National Day of Silence

I absolutely love working for an organization that gives me free rein to do things like planning and executing events geared towards the LGBTQ+ community. This year in honor of the National Day of Silence my team and I are planning a Silent Disco Party.

The National Day of Silence is a day to highlight the erasure and silencing of LGBTQ individuals within our schools. This day is observed on the second Friday of April each year and will be observed on April 8, 2022. This is a movement against bullying and harassment of individuals that may identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.

Individuals that support this movement usually take a vow of silence for the day to represent how students who were a part of the LGBTQ+ community were silenced for many years.

When did the movement begin?

This movement began as a class project in 1966 by a student at the University of Virginia. It was a nonviolent protest that was created to shine a light on the situations that the LGBTQ+ community had to endure.

The student by the name of Maria Pulzetti felt that this day represented that a community was being silenced by their parents and ignored by the administration. This day is now being recognized in the United States across schools, colleges, and places of work.

Some ways this day is observed is with individuals sticking pieces of tape onto their mouths and marking their hands with the letter X.

How is my organization recogniing this day?

In honor of the National Day of Silence, my team and I, are planning an event for the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. The event is going to be a Silent Disco Party where a silent DJ will be performing. Everyone that comes to the event will get a set of wireless headphones.

The DJ will have several different stations or music playing on each headphone. Each station will have a different color in which the headphones would match to that. Everyone can tell what others are listening to when their headphone is shining the same color.

For instance, the headphone lighting up with blue could be hip-hop music while the one that is yellow could be electronic dance music.

National day of silence symbolism

Throughout the event, we plan to have a photo booth and tape available so everyone can take pictures. This tape would be put on community members' mouths in honor of the National Day of Silence. The photo booth will then print out individual pictures for each person on the spot. During the event, we will have food and a small resource fair that will display all the services that we offer as a whole organization.

I am very excited to put together this event for my community especially because this is the first of its type within my organization. The National Day of Silence is a day that we should recognize as a community and I am proud to be able to bring awareness around it.