Enjoy our favorite lines from Loretta Ross’ groundbreaking new book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel, published Feb. 4. (Then read my book review!)
“With truth, history, evidence, and time on our side, we hold the winning hand despite our fears of powerlessness and failure.”
(p. 4)
“Calling in builds bridges instead of burning them down so that we might walk together along the path toward collective liberation.”
(p. 5)
“A call in is a call out done with love.”
(p. 26)
The purpose of calling in is to “create the conditions for differences of opinion to be heard, to allow facts to be ascertained, and to avoid ideological rigidity and political bullying.”
(p. 31)
“A call out culture makes our tribes smaller and more impotent. Loyalty to the tribe becomes more important than coexisting peacefully with others in a pluralistic system.”
(p. 48-49)
“We expect our allies to get everything right and to be perfectly aligned with our beliefs. But that’s just not realistic.”
(p. 49)
“We created a cult of unforgiveability. Instead, we need to learn the power of forgiveness.”
(p. 62)
“When we point out mistakes not to rectify them but to punish others, we seek to shame others, masking a power play as a virtue, as a form of moral grandstanding.”
(p. 64)
“Don’t use your knowledge as a weapon.”
(p. 68)
“Language policing is sometimes unintelligible, even to the people we are trying to support.”
(p. 68)
“Constructive kindness is more effective than destructive criticism.”
—Walter Rhein (p. 70)
“We let minor differences distract us from the fights that matter.”
(p. 79)
“We can be politically correct and stunningly ineffective at the same time, losing on policy while we believe we are winning on politics.”
(p. 81)
“I’m particularly concerned about the way leftists put each other down for not being ‘woke’ enough, as though this were an effective anti-racist practice. This virtue signaling is just another expression of white supremacy: blaming and shaming are central to that ideology’s goal of dividing people and preventing unity across difference.”
(p. 81)
“I’ve seen many great organizations break down because they were great at poking holes but bad at filling them.”
(p. 108)
“If you want to accomplish anything of import, you need a positive vision.”
(p. 108)
“Punishment and purges might feel righteous, but that impulse doesn’t accomplish anything meaningful or moral.”
(p. 113)
“This is what calling in seeks to achieve. We seek to replace shame and fear with a sense of joy and purpose. We seek not just to tell people what they can’t do, but to show them what they can be a part of. When it all comes together, the experience is genuinely thrilling. It’s a way of thinking brilliantly together about the possibilities of making a difference in the world.”
(p. 124)
“To prevail, we need to lead a revolution of moral renewal, a revolution that encompasses a vast range of people with a common vision.”
(p. 135)
“Anger will always have a purpose in fighting injustice. It can be fueling, even liberatory. … We shouldn’t be afraid of our anger, nor should we be chastened into silence when there are justified reasons for outrage. But anger can also build up, like a static charge, demanding to be released. If we don’t channel it to a fitting outlet, our anger will fry us from the inside, or surge without warning. Then, we strike out at the people closest at hand… Anger clouds my thinking and stops me from processing what’s going on… I’ve determined that I no longer want to be drive chiefly by anger.”
(p. 142-143)
“Always try to make decisions you can be proud of.”
(p. 144)
“Anyone working for change need to be able to channel charged emotions without being overcome by them. Let’s learn to be trauma-informed, not trauma-controlled.”
(p. 144)
“Our larger goal when calling in is to persuade people to *be* with us, not to *agree* with us.”
(p. 169)
“One of the underlying assumptions of a call out is that the damage has been done and nothing can fix it—which is why we sometimes seek to punish or cancel the perpetrator. But that’s zero-sum, prison industrial thinking. When we move to the restorative framework of calling, we can move beyond that.”
(p. 174)
“When we move from a call out culture to a calling culture, we seek to embrace our ability to hold power with one another, not over one another.”
(p. 190)