Silence itself acted as a turning point in the 1934 general strike

Evidence

Friends and family held a small, somber memorial the next day. But as they proceeded down Market Street, they were unexpectedly joined by thousands of strikers, sympathizers, and spectators who silently marched alongside them. In his history of the strike, David Selvin writes that papers afterward struggled to describe the magnitude and silence of the event. “Here they came as far as you could see in a silent, orderly line of march,” wrote the Chronicle’s Royce Brier, “a mass demonstration of protest which transcended anything of the like San Francisco has ever seen.” Tillie Olsen imagined the shock the Industrial Association must be experiencing: “[W]here did the people come from, where was San Francisco hiding them, in what factories, what docks, what are they doing there, marching, or standing and watching, not saying anything, just watching.” — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 294

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the reader’s running theme on silence as a positive political presence rather than withdrawal.
• ADDENDUM: Supports the silence-as-positive-presence thread from One Square Inch of Silence with a concrete instance of mass silent refusal.