I think generally as a kid, I had this idea that an early death honestly was possible just because you were Black or just because you were in the wrong place. That feeling never really left.”
In 2020, Harris didn’t take to the streets in protest. His family wanted him to stay home, he said, so he advocated for anti-racism at his high school instead. He also turned to journalism as a way to make sense of what was happening.
Harris wrote an essay on Gothamist in June 2020, as part of a series of reflections on the protest movement from local teens. He wrote that he didn’t condone rioting and looting. But he also expressed frustration with some news outlets for focusing more on images of destruction than on the underlying reasons for the demonstrations.
I feel that showing a few sensational pictures of the rioting and looting without amplifying the protesters’ message largely distracts from the central message against police brutality that protesters are pushing forward.
Reading back those words five years later, Harris said they’re “still true, unfortunately.” He graduated from Columbia University this month, and he said he felt the same disappointment with much of the coverage of the protests on his college campus against the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
But Harris said protesters can also fall prey to misinformation, especially with how quickly news spreads on social media. Now, he’s embarking on a career in journalism and said he hopes to explain both what is happening — and why.
“Fair, good journalism can place it into a wider context and help people understand why people are protesting, why people would be upset. What are the lived experiences behind the emotions you're seeing,” he said.
Mariah Morgan when she was a junior at Park Slope Collegiate and plays on the girls varsity volleyball team
Yachin Parham / Gothamist
‘Calling out injustice wherever you see it’
Watching the video of Floyd’s murder was “depressing and sad and traumatizing” for Mariah Morgan, who was 15 at the time. But she said it didn’t surprise her in the way it jarred some of her friends.
“I think for me it reflected a larger historical legacy and problem of this immense police violence against Black and low-income people,” she said.
Morgan, now 20, grew up going to protests, discussing politics with her dad and advocating for the removal of metal detectors at her school, Park Slope Collegiate. She helped to integrate her school’s sports program, as documented in the WNYC Studios podcast “Keeping Score.”
Morgan also felt the effects of police violence in her community — she said her ninth grade English teacher was the sister of Shantel Davis, who police shot and killed during a chase in Flatbush in 2012.
“I found myself very compelled to think about maybe other sorts of ways of protecting each other and protecting communities that didn’t rely so heavily on the police,” she said.
When she reflects on the 2020 protests, Morgan feels mixed about their outcome. She considers herself an avid student of political theory, and she said the demonstrations in response to Floyd’s death didn’t unify toward clear shared goals in the same way as other major efforts to change policy, like the civil rights movement.
“There were some people who wanted a defund of the police. There were some people who wanted an abolishment of the police,” she said, adding that others favored smaller reforms.
Despite the fissures within the movement, Morgan said, the reaction to Floyd’s death made her feel empowered.
“That period really encouraged me as a person to speak up,” she said.
The years since have been less encouraging, Morgan said. She’s now an undergrad at Princeton University, where she’s a member of the Black Student Union. She said she’s heard from peers in Black student organizations across the country who feel deflated by the shift away from the Black Lives Matter movement since 2020.
But Morgan said she’s still determined to advocate for what she believes in. She plans to go to law school and become a human rights attorney. Floyd’s killing, she said, helped solidify her path.
Tagged
brooklyn
new york city
public safety
queens
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Countdown clocks are coming to an NYC bus stop near you
New York City bus service isn't exactly reliable, but new digital countdown clocks will give riders a better sense of how long they have to wait.
By
Stephen Nessen
Published Oct 23, 2026 at 10:59 a.m. ET
Are NJ schools unconstitutionally segregated? It's back to the courts to decide.
Mediation didn't resolve the years-old case. A ruling for the plaintiffs could upend how public schooling works in New Jersey.
By
Colleen O'Dea
News
Are NJ schools unconstitutionally segregated? It's back to the courts to decide.
Mediation didn't resolve the years-old case. A ruling for the plaintiffs could upend how public schooling works in New Jersey.
By
Colleen O'Dea
Early Addition: New Jersey considering a ban on chewing gum because of microplastics
By
James Ramsay
Queens mother charged with murdering her son after failed suicide attempt, NYPD says
By
Brittany Kriegstein
Your guide to voting in New York's 2026 elections for governor and Congress
By
Walter Wuthmann
,
Jon Campbell
and
Brigid Bergin
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .