By Camille Aubin
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We wished a Happy New Year, virtually, to our beloved ones. We had read and heard repeatedly that 2020 was behind us, it was over, and brighter days were ahead. We dreamed about it with all our hearts, hoping it was true. Some of us held out hope that 2021 everything would be back to normal, or at least something more normal than the rough year, a strange year that 2020 was. No such luck: six days into 2021, and voilà the U.S. Capitol was being stormed by Trump supporters. The images went around the world, causing outrage among many leaders in many countries.

Protestors forced their way into the U.S. Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 6, hoping to prevent the certification of the 2020 election, and with it, avoid the end of Trump’s presidency.

Bang! The U.S. Capitol event brought several themes that marked 2020, ones we had hoped gone, back right in our faces, just like a boomerang.

Black Lives Matter supporters said that it would have been a totally different response from the police if the protestors were black. “Comparing Wednesday’s events to the case of Miriam Carey makes this abundantly clear. In 2013, Carey, a Black woman, drove into a barrier near the Capitol building. Capitol police opened fire and shot at her 18 times. She was struck five times from behind and killed,” wrote Sandy Hudson, founder of Black Lives Matter in Toronto.

Social media’s role in our lives and in our society was also a big topic in 2020. With the release of The Social Dilemma documentary, many people have taken a step back from their favourite platforms while rethinking their use. The phenomenon of fake news got even worse in 2020, and new specialist role were created by many social media platforms to handle the deluge of misinformation. And then, after originally planning to block President Donald Trump from posting to his Facebook and Instagram accounts for 24 hours, Facebook chief Executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said, after the event at the Capitol, that the blocks would be extended indefinitely. The decision attracted a thunderbolt of different opinions. Should social networks have the right or not to determine what can be said and by whom?

Just six days into 2021, the same debates and the exact same questions that bedevilled much of 2020 have resurfaced, forcing us to consider a world where words and actions filled with hatred and violence have too much of an impact. We shouldn’t wish to go back to normal: the ‘old normal’ was filled with unresolved situations, as the event at the Capitol showed us. Instead, we should look ahead and try to face our struggles and problems with peaceful solutions and a spirit of open-mindedness, all together. Call it our 2021 resolution.