This is the weekly column written by Blavity:Politics Senior Editor Kandist Mallett.
It's hard to sum up a decade in one article, especially the enormity of the 2010s. As someone who comes from an activist background, to me, social movements have always been at the heart of American politics and societal change.
Of course, these aren't the only important events that took place this decade, but these are definitely some that helped define our culture in the past 10 years.
2011 – The Occupy Wall Street movement created awareness surrounding income inequality.
The Occupy Wall Street movement deserves to be mentioned because it changed the dialogue around income inequality, not only on a national level but globally, as well. When Adbusters made the call for people to join in protest at Zuccotti Park on September 17, 2011, the message was to gather the 99% to speak out during a time when those in the U.S. House of Representatives were debating about debt ceilings and austerity.
The movement spread throughout the nation and, eventually, the world, with other local Occupy protests being formed. There was even an Occupy Nigeria, which focused on the economic and environmental injustices taking place by Shell corporation.
What Occupy domestically failed to deal with was the intersection of race and gender and how that challenged the idea of solidarity within the 99%. In the end, the movement was undone by police brutality, political repression and white liberal exceptionalism that failed to take a broader view of social justice into account.
2012 – The death of Trayvon Martin shook us to the core.
On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Miami Gardens, Florida. His death sparked a new wave of conversation surrounding race, particularly between Black and white people. Martin's death took place during then-President Obama’s last term in office and was a reminder that having a Black president doesn’t mean a damn thing in a country that is still institutionally overrun by white supremacy.
More than a year later, Zimmerman was acquitted. This startling, yet unsurprising verdict sparked nationwide protests, with Black youth taking to the streets demanding justice but knowing that, in reality, it’s just us.
The death of a 17-year-old who was wearing a hooded sweatshirt drove conversations that challenged our communities internally. The respectability politics that older generations of Black people used to police our youth was the same rhetoric being used to justify a child’s murder. Organizations, like the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, were created, and Black celebs participated in a Hoodies Up day of action five years after Martin's death to signify the seemingly obvious notion that being Black and wearing a hoodie does not mean you deserve to die.
2014 – The Ferguson Uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement changed the face of our culture.
The documented public killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, kick-started a national conversation about police brutality. The community unrest and the police repression that followed inspired people around the world to join the Black community in solidarity.
The Ferguson protesters were the catalyst for the next few years of Black protests that took place, now commonly referred to by the media as the Black Lives Matter movement. There were casualties from this movement, such as Josh Williams, who spent a month protesting in Ferguson and was sentenced to eight years in a prison near St. Louis after being convicted of arson. Six Ferguson protesters have since died, including Darren Seals, the subject of an iconic picture featuring him hurling a tear gas canister to protect children in the vicinity. It is because of these people and the emotion emanating from this era that it’s important to single out Ferguson as a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement as we know it today.
2014 – The Flint water crisis ignited a conversation about environmental racism.
The Flint, Michigan, water crisis, which is still taking place by the way, played an important role in showing how environmental issues are not just a “white issue.” This crisis has been an obvious case of environmental racism, but despite this, nothing fundamentally has been done to ensure that the people of Flint have clean, drinkable water.
Young activists, like Mari Copeny, have helped disprove the myth that young Black folks don’t care about the environment as much as their non-Black peers. While Flint is not the only Black community that has unsafe water, it helped set off discussions amongst the Black community about the importance of environmental safety and how it is connected to health.
2014 – The #FreeCece Movement gained national attention.
On January 13, 2014, Cece McDonald was released from prison after serving 19 months at a correctional facility in Minnesota. McDonald was charged with manslaughter for defending herself against attackers who were spewing racist and transphobic language at her and her friends. With the work of activists and famous supporters like Laverne Cox, McDonald was released after serving 2/3 of her 41-month sentence.
Her sentencing brought national attention to both the violence that trans women face and the inadequacies in the justice department to recognize the need for trans women to defend themselves.
Laverne Cox produced a documentary about McDonald’s story, which was released two years after she landed a Time magazine cover titled, “The Trans Tipping Point.” In the 2010s, the conversation around gender significantly expanded. In 2019, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary named the word “they” as its Word of the Year. While visibility from shows, like Orange Is the New Black and Pose have helped shift the broader conversation, horrific violence continues to occur against trans women, specifically Black trans women. This year alone at least 22 trans women have been killed.
2015 – It was time to #SayHerName.
The phrase #SayHerName was started by the African American Policy Forum following the death of Sandra Bland. Bland was a 28-year-old Black woman who was arrested by a Texas state trooper and was later found dead in her cell, according to Walter County police. Bland filmed her interaction with the police officer, and the dashboard camera video from the police car also uncovered the disturbing encounter. An official autopsy found that she hanged herself.
The death of Bland challenged the idea that police brutality was something that only Black men were forced to deal with. With the #SayHerName movement, stories of other Black women and girls who were killed by police were brought into the public conversation. Although other movements have attempted to co-opt the #SayHerName hashtag, it still, to this day, remains something that is used to highlight the violence that is occurring to Black women by the hands of the state.
2016 – Trump won the 2016 presidential election.
The 2016 election of Trump, in which 13% of Black men voted for him, was a large shift from the American norm of politics. His presidency has ushered in blatant white supremacy, xenophobia and, according to the impeachment hearings, corruption to the White House.
His attack on immigrants with executive orders, like the Muslim Ban, which prompted protests in airports across the country, or his child separation policy that will continue to have ill effects even if he’s not re-elected in 2020, has caused a troubling divide among Americans. Looking at the Tijuana border, we can see how his border policy has impacted Black migrants, like those from Haiti. In the last few weeks of December 2019, several Black migrants have died under ICE custody, one Nigerian and one Congolese.
Trump has taken an already broken immigration system and somehow made it even worse.
It will take decades of progressive policies and leadership to undo the wrong that has been done by his administration.
2006, 2017 – Women around the world found out they weren't the only ones, and the #MeToo movement took over.
In 2006, sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke started the #MeToo movement on Myspace while sharing her story. It didn’t become a worldwide hashtag then, but in 2017, actress Alyssa Milano used the phrase to comment on the allegations of sexual violence against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Since the Weinstein incident, the conversation about sexual harassment, violence, abuse and domination in both public and private spaces has spread across industries, taking down powerful men in its wake.
As we head into the next decade, these impactful moments and social justice movements will be the foundation that the next generation of activists can build upon to improve our society and world.
