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The Day of Silence is an annual event organized by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and is generally based in the United States. However, students at schools in other countries have caught onto this event as well. As far as we know, we’re the first school to have done it in Hong Kong.
Because the timing of our Easter break didn’t give us enough time to plan for the Day of Silence to be done the day set by the GLSEN, we did it a month later, on May 14. One hundred and thirty-two people clicked ‘Attending’ on the Facebook event, while 40 said ‘Maybe’. A good proportion of these signed up with us physically, which just means they got a rainbow ribbon to wear on the day. Unfortunately, some people had to go without, but they still participated.
As far as I know, nobody brought a camera to school that day, so the images of students and teachers all wearing ribbons on their wrists remain only in the memories of those who were there on the day. Hopefully we’ll remember to take photos next year!
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Today, nine Spectrum members (plus Issie D.) participated in Hong Kong’s second annual Pride Parade.
After sweating for over an hour in Southorn Playground in Wan Chai, during which time we all got to spend some time under a giant rainbow flag and hit around a giant pink balloon, we finally got moving towards Central. On the way, we issued enthusiastic greetings to people on footbridges, trams, buses, minibuses, taxis and private cars. The few negative responses we received were replied to with more and louder whoops, cheers and rainbow-flag-waving.
The amount of loot we’d accumulated by the end of the day was astounding. We started with just our personalized Spectrum T-shirts, and all ended up with at least one rainbow flag, a poster, freebies from the sponsors of the parade, brochures and condoms.
Photos:
Spectrum shirts!
This is what happens when the parade organizers make us wait.
Giant rainbow flag!
And the parade finally begins…
