[…] Most of us know the drill. Someone says something that supports the oppression of another community, the red flags pop up and someone swoops in to call them out.
But what happens when that someone is a person we know — and love? What happens when we ourselves are that someone?
And what does it mean for our work to rely on how we have been programmed to punish people for their mistakes?
I’ll be the first person and the last person to say that anger is valid. Mistakes are mistakes; they deepen the wounds we carry. I know that for me when these mistakes are committed by people who I am in community with, it hurts even more. But these are people I care deeply about and want to see on the other side of the hurt, pain, and trauma: I am willing to offer compassion and patience as a way to build the road we are taking but have never seen before.
I don’t propose practicing “calling in” in opposition to calling out. I don’t think that our work has room for binary thinking and action. However, I do think that it’s possible to have multiple tools, strategies, and methods existing simultaneously. It’s about being strategic, weighing the stakes and figuring out what we’re trying to build and how we are going do it together.
[…]
Because when I see problematic behavior from someone who is connected to me, who is committed to some of the things I am, I want to believe that it’s possible for us to move through and beyond whatever mistake was committed.
I picture “calling in” as a practice of pulling folks back in who have strayed from us. It means extending to ourselves the reality that we will and do fuck up, we stray and there will always be a chance for us to return. Calling in as a practice of loving each other enough to allow each other to make mistakes; a practice of loving ourselves enough to know that what we’re trying to do here is a radical unlearning of everything we have been configured to believe is normal.
And yes, we have been configured to believe it’s normal to punish each other and ourselves without a way to reconcile hurt. We support this belief by shutting each other out, partly through justified anger and often because some parts of us believe that we can do this without people who fuck up.
[…] But when we shut each other out we make clubs of people who are right and clubs of people who are wrong as if we are not more complex than that, as if we are all-knowing, as if we are perfect. But in reality, we are just really scared. Scared that we will be next to make a mistake. So we resort to pushing people out to distract ourselves from the inevitability that we will cause someone hurt.
And it is seriously draining. It is seriously heartbreaking. How we are treating each other is preventing us from actually creating what we need for ourselves. We are destroying each other. We need to do better for each other.
[…]
We have to let go of a politic of disposability. We are what we’ve got. No one can be left to their fuck ups and the shame that comes with them because ultimately we’ll be leaving ourselves behind.
(Disclaimer from article: “This post is specifically about us calling in people who we want to be in community with, people who we have reason to trust or with whom we have common ground. It’s not a fuckery free-for-all. Thank you.”)
I read this last week and can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve struggled to articulate the problems I have with discourse in our communities, in various progressive / activist spaces. Trần captures much of what I feel and I just…I keep thinking about this.
You can easily find a group of people who want to make this world a better place, who want justice and freedom and peace. But you can’t find a group of people who strive for those things without fucking up; we will always make mistakes. Even with the best of intentions. And what then?
Accountability is vital, of course. We must hold ourselves accountable for our behavior towards the people we love, the people we’re working with, the communities we participate in.
But we don’t talk as much about recovery from mistakes. About handling our mistakes with grace and compassion. Or about reaching out and rebuilding connections when people mess up. Sometimes we act like people are irredeemable, disposable. And sometimes we want a hollow ‘redemption’ which doesn’t require us to grow or heal rifts we created. Neither works.
We need to create accountability in our discourse without dismissing the possibility & process of change. Of redemption after we fall.
"We have to let go of a politic of disposability. We are what we’ve got. No one can be left to their fuck ups and the shame that comes with them because ultimately we’ll be leaving ourselves behind."
I am still trying to navigate the endless shipwreck that is social justice and community politics. But this resonates with me in a way that gives me hope that our generation will find its way to peace.
