by Alexis Blue
Gutswurrak was filled with chatter, chilled drinks and cookies from a refreshment table on Feb. 11. The room felt lively; students, faculty, staff and community members gathered to listen to renowned author and activist Loretta J. Ross speak on contemporary society’s inclination towards cancel culture.
Ross spoke as the Black Liberation Month Keynote Speaker, hosted by the Umoja Center for Pan African Excellence. Ross is an activist, feminist, public intellectual and professor at Smith College in Massachusetts. A 2024 National Women’s Hall of Fame Inductee, Ross was an exceptional figure in the women’s movement. She joined in 1978 by working at the first rape crisis center in the country, where she developed her knowledge on women’s human rights, reproductive justice, white supremacy and the intersectionality of race with each issue.
In her book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel, Ross dives deep into what it means to call in, and how this strategy may be used to foster real change in activism as a whole, to fight modern facism in the United States.
“I remember Trump coming down that golden escalator,” Ross said. “I knew that America was not prepared for what he represented. Everybody in the media thought that he was a joke. I thought that he was an outcome of what America is and has busily denied forever.”
Ross continued by saying that 30 years ago, and even now, American society was so eager to call itself “post-racialist” to move past the fact that racism still exists in this country.
As an activist, Ross discussed her experience trying to fight facism in the past, and particularly in the contemporary political climate that surrounds the current administration. Her activism for the larger part of her life has never been easy, but has allowed her to gain insight into how exactly she wants to work towards her goals.
In developing how she wants to do work in her activism, she identified certain barriers and ways that people can advocate for change more effectively.
“Doing anti-Klan work, doing the human rights work, doing the women’s rights work,” Ross said. “All of that slowly brought me to the realization that we cannot effectively fight facism when we’re spending our best bullets on each other.”
Ross outlines what she describes as a “Five C Continuum,” a framework for responding to challenging ideas and conflicts amidst one’s own activism: calling out, calling in, calling on, calling off and canceling.
She strays from the idea of cancel culture, and instead promotes her idea of calling in, as it allows people to confront their own ideas in a more productive way.
“The first person you have to call in is yourself… You are modeling your best integrity in the world that you want to live in, not the world that you’re fighting,” Ross said.
A part of the continuum, a calling on strategy is useful specifically in addressing the people in one’s life as an incentive for them to confront internal ideas that are affecting their external behaviors.
“A calling on strategy is to help [the people in your life] pay attention to the good things that they’re capable of,” Ross said. “Using the adage of what Adrienne Maree Brown says, ‘What you pay attention to grows.’”
Ross highlighted the importance of humanizing people that have differing opinions and the importance of human rights. In a world full of hate, facism, racism and people in power trying to strip humans of their basic rights, Ross spoke to the power of love to defeat hate.
“For a movement, there will be many different people with many different thoughts moving in the same direction,” Ross said.
Alexis Blue is a senior at Cal Poly Humboldt, majoring in journalism – public relations and minoring in writing. In her free time, you’ll probably find her drinking coffee, watching sunsets, collecting shells on the beach and playing soccer.
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