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When the clock strikes midnight on January 1, an unparalleled decade comes to a close: one that saw everything from NASA's first all-female spacewalk to the aftermath of natural disasters and the death of Osama bin Laden.

There were times of real change and hope. The White House was lit up in rainbow colors when the Supreme Court struck down same-sex marriage bans. The world watched in awe as a Thai soccer team and their coach were rescued one-by-one by a group of brave diving experts after being trapped for more than three weeks.

And there were moments so shocking we were left feeling helpless. Twenty-six people were killed in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and eight parishioners and their pastor were gunned down during Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Revolutionary moments made history in real time as anger and passion turned into movements -- like the one made up of thousands of students who skipped classes worldwide to demand action from their leaders on the climate crisis.

Here's a look back at some of the news stories that defined the past 10 years.

The decade produced scandals that upended institutions from the Catholic Church to elite universities.

The controversies began less than a year into 2010, when the US State Department was pushed into damage control mode after WikiLeaks released thousands of classified documents on July 25. WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is now facing charges related to the leak. Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst who helped the site get access to the classified documents, is currently jailed for refusing to testify before the grand jury investigating Assange.

A year later, another release -- this time, a grand jury report made public in November 2011 -- marked the beginning of a scandal that would ripple through Penn State University and lead to the termination of the school's beloved football coach. The report contained testimony that former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sexually abused eight young boys, a number that would eventually increase to 10, over a period of at least 15 years. University officials purportedly failed to notify law enforcement after learning about some of these incidents. Sandusky was found guilty in 2012. Football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier lost their jobs in the scandal.

Sexual abuse within the Catholic Church was similarly far-reaching. In 2017 and 2018, the church in the US spent more than $300 million -- including $200 million in legal settlements -- on costs related to clergy sexual abuse. The payouts were only part of the fallout of the massive worldwide scandal in which the church was accused of repeatedly covering up sexual abuse.

USA Gymnastics was likewise disgraced after Larry Nassar, a former USAG and Michigan State University doctor, was sentenced in 2018 to up to 175 years in prison after more than 150 women and girls testified he sexually abused them over two decades.

Earlier this year, about 50 people were accused in a college admissions scandal of either cheating on standardized tests or bribing college coaches and school officials to accept students as college athletes -- even if they weren't. Among those named by federal prosecutors were actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman.

From #MeToo to Black Lives Matter, the 2010s were shaped by activism, beginning in 2011 with the Occupy Wall Street protest movement. The demonstrations against income inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of money in politics began in New York but spread to cities across the United States.

Anger over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in 2014 gave rise to the Black Lives Matter. What started as a social media hashtag quickly grew into an international movement protesting against police brutality and inequality.

Another social media hashtag went offline when survivors of sexual abuse shared their stories with #MeToo. Although the hashtag was created years earlier by activist Tarana Burke, it caught fire after people in Hollywood used it to take down Harvey Weinstein. Not only did it spark a conversation about consent and harassment, but the global movement also contributed to powerful men like producers, actors, anchors and executives and politicians being called to account on harassment accusations.

The decade also brought catastrophic natural and environmental disasters to points across the world.

Haiti and Japan both were hit with the largest earthquakes ever to strike those countries. The 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti in 2010 and 9.1-magnitude quake -- followed by a tsunami -- the following year in Japan left hundreds of thousands of people dead and thousands more displaced.

The first year of the decade also saw an explosion on board the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 people and released 168 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The strongest hurricane to strike the Bahamas made landfall in 2019. Hurricane Dorian slammed the island over Labor Day weekend and stalled there for more than 48 hours. It was one of five Category 5 hurricanes to form this decade. The others: Matthew, Irma, Maria, Michael and Lorenzo.

Hurricane Maria, which made landfall on the island nation of Dominica as a Category 5 hurricane and hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm in 2017, caused about $90 billion in damage and resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths.

The same year introduced a yearslong spate of wildfires in California, including the deadliest in the state's history.

Mass shootings in the United States shook the country's sense of safety as targeted places included an elementary school, nightclubs, colleges, a music festival and places of worship. More than half of the 10 deadliest US mass shootings took place in this decade, including when a gunman opened fire inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. At least 49 people were killed. In October 2017, 58 people were gunned down at an outdoor music festival in Las Vegas.

The shootings raised a debate across the nation about access to firearms.

Violent attacks weren't limited to the United States. ISIS showed its global reach in 2015 with a terror attack in Paris and a series of attacks in Tunisia, including at a hotel where 38 people were killed.

At Garissa University College in Kenya, four gunmen killed 147 people and wounded scores more during morning prayer in April 2015, making it the deadliest attack in Kenya since the 1998 United States embassy bombings. The Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militant group claimed responsibility for the terror attack.

An act of terrorism also devastated the city of Boston in 2013. Two bombs exploded 12 seconds apart near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killing three people and injuring at least 264.

But bloodshed this past decade didn't only come in isolated attacks. The decade was scarred by humanitarian crises and devastating conflicts -- like the yearslong civil war in Yemen, which has taken the lives of more than 100,000 people.

In 2012, the American government came under fire after four Americans were killed in Benghazi, Libya. Critics said the State Department may not have done enough to protect its employees.

Back home, Americans faced a rise in extremism. A 2017 government report found far-right-wing violent extremist groups were to blame for the majority of deadly extremist incidents in the country since 2001. The total number of fatalities from far-right wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists was about the same. The words "white nationalism" began leaking into headlines after the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was killed as a car plowed through a crowd protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. James Alex Fields Jr., the man accused of driving into the crowd has been sentenced to life in prison on hate crime charges.

Across the ocean, Europe was fighting its own battle against racism. A CNN poll in 2018 recorded frightening anti-Semitic attitudes across the continent while many blamed a substantial amount of Brexit votes on a rise in racism.

With millions fleeing from violence in the Middle East and Africa, Europeans began taking measures against the influx of immigrants. A heartbreaking image of 3-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi shook the world and offered a glimpse into just how badly the European migrant crisis was handled.

Four years later a similar photo surfaced: a father and daughter from El Salvador lay face down in murky waters. The devastating picture offered a glimpse into the dangers and challenges migrants face trying to cross from Mexico into the US. The crisis at the border was center stage during the 2016 elections, with then-candidate Donald Trump vowing to build a wall to curb illegal migration.

Trump's administration would later draw worldwide condemnation for its practices of separating children from their parents at the border and holding migrants in overcrowded cage-like units.

The past decade's politics have been marked by polarization and division.

In a bitterly fought referendum, the United Kingdom voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union. The deal, called Brexit, eventually led to the resignation of British Prime Minister Theresa May and the election of hardline Brexit supporter Boris Johnson.

In another divisive decision, the United States elected businessman Donald Trump, a Republican, as president over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat in November 2016. Three years into his term -- and following dozens of controversial decisions and tweets -- Trump, this month, became the third US president to be impeached. The House of Representatives voted to charge him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Meanwhile, citizens of countries took on their leadership and protested for change. Thousands took to the streets in Venezuela in 2019 in failed effort to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from office.

In Hong Kong, protests began in June 2019 in response to a bill that would have allowed citizens of Hong Kong to be extradited to China. The protests have continued for months nonstop and resulted in violent clashes with police. The focus of the protests also has shifted to demand greater democracy and an inquiry into allegations of police brutality.

But among division and disasters, the world took major strides toward change.

In 2011, American troops pulled out of Iraq after nearly nine years in the country -- fighting a war over which many high-ranking officials were criticized for not putting an end to earlier.

In a landmark opinion, the US Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that same-sex couples can marry nationwide. The divided court's decision established a new civil right and gave a historic victory to gay rights advocates.

Later that year, in December, about 195 nations agreed to begin tackling the climate crisis head-on by reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- the primary driver of climate change -- and entering into other agreements. The agreement became known as the 2015 Paris Climate accord. In 2019, the Trump administration announced that the US would pull out of the agreement following the President's claims that it would punish American workers and benefit foreign countries.

And this year, the most diverse class of lawmakers to date took office in the US Congress, bringing greater gender, racial, religious and sexuality representation.

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The 2010s were relentless. Here are some of the most fascinating news stories that shaped the decade - KMOV.com

113011 Boston, MA - Protesters from Occupy Boston step off on their two month anniversary march. Boston Herald staff photo by John Wilcox.

(063011, Boston, MA) Whitey Bulger is taken from a Coast Guard helicopter to an awaiting Sherif vehicle after attending federal court in Boston. Thursday, June 30, 2011. (Staff photo by Stuart Cahill)

Members of the Rutter family of Sandy Hook, Conn., embrace early Christmas morning as they stand near memorials by the Sandy Hook firehouse in Newtown, Conn.,Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2012. People continue to visit memorials after gunman Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Dec. 14, and opened fire, killing 26, including 20 children, before killing himself. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

(Boston, MA - 1/6/14) Mayor Thomas Menino and his wife, Angela, arrive at Boston City Hall, Monday, January 06, 2014. Staff photo by Angela Rowlings. THIS PHOTO WON AN HONORABLE MENTION AS PART OF A NEWS PICTURE STORY ENTRY ON MENINO'S LAST DAY IN OFFICE.

BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN - DECEMBER 18: President Donald Trump speaks at a Merry Christmas Rally at the Kellogg Arena on December 18, 2019 in Battle Creek, Michigan. While Trump spoke, the House of Representatives was voting on two articles of impeachment, deciding if he will become the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

(Boston, Ma 013018) Ayanna Pressley. January 30, 2018 Staff photo by Chris Christo

FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump reacts before speaking at a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix. The Trump administration is preparing to restore the flow of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

BOSTON MA. - DECEMBER 12: Mayor Marty Walsh and Gov. Charlie Baker share a laugh during the announcement on December 12, 2019 in Boston, MA that the NAACP convention will be held in Boston next July. (Staff Photo By Nancy Lane/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)

The Teens have been a whirlwind of bitter divisiveness and violence, with changes of the political guard on both sides of the aisle that were welcomed by some but feared by others, and also dramatic innovation and prosperity.

Then-President Barack Obamas controversial signature achievement, Obamacare, kicked off the Teens as the big story of 2010 and fueled Republican Scott Browns U.S. Senate win in blue Massachusetts. But the even more controversial and divisive election of President Trump in 2016 stands as the single most transformative event of these last 10 years cutting a sharp line in American politics between liberals and conservatives, coastal elites and those in the heartland who felt they were ignored, with a power struggle between sharply different visions of Americas future that remains unresolved.

Donald Trump redefined the American political order with his stunning defeat of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a polarizing victory and hes now under a highly disputed partisan impeachment.

A businessman and real estate mogul with no prior political office, Trump capitalized on discontent with the political establishment to power his way to the White House.

Trump has passed broad tax cuts, began a dramatic rollback of regulations and appointed dozens of constitutionalist judges. Despite predictions the stock market would crash, the economy has boomed. He brought North Koreas Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table after dire warnings he was provoking a war. He forced the renegotiation of trade relations with Mexico and Canada, and launched a trade war with China ignoring the threats of consequences. He was vilified for his crackdown on illegal immigration and a freeze on visas for several Muslim nations, though his supporters say his tactics matched those of the Obama administration. He faced a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election but wasnt charged, though special prosecutor Robert Mueller stopped short of exonerating him.

Trump is now the third president to be impeached, after the Democratic House majority on a party-line vote accused him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress based on a July phone call in which Trump allegedly pressured the Ukrainian president into investigating Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Trump enters 2020 awaiting trial in the Republican-led U.S. Senate, which is expected to toss the charges.

Boston under attack: The defining event of the past decade in this city was the deadly terrorist blasts that turned the celebratory finish line of the Boston Marathon into a crime scene on April 15, 2013. Islamic extremist brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ethnic Chechens who immigrated from Kazakhstan set off two bombs along crowded Boylston Street, killing Martin Richard, 8, Krystle Campbell, 29, and Lingzi Lu., 23. Three days later, the Tsarnaevs shot and killed MIT police officer Sean Collier, 27. In a Watertown shootout, MBTA officer Richard Donohue, 33, was critically wounded. Boston Police officer Dennis Simmonds, 28, injured in the Watertown shootout, died in April 2014.

Tamerlan was killed in Watertown. The younger Tsarnaev, after a daylong manhunt, was found hiding in a boat. Now on federal death row in Colorado, Tsarnaev is fighting his conviction and death sentence.

Bostons leadership changed hands for the first time in two decades in 2014 when Martin Walsh succeeded the citys longest-serving mayor, Thomas M. Menino, who died of cancer later that year.The governorship, meanwhile, returned to Republican hands with Charlie Bakers victories in 2014 and 2018.

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressleys stunning defeat of incumbent Mike Capuano last year was a rebuke of the partys establishment, which led to this years challenges of sitting U.S. Sen. Edward Markey. Brown lost in 2012 to current U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, now a leading Democratic candidate for president.

Ten years after 9/11, the U.S. military hunted down and killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. It was hailed as a major blow to the terrorist network that drew the United States into war.

But the Islamic State emerged in 2011 in Iraq and Syria after the United States exited the region. In 2015, ISIS-inspired terrorists killed 129 people and wounded 352 in Paris. In 2016, ISIS-inspired terrorists killed 31 people and injured 270 in Brussels. Trump sent U.S. troops into Iraq and Syria, largely destroying the organization. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed himself this year while pursued by U.S. soldiers.

Smartphones became ubiquitous in The Teens. Facebook, which had allowed family, friends and businesses to connect with each other, was revealed as having extensively data-mined its users. Twitter became a major means to pushing out information, bypassing traditional media. But it also became notorious for hosting vile personal and political attacks.

Murderous Southie gangster Whitey Bulger and his girlfriend Catherine Greig were captured in 2011 in in Santa Monica after 16 years on the lam. In 2013, Bulger was convicted for his role in 11 murders. In 2018, then 89, he was beaten to death in a West Virginia federal prison.

The 2012 the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., prompted a national debate over gun control. The debate between those who want to ban weapons and 2nd Amendment advocates has resurfaced after mass shootings in San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland and El Paso.

Occupy Wall Street. Black Lives Matter. #MeToo: Occupy Wall Street kicked off a decade of social protests in 2011 with a protest in Manhattan with the rallying cry, We are the 99 Percent.

Black Lives Matter emerged in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, accused of killing unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, with riots following killings by police in Ferguson, Mo., and other cities, and incidents such as the execution of two police officers in New York City. In Boston, then-BPD Superintendent William Gross faced down protesters after his officers shot and killed a man who had shot a detective in the face.

And the #MeToo movement, combating sexual harassment, started with accusations against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein, and led to allegations against actor Kevin Spacey, comedian Louis C.K., NBC news anchor Matt Lauer and others. In Massachusetts, the news that casino mogul Steve Wynn had paid out settlements forced an investigation of the license for the Encore casino in Everett.

But Trump, the top story of The Teens, will remain the top story as the new decade starts, as embittered Democrats seek to remove him from office both by impeachment and in the 2020 election.

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The Teens: Decade of Trump - Boston Herald

The power of street protest. The disruption of technology. The fight for racial equality. The struggle against disillusionment. Few have lived the high and lows of this decade as viscerally as DeRay Mckesson of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The civil rights activist felt compelled to join spontaneous street demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, a week after Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American man, was fatally shot by a white police officer. The protests lasted for months and were a seminal moment in the evolution of social movements and social media.

It was really organic, the 34-year-old from Baltimore recalled in a phone interview. It is a myth that there was a small set of the people that started a movement. What was so beautiful about it was people came out in the street in the early days and stayed in the street. What makes the current movement so different is that it wasnt started by an organisation, by institutions, by churches, by schools.

In our generation, it was the first time that we saw this type of activism in the streets that was widespread and caught on. There were certainly other demonstrations across the country that happened way before the death of Mike Brown, but this one was the phenomenon.

Technology lined up at the time. The police were so wild in a way that was so concentrated. The community was ready to engage. The media was present. All of the things happened in this one moment in a way that no person could have organised. It changed the country. It opened up a wave of activism across a host of areas and focused citizens in a way that is truly special.

Browns death fed into an awakening about the national crisis of law enforcement killing people of colour. The demonstrators in Ferguson gained widespread attention. They marched all day and all night because police enforced a five-second rule that meant no one could stand still during a protest. Mckessons critiques of the policy on Twitter helped get it struck down in federal court.

If we stood still for more than five seconds, we were arrested, he said. We were in the streets for 400 days. Its a long time and the police were relentless. Most people know Mike Browns name, but the police killed 10 people after they killed Mike Brown so it didnt stop.

The protests spread across the country because the police had continued to kill people and with it you saw a generation find their public voice. People had always known these things. People talked about it and suddenly there was a broad community of not just people who identified as activists or organisers but who simply loved their community and knew that this was not the best version of it there could be.

According to the Pew Research Center, the phrase black lives matter was first used by a black community organiser in a Facebook post following the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American. The hashtag, and the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, accelerated greatly in August 2014 when Brown was killed, Pew noted.

A new language for grassroots protest, social media and the mainstream medias understanding of them was taking shape. Its heirs have included #MeToo, giving a voice to victims of sexual harassment, the Womens March and Indivisible movement that followed Donald Trumps election, and the March for Our Lives, a response to a 2018 mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida.

Mckesson continued: With us, the media and mainstream society were learning how to talk and think about protest. And shortly, youd see it open up space for Parkland and open up space for the Womens March and open up space for Indivisible. By the time they came along, there was already a language, reporters knew how to talk about it, reporters understood it.

When we were doing it, Ill never forget the early days where the reporters were as critical of us as they were of the police, and were like, We didnt kill anybody! It wasnt until the reporters understood it better and understood the message and the tactics that the shift happened.

Then came the event on which the decade hinged: the 2016 presidential election. It saw America lurch from Barack Obama, its first black president, to Donald Trump, who gave succour to white supremacists. Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but threaded the needle of the electoral college by just 77,000 votes in three battleground states where African American turnout was significantly down.

Mckesson reflected: There was so much hope with Obama. There was so much promise, and then we saw in real time the promise fade away. You saw Trayvon get killed. You saw Mike Brown killed. You saw all these horrific things happen and it didnt seem like there was something on the other side.

The disillusionment hit right at that time. People would tell us to vote and were like, I voted my entire life. I voted every election. I still got dragged out by police by my ankles. I still got arrested. I got shot at. Voting didnt stop any of the bad things from happening. I think that people understood that and they inadvertently took that message to mean that voting didnt matter.

That was not Mckessons own view. He voted for the leftwing insurgent senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary and Clinton in the general election. I was shocked by activists and organisers in 2016 saying that elections didnt matter. I was shocked by people participating in the logic that said structures didnt matter, because theres so much at stake in it. Those same people are now, especially given that Trump is just so wild, building voter organisations.

There was so much hope with Obama. There was so much promise, and then we saw in real time the promise fade away

There was another factor behind the all-important dip in black voters, Mckesson added. The other thing that happened in 2016 that the establishment left wasnt prepared for was the long con that the right had played around voter suppression and disenfranchisement. By the time anybody realised it, it was just [too] late.

Trump has turned back the clock, aggressively pro-law enforcement, emphasising blue lives matter and even appearing to advocate for rougher treatment of suspects under arrest. Dont be too nice, he told law enforcement officers in Brentwood, New York, in July 2017. Mckesson believes the police have been emboldened but has numerous other concerns about the Trump administrations legacy.

The thing about Trump thats so dangerous is the pace with which hes making decisions, he said. Two per cent of what this administration is doing is making the news but all of it is bad. So, I think when the dust settles, when hes out of office, only then will the public actually understand the true extent to which he has done damage. Its all the things that are not Russia, that are not impeachment, that are not in the news.

After Ferguson, Mckesson, instantly recognisable for his blue vest, became a leading figure in Black Lives Matter. In 2016 he ran for mayor of Baltimore, finishing sixth in the Democratic primary, and was arrested in Baton Rouge, Florida, after police shot dead 37-year-old Alton Sterling. He joined Crooked Media, a company founded by Obama alumni, and hosts its weekly podcast Pod Save the People. He has a million followers on Twitter.

Black Lives Matter goes on, decentralised and non-hierarchical with decisions in the hands of local chapters listed on its website as Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Greensboro, Lansing, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Louisville, Memphis, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington DC and Toronto in Canada. It is running a What Matters 2020 campaign to engage communities and encourage voter registration for next years elections.

Mckesson, however, is on a brief hiatus. Ive been taking it slow at the end of the year just because I worked so hard for so long, he says. To have done what was done took a toll on all of us and after watching and being around people and being one of the people who struggled to just make sense of everything and all the sacrifices and all that, I really needed to just step back a little bit. So Im excited for 2020. I have a lot of plans in 2020 with what we do around the police. I just needed to slow down for a minute.

As a new decade dawns with Trump in the White House, inequality entrenched and police brutality stubbornly resilient, there are plenty of reasons to be ambivalent. At first, Mckesson tried to be positive: I think in 10, hopefully less than 20 years, well see a dramatic transformation. This is like the dark before the light. A lot of people fight really hard.

But then he added: Its frustrating to watch people say things like, I cant believe were not in the streets like people in other countries. The reality is, when there were thousands of us risking our lives in the street, those people werent. So if anything, there is a whole set of people who I was in the street with who are less willing to do it again because we saw that it was gonna be a lot of lip service.

We saw that people were going to say, Oh, my God, people should be in the street, but would never join us. We saw that people werent willing to risk much and I think theres less of a willingness to do it. Its easy to stand in the street at 10 oclock in the morning when there are TV crews and youve got a podium and its a concert. Its much harder to do when the police are literally ready to kill you at 2am, its dark and youre standing in a side street.

Last year Mckesson published a book, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope. As if mocking that title, 897 people have been shot and killed by police so far in 2019, according to a count by the Washington Post. The police have killed more people since the protest, not less, Mckesson said. That is the sobering reality because its also a reminder that we are so much work to do. The civil rights movement was decade-long works of activism, so Im not discouraged.

In five years we have completely shifted the conversation about race and justice in the country. People felt like it was an impossible task and we did it without grants and workshops and all the things that people tell you you must have to be able to make to make change. So Im incredibly proud of that.

More here:
DeRay Mckesson on Black Lives Matter: 'It changed the country' - The Guardian

The more we communicate, the faster the English language changes. It wont have escaped anyones notice that the 10 years weve just lived through was the first full decade of the smartphone and of social media, two innovations that prompted us to find new ways of expressing ourselves. We did so with new euphemisms, slang and abbreviations; by bending grammar into different shapes and using pictures to enhance meaning. These kinds of changes are always resisted by traditionalists, but its part of a perfectly natural evolution. If a community of speakers is using a word and knows what it means, its real, says professor Anne Curzan in a Ted Talk. That word might be slangy, that word might be informal but that word that were using, that word is real.

Many words have come into popular usage to represent inventions appearing in the world around us. The first consumer drone appeared 10 years ago. Few people knew what Bitcoin was in 2010, let alone fidget spinners. Fracking and vaping became commonly used verbs, contactless payments went from rare to everyday, and people began sporting onesies, manbuns and athleisure clothing.

We found ourselves indulging in new activities that needed new words to describe them: taking selfies, binge-watching TV series and ghosting people we no longer wanted to be in touch with. We saw the rise of the Scandinavian lifestyle trend known as hygge, the pursuit of squad goals, wealthy start-ups referred to as unicorns, and the (dreadful) word nom being used to describe something tasty.

But perhaps the biggest shift in communication in the past decade has been the popularisation of the emoji. In October 2010, Unicode, the consortium that decides the worlds standards for computer text, established the first set of 722 emojis. From then, as far as online communication was concerned, emojis were on a par with the traditional Roman alphabet and they quickly became indispensable. In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year was an emoji the Face With Tears of Joy one much to the horror of language purists. But emojis can be more complex than they appear. By the decades end that symbol had gained many meanings, including derision rather than delight. Gifs became another popular tool of expression, with ironic conversations conducted via short animated sequences from popular films and TV shows.

This yearning for brevity also yielded a new batch of abbreviations and acronyms. Ask Me Anything (AMA) became one of Reddits most popular communities, while ELI5 (explain like Im five) became shorthand for needing to have something clarified as simply as possible. Yolo (you only live once) became a rallying cry, and Fomo (fear of missing out) was the social media-induced feeling that everyone else was Yolo-ing and you werent. About halfway through the decade we saw the emergence of Doge, a picture of a shiba inu dog with some grammatically dubious captions in a Comic Sans font (for example So scare). No meme has had such a profound effect on online grammar; from then on, awkward two-word combinations were instantly understood for what they were. Such amaze. So respect. Much wow. Meanwhile, another video meme by a Chicago woman describing her perfect eyebrows gave us the phrase on fleek. And it hasnt gone away yet.

The often bizarre developments taking place in online communities required dozens of words to describe what was unfolding. Trending may not have been a new word, but it gained new meaning around 2011 as various topics surged to prominence on social media. Humblebragging (2011), catfishing (2013) and photobombing (2014) all made it into various Word of the Year lists. As the technology around us slowly changed, we became familiar with adblockers, chatbots and, if you dared, the dark web. More recently, the impact of charismatic youngsters on YouTube and Instagram gave birth to the term influencer, and attempts to dislodge them from their pedestals by accusing them of questionable behaviour was an example of so-called cancel culture.

The intensity of online discourse brought new terms to prominence such as mansplaining and incel. The most resonant hashtags of the decade were #BlackLivesMatter (dating from the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida) and #MeToo, following the sexual abuse allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein. One political wing found itself labelled as the alt-right, another as Antifa. Many people were accused of being woke for showing too much sympathy with progressive causes, and others of cakeism (stemming from the phrase have your cake and eat it). Occupy, Brexit and Youthquake all found themselves in the news as social change unfolded around us.

The election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016 had a curious impact on language. His fondness for communicating directly with the public via Twitter, and the enormous attention bestowed upon those tweets by the media, meant even his slip-ups entered lexicon (for example Covfefe, from a tweet in May 2017, an apparent mistyping of coverage.) But his dismissal of unfriendly media as fake news was the dawn of an era in which any position could be adopted and any opposition refuted, as long as you did it brazenly and boldly enough. As black was stated to be white and reality openly doubted, words such as post-truth, gaslighting and deepfake were used with increasing frequency.

But amid all the unsettling changes that can make our world feel so disorientating, there has been plenty to lighten the mood. South Korean singer Psy gave us Gangnam Style, and was subsequently recognised by the UN for his skill of dancing as if riding a horse. Twerking wasnt recognised by the UN, but everyone now knows what it is. A 16-year-old American schoolboy, Russell Horning, became famous for flossing, and it wasnt long until the world was flossing, too.

Ten years ago, none of this would have made any sense. But making sense of our world is what an ever-changing language is all about.

Updated: December 30, 2019 07:55 PM

Excerpt from:
From 'trending' to 'flossing', the past decade has brought a whole new meaning to language - The National

Each December,Fast Companyrounds up the years best and worst leadership moments. But as we bid adieu to an entire decade, it seemed only fitting to look back at the last 10 years instead.

We thought the more hopeful moments would be harder to recall than the myriadscams and leadership failures that grabbed headlines. But for all the scandals and tragedies that punctuated the past decade, there were just as many instances of inspired leadershipoften in response to those very hardships. Some of the names on this list arent leaders in the traditional sense but are simply people who acted powerfully at a particular historical moment.

Of course, a decade is a long time, which means some of the leaders weve lauded have made their fair share of missteps. But in the moments weve outlined below, their leadership made us optimistic during a difficult decade.

In June 2015, the Supreme Court made a historic ruling that finally granted same-sex couples the right to get married, in a 5-4 decision that saw Justice Anthony Kennedy voting with the more liberal justices on the court. As in prior gay rights cases, Kennedy was the swing vote and penned the majority opinion. No longer may this liberty be denied, Kennedy wrote. No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.

The deadly 2015 shooting in Charleston, when white supremacist Dylann Roof opened fire on a historic black church, claimed the lives of nine people. In a eulogy for slain pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, President Obama addressed a churchand nationin mourning. His speech, which centered on the idea of grace, also touched on the countrys history of racial violence, the legacy of the Confederate flag, and reiterated the urgency of gun control measures. But in an unexpected closing, Obama segued into a stirring rendition of Amazing Grace,and the crowd joined in.

The Trump era has driven political engagement even in more unlikely corners, and at no point was that more clear than during the 2018 midterm elections. The candidates for office were some of the most diverse in the history of the U.S. with 272 women, 216 people of color, and 26 LGBTQ folks running for the House, Senate, and governor seats. A number of them didnt have a traditional background in politics or hadnt previously run for political office. There are now 126 women and 116 people of color with seats in Congressboth record highs.

When President Trump announced a travel ban that would bar immigration from a number of Muslim-majority countrieson a Friday at 5 p.m., no lessthe ACLU sprang into action. (It helped that someone had leaked a draft of the executive order to the ACLU days in advance.) Executive director Anthony Romero and the rest of his team got to work on getting a temporary stay on the executive order, to stop the deportations that were already underway; by Saturday night, a New York federal court judge had issued an injunction. (By the end of the year, however, the Supreme Court had given the green light to the Trump administrations third version of the ban.)

As the national anthem played at an NFL preseason game in 2016, Colin Kaepernick stayed seated. It was his way of protesting racism and police brutality. I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color, he said at the time. At another game, he chose to take a knee instead, in response to criticisms that he was being disrespectful of the military. Kaepernicks protest sparked a fiery debate, with a number of other athletes following his lead. Protests spilled over into the 2017 season, in part also a response to the violence in Charlottesville.

On International Womens Day this year, the U.S. womens soccer team, which won the last two World Cups, sued the U.S. Soccer Federation over gender discrimination. Despite the teams successespecially in recent years, as game revenue has outpaced that of the mens soccer teamits members have long been underpaid compared to their male counterparts. The suit doesnt just address the pay gap, though; it also argues that the womens team does not receive equal treatment with respect to training and working conditions, for example.

This isnt just about pay equity on the womens soccer team, of course: the team hopes to catalyze change across womens teams around the world, and even take on FIFA.

A few months after the New York Times exposed decades of harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein and ignited the #MeToo movement, prominent women in Hollywood banded together to create an organization that would not only tackle harassment in their industry but also across blue-collar workplaces.

A legal defense fund would provide aid to women in low-wage industries who wouldnt otherwise have the resources to pursue legal action against sexual misconduct. Times Up was driven by heavy hitters like Reese Witherspoon and Shonda Rhimes, and at the Golden Globes just days after its launch, many actresses made a different kind of fashion statement, as they walked down the red carpet clad in black to protest sexual harassment. Some of them brought activists as guests, from Ai Jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance to Saru Jayaraman, who advocates on behalf of restaurant workers.

But one of the most important #MeToo moments of this decade was when Christine Blasey Ford came forward with sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh in the lead-up to his confirmation to the Supreme Court. (Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.) Ford took the brave step of testifying publicly in a hearing that gripped the countrya decision that won her support from many, but also made her the target of endless threats and harassment.

For all the harassment allegations and cases of company culture gone sideways, there were high points, too. Well before he floated a bid for the presidency, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz set a standard for providing benefits to low-wage workers. For years, the company has extended stock options and health benefits to both part-time and full-time employees.

Since 2013, Starbucks has hired 25,000 veterans and active-duty spouses, and in 2017, Schultz pledged to hire 10,000 refugees within five years; last year, Starbucks opted to give all its hourly workers paid leave.

Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya has employed refugees for years30% of his workforce is comprised of immigrants and refugeesand invited all employees, including factory workers, to share in the companys profits and benefits like paid parental leave. Last year, Rent the Runway took steps to put both their classes of employees on more equal footing, by extending benefits like bereavement, parental leave, and family sick leavewhich were previously only granted to corporate, salaried employeesto hourly employees who work in their warehouses and retail stores.

Many tech companies also took steps to improve benefits and work culture for corporate employees. Under Satya Nadellas leadership, Microsoft has not only generated more than $250 billion in market value but also made strides to improve company culture, from dialing back the internal competition of the Steve Ballmer-era to getting rid of forced arbitration for sexual harassment allegations. At Intel, a $300 million investment in diversity has noticeably increased its share of women and underrepresented minorities, in both technical and nontechnical roles (though white and Asian men still account for more than 70% of executive positions).

Even by tech standards, Netflix adopted an uncharacteristically generous parental leave policy in 2015 that gave new parents the ability to take up to one year of leave; the Gates Foundation introduced a 52-week leave policy as well. (A former Netflix employee did, however, sue the company for pregnancy discrimination, claiming that new parents werent exactly encouraged to take the full year off.)

A defining feature of this decade has been gun violence, from mass shootings to police brutality. But even in the face of political inaction, weve found hope in movements like Black Lives Matter and the activism of the Parkland students. Black Lives Matter first made its mark after George Zimmerman was acquitted for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. But it was after the shooting of Michael Brown that the movement drew a wider audience, with people taking to the streets of Ferguson.

More than 1.2 million people flocked to the March for Our Lives rally led by the Parkland students last year, who have also agitated for changes to how businesses restrict gun sales. Dicks Sporting Goods was one of the major retailers that stopped selling guns altogether in response to the Parkland shooting.

Moms Demand Action, which coalesced after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, has pushed for businesses like Starbucks, Target, and Walmart to restrict open carryor ban guns outrightin their stores. Levis, too, has taken a strong position on the issue. After a customer brought a gun into a Levis store in 2016 and accidentally shot himself, Levis CEO Chip Bergh wrote an open letter urging customers not to bring guns into the companys stores. And after Parkland, Levis introduced the Safer Tomorrow Fund, which would put $1 million toward nonprofits and youth activists.

The Paris climate agreement was a historic move toward addressing climate change on the world stage. President Trump has now officially pulled the U.S. out of the agreement, but a number of businesses have pledged their commitment to staying the course anyway.

Companies like Patagonia have supported environmental activism for decades, taking a stand on social and political issues long before it was fashionable. Last year, Patagonia donated its $10 million tax cut to grassroots environmental organizations and explicitlyendorsed two Senate candidates with a record of protecting public lands. If their intentions werent clear already, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and CEO Rose Marcario recently changed the companys mission statement to the following: Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.

But the most inspiring climate leadership this decade has come from a new crop of young activists. One of the most visible faces of the movement is 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, who galvanized an estimated four million people across the world to strike for climate change in Septembera moment that begin with Thunbergs quiet protest outside the Swedish parliament a year prior. While Thunberg is an influential voice for climate activism, the Green New Dealintroduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markeyhas shaped the climate conversation amongst presidential candidates and calls on the government to curb emissions and lead the way to reaching net-zero emissions globally by 2050.

The Google Walkout, a response to a report that Google had awarded Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package in response to sexual harassment allegations against him, was an unprecedented show of protest from 20,000 Google employees across the world. (Rubin, for his part, denies the allegations.)

The walkout organizers put forth a series of demands to address alleged issues of sexism and racism at the companyputting an end to forced arbitration, for example, as well as introducing pay transparency to mitigate pay inequities. Many of their demands werent met, and in the months since, several organizers have left the company over claims of retaliation. But the Google walkout has prompted ongoing conversations around systemic issues and introduced many tech workers to the power of organizing.

This holds true even for the tech workers who arent nearly as well compensated. Gig workers at companies like Uber and Instacart have fought against falling pay by organizing: Just last month, Instacart shoppers went on strike to demand better tips.

Following the deadly earthquake in Haiti, chef Jos Andrs launched a nonprofit, World Central Kitchen, to provide meals to survivors in the aftermath of disasters. The organization has delivered 10 million meals since its inception; this year, it offered aid after 19 disasters and introduced a Climate Disaster Fund, through which World Central Kitchen plans to raise $50 million for disaster response.

Other celebrities have stepped up as well.Lin-Manuel Mirandaraised $2.5 million in just 24 hours through a MoveOn campaign and helped drum up $43 million for the Hispanic Federations hurricane relief fund. Miranda even took his entire stage production of Hamilton to Puerto Rico, using the show as an opportunity to fundraise for Puerto Ricos arts communityand lift spirits.

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The best leadership moments of the decade - Fast Company