Radical activism

Why become an activist? And what drives some activists to use methods and forms of action that break the law, are violent or go directly against the orders of the authorities? In other words, taking action in ways that challenge, criticize and question the way our democracy is set up.

These are the main questions in this material, where students will work with activist and democratic issues and dilemmas that can help challenge their understanding of democratic action, but at the same time strengthen their level of reflection on basic democratic issues.

Use of memories

The material addresses these fundamental questions in six didactized memoir source packs with tasks and questions for students to work with. Each source pack is built around audio clips of an activist’s memories and additional sources of activism they have been a part of. The memoirs are about activism against the Vietnam War, the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the World Bank in the 1960s to 1980s.

You’ll find a general teacher’s guide as well as teacher guides for each material, links to the source pack pages and an introductory movie below.

To make the assignments clearer for students, excerpts have been used in the source packages instead of full sources if the source was long or difficult to read.

Below are these sources in full version.