Columnist Carrie N. Baker: How to model the world we desire

Carrie N. Baker
Published: 01-23-2025 8:04 AM |
Intense political polarization in contemporary American society shapes not only national politics, but local politics as well. It’s happening across partisan boundaries, but also within the left as well as the right. Some people appear to have lost the capacity to disagree without demonizing one another, calling each other names, assuming bad intentions and engaging in character assassination. Examples abound, such as recent personal attacks on social media against Northampton’s mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra; attacks on Amherst school board members that resulted in multiple resignations in 2023; student protesters’ treatment of Smith College’s new president last year; and call outs that led to the cancelation of the 2021 Western Massachusetts Visual Arts and Poetry Biennial.
Within the women’s movement, personal attacks have driven out many strong leaders, leaving key movement organizations decapitated and increasingly ineffective at critical junctures. Some have closed down and others are shells of their former selves. In the 1970s, feminist Jo Freeman called this kind of behavior “trashing,” which she described as “the dark side of sisterhood.” Former NOW president Ellie Smeal called it “a circular firing squad.” Calling out and canceling are common in an “us versus them” battle for dominance. The movement that was meant to liberate us has, at times, confined us. As a result, many allies have disengaged from the movement and good people are hesitant to take on leadership roles for fear of being attacked for not measuring up to the constantly shifting standards of ideological purity.
So, I was thrilled to read Smith College professor Loretta Ross’s new book, “Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel” (Simon & Schuster, due out Feb. 4). Drawing on over 40 years of experience as a feminist activist, Professor Ross offers hope for how we can learn to communicate and work together across our differences of identity, political opinion and priorities. Beautifully written and engaging, Calling In is a guide to “compassionate politics”— an antidote to the infighting and cruelty in politics today.
Calling In is part activist memoir, part how-to guide and part strategic plan for growing the human rights movement. Ross says that as a Black woman in white America, she’s had little trust or patience for many people. She’s often reacted to others with fear or domination when they’ve said things she’s disagreed with or that offended her. This pattern tore apart personal relationships and movement spaces she was in. So she eventually sought a pathway for growing relationships rather than ending them over differences or conflict.
Ross locates the origins of much calling out and canceling in personal trauma. She explains that people who regularly engage in call outs are operating out of their own trauma. She argues that we have to start with ourselves, heal our trauma, let go of hate and lead with love. Ross argues that we need to work for change by channeling charged emotions without being overcome by them — to be trauma informed, not trauma controlled.
Ross defines a call in as a call out done with love — a response based in love instead of anger, that respects the human rights of others. Ross explains her five steps of calling in: 1) assess whether you have the energy and desire to call in, 2) calibrate the conflict by determining whether the harm was intentional or not, 3) ask open-ended questions to start the conversation, 4) accept the other person’s reactions by listening and being OK with disagreements, and 5) reach a resolution by addressing the context under which the harm has occurred. According to Ross, sometimes calling out and canceling are appropriate, but she also offers other options: calling on (without engaging) and calling it off (walking away).
Ross argues, “instead of seeking power over, we need to seek power with.” She says that deciding to “hold back a powerful tirade” is usually the “smarter, more strategic choice” to accomplishing your political goals. Ross invites us to release “zero-sum, prison-industrial thinking” and instead seek transformative justice by modeling the world we desire. She quotes the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said “No individual can live alone. No nation can live alone. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Ross echoes this call to radical solidarity, arguing that how we do the work is as important as the work we do; that who we bring along is inseparable from how far we’ll go.
Ross has long said that you can’t build a human rights movement by violating people’s human rights. In this time of intense political turmoil, we should take Ross’s message to heart: finding strength in difference within movements for justice, cultivating patience and treating each other kindly.
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Loretta Ross will hold a book talk and signing at Smith College on Thursday, Feb. 13, at 4:30 p.m. in Seelye Hall 201.
Carrie N. Baker is a professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College and a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine.