Seeing and experiencing injustice can sometimes make us fearful, insecure, and hopeless, yet empower others to take action and stand up against injustice successfully to produce positive change. There are many ways to take take against injustice, including protest, sanctions, legislation, and other policy measures. Petitions, speeches, demonstration marches are non-violent methods of protest. Leaders whose goal is to initiate change faced various obstacles in their quest for reform. For people in American history, the struggle for justice included personal danger and drew upon a deep internal and personal conviction for the good of all. Social and human injustices continue to evolve today. While slavery had been abolished, injustices against African Americans still continue; however, the dreams and ideals of freedom and equality live. New eras of awareness are born in the effort to end discrimination. While women had gained the right to vote, other forms of inequality continue, for example income inequality. The pursuit for justice and freedom lay the groundwork for the life people live today. Students should reflect on their journey throughout the year and how they have grown and changed. Students should personally investigate their individual responsibility to help others within their community and beyond. Students should consider their role for raising awareness and creating change for issues they care passionately about. Encourage students to discuss other texts they have read or movies or television shows they have seen that deal with the struggle for change. Promote students’ discussion in this topic by raising thoughtful questions on current news. Students should discuss justice and equality. Use specific examples from today to make these needs real to students. Be sure to touch on times in the history of the United States when some or its entire people were not free. Talk about children, similar to our students’ and their siblings’ ages that live in poverty without access to food, shelter, clean water, and education. In English, Language Arts, students would learn about how authors and activities use a variety of techniques, tools, and rhetoric to appeal to their audience and cause change. Students will encounter selections that have people, both real and fictional, who are protesting various injustices. Consider what the selections show about the struggle for justice in the past and its relationship to our ideas of justice today.
