A first quarter of confusion, a second quarter of mayhem; the 2020 half-time report

BY JANIECE CAMPBELL

It’s finally June! The time to put away those parkas and pull out those shorts! The days are longer, the burgers are on the grill, and everything is great again… right?

We made it halfway through 2020, the beginning of what was supposed to be a new decade filled with hope and prosperity. Well, so much for that.

Has anybody else been pinching themselves? Because, 2020 feels like a fever dream.

One thing can be said: this year has been full of surprises. Can you believe that in just six months, the entire planet has been nothing but chaos, death and destruction? Let’s recap some major events together:

As we entered January, the New Year’s confetti barely touched the floor before the US led airstrikes, killing Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani and simultaneously igniting fears of World War 3. A few days later, the World Health Organization (WHO) was notified about the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, which subsequently led to the city’s lockdown, but we’ll come back to that later. As if all of that wasn’t enough, as the month came to a close, the world was at a standstill following the untimely loss of beloved NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his 13-year old daughter Gianna and seven others in a horrid helicopter accident.

In February, after President Donald Trump became the third president to be impeached, he made history by also becoming the third president to be acquitted by the Senate. At this point, the coronavirus was officially named COVID-19 by the WHO. Again, we’ll get to this one soon. We finished off the month with somewhat of a long-awaited win; Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of two of five criminal sex charges, leading to a 23-year prison sentence.

With all of the shock that the first two months brought in, March and April sort of blurrily blended together. These two months were when things got unbelievably real. COVID-19 was officially declared as a pandemic as it unapologetically took a bite into the world. The terms “lockdown”, “quarantine”, “state of emergency” and “social/physical distancing” flooded every media outlet and entered into everyday vocabulary. With Italy being the first country to begin nationwide border closures, many countries soon followed. Through the disarray came a huge revelation to many: the importance and appreciation for the essential worker.

May was the month of uprising unrest. A pivotal time that will go down in history, this month made a global pandemic seem miniscule. The video of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man who was pursued by three white men and fatally shot while jogging, went viral on social media. As the injustice sparked outrage, it wasn’t long until another unfortunate senseless killing of another black person by the hands of police occurred – George Floyd. And then another in our own Torontonian backyard, Regis Korchinski-Paquet. May was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Thousands of people have taken to the streets worldwide, rioting and protesting the police irrationally murdering unarmed black people and demanding justice in the form of law reformation.

And now we’re in June. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m sure we all have one unanimous feeling. We are tired.

So, what can we expect from the rest of the year? As the days pass, it seems to get more and more unpredictable.

One positive outcome of the rage is the growth of social media activism. In the majority of the events this year, apps like Twitter and Instagram were major information outlets, often unveiling what isn’t broadcast on television. With amazingly rapid access to a plethora of petitions and donation sites, social media is definitively becoming a resource in the fight for change.

Within the first few days of the madness, many on social media deemed 2020 as “cancelled.”

Amid all the disorder, a poem written by Leslie Dwight that has gone viral addresses this thought.

“What if 2020 isn’t cancelled? What if 2020 is the year we’ve been waiting for? A year so uncomfortable, so painful, so scary, so raw — that it finally forces us to grow. A year that screams so loud, finally awakening us from our ignorant slumber. A year we finally accept the need for change. Declare change. Work for change. Become the change. A year we finally band together, instead of pushing each other further apart. 2020 isn’t cancelled, but rather the most important year of them all.”