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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.

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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

After 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, students all over the country walked out of their classrooms to demand political action against gun violence. A one-girlprotest in Sweden sparked a global strike among youth worried for their future and pushing for action against climate change. After the 2007-2009 recession, hundreds of thousands of people camped out on public lands all over the countrytoprotest wealth inequality.

Some of the most impactful movements of the 2010shadroots in activism that came before. But this decade with its advances in technology, the organizing power of social media and a unique political climate has endowed movements with new energy and ideas.

Just as the civil-rights movement fought back against racist segregation, disenfranchisement, and lynchings of Black people, the 2010s have seen people come together to address some of the most pressing social issues of our time.

In the 2010s, Washington found itself at the center of some of these national social shifts. Voters here approved same-sex marriage well before it became the law of the land.Amid the rising trend of anti-immigrant sentiment nationally, Seattle has adamantly remained a sanctuary city. Before Black Lives Matter drew national attention to the issue of police brutality, Washington had already been shocked into action and eventually became the first state in the U.S. to pass a police-accountability and -training measure.

With a national increase in hate crimes and hateful rhetoric that has emboldened white supremacist and white nationalist groupsthis decade, Seattle saw a 400% increase in reported hate crimes since 2012. In 2018, Washington had the fourth-highest number of reported hate crimes in the U.S.

It has been a decade of great turmoil and great change, a time of extreme divisions and of people coming together to take action.

What was Seattles role in some of the biggest changes of the past 10 years? We looked back at some of the most impactful movements of the 2010s to explore what theyve meant for a changing Seattle.

Criminal-justice reform | Occupy | LGBTQ+ rights |Marijuana legalization/decriminalization |Gun control & gun rights | Black Lives Matter |Standing Rock, Mauna Kea, MMIW & Indigenous Rights |New populism| #MeToo | Climate strike

Emergence: 2010

Significant local events: No New Youth Jail protests, Block the Bunker protests

Although the number of children under confinement in King County is at a 20-year low, the county incarcerates youth of color at 5.6 times the rate of white youth, according to county data. Organizations like No New Youth Jail (NNYJ), which grew out of opposition to a 2012 tax levy to build a new youth jail and family court buildings in King County, believe children shouldnt be detained at all, that the country should invest in preventive measures and alternatives to youth detention instead.

The $232 million Children and Family Justice Center opposed by NNYJ is almost built now, but King County has rolled out a Zero Youth Detention plan.

And in 2016, a Block the Bunker campaign successfully blocked plans to build a $149 million police station in North Seattle while the SPD was still undergoing significant reforms as part of a Department of Justice (DOJ) consent decree.

Though prison abolition has roots in the 1970s, Michelle Alexanders 2010 book The New Jim Crow brought the topic back to the national conscience by drawing a compelling parallel between todays mass-incarceration system and the Jim Crow laws that segregated and disenfranchised Black people.

In November, Florida voters approved a measure that restores voting rights to millions of ex-felons in the state. In Seattle, organizers continue to push for prevention and alternatives to jail.

Emergence: 2011, New York

Significant local events: May Day protests 2012

When 84-year-old Dorli Rainey was pepper-sprayed by a Seattle police officer at an Occupy Seattle march in November 2011, no one imagined shed become a symbol of the movement. But the image of a senior woman drenched in milk to neutralize the effects of the chemical became a symbol of the movements power to mobilize hundreds of thousands across generations and across the country to take to streets and encampments.

The Occupy movement kicked off the decade when more than a thousand protesters took over Zuccotti Park in New Yorks Financial District on Sept. 17, 2011, to express discontent over wealth inequality in the U.S. and demand accountability for the investment bankers responsible for the financial crisis that began in late 2007.

Protesters at encampments across the nation insisted, We are the 99%, a rallying cry that highlighted that the majority of wealth in the U.S. is concentrated among the top 1% of income earners. The leaderless movement demanded that the capitalist status quo be completely altered. Critics felt the movement lacked clarity in its goals. It ultimately failed after the camps were cleared, but many of its central grievances and messages have informed current candidates political platforms.

The ties forged through Occupy Seattle created networks among the citys organizers. Many actions and movements like the Food For Everyone program in Capitol Hill were born out of those connections and continue in the citys organizing efforts today.

Re-emergence: 2011, national

Significant local events: Repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell, and Ingersoll vs. Arlenes Flowers

They married in one of the 38 states in which same-sex marriage was legal in 2012. Prior to the 2015 Supreme Court case that ended the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which had defined marriage as between a man and a woman Witts marriage was not recognized in the eyes of her employer, the U.S. government. But that wasnt the only battle Witt faced as a lesbian woman.

U.S. Air Force Major Margaret Witt, who grew up in Tacoma, had been suspended from duty in 2004 for beinglesbian. Although shed never disclosed her sexual orientation to anyone in the military, she was discharged in 2006 under the militarys Dont Ask, Dont Tell (DADT) policy that banned gay, lesbian and bisexual peoplefrom serving openly. In 2011, after five years in the federal court system, Witt won the right to be fully reinstated. DADT was repealed.

In 2012, Washington state began allowing LGBTQ+ marriage, and Witt and her partner married in Spokane. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, federally recognizing LGBTQ+ marriage nationwide.

In 2017, the Washington Supreme Court ruled against a Richland florist who refused to sell flowers for the wedding of two men. More openly LGBTQ+ celebrities are in the spotlight, and broader acceptance has been reflected in the media and popular culture.

This decade has also seen setbacks for LGBTQ+ people. President Donald Trumps stance against transgender people in the military took effect in April. In October, Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job at a funeral home when she came out as trans, brought the first transgender-rights case to the Supreme Court.The case will decide whether transgender people are entitled to sex-based protections under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Supreme Courts decision is expected in 2020.

Emergence: 2012

Significant local events: Washington Initiative 502 legalizes marijuana

On Nov. 6, 2012, Washington and Colorado became the first two states nationally to legalize marijuana for recreational use. As of 2019, 11 states have legalized recreational use of marijuana.

This comes after decades of fighting for the decriminalization of marijuana and after several states passed legislation allowing its medical use. In November this year, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would legalize marijuana at the federal level; however, the bill needs approval by the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-dominant Senate.

The bill would give states the right to enact their own policies and incentivize states to clear the criminal records of people with low-level marijuana offenses. As marijuana arrests disproportionately affect low-income communities and people of color, this could have a significant impact in criminal-justice reform.

Emergence: 2012

Significant local events: Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting

Lasting local impacts: Initiative 1639 passed in Washington in 2018

On Dec. 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot through the doors of Connecticuts Sandy Hook Elementary School bearing loaded semi-automatic weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He killed 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, six staff members, his mother and eventually himself.

Sandy Hook shook the nation at a level perhaps untouched since the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, when two shooters killed 13 students and teachers. Twenty years later, mass shootings at schools and in public places are terrifyingly common, but the mass murder of 20 first graders was a more horrifying reality than many could believe.

The movements for gun control and gun rights have long moved in lockstep, battling for ground, but Sandy Hook propelled a new burst of energy in both movements. Very little changed in response. Several states made small changes to local laws in favor of gun control, particularly on assault-style weapons, but in April 2013, a proposed federal ban failed to pass.

In the seven years since Sandy Hook, many more school shootings have occurred, including a shooting at Washingtons Marysville Pilchuck High School that killed four students. Theres also been an increase in hate-motivated mass shootings in public places.

The 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, ignited another burst of action. With 17 of their classmates and teachers dead, student survivors of the shooting protested outside the White House, and Emma Gonzlez became the face of student outrage when she gave a speech condemning the common refrain of thoughts and prayers from politicians.

The Parkland students protests launched many more gun-violence protests in 2018, including the 2 million-strong March for Our Lives and the National School Walkout on the anniversary of Columbine. Gun-rights activists counterprotested, pushing back against calls for stricter gun laws.

In November, Washington state passed Initiative 1639, which defined the term semiautomatic assault rifle to include all semi-automatic rifles, raised the minimum age for purchasing semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21, imposed a 10-day waiting period to claim a rifle from a dealer, and expanded background checks to include medical records.

But there have been no significant federal measures in favor of gun control in the last decade. As of Dec. 27, the Gun Violence Archive reported410 mass-shooting incidents in the U.S. in 2019.

Emergence: 2013, online

Significant local events: Police shootings of John T. Williams, Che Taylor and Charleena Lyles; Marissa Johnson interrupts Bernie Sanders rally, BLM protests at holiday tree-lightings, passage of Initiative 940

In 2010 First Nations woodcarver John T. Williams was walking down the street with a block of cedar wood and a pocket knife when Seattle police Officer Ian Birk shouted for Williams to put the knife down. Four seconds later, Birk fired four shots. Williams died at the scene.

The shooting shocked Seattle, launching widespread calls for reform and accountability for a police department that had often been accused of brutality and bias. Later, a DOJ investigation of the Seattle Police Department found evidence of excessive force and biased policing.

Across the nation, police killings of several unarmed Black men drew similar outrage. Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by neighborhood-watch leader George Zimmerman; Eric Garner cried out I cant breathe as an officer used an illegal chokehold to subdue him; and when 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, monthlong demonstrations and the polices militarized response galvanized the nation.

When Zimmerman was acquitted in 2013, activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometidescribed their hurt with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media. With the power of social media and advances in cellphone video technology, Black Lives Matter (BLM) was poised to become a powerful movement.

In Seattle, BLM activist Marissa Johnson famously took over the stage at a Bernie Sanders campaign rally and brought concerns about police brutality to the 2016 presidential race. Transcending politics, the movement inspired San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick to sit or kneel during the national anthem in personal protest of police brutality and racial inequality in the U.S. Many prominent athletes, including several Seahawks players and soccer star Megan Rapinoe, followed suit.

In Seattle, the movement against police brutality drove legislative change. Initiative 940 removed a state law that made it practically impossible to criminally charge police officers who wrongfully use deadly force.

Emergence: 2014, Sioux lands in North and South Dakota, Mauna Kea in Hawaii

Significant local events: Lummi Nation successfully blocked coal port at Cherry Point, House of Tears Carvers of Lummi Nation tour to raise awareness of indigenous land rights; Seattle Urban Indian Health Institutes report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women

The red handprint painted across Rosalie Fishs mouth drew everyones attention at the Washington State 1B high-school track championships in Cheney, Spokane County, this year. The Muckleshoot Tribal School senior and member of the Cowlitz Tribe made national headlines as the handprint and the letters MMIW painted on her leg drew attention to the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) in the U.S. and Canada and the 30-year movement demanding action. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice found that indigenous women in parts of the U.S. are being murdered at rates more than 10 times the national average.

MMIW is one of several prominent indigenous-rights issues that captured national attention this decade, including opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a 1,100-mile oil pipeline passing under the water source of the Standing Rock Sioux, and Native Hawaiians opposition to building the Thirty Meter Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea, a sacred site.

Washington tribes supported the #NoDAPL movement with donations, cash and by journeying to the encampment, bringing firewood from their forests and fish from their rivers and songs from their families.

In February 2017, Seattle became the first major city to divest from Wells Fargo due to its ties to DAPL. The Lummi Nations success in blocking the coal port at Cherry Point helped inspire leaders of the DAPL opposition. To raise awareness about proposed oil and coal projects on indigenous lands, the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation drove a 22-foot totem pole 5,000 miles through the U.S. and Canada in 2017, including a stop at Standing Rock.

Although the pipeline became operational in June 2017 after President Donald Trump signed an executive order for its approval, the fight for indigenous sovereignty and protection of lands and waters continues. Protesters remain active at Mauna Kea. In Tacoma, the Puyallup Tribe is leading resistance to proposed construction of a liquefied natural-gas facility on the waterfront.

Emergence: 2015

Significant local events: Several clashes between anti-fascists and the Proud Boys

When New York businessman and reality-TV star Donald Trump announced that he was running for president in 2015, few took it seriously. However, when Trump unfurled his campaign to Make America Great Again (MAGA) he tapped into a feeling among voters whod felt neglected and mischaracterized by mainstream media and disenfranchised by rural brain drain, demographic shifts and policies enacted under the Obama administration.

The Tea Party tapped into similar frustrations in the previous decade, and Trumps slogan hearkens back to Ronald Reagans 1980 presidential campaign that declared Lets make America great again. Like Reagans campaign, Trumps promises to be a president for the people came while the memory of economic insecurity during the Great Recession was still fresh, although unemployment decreased and the economy improved during Barack Obamas second presidential term. Still, many voters connected with Trumps promises to create jobs, cut taxes and build a wall to keep out immigrants.

Meanwhile, 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders campaign more closely resembled the populism of the 1890s advocating against corporate influence and for a more equitable society, a message that resonated with the Occupy movement and with many voters in Seattle.

The 2016 presidential election showed the deep divides that have grown within the electorate. Trump won the election, yet only 8% of Seattle voters backed him. While Trumps campaign message resonated with voters worried about jobs, it also attracted white supremacists and white nationalists. Counties that hosted Trump rallies saw a 226% increase in hate crimes, The Washington Post reported. Several white supremacists who committed deadly crimes this decade specifically declared support for Trump or used talking points from Trumps speeches.

However, Josh Peacock, a Washingtonian and member of a group that attends MAGA events, says the conservative movement disavows hate groups and is no longer just about MAGA or Trump. Were self-proclaimed patriots, he said, adding that the goal of his group, which he asked not be named, is to get the U.S. back to the constitutional republic that we are.

Trump was recently impeached by the House and faces trial in the Senate, but his campaign for reelection remains strongly supported with a new slogan: Keep America Great.

Emergence: 2017, online

Significant local events: Seattle Silence Breakers speak out about sexual harassment at Seattle City Light, 11 women accuse David Meinert of sexual assault including rape

In 2006, activist Tarana Burke created a Me Too Myspace page for women to share their experiences with sexual assault. With social media and celebrity power behind it, Burkes Me Too idea took off in 2017 after Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was accused of sexual assault by several women.

After the allegations, actress Alyssa Milano sent out a call on Twitter for sexual-assault survivors to tweet in solidarity; the hashtag #MeToo went viral. Catalyzing a global conversation, #MeToo emboldened survivors who had been silenced by fear or shame totell their stories.

In July 2018, five women accused Seattle nightlife entrepreneur David Meinert of sexual misconduct, including rape. A month later, six more women came forward. Meinert denied accusations of rape, only admitting to being handsy with women in the past. Some of the women who accused Meinert said the #MeToo movement inspired them to come forward.

By the end of 2018, The New York Times reported that 201 powerful men accused of sexual harassment had lost their jobs or major roles after survivors came forward, including Washington state representatives David Sawyer and Matt Manweller.

In the meantime, the Seattle Silence Breakers forged after a former Seattle City Light employee spoke out about sexual harassment in February 2018 continue to inspire and push for reform around sexual assault. Their work helped push the Seattle City Council to create an Office of Employee Ombud to support employees and oversee the citys handling of workplace misconduct.

Emergence: 2019

Significant local events: Gov. Jay Inslee runs for president on a campaign of climate change, the Lummi nation successfully blocks construction of the coal port at Cherry Point.

Scientists have shown that were already seeing the harmful effects of climate change, yet many government officials continue to deny climate change is happening at all.

Earlier this month, Time magazine named a teenage girl its Person of the Year: Greta Thunberg, 16, a Swedish environmental activist who skipped school to camp outside the Swedish Parliament to protest government officials inaction around climate change. Thunbergs one-person protest inspired a global climate strike that saw over 4 million people demonstrating to catalyze government action on climate change.

Although he has dropped out of the presidential race, Washington Gov. Jay Inslees presidential campaign was singularly focused on climate change. Back at home, citing the accelerating threat of climate change, Inslee recently pulled support for two Washington natural-gas projects.

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A look back at 10 of the biggest social movements of the 2010s, and how they shaped Seattle - Seattle Times