The Day of Silence Entries
For the past 3 years, I've been the president of my school's GLBTQA group, and I brought The Day of Silence memorial to our campus for the first time ever as it is a day that has always touched me very deeply and I believe breaks ground for an opportunity to spread a real impact.
For those of you who do not know, The Day of Silence is an annual nationwide student project sponsored by GLSEN that takes place mainly in schools across America. The Day of Silence is a day-long silent vow in memory of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons whose voices have been silenced by hatred and violence. Two of the project's biggest summarizing taglines are: "Think about the voices you are not hearing today" and "What are you going to do to end the silence?"
At my school, I distribute fliers around campus with faces of different slain GLBT people consuming most of an 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper followed by a sentence of what happened to them (Ex: Matthew Shepard was murdered at age 21 because he was gay) and then a blurb about The Day of Silence.
We also do a silent candlelight vigil at night and then "break the silence" by sharing stories, thoughts, and messages of hope. Aside from the vigil, we sponsor the day by wearing black and "stop the hate" wristbands to provide alternatives for those who are not willing or able to remain silent all day.
All of this acts as a solemn, yet necessary, reminder of the power that hatred and fear can carry if we choose not to challenge and stop it to the best of our abilities. At this time of year particularly, I reflect on those GLBT persons and have chosen to pay homage to them with a journal entry memorial to several whose stories have especially impacted me.
As far as the actual day goes, I strongly encourage everyone who believes in this cause to participate. It is definitely a sense of being involved in something great and important, and even if there is not an organized project where you are, you can still participate (or start your own like I did)
http://www.dayofsilence.org/index.cfm
What are you going to do to end the silence?