[1] His stepfather, a cutter in the garment industry with a family history of union activism, and his mother, a teacher and social democrat, withdrew from politics out of fear of reprisals during the McCarthy era.
[2] As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ross became engaged with political activism on behalf of progressive causes and emerged as a student leader.
As a delegate at the 1962 annual convention, and a member of the "drafting committee", Ross participated in writing the Port Huron Statement, which was adopted as the SDS political manifesto.
Author of Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops (University of Michigan Press), he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium and of the International Labor Rights Forum.
In 2015, on the second anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse (killing 1,130 people and injuring 2,500) he traveled to Bangladesh to commemorate the victims and assess the steps taken to advance worker safety.