Prologue PROLOGUE In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness. To reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. --Wangari Maathai, Nobel lecture, 2014 I''m a reformed call out queen. I''ve furiously called out enemies. I''ve righteously called out friends. I''ve gleefully called out strangers. I even once called out President Barack Obama, although that''s a story for another time.

My ego sure gets the appeal of putting people on blast. But I also realized a long time ago that running my mouth never did seem to accomplish what I wanted it to. I have been a human rights activist since the early 1970s. I''ve been the voice who picks up the phone to help rape victims in the most humiliating times of their lives--times they''d rather forget. I''ve been an opposition researcher, attending Klan rallies and working to deprogram white supremacists who''ve spent their lives devoted to hate. I''ve been a bridge between warring factions of feminists and progressives, finding new conversations that can unite us, pursuing common goals instead of prying us apart. In the past five decades, I''ve learned a lot about what works to create change. And I''ve learned a lot about what doesn''t --often, the hard way.

I''ve been proud to watch the human rights values I''ve espoused take hold in our culture, turning ideas that once seemed radical into mainstream beliefs. I''ve been proud to watch movements like Black Lives Matter, Reproductive Justice, and #MeToo spread far and wide, and to witness how new generations have joined the fight for justice, demanding action on global warming, insisting that health care and affordable housing are human rights, and asserting that a college education should not be a ticket to lifelong debt. Those most likely to have their human rights violated are typically the ones who believe the most in the promise of human rights, while our critics and skeptics tend to be those whose human rights are most protected by the status quo. Opponents mockingly call us SJWs--social justice warriors--but we''re really human rights activists with a forward-facing global vision for the twenty-first century. Opponents fear us because their idealized society is fixated on centuries past when violence against political opponents was normal and when we stayed in our place. If another world is possible, then another America is necessary. I''m so inspired by how many people are doing the work to bring it about. But, in the past decade, I''ve also seen a spike of infighting, cruelty, and call outs among could-be allies.

This has always been a danger among radical movements: it''s what hamstrung the groups I worked with in DC in the 1970s when I started my journey as a social justice activist. I now often talk to people who are clear-eyed and adamant about their values and yet who feel unbearably drained by the toxic atmosphere in which they''re working. Or I speak with well-meaning people who want to help but are afraid to lend their efforts--because they don''t know the right language or where to begin without being reamed out. This isn''t how it should be--nor how it has to be. The terms "cancel culture" and "call out culture" have become a political Rorschach test. Since Trump''s first run for president, the Right has bemoaned cancel culture, even as they seek to ban more books, more history, more art, and more ways of living than anyone on the Left. They don''t want to teach an honest history of America because they want to repeat the sins of the past. They carp about wokeness, pronouns, and feminism, while they lack any discernible agenda for addressing the country''s problems.

Stroking the outrage culture is their priority. And call outs are an easy target for their rage. Progressives, meanwhile, have responded reactively, defending call outs as mere "consequences" or "accountability" measures for bad actors. Sometimes this is true. But cancel culture can also be weaponized, by the Right or the Left. Offenses--someone''s not woke enough, someone''s not patriotic enough--can get treated as five-alarm fires, until we''ve reached a point where it becomes difficult to critique cancel culture without risking being canceled ourselves. I know the allure of calling people out all too well. I''ve scorched others with righteous anger, and I''ve been burned by my ego.

I have to trap words in my brain before they come out of my mouth a dozen times a day. Because I know it''s better if I do. I''ve seen families torn apart over political differences because they don''t know how to love each other despite their disagreements. I''ve been part of movements that have disintegrated due to their inability to distinguish between allies and enemies. I''ve seen how a moment of opportunity can slip away while we''re caught up in morality plays or power fights. And I see the warning signs right now, for progressives and our country as a whole. Bitter partisanship has caused many of us to hate fellow Americans. It''s made people afraid to build community.

It''s divided families. Almost everyone is anxious for fear of saying the wrong thing. People are distancing themselves and suffering emotionally. Powerless to do anything about geopolitical conflicts, we turn on family and friends. Anyone who thinks this is okay doesn''t care about our country and doesn''t care about honesty, integrity, or mercy. These are, perhaps, old-fashioned terms, but they matter to me and they should matter to all of us. I have no interest in respectability politics--no interest in being polite and uncontroversial in the hope of gaining others'' approval. But I am interested in living out my values.

I get why it can be easy to forget all this. We are sensitive to our despair and the despair of others. We are all struggling to make sense of everything that is going on. We refuse to accept the status quo that judges us because of our skin color, sexual orientation, gender identity, class, citizenship, abilities, political affiliation, or any other infuriating, irrelevant reason. We witness our loved ones pulling in a different direction in ways that often don''t make sense to us. We yearn to be part of something bigger than ourselves, something that gives our life meaning. But it is not enough to be correct; we must take correct action. People opposed to human rights--opposed to ending poverty, addressing racism, or accepting women''s rights to control their bodies--think they''re fighting the human rights movement, but I believe they''re wrong.

They''re fighting truth, history, and evidence. Most importantly, they''re fighting time. These existential forces are beyond their power to command. With truth, history, evidence, and time on our side, we hold the winning hand despite our fears of powerlessness and failure. Our opponents are simply pimples on the ass of time. But my biggest fear is that despite our winning hand, we''ll be defeated--at least in our lifetimes--because we can''t stop calling one another out. I''ve learned that there is a better way. We can skip the viral shaming and reputational warfare.

We can skip the ideological litmus tests that don''t help to build a diverse coalition. Whether persuading another individual or launching an entire cultural movement, real change requires bringing people in . Even people you expected not to need or not to be able to reach. This is why I''ve come to embrace Calling In. Calling in considers whether we can connect with others before we start shouting them down. It allows us to reach other people as people , to breathe a little easier, and, ultimately, to get things done. Calling in builds bridges instead of burning them down so that we might walk together along the path toward collective liberation. The difference is tactical--and so I''ll suggest new words, methods, and attitudes throughout this book--but it''s also philosophical.

Calling in can help us model the world we want to achieve at the end of our efforts: a world with more joy and forgiveness and less shame and cruelty, a world where people don''t need to feel afraid and can feel empowered to pursue the common good, even if we make mistakes along the way. We can avoid the shame of not being enough, or not knowing enough. For more than forty years now, I''ve oriented my philosophy for enacting change and building movements around calling in. In the first four chapters of this book, I''ll explore the theory behind this approach and show you how it gets results. I''ll also diagnose where call out culture came from, why it''s become a cultural monster--especially on social media--and why no one seems to be able to talk about it without losing their head. Then, in the last four chapters, I''ll show you the techniques you''ll need to put the principles of calling in into action. Most of us respond emotionally to call outs without recognizing their patterns and intentions. We need to think more systematically.

We need to create strategies for engaging with disagreements, so we''re prepared in advance. I''ve created what I call the "5Cs"--a spectrum of accountability measures to help us figure out how to respond depending on the situation, whether by calling out (yes, I think call outs do have their uses, as I''ll discuss in chapter 2), canceling, calling in, calling on (asking people to do better, but without investing your time and energy in helping them to change), or calling it off . When it''s not possible to call in people with love and respect, we can choose another option that better suits where we are emotionally.