Sit Down to Rise Up: Townhall Takeovers

Sit-ins (or die-ins) can be an easy way to get people to step towards escalated action and civil disobedience, without risking too much. Can you occupy your townhall, university, or key public space to highlight the problem and demand policy change?

When organising a sit-in (or a die-in), the most important thing is to choose your location carefully – it obviously has to have a meaning connected to your demand or your target, but it also has to be an iconic place – not too large (so that your group doesn’t look lost in the middle of a giant square) but not too small either (so that pictures can have some magnitude).

If you organize a die-in, you can draw the forms of the many bodies using white-chalk, so that something remains once you’re gone.

Protesters supporting an independent Tibet lie on the ground holding placards at the G20 leaders summit  in Brisbane in 2014. (Reuters / David Gray) © Reuters