leadership lab deep canvassing
The leaders worked to keep the mood relaxed and optimistic. His deep canvassing career and vision took off in rural North Carolina, where hehelped change hearts and minds in our groundbreaking immigration deep canvass with Down Home North Carolina. For instance, Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,000 votes. If youre talking about having real, quality conversations with voters, you cant bring that to scale without a really large number of people, says Tim Saler, a Republican strategist at Grassroots Targeting, which works to mobilize and persuade voters. Paid for by Up PAC and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. So the research suggests that deep canvassing works. Its only right. But this work isnt about that. Another a tattooed student who identifies as gender-nonconforming proudly recalled persuading a voter who clearly had no experience with anyone who identified as being outside the gender binary. But the researchers found that the persuasion attempts had zero effect, Broockman said. Online training about deep canvassing 100,000 people door-to-door seeking to speak with marriage equality opponents. You can do training and prep together prior to canvassing and then come back and debrief afterward. hide caption. For many voters, they reflect on it and they realize that's a terrible feeling they don't want anyone to have," Broockman says. Not every campaign can afford to run canvasses. The canvassers role is primarily to listen, to build trust and then to have a respectful conversation about areas where both parties may disagree. In the video above, notice how the voter starts to come around on the issue when the canvasser asks if shes ever been on the receiving end of discrimination. He calls it "deep canvassing. Fanned out across the neighborhood were more than three dozen Leadership Lab volunteers, many of them local college students, as well as progressive activists from around the country hoping to learn about changing voters minds. Though there was currently no ballot measure in Los Angeles to worry about, there was a palpable urgency to the Leadership Labs work. Fleischer is especially interested in learning whether deep canvassing can affect peoples thinking on two issues racial prejudice and abortion rights. Broockman says they didnt set out to find the exact mechanism. Which is to say: Republicans assume Democrats dislike them more than they actually do, and vice versa. LaCour, joined late in the process by Green as a co-author, published the results in the December 2014 issue of Science. I know it exists, and I hear stories, and I see them on TV. "[That's] the moment I backed away from my monitor and said, 'Wow, something's really unique here,' " he says. Eboni Taggart has over 15 years of experience in community-building, she has maximized the leadership skills of community members, teachers, youth, and parents to advocate for transformative systemic change on issues that impact their lives. The fraudulent study called into question the validity of the Leadership Labs deep-canvassing approach. A shocked and embarrassed Green requested that Science retract the study; soon after, Princeton rescinded a teaching offer to LaCour. Advocacy Trainings: 7 Questions w/ Martn Diego Garcia, Clean Your List Email List Hygiene Makes for Better Email Marketing, Patch-Through Calls: What Are They & When to Use Them. And 75 percent of the people who start the conversations with the canvassers share a story about their own lives. However, a modern technique of deep canvassing developed by David Fleischer at the Leadership LAB encourages canvassers to engage in one-on-one conversations with the intention of gaining understanding, building empathy, and finding common ground. To run a canvass you need staff, office space, voter lists, technology and more. I came out two years ago now, and one of the hardest things for me has been talking with folks who dont understand [gender identity], and not immediately writing someone off because they dont immediately get it, Topping says. The goal is to share personal stories about times when the voter and the canvasser felt attacked or discriminated against, says Nancy Williams, a volunteer canvasser with the LGBT Center. On the issue of transgender rights, the woman seemed mostly supportive but stopped at a nine. Leadership LAB Conversation with a Voter about Transgender Rights, 2016(Video 8:30 mins). Our work in Orange County during the . Its just not easy. That changed everything, Fleischer told me. Whats the coolest thing about this method of canvassing? She said she was trying to evolve on the issue, though. Please enter a valid email and try again. Finding common humanity. Deep canvassing is an approach to conversations which is non-judgemental and invites people to open up about their real conflicted feelings on an issue. What a roller coaster of emotions," he says. First, theres a learning curve involved in setting up a deep canvass because this method is so different. Approaching voters with emotional honesty and vulnerability. Sample Scripts for Deep Canvassing: Signature Gathering and Voter Research, CallHub, 2022 (Online article). Their main hypothesis is that it works because its not threatening. He began by sharing his experience of losing the 2008 California marriage equality referendum campaign, which led David and his Leadership Lab colleagues to develop the deep canvassing approach to determine why people were susceptible to the anti-marriage equality campaign. Those basic numbers tell you something about just how willing most Americans are to have an open conversation with a stranger about these ostensibly divisive issues, Broockman says. It has also attracted controversy. Maybe, as The Wall Street Journal suggested, Fleischers efforts merely flattered the ideological sensibilities of liberals. But this week, a new study published in Science by David Broockman, an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford, and Joshua Kalla, a graduate student in political science at Berkeley, appears to serve as vindication of Fleischers work. We studied everything, from the kinds of conversations we should be having to the characteristics that made a voter persuadable, he says. In Pennsylvania and beyond, Eboni has also supported organizations on outreach, strategy, program management, leadership development and political education. We invite you to share your script with us to include below to help others develop their own. She talks about being picked on at work and feeling different. Volunteers who dont have a specific election or issue they wish to canvass on can use a listening script. ), Emile Bruneau, a neuroscientist who studies intergroup conflict at the University of Pennsylvania and was not involved in the canvassing experiments, tells me in an email it is so promising to see an intervention, any intervention, that has a lasting effect on big social issues.. Have A Conversation. Heres a 2015 video example of deep canvassing. To learn more read the Leadership Labs Deep Canvassing Primer. If he had his way, Fleischer would knock on doors with a golf ball. Deep Canvassing Workshop 2022 Medicare for All Strategy Conference, HealthCareNow, 2022 (see example from 48:40 mins), Peoples Action Institute Deep Canvass Script, 2020, Peoples Action Institute (Report see pgs 8-9), Insights from Deep Canvassing: Proven Scripts for Transformational Outreach, The New Conversation Initiative, Netroots Nation, 2022 (Video), How We Can Reduce Prejudice with a Conversation, David Fleischer , TEDxMidAtlantic, 2017 (Video 16:51 mins), Unpacking Deep Canvassing, Indivisible, 2022 (Video See marriage equality example at 5:42 mins), Deep Canvassing: Changing Voters Minds Through Conversation, Leading Change Network, 2018 (Video 1:32:42 mins). Nancy laughed. Were out talking to voters about an important issue Fleischer began, only to have Nancy excuse herself and walk away. That means not making assumptions based on the voters age, race or their religion. In his work, Bruneau finds that political partisans have a skewed view of how they think their opponents think of them. Its about sharing and listening, all the while nudging people to be analytical and think about their shared humanity with marginalized groups. These scientists keep proving that reducing prejudice is possible. "We had a certain sense of responsibility.". "I needed to be sure people knew that we no longer had evidence. Volunteers may also canvass as part of an issue-specific advocacy campaign. But many times this approach underestimates whos persuadable. The woman in the video starts off ambivalent on transgender issues. Hes married to a woman now, and hes so much happier. Both types of canvassers could instigate change. Script structure used to guide SURJ-NYC deep canvassing conversations on reparations, A Qualitative Examination of Dialogical Elements in Anti-Racist Deep Canvassing Conversations, 2021 (Journal article see fig. He and several collaborators struggled for years to get to this point. Just dive in. The Leadership LAB works to reduce prejudice and change voters hearts and minds. Thats a new finding. Since then, Matthew has organized around disaster relief in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, and worked as a regional field director for the Bernie Sanders Campaign in Northern Nevada. Now we can show experimentally that when you take away the two-way nature of the conversation, the effects go away, Broockman says. The groups feared a backlash against a recent ordinance that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. All Muslims are often blamed for single acts of terror. Ellas earliest organizing focus was on developing innovative tactics to recruit, train and retain large, dedicated volunteer teams with the Oregon Student Association at the University of Oregon. Though Fleischer prefers talking to voters face to face, he isnt opposed to sequestering volunteers in a phone bank to help L.G.B.T. Long Form Canvas, That, Williams thinks, might have helped persuade him to be more supportive of nondiscrimination measures. Door to Door, They urged voters to talk about anyone they knew who was gay or lesbian and, more important, to speak about their own marriages. Dave Fleischer, director of the Leadership Lab. And thats exciting, because it offers the possibility that we could get past the current paralysis on a wide variety of controversial issues.. Most people consider marriage the most important and meaningful thing they ever did. Were asking voters not to discriminate, to be less prejudiced, and we need to walk that walk, she said. Tweet Jeffrey Fountain/Courtesy of Los Angeles LGBT Center. The Los Angeles LGBT Center's Leadership LAB (Learn Act Build) specializes in deep canvassing and organizing through volunteer leadership development. Over the last six years, Fleischers unorthodox canvassing technique has attracted the attention of social scientists, liberal groups and even presidential-campaign consultants. He is deeply passionate about the superpowers of vulnerability and non-judgmental curiosity that we all carry within us, and the political and personal transformations that occur when we use those powers to bridge fear and difference. An IE may ask its volunteers to canvass via #KnockEveryDoor. Typically, the conversations begin with the canvasser asking the voter for their opinion on a topic, like abortion access, immigration, or LGBTQ rights. Steve: So my name is Steve Deline, and I am a field organizer at The Leadership LAB at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Canvassers (who may or may not be members of the impacted community) listen nonjudgmentally.