CfJ's Jason Bostic Featured in Gothamist

June 02, 2025

Gothamist interviews young people in New York who reflected on the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.

When police killed George Floyd, the moment changed these NYC teens' lives


By: Samantha Max
Original article appeared in the Gothamist

‘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.