How can someone legally block a road?

When a problem show up it's challenging thinking on original ways to attack it. Many times the best solution is elegant, simple and not distant from the problem, but our brains usually tend to ignore simple solutions while they are busy processing all kinds of complex possibilities.

Usually it takes just a small prospective tweak to reach the ahh! moment. An example of an extremely elegant solution came some years ago when I was studying at the university in Portugal. At that time students were preparing manifestations against the Education Minister which was making some polemic reforms.

The students gathered in front of the ministry to protest and they started by cutting one of the road in Lisbon where the ministry was located. Quickly the police arrive saying it was illegal to cut roads. The students didn't took long before reaching an elegant ahh! solution to the illegality of their behavior.


There was a zebra crossing in front of the ministery, so they made two very compact lines of students that would continuously cross the road in opposite directions on the zebra crossing. They were not doing anything illegal because they were just crossing the road. Maybe the Beatles' Abbey Road album served as inspiration to some cleaver mind.