Silent mass marches can catalyze general strikes

Evidence

The haunting image proved to be a turning point. Selvin writes that while talk had circulated about a general strike, “this grim, silent parade made it inevitable.” In the coming days, one hundred and fifty thousand people around the Bay walked off the job. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 295

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Silence as a positive political force — a coordinated refusal of speech — gains narrative weight here; ties to reader’s larger theme of silence as presence rather than absence.