Silent Protest

On Tuesday I participated in the Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity. All day I received nothing but positive feedback on my choice to stay silent for those who would never have a voice. High fives in the halls, comments about how people were proud of the choice that I was making. All positive. Until the very end of the day, where I came into class and I was told by a boy that "you people" were "stealing" the silent protest idea from the gays. I started to formulate a response and, being unable to say it out loud, grabbed my notebook to write it down. However, by the time that I started writing, I realized that he'd already walked away. I wasn't angry or anything about what he said. As a matter of fact, he's a kid that I respect quite a lot. He has a lot of good points to make about the world. Even if we don't agree on everything, I think he's a great person. I decided that I'd write a post about silent protests so that I could get my points out about silent protests and why they don't just belong to homosexuals.


Various forms of protest have been used to get people's points across for centuries. People work to find effective ways to change the world around them. Silent protests have been one of the ways that people have found as useful in displaying their ideas and beliefs in a nonviolent way. My friend seems to be misinformed when he says that the silent protest idea was stolen from homosexual people. Silent protests were used long before the gays started their Day of Silence in protest of the bullying and mistreatment of gay/lesbians/transgenders. As a matter of fact, the silent protest has been used for at least one hundred years. In example, it was used by the NAACP in 1917 to protest about black massacres and lynchings (http://www2.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Harlem/text/silentprotest.html). More recently, silent protests have been used by colleges against the Communications Decency Act (http://scripting.com/twentyFour/silentProtest.html). Another use of silent protest by colleges was to show discontent with the government's plans to "introduce higher tuition fees, cut state funding of higher education by tens of millions of pounds, and promote the 'marketisation' of universities." Silent protests have been used by different groups for different causes for quite a long time. One group using the silent protest technique does not give the the "sole rights" to use a silent protest. As a girlfriend of mine pointed out, "silent protests are just like the silent treatment! We've been using silent protest since we were little. Nobody has the 'rights' to it."
I would like to thank my friend for bringing up the gay silent protest. I like having the chance to stand up for my beliefs and share them with those around me. I guess I'd just like to point out that before you put somebody down for doing something, do your research to make sure what you're saying is right.