Maria Pulzetti said many folks will tell her that their first exposure to LGBTQ+ activism was in middle school or high school, through the national youth movement known as Day of Silence. However, these same folks do not realize a key detail about the annual event until Pulzetti informs them.

“They’re always very surprised that it’s connected to me,” she said.

Pulzetti co-founded the event while she was a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) in 1996, and now works as the Student Rabbi at the Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia.

Day of Silence is a national youth movement protesting the marginalization of the LGBTQ+ community. Across the country, LGBTQ+ and ally students take a daylong vow of silence to symbolically represent the silence they face as a result of bullying and

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