BLAZING TRAILS

12 April 20, 2016
WINDY CITY TIMES
20th Day of Silence
has thousands of
students taking action
By Gretchen Rachel Hammond
On April 15, 1996, Maria Pulzetti organized
150 of her fellow University of Virginia students
to take a stand against bullying and
harassment in a statement against those who
wished to marginalize LGBTQ individuals and so
mute their growing chorus of demands to be
recognized in a society who wished them to
silently disappear.
For Pulzetti and her classmates, the day rendered
society’s desire powerless through visible
solidarity around a brilliantly simple plan that
used silence as an emphatic voice.
Twenty years later and according to The
Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network
(GLSEN)—since 2001, the official organizational
sponsor of the Day of Silence—a worldwide
alliance of students from middle school
to college numbering in the hundreds of thousands
take part in a pledge to “be silent to
bring attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying
and harassment in schools.”
Organizations like the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) and Lambda Legal offer their
notable support to students who want to take
part.
The ACLU sends a letter to the principals and
superintendents of schools and school districts
across the nation alerting them to one
of the “largest annual student-led actions in
the country.”
It offers advice on how a participating student
who hands out “speaking cards” with
the reasons for their silence written on them
can still “meet their academic responsibilities
without speaking.”
“As evidenced by recent tragedies, awareness
of and attention to this issue is needed now
more than ever,” the ACLU writes. “Because
students who are targeted for anti-gay or antitransgender
bullying often do not identify as
LGBT, the Day of Silence represents a peaceful
protest of a problem that affects all students
no matter their sexual orientation or gender
identity.”
In case such appeals are met with disdain,
the ACLU goes on to note that “student speech
that promotes the fair and equal treatment of
LGBT people is constitutionally protected political
speech.”
Meanwhile Lambda Legal is on hand to inform
students about their right to participate
in the Day of Silence and the remedies available
to them if they meet with opposition from
teachers or principals.
“If a public school wants to restrict student
expression because it fears disruption, school
officials have to show facts that reasonably
lead them to believe that the speech will cause
a substantial disruption to the school,” Lambda
Legal notes. “A school can’t just assume
that the Day of Silence, or speech related to it,
will disrupt the school.”
While Lambda Legal and the ACLU offer both
legal rationale and remedies, GLSEN provides
the emotional cause.
Its 2016 video Whose Side Are You On opens
with a statement from vitriolic anti-LGBT radio
talk show host Linda Harvey. Her organization
Mission America has been designated by the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a hate
group.
There is a reason for that.
“The Day of Silence has become a central
showpiece in this homosexual agenda in our
schools,” Harvey states. “It encourages sympathy
for homosexuality which is wrong. They
claim that homosexuals have been routinely silenced
and victimized and don’t have a voice.”
While Harvey continues to fulminate in uniform
compliance of pharisaic interpretations
of Biblical precepts, GLSEN silently offers facts
interspersed with pictures of students each
expressing their unique and wholly individual
freedom to defy Harvey’s hatred of them.
“Four out of five LGBT students were bullied,
harassed or assaulted last year,” GLSEN notes.
“80 percent of transgender students don’t feel
safe at school. Many LGBT students say, when
they report bullying or assault, nothing is
done.”
The effects of such bullying are as indelible
as they are devastating.
In a Harris Poll released April 14, more than
half (52 percent) of all LGBT adults recalled being
bullied at school.
“Strikingly, by nearly two to one, 37 percent
of LGBT adults say they encountered cyber bullying,
when compared with 20 percent of all
adults,” the poll noted. “LGBT adults who have
experienced bullying also report higher than
average incidents of physical bullying. Threequarters
(75 percent) say they have experienced
physical harm when compared with 68
percent of all respondents.
In Illinois, organizations like the Illinois
Safe Schools Alliance have been fighting to
make sure something is done even if it is one
school district at a time. Alliance staff members
spent April 15 fanned out across the city
distributing Day of Silence kits put together by
the organization’s youth committee for school
Gay Straight Alliances (GSAs).
The youth committee also developed a curriculum
designed to spark ongoing discussions
“about bullying, harassment and the silencing
of our various identities.”
In Chicago, the Center on Halsted collaborated
with organizations like the Alliance in
order to conclude the Day of Silence with a traditional
Night of Noise. They opened up thirdfloor
lobby and Hoover-Leppen Theatre for an
evening of art, food, selfie opportunities and
an open mic. free-for-all of poetry, song and
declarations of individual empowerment.
Jezibel is a sophomore—part of a group of
students from Lake View High School who were
setting their artistic creativity towards a Day
of Silence poster.
“I know a lot of people who have been affected
negatively by not being able to talk out
about their sexuality and how they feel especially
to their families,” Jezibel told Windy City
Times. “So I have a personal connection with
the Day of Silence. It’s a very important day
because were supporting everyone who can’t
talk out about it.”
Princess Tiona was among the adults who had
come to express solidarity with the students.
“I care a great deal about children so I think
that it’s good that we’re trying to figure out
what we can do to better them,” Tiona said. “It
seems like they single the LGBT community out
for the most violent attacks. It just isn’t right.”
“This is a celebration of breaking the silence
and being proud and here as who you are,” Center
Youth Program Clinician Kim Vachon stated.
“The protest is important but the celebration
aspect is as well. It’s so poignant at this moment
to be visible so the world can feel that
statement that we are not hiding, ashamed or
silent.”
Princess Tiona (right) and friend at The Center of Halsted’s Night of Noise.
Photo by Gretchen Rachel Hammond
More Chicago
meningitis
cases reported
By Matt Simonette
Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH)
officials announced, on April 12, that two
more cases of meningococcal meningitis
have been identified in the Chicago area,
and are asking that gay and bisexual men get
vaccinated against the infection.
The two infected individuals were linked to
the same serogroup that infected seven other
people between May and July of last year.
One of those seven individuals died from the
infection. In all nine cases, the patients were
men who have sex with men (MSM). The 2015
episodes sparked an aggressive push from
CDPH to get Chicago gay and bisexual men
vaccinated.
African-Americans, MSM and HIV-positive
MSM are most disproportionately affected
by this current outbreak, said CDPH Commissioner
Julie Morita, MD, in a press conference.
“All gay and bisexual men in Chicago
should get vaccinated if they have not received
a vaccine in the past five years,” she
added. MSM with HIV should get two doses,
spaced about eight weeks apart, in order for
the vaccine to work most effectively.
“In general, this infection can affect people
of any type, not just gay and bisexual
men,” Morita said. “[But] this particular outbreak
is affecting disproportionately African-
American, gay and bisexual men, and [MSM]
with HIV. This disease is transmitted through
saliva, so sharing glasses, cigarettes, kissing—those
types of interactions increase the
opportunity for spreading it.”
Howard Brown Health President/CEO David
Munar said, “This is a very important call to
action right now, in the spring, as we head
into a very busy summer season, where Chicagoans
turn out for festivals. There are
many events where individuals are going to
be in close proximity, including Pride and
other summer festivals.”
Low- and no-cost vaccination locations
are listed on CDPH’s website at http://bit.
ly/1Jr8C9M.
HIV-to-HIV organ
transplants
performed
In what some have called a groundbreaking
development, Johns Hopkins University
surgeons performed liver and kidney transplants
from an HIV-positive donor to HIVpositive
recipients.
The HIV Organ Policy Equity Act—which
President Obama signed into law in 2013—
allows HIV-positive donors to donate organs
to patients infected with the AIDS-causing
virus, Dr. Dorry Segev said. Segev—a professor
of surgery and director of the epidemiology
research group in organ transplantation—added
that until the law was changed,
thousands of HIV-positive patients risked
death by waiting for donated organs.
HIV-positive patients can opt to accept an
organ from a non-HIV-infected donor, potentially
cutting their waiting time for a transplant,
said Dr. Christine Durand, an assistant
professor of medicine and oncology at Hopkins.
Durand also said that organ transplants
involving seropositive individuals carries
risks such as the possibility that the donor
has drug-resistant HIV.
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