2020 In Review: Five More People Who Got Us Through This Awful Year

Next in a weekly series until this monstrosity of a year is finally over.

This year has been awful: You don’t need me to tell you that. But to try to accentuate the positive of this year, if that’s even possible, every Friday until the end of the year I’ll shout out five people who got us through this wretched year. (Here is last week’s.) These people may work in politics, or entertainment, or the arts, or any field in America or around the world. All that matters is that their contributions to the world in 2020 made it a little easier for the rest of us to make it through.

Also, send me your recommendations and nominees at williamfleitch@yahoo.com or in the Responses to this piece. Who has gotten you through this year?

Stacey Abrams

The state of Georgia has been at the center of the political world all year, and it’s going to be even more so in 2021. Abrams, who famously just lost her gubernatorial race against Brian Kemp in 2020, picked herself up and started Fair Fight, a voter registration juggernaut that may just have turned Georgia blue and given Joe Biden the state. There’s another big test next month, but if Abrams and Fair Fight can somehow give the Senate back to the Dems, she’ll be an even bigger hero in her party than she already is. On deck? A rematch with Kemp in 2022. This is just getting started.

Bob Dylan

Dylan’s going to be 80 in May, but that’s no big deal: Have you seen how old Congress is? (How old the White House is?) He’s still, somehow, everywhere, releasing his first album of new material in eight years with the terrific Rough and Rowdy Ways and then shaking up the music industry by selling his entire catalog for $300 million. The only downside for Dylan: His infamous “Never Ending Tour” had to pause for Covid-19. But the second anyone can get back out there, you know that Dylan…