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I was walking through the square, and I came upon a group of people all lying on the ground. Each had a printout on their chest with a political message, and nobody was moving.

Photo of many people lying on their backs on a flat concrete expanse

What word or phrase could best be used to describe a group of people who lie down in a public place in order to send a political message?

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    This looks like a "lie-in" protest demonstration - sometimes also called a "die-in". The protestors lie down in an area, representing dead people, sometimes having signs or banners on their bodies, as your picture appears to show. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die-in – Kristina Lopez Jul 25 '14 at 18:48
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    fainting by numbers – Edwin Ashworth Jul 25 '14 at 19:06
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    Looks like this might be a flash mob. – Lumberjack Jul 25 '14 at 20:30
  • Everybody do the flop. – Adam Davis Aug 1 '14 at 20:54
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    Protesters or not, it's hard to describe them as "activists." – Sven Yargs Aug 6 '14 at 19:30
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Answered very nicely by Kristina Lopez in a comment:

This looks like a "lie-in" protest demonstration - sometimes also called a "die-in". The protestors lie down in an area, representing dead people, sometimes having signs or banners on their bodies, as your picture appears to show. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die-in
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    Really though, the question asks what do you call the group of people. The people are participating in a lie-in but the people are called protesters. But of course protesters is not sufficiently distinct to describe only lie-in protesters – Jim Aug 2 '14 at 1:33
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    So, lie-in protesters it is then. Not be be confused with lyin' protesters. – Mr Lister Aug 7 '14 at 13:01
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    You can also call them demonstrators. I like it better because they're not necessarily against something. They might be demonstrating for something. – aparente001 Nov 24 '16 at 20:17
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From Oxford Dictionaries the following definitions of satyagrahi and satyagraha :

satyagrahi

NOUN

A person who practises the policy of satyagraha: ‘as a satyagrahi, suffering in the path of freedom and justice was part of his creed’

satyagraha
NOUN

[mass noun] A policy of passive political resistance, especially that advocated by Mahatma Gandhi against British rule in India.

  • ‘This is where Gandhi developed his concept of satyagraha, translated in the west as passive resistance that, in the end, influenced the whole of the colonial world.’

Origin
Sanskrit, from satya truth + āgraha obstinacy.m

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If you are looking for the commonly used contemporary terminology, it seems to me that your inquiry has been answered. So I feel you may be searching for a new phrase that is a nuanced descriptive of a "lie-in" or "die-in" (as suggested in your title, "describing a group of people...")

One could riff on the old by creating something new:

"vie-in":

Vie, as in:

battle

Battle, as in:

to try to overcome; struggle against or contend with

The demonstrators are vying to overcome some perceived injustice, vying in a struggle for a voice, vying as an act of contention against powers whose eyes and ears are closed to their needs or opinions or rights. They are vying with the words affixed to their very bodies, with their bodies affixed to the very ground, as an expression of the power that a dead body holds ubiquitously, as a spector which must be seen, acknowledged, respected, and responded to. So that their voices may be seen, acknowledged, respected and responded to.

References:

Thesaurus.com

YourDictionary.com

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