Blueprint for Revolution: how to use rice pudding, Lego men, and other non-violent techniques to galvanise communities, overthrow dictators, or simply change the world

by Srdja Popovic

But people who lived in Pinochet’s Chile during the 1970s were plucked off the street and thrown into secret jails just like in Egypt. And instead of trying to swarm the streets, they started encouraging taxis to drive at half speed. Just imagine, I told the young woman, that you wake up in Santiago and go to the store to buy some empanadas, and suddenly you see that all the taxis are moving in slow motion. Then imagine that spreading—imagine every car, bus, and truck driving at ten miles an hour as well, clearly stating their drivers’ displeasure with the regime. Within a matter of days, people are walking at half their normal pace down the sidewalks. The city barely moves. Before all this happened, I told the Egyptian woman, people were afraid to talk openly about despising Pinochet, so if you hated the dictator, you might have imagined that you were the only one. Watching the slow drivers and walkers, however, and understanding their actions to be a subtle protest against the regime, you could be certain that everyone hated the tyrant. Tactics like these, Chileans used to say, made people realize that “we are the many and they are the few.” And the beauty was that there was no risk involved: not even in North Korea was it illegal for cars to drive slowly.