Tomorrow, April 25th, 2008, is the National Day of Silence, which was started in 1996 by students at the University of Virginia, in response to a class assignment on non-violent protests. It has since become a day observed nationally in colleges and K-12 schools. For the complete history read at the above link. The idea is that GLBT students and friends take a vow of silence for a day to represent how GLBT youth (and people) are unfairly "silenced" - by bullying, name-calling, and more tragically by being killed or committing suicide - because of their sexual orientation. This year's National Day of Silence honors Lawrence King, an 8th grader in California who, on February 12th of this year, was shot and killed by one of his classmates, because he was gay.
I have thought about how I would be able to participate and what point I would be making. If I go in to work tomorrow, it would be extremely difficult to not talk and still be productive. If I stay home and work remotely, I wouldn't have to talk to anyone but I'd be "talking" over instant messenger to everyone, which wouldn't really make any point. I thought maybe I could just be silent "off the clock" but then I'd really only be making the point to my friends, who don't really need to have a point made to them. The silent protest is really designed to work best in a school/classroom type environment where you have mixed groups of people. So I guess my contribution to tomorrow is this blog entry, and hoping that the day of silence makes people think a little bit.
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