While PN staff were in Paris for the climate protests, we were taught by Reclaim the Power how to make human blockades stronger. (The blockade was to protect the Red Lines action on D12.)
1. Everyone wears a backpack. TOP TIP: Reclaim the Power advised us to wear peaked caps so that we could duck our heads down to protect our eyes if the police walked along the line pepper-spraying our faces.
2. Everyone loosens their backpack straps.
3. The people standing next to you pass their arms through your straps (and you pass your arms through their straps, not shown in pic).
4. A close-up showing the other person’s arm going through the strap.
5. When all of you have passed your arms through each other’s straps, you link your hands in the normal way. Even if the police unlink your hands, the people next to you are holding onto your backpack straps, and you are still caught up in their backpack straps.
6. When you are all linked together, you can sit down for the blockade (sitting down takes practice, in fact, all of this takes practice). TOP TIPS: Before you sit down, it helps if you are next to people roughly the same size as you. It also really helps if you all start off standing close to the people next to you, pretty much hip to hip.
7. Everyone lifts their left leg and takes it over the right leg of the person next to them.