Environmental protestors struck a blow for clean air by asking others to drive their cars on “Honk If You Hate Smog Day.”
Internet radio stations struck a heavy blow to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) by broadcasting dead “air” (dead bandwidth, really). The stations are protesting a royalties hike that could effectively drive most Web stations out of business.
In other words, they gave the RIAA a preview of exactly what they want: Internet radio should either pay up or go away–not mad, just away.
This reminds me of a similar protest in the 1970s when women across the nation refused to collect paychecks to protest their income disparity with male coworkers. Instead, they stayed home and baked pies … scorn pies.
In the 1960s, African-Americans also drank from “blacks only” water fountains for a day to protest Jim Crow laws. That same decade also witnessed National Armed Forces Enlistment Day when all of the hippies signed up for infantry duty in Vietnam.
Long before that, teetotalers gave out free whiskey for a day in the 1920s, encouraging Irish and German immigrants to vote for candidates supporting Prohibition. They followed up with a similar event in the 1930s to prevent the repeal of the 18th Amendment.
Even Martin Luther used the same tactic when he encouraged Protestants everywhere to hold masses in Latin a day after posting his infamous theses.
So, of course, National Day of Silence is a good idea. Although, they ripped the name off from gay and lesbian equal rights organizations.