Sounds of Silence
“Make your voices heard!” can also be a metaphorical call to action. Some acts of social protest are silent acts or speak volumes in gestures alone. Some acts may be forms of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance that are not always viewed as social protest, but can be given the context in which the act was performed. Silent marches, sit-ins, kneeling, first raising, boycotts, symbols, and yes, even giving the Presidential motorcade the middle finger salute are forms of silent protest (1). In 1959, the Nashville Student Movement held lunch counter protests at downtown department store lunch counters to protest racial discrimination (2), and in 1965, 2SLGBTQIA+ communities held lunch counter protests to demonstrate against establishments who refused to serve anyone perceived as gay, transgender, or gender non-conforming (3).
Although a fictional account, female Suffragettes in British prisons did hold hunger strikes in their struggle to gain Votes for Women (4). Sports stars have long used their visibility to fight for social progress: Gold and bronze medal winners, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each raised a black-gloved fist during the playing of the U.S. national anthem at the 1968 Olympics (5), and NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, knelt during the national anthem as an act of protest for human rights, racial equality and against police brutality (6). Lastly, while we may not always think of mourning as an act of social protest, it can be. In Stuck Rubber Baby, thousands of people attend the funeral of black children killed by a bombing in an act of racial violence (7).
