This story aired in the February 24, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
A Call for Change gets a variety of calls, but sometimes they sound like this:
“It can get very, uh, confusing when I'm working with the woman and we're out in the field together…"
This is a recreation of a real call the group received. They use it for training.
“And then later they say that I did not have the permission to touch them sexually, or they say it was inappropriate because of our work roles. And it seems like they're just changing their minds.”
“Yeah. Um, you've put a, a lot out there, and I appreciate it. Can I tell you…"
As you can hear, it’s almost like therapy.
“What I'm hearing and ask some questions and we can talk about this together?”
“Yeah. Let's see what you got for me.”
The operators at A Call for Change are trained to offer feedback and hold callers accountable.
“ You're missing all the valuable information that other women, the ones you work with, your present partner, your past partners are trying to show you because you don't wanna learn from them. How they see you and their world.”
“You are the first person who has ever said that to me.”
JAC Patrissi co-founded A Call for Change in Massachusetts in 2021. At the time, nothing else like it existed. The only similar thing she’d heard of was a helpline called Stop It Now.
“And it's been around for like 25 years, and that is for adults who are committing sexual harm against children. That’s not what we’re focused on, but it was a line. A line that’s still available.”
They asked the people running Stop it Now for advice.
“And we heard that in their first year they got about 50 calls. And so we made that our target we're like, okay, let's expect 50 calls in our first year, but we got like 250 calls.”
She was surprised and encouraged by the popularity of the line. Clearly this was something people needed.
“Once that phone number was out there, within five days, we had calls from all over the state and within a week after that all over the country, and a few other countries.”
They were also told that their callers wouldn’t be the ones causing harm, but that wasn’t true either.
“ We have a phrase that guides our work, which is that we work with the willing, and I guess I didn't realize there were so many willing people.”
Domestic violence can take many forms: It can be emotional, financial, or verbal. It can happen in queer relationships, and to heterosexual men. JAC says domestic abuse can be difficult to recognize and even harder to address, especially with our criminal-justice system’s one-size-fits-all approach.
“ The caging bureaucracy, the carceral solutions we've had, the harms that are created. People have to understand that that happens in a racial context, and that if we're going to create an alternative, we have to be transforming those dynamics.”
Which is why when the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color wanted to work with A Call for Change, they said yes.
“ They think of policies of what alternatives to carceral solutions could be. And here we were innovating an actual possible part of a solution.”
The Alliance for Boys and Men of Color — or ABMoC — is kind of what it sounds like. It’s a network of grassroots organizations working on issues that affect Black and brown men and their communities.
In 2019, they started a campaign to “end intimate partner violence” in California, called “Healing Together”.
“We were seen as outsiders because we're not a domestic violence organization. And traditionally the domestic violence field has been led by women, and primarily white women as well.”
Gustavo Lopez is the research director for ABMoC.
“ We need to address the violence by working with men, engaging men as leaders in ending domestic violence.”
They wanted to find a solution that didn’t rely on shaming people or entering them into the legal system.
“And instead move towards healing options.”
The helpline fit the bill.
“They can call this anonymous helpline, right? Otherwise, there's very little that people can actually do if they want to change their behavior, if they actually want to change, if they want to address the violence.”
Last October, ABMoC and A Call for Change held a training session at the RYSE Youth Center in Richmond, California. Dozens of people showed up, including a woman named Jacquie Marroquin.
Jacquie’s been doing anti-domestic violence work for over two decades. The work is personal for her, because she grew up in an abusive household.
“ My father and my mother came to this country and my father was very — and continues to be — jealous, controlling, manipulative.”
When she was a kid, she didn’t know how to describe what she was experiencing. She just knew something was wrong.
“ I used to have these fantasies as a child and as a teenager of someone swooping in to talk to my dad. And if just someone could talk to him, just to talk to him and tell him about how the way he treats my mother, the way he talks to her, the way he treats us is just not okay.”
But, for Jacquie’s immigrant family, asking for help wasn’t an option.
“It's just not something that you do. It's not even a conversation to be had.”
Involving authorities in any way meant risking deportation or having their family separated. And so it was just something she endured.
“ I just thought that's just how families were. Uh, it wasn't until, I think now I'm almost 50 years old at this point, and now I'm still grieving the panic of that little girl that... who thought that this was normal. And I, and I'm still integrating the fact that it wasn't normal and it wasn't okay. Uh, but yeah, that's... I'm still integrating that, I think.”
In October 2024, she started working as an operator at A Call for Change. She says it's difficult at times, but also an important reminder:
“That there's still humanity in that person. And that person is still, I believe, capable of change. 'Cause I still have to believe it.”
A visit to Jacquie's
“Hi.”
“Hi, you made it ok.”
“I did, I did, thank you.”
Jacquie takes calls from her house. I stop by one day to spend time with her while she works.
“Come on in, it’s good to see you.”
“Good to see you too.”
“Got two little ones here.”
“Oh, great! Hi guys!”
“That’s Coco.”
*barking*
“Coco, I know, men are scary.”
We chat, and wait for a call, but nothing comes. She says it’s been slow, but in a way that makes every call she gets even more important.
“ Every time I get a phone call and someone who self identifies as someone who's caused harm and who said, I am going to call this number, it's one of those moments where I think, yes, people can change. There is an opportunity here for people to make a different choice.”
And that’s what makes the work so meaningful to her.
