# Hong Kong Protest Tactics How the 2019 Hong Kong protesters organised without official leaders, using online forums, chat groups, shared roles, and hand signals to pass gear forward\. By Valentin Mermet\-Bouvier Topic: Society & Business [Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/KrHUpC3ZCsOn) ## Transcript ### 1. Summer 2019 in Hong Kong In 2019, huge crowds in Hong Kong marched against a proposed law that would have let people be sent to mainland China for trial\. The protests grew into a movement that lasted about a year\. Drag the street to look around\. 16 June 2019: organisers counted about 2 million marchers; police counted 338,000\. Crowd counts often differ\. ### 2. Be water Borrowing words from Bruce Lee, protesters said: be water\. In the 2014 Umbrella Movement, people camped on the same streets for weeks\. In 2019, groups gathered quickly, flowed away, and reappeared somewhere else\. Lennon Walls of sticky notes, like the one behind the crowd, popped up across the city in the same spirit\. ### 3. No leaders, many phones There was no official leader to follow or arrest\. Anyone could post an idea on a forum called LIHKG, where upvotes chose the plans\. Telegram chat groups ran quick polls, and AirDrop passed posters from phone to phone, even without the internet\. The largest Telegram groups had tens of thousands of members\. ### 4. Everyone has a job Most people simply marched\. Near the front, volunteers took on roles: front\-liners with umbrellas and hard hats, lookouts, first\-aiders, supply crews, and smoke teams\. A smoke team covered tear gas canisters with traffic cones and poured water in to smother them\. First\-aiders carried gloves, saline water for rinsing eyes, gauze and scissors\. ### 5. Pass it forward When the front ran short of something, a person made a hand sign\. Arms circling the head meant helmets; two fingers snipping meant scissors\. The sign was copied back through the crowd, and the item travelled forward hand to hand\. Reporters described supply chains of people stretching up to about a kilometre\. ### 6. Umbrellas and gear Umbrellas, the symbol of the 2014 protests, became shields against pepper spray and hid faces from cameras\. A shout of "It's raining\!" called more umbrellas forward\. Front\-liners also wore hard hats, goggles and masks against tear gas\. ### 7. Moving with care A packed crowd can still move safely when people cooperate\. Crowds were filmed parting in seconds to let an ambulance through\. In narrow streets, people chanted "one, two, one, two" and walked in step so nobody was pushed or crushed\. ### 8. The Hong Kong Way On the evening of 23 August 2019, people lined the pavements holding hands, forming a human chain about 50 kilometres long beside three metro lines\. Organisers counted about 210,000 people\. The idea was posted online just four days earlier\. It copied the Baltic Way of 1989, when about 2 million people joined hands across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania\. ### 9. Ideas from around the world Peaceful protests everywhere borrow simple ideas that anyone can join: candlelight vigils, sit\-ins, banging pots and pans, and human chains\. Protest field guides add a few rules: know your goal, bring a buddy, plan your way home, and walk, don't run\. Sit\-ins: in 1960, four students sat at a whites\-only lunch counter in Greensboro, USA\. Vigils: South Korea's 2016–17 candlelight protests drew crowds for weeks\.