Participate in the day of silence

Worth doing, hands down.

silence is amazing
the whole idea of using silence to say something blows my mind
some people didn’t get it
and tried to trick me into talking
like i was on some bet
it was sad
but now i can really understand what people feel
im so glad i did this

Did it the last couple of years and it’s SO much fun!

Too bad I missed it this year :(

My girlfriend told me about this concept in 2004, and I missed the day (April 18th) twice in a row. This year I covered all the objects I use when I wake up (Razor, Shampoo, Dresser etc.) with sticky notes saying “SILENT!”, so that I wouldn’t forget.

This protest stirred up a lot of talk in our school, not about LGBT rights, but about the idea of silent protest itself. A large amount of people in my school refused to participate, or made fun of the participaters because they thought it was a really bad idea for a protest. That being silent, and meekly doing our normal chores didn’t tell anyone about our cause.

Their argument was that a protest should get in the way, and inform people of your cause and opinions. Our day of silence was did exactly the opposite, and was really badly set up.

But this protest stirred up a lot of talk in the school (funny it being a day of silence and all), since the protesters wouldn’t defend their ideas. All the kids who thought it was a bad idea spent the entire day talking about the protest. All teachers were informed to let their students get away with not talking, and so all 2000 so faculty members, and students were made aware of our protest. Pretty neat huh?

I had a few personal grudges against the way it was organized in our school. I wish the day before someone would have been handing out fliers telling everyone about the day so that those who have no social life and wanted to participate would know before hand. Next year I plan to do that (it’s not on my 43 though).

Protesters were handed a small card at the beginning of the day that we were to give to teachers and administration when they demanded we respond to them. The card had an explanation of our cause printed on it, and I felt it diminished a considerable amount from the controversy that would occur from students refusing to speak. Many students took these cards as a go ahead to write or use hand gestures to communicate, which also seemed to trivialize and diminish the protest. I refused to show these cards to my teachers (they knew anyway so it was easy), and threw mine out when it was handed to me. Mostly just because I didn’t like the poetic excuse the organizing teacher decided to write.

My biggest grudge with how our school handled the protest, and my only real grudge, was the time restriction the placed on it. Our school decided that the protest was to last from 8:15 to 2:55 (the time our school is officially in session), so before and after on April 18th we were allowed to talk. I personally didn’t but the entire concept infuriated me. The idea is to be silent for an entire day, and see how it effects those who are close to you. Most of these protesters families, and those they work with in extra-curricular activities, never learned about the day of silence because our school decided it was a school only protest.

It was a half-a-day of silence for Teaneck.
Just voicing my opinion hoping to influence next year.
Props to everyone who participated.

It was a long day, and I almost quit a few times as many were not supportive and I really wanted to stand up for myself, but couldn’t. Is this truly how they feel? I was helpless, and angry, but it was an amazing experience and I want to do it for many years to come.

I learned alot doing this, definatly doing it again next year!

Did it and it’s soooooo worth doing!

I was probably the only one that I knew that actually participated, but I got a lot of people to listen to what I had to “say” (I wrote notes to get my points across all day). It was also fun to use my little shell whistle to get people’s attentions.

It was kind of hard though not to talk for part of the day because my friend’s boyfriend broke up with her that day and it was hard not to verbally console her. But it turned out to be better this way anyway because she liked the funny faces I made at her.

I plan on doing it untill there is not one more homophobic person on this earth.

So in other words forever!

I plan on doing it again I just need to remember that it’s on April 26 this year!

Well just thought that I’d go ahead and post about this and try to raise just a little more awareness and tell people how I felt about it.

I’ve done the DOS for three years now and it’s always a great experience.

i organized day of silence at our school in union county (north carolina) and it was HARD. we didn’t have any help from the administration and we had a lot of negative energy thrown at us and there weren’t that many people participating but it was worth it. there was an amazing sense of togetherness with the few that participated, and a real feeling that i was doing something worthwhile that i haven’t experienced since.