An essential requirement for supporting the activist literacies of adolescents is a critical understanding of the purposes, practices and roles of engaged citizens and of the linguistic and broader semiotic resources they deploy in response to their multi-layered contexts. Drawing on theories from social semiotic and rhetorical traditions as well as socio-culturally informed genre-based pedagogies, I discuss how teachers and adolescent learners have developed their knowledge of rhetoric and grammar from a close study of the texts of adolescent activists to inform their own activist literacies. (Contains 3 figures.)