Let us mark the end of a decade by remembering some who were lost.
Not celebrities, who were celebrated in life. Others, whose legacy may yet help us:
Dead. Victims of mass shootings, including 28 killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School (2012), 50 at the Pulse night club in Orlando (2016), 59 at a Las Vegas country music festival (2017), 17 at Stoneman Douglas High School (2018), and 22 at an El Paso Walmart (2019).
Persecuted and dead. The Rohingya of Myanmar. Their persecution, decades old, escalated in the 2010s, with rape, murder and other violence usually blamed on the Myanmar military. Some 740,000 fled the country in 2016 and 2017.
Forgotten. The hundreds, perhaps thousands, of immigrant children who will not be restored to their parents because of U.S. government deliberation, indifference and incompetence.
Ignored. The 2,911 residents of Puerto Rico whose deaths due to Hurricane Maria in 2017 were not officially acknowledged until a year later.
Extinct. The Bramble Cay melomys, a rodent in Australia, and the Alagoas Foliage-gleaner, a songbird in Brazil – declared extinct during the 2010s.
More on welcoming a new year
The news from 2023 that wasn’t
