Fleischer has an unwavering confidence in his ability to persuade most people to be more empathetic and less prejudiced, and his optimism is shared by progressive groups who train with him. That lack of control scares campaigns. Deep canvassing has become a buzzword in relational organizing - and it all started at the Leadership LAB during the fight for marriage equality in California in 2008. Technology has helped a bit with the scale challenge, but theres always the question: Do you knock on as many doors as possible, or do you knock on fewer doors and have potentially more fruitful interactions?, Theres also a lot that can go wrong when fresh-faced canvassers descend on unfamiliar neighborhoods. The watered-down intervention without the two-way exchange didnt move anyone to support undocumented immigrants. Jackson grew up as a girl, but he knew even when he was 5 or 6 that he was really a boy. Volunteers went to the other half and started the conversations that Fleischer thinks can help change minds. While a discussion of transgender rights can trigger deeply ingrained feelings about sex and gender roles, the issue is also a fairly recent political consideration for many people. 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. We hope to provide both new and seasoned grassroots activists with a quality canvassing training that will allow them to enhance their local power building around whichever issue or candidate of their choice. "To go into it with high hopes and then get this really bad piece of news, then to go forward anyway and have the accurate results? It costs money. What does it take to divert someone away from prejudice and toward greater acceptance of others in order to build support for progressive causes? Mike LaCour had not assembled [it]. Deep canvassing, a relatively new technique, []. The effort helped defeat the anti-L.G.B.T. To learn more read the Leadership Labs Deep Canvassing Primer. But through deep canvassing, the activist is able to turn her around. In it, canvassers in three areas central Tennessee; Fresno, California; and Orange County, California went door to door and interacted with 2,374 voters in these communities during the runup to the 2018 midterm elections. Social science experiments are usually conducted on college campuses, in a lab, in contrived scenarios. Second, we will provide volunteers with materials, including template scripts, data entry sheets, sign-in sheets, field training and debrief agendas, etc. Deep canvassing, it appears from the research, has an effect that can last for several months. Knocking on a strangers door is scary, and a lot of that mornings training session was spent boosting the confidence of first-time canvassers. The Leadership LAB of the Los Angeles LGBT Center trains people in canvassing techniques aimed at reducing prejudice. These conversations arent arguments. "[That's] the moment I backed away from my monitor and said, 'Wow, something's really unique here,' " he says. Betsy Levy Paluck, an associate professor at Princeton who studies bias, believes the study will have broad implications for those in her field. He ran a phone program in the 2020 general election that canvassed over 15,000 people in battleground states, and also led the deep-canvassing phones program in support of the Minneapolis public safety charter amendment in 2021. At Vox, we believe that everyone deserves access to information that helps them understand and shape the world they live in. Volunteers also encouraged people to talk about anyone they were close to who had an abortion. Have a Conversation, academic study referenced by the New York Times that was published by political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla, http://www.vox.com/2014/11/13/7214339/campaign-ground-game. The new research shows that if you want to change someones mind, you need to have patience with them, ask them to reflect on their life, and listen. The news crushed Fleischer. Its up to volunteers to add specific candidates, districts, elections, or geographically-specific voting information to our templated #KnockEveryDoor scripts. "When we were nonjudgmental and vulnerable with them and when we exchanged our lived experiences about marriage and gay people, that's when we started changing people's minds," he says. In the full-conversation condition, 33 percent were in support. Across the street, a man in his late 30s who said he was liberal and pro-L.G.B.T.-rights moved to a five from an eight, explaining that he was deeply worried about the bathroom issue. The mans concern seemed informed by his experience in a New York City nightclub; he hinted at his discomfort standing at a urinal next to a drag queen. He handed her a small video player, on which she watched a Baptist minister in Houston make the case about bathrooms. This doesnt mean that you all confront that person at once. We work to empower volunteers to connect the personal to the political with voters in order to make long-term, meaningful impacts on elections. The experiment divided voters into a treatment group engaged in a conversation intended to reduce transgender prejudice and a placebo group targeted with a conversation about recycling. Nancy laughed. The effect was durable, too: Three to six months after the conversation, voters who shared their feelings with canvassers in this manner also reported less prejudice toward undocumented immigrants. What an African-American person has faced because of their race is not the same as the discrimination that Ive faced for being bisexual, or that my friend has faced for being transgender, she told the group. The study got a huge amount of attention. Read transcript and/or Read more about it. As several studies have shown, deep canvassing, which involves deliberately developing a nonjudgmental, empathetic connection with a voter through 10 to 15 minutes of authentic conversation, canif done properlylead to persistent changes in people's attitudes on issues like immigration and transgender rights. Check out Dave's Ted Talk here, or ask them below! What is a deep canvass and how is it different from a traditional canvass? They still felt more positively about transgender people than those who had gotten the unrelated canvass. Though he has devoted much of his political and community-organizing career to L.G.B.T. Beginning in 2014, the Leadership Lab teamed up with Planned Parenthood to canvass in support of pro-choice policies. And thats exciting, because it offers the possibility that we could get past the current paralysis on a wide variety of controversial issues.. Proven Persuasion and Inoculation: Breakthroughs in Deep Canvassing Its only right. Its not easy to confront people whose votes would seek to hurt you, and then try to change their minds. Over 8 years on the LA LGBT Center's groundbreaking Leadership LAB team Steve helped create the tactic of deep canvassing. You will also need a team of at least three full-time organizers, which is the majority of the budget, and you need a dedicated team of volunteers (ideally 200 or so). 2. Who can you reach with a deep canvass? But for transgenders? 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. "The LGBT community and our allies were shocked and upset," Fleischer says. Volunteers who dont have a specific election or issue they wish to canvass on can use a listening script. Were a progressive country, but were also a voting-suppressed country. Think back to the last time you changed your mind about something important. Video example of deep canvassing. An IE may ask its volunteers to canvass via #KnockEveryDoor. The canvassers don't try to build rational arguments for why someone should think one way or another. "Our ability to change voters' hearts and minds has been measured, this time for real," Fleischer said, contrasting the intensely reviewed work of Broockman and Kalla to the earlier, retracted paper. If I would have only talked to people who agreed with me, I would have only talked to my mom and dad, he told me. Though not all voters would engage emotionally, I was surprised by how many did. That means canvassing is much more about conversational skill rather than identity. 6. The truth is, theres not much out there in scientific literature on what can change a voters mind. Broockman and Kalla published the results in Science on Thursday. But things fell apart when David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, then graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, tried to use LaCour's methods to study prejudice against transgender people. The woman eventually told Riley that she had voted against gay marriage in California, but that she now regretted that choice. In this conversation, recorded in March 2016, a Leadership LAB volunteer speaks with a voter in Los Angeles about including transgender people in non-discrimination laws using the same approach that was studied by Broockman and Kalla in Miami in 2015. That changed everything, Fleischer told me. David directs the Leadership Lab at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Share this page on LinkedIn, 7 Questions with Dave Fleischer on Deep Canvassing, Remote Work Culture: How to Boost Your Company Culture. That campaign completed 3,000 conversations, and persuaded over 40 percent of those people to support the amendment. A new way to talk about abortion? Tags The two other experiments in the study targeted transphobia. The canvasser shares vulnerably about their own life and asks curious questions to create mutual understanding grounded in lived experience. The day before one canvass, representatives from an animal rights group told me they hoped to better understand how to help people connect emotionally to animal welfare. Each week, we explore unique solutions to some of the world's biggest problems. For me, I never had a transgender friend I was really close to until I was 56, he said, handing Nancy the picture. In addition to being a strong persuasion medium, for some issue areas, the deep canvass can also help to serve as an effective voter research tool as well. As the team's National Mentoring Coordinator he partnered with organizations and campaigns across the country to develop and apply deep conversation approaches - around marriage equality, trans-inclusive nondiscrimination laws, criminal justice reform, and . Over the last six years, Fleischers unorthodox canvassing technique has attracted the attention of social scientists, liberal groups and even presidential-campaign consultants. Eager to know if his abortion canvassing was persuasive, Fleischer asked Broockman and Kalla to measure it. Earlier that morning, Leadership Lab volunteers sat on stackable chairs and watched video clips of front-door encounters on a projector screen. The mans daughter, though, would have none of it: She practically pushed him out of the way to tell Riley they were a 10. Committing to curiosity rather than assumptions or judgment. Share on Facebook He continues to lead on integrating deep canvassing into powerful and leaderful field programs while hiking and shooting hoops in his free time. For instance, Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,000 votes. Fleischer does improv in his spare time, and the training sometimes felt like a well-oiled comedy routine. The technique might be used to target any societal prejudice or be used to increase prejudice, Broockman acknowledges. And finally, this method dramatically changes who volunteers on a campaignwe get a more engaged and self-motivated volunteer base when we tell volunteers to interact with voters as human beings rather than as robots. Whats missing here, she says, is a theoretical understanding for why the change is occurring. He and several collaborators struggled for years to get to this point. Psychology explains how to stop it. They, along with Yale statistician Peter Aronow, discovered that LaCour's work was almost a complete fabrication. It is an extraordinarly rewarding experience, and you will come away with greater skill at talking with, understanding, and influencing a wide range of voters who are not just like you. Were just beginning to learn how to do this well, but its important. He said I blew his mind, and that he would never forget the conversation we had! Meg Riley, a 60-year-old Unitarian Universalist minister from Minnesota who volunteers with a racial-justice group, recounted her eventful day. 2. Who can you reach with a deep canvass? For her, the video seemed to clarify that Fleischer was specifically asking her about transgender people, a group she had no experience with and seemed to have little inherent empathy for. Finding common humanity. By submitting your email, you agree to our, The Dark Brandonmeme and why the Biden campaign has embraced it explained, The secret delegate battle that will decide the 2024 Republican nominee. First, theres the magnitude of the impact. Volunteers will be responsible for localizing the script they wish to use. Canvassers often had to politely extricate themselves after 20 minutes voters were sad to see them go. You can also contribute via. Immigration particularly that of asylum seekers loomed over the 2018 elections. "It was a really ingenious test of the change. Mehrdad Azemun is Senior Strategist at Peoples Action. #KnockEveryDoor isnt currently supporting or opposing any particular federal, state, or local candidate, but instead we are providing materials for volunteers to support or oppose candidates of their choosing. Volunteers may also canvass as part of an issue-specific advocacy campaign. 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. The video ends like this. But how does it work? At the door, Fleischer asked Nancy if she knew any transgender people. But not both.". How to talk someone out of bigotry with deep canvassing - Vox They may come in organically through the website. In a distributed organizing model, a sprawling crew of part time, sometimes, and one-time volunteers work across space and time and use consumer software platforms like Google apps, Maestro Conference Calling, Slack and Facebook to manage everything from canvassing logistics to training to research to tech development. The technique also raises empathy in canvassers, who . people, with a current focus on transgender discrimination didnt take to the golf-ball suggestion, but Fleischer wanted me to know that he is not opposed to stealing a good idea from the Mormons.. What do social scientists know about reducing prejudice in the world? Give me a five., Nancy wasnt the only person to significantly decrease her support after watching the video. The Great Battlefield. Support our mission and help keep Vox free for all by making a financial contribution to Vox today. Broockman and Kalla (2016) assessed the impact of the . And I also wanted to point out to people we were not going to give up. Which makes it feel like a big departure from a lot of the current political dialogue. It was only in his 20s that he started to tell his folks the truth, and he started making the transition to living as a man. The new research also tries to identify the secret ingredient that makes deep canvassing work, and whether versions of it that occur over the phone or through video prompts can be useful as well. Nancy Williams, right, who is transgender, talks with a voter as part of a canvassing effort in Los Angeles. As part of the LA LGBT Centers groundbreaking Leadership LAB team, he helped create the original deep canvass approach. The leaders worked to keep the mood relaxed and optimistic. Not so with deep canvassing. Prejudices are often deep, obstinate beliefs. Its this nonjudgmental exchanging of narratives that Broockman and Kalla think is the key ingredient in how deep canvassing works. Canvassing for climate action: Heres how to make it work, 2021 (Podcast 40:53 mins). Like, of course were on your doorstep on a Saturday talking about transgender issues!, Moments later, Williams reminded the volunteers to be open and nonjudgmental. Without in-person, full-time, paid organizers running all aspects of the operation, we are piloting a canvass model that is lightweight, easier to learn via online training, and depends on peer-to-peer coaching, encouragement and knowledge sharing among volunteer hosts, canvassers and support team members. What does it take to divert someone away from prejudice and toward greater acceptance of others in order to build support for progressive causes? But David Fleischer, the director of the Leadership LAB of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, thinks he's found a way to begin changing people's prejudices with just a short conversation. Green connected Fleischer with Michael LaCour, then a U.C.L.A. Its too bad that the takeaway was that only gay people could persuade people about gay marriage, Broockman says about LaCours retracted study. As part of the LA LGBT Center's groundbreaking Leadership LAB team, he helped create the original deep canvass approach. Is this the first time youve thought about transgender people? Fleischer asked her soon after she backtracked. Leadership Canvas Owl, Fox & Dean I made a mistake, she said. Grassroots, 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. Google Pay. Fleischer then returned to his scale, asking Nancy what number felt right for her now. Though the abortion debate is less obviously rooted in prejudice than transgender discrimination, Fleischer and his canvassers noticed that many voters reacted negatively to a short video of a middle-aged woman recounting having an abortion when she was 22. How much does a deep canvass program typically cost? Dave Fleischer of The Leadership Lab joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about how he's spent most of his life fighting for equal rights for LGBTQ people and how deep canvassing can help us find common ground and reduce prejudice. LaCour, joined late in the process by Green as a co-author, published the results in the December 2014 issue of Science. Broockman and Kalla found that the treatment group was considerably more accepting of transgender people and that a single, approximately 10-minute conversation with a stranger can markedly reduce prejudice for at least three months. Unlike LaCours invented finding that the messenger matters more than the message, Broockman and Kalla found that both transgender and nontransgender canvassers were effective. This model encourages a freeform and reciprocal conversation between the volunteer canvasser and the voter. Who We Are The New Conversation Initiative Still, the Leadership Lab is unusual in its focus on quality over quantity. So the research suggests that deep canvassing works. It was developed by the Leadership LAB in Los Angeles and has been effectively employed to help motivate voters in multiple organizing projects across the nation. That's why we keep our work free. "There's something special about caring about why [people] feel the way they do. Center, which houses the Leadership Lab, and proposed an unusual idea to his new colleagues: Canvassers should talk to Prop 8 supporters about why they had voted against same-sex marriage. LGBT Center volunteers went out to canvass hundreds of people. 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. Though there is scant research on transgender prejudice, what is known suggests transgender people face widespread prejudice and discrimination, Aaron Norton and Gregory Herek wrote in their 2012 study of heterosexual attitudes toward transgender Americans. In the age of Trump, theres a compelling push to call things what they are. This kind of conversation helps me talk to family members who arent totally there yet on accepting their identity, Topping says. Broockman, now an assistant professor of political economy at Stanford University, says asking someone questions face-to-face like, "What are the reasons you wouldn't support protections for transgender people, or what does this make you think about?" In terms of the length of the canvass program, you have to look at the outcome you are trying to achieve. In the experiment on immigration, Broockman and Kalla found that 78 percent of all the people who came to the door when the canvasser rang ended up staying for the entire conversation. issues, he believes this kind of canvassing could change peoples thinking on everything from abortion and gun rights to race-based prejudice. Let's say you want to beat Candidate X who won in Michigan by 10,000 votes. Are Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney in love, or are they good actors? When working with new groups, new staff, on a new issue and at bigger scale, I think its natural to expect smaller effects, he says. Sharing narratives gets around that: The persuasion happens because in talking about themselves, the voters realize a more tolerant attitude is consistent with their self-image. The Center's carefully honed method of "deep canvassing" delivered the first empirically tested and proven process where a single conversation decreases prejudice in a long-lasting way. Deep canvassing was born - and can be boiled down to two key skills: Vulnerability and curiosity. Among those who started the conversation, there was a 7 percentage point increase for granting legal status to people brought to the US as children, he says, for example. Her second conversation, she said, was with a black man in his 50s who was a seven on the 10-point scale. He likes to say that he has been talking to people who disagree with him since he was 4. Change the conversation from the ground-up with climate deep canvassing Webinar, Climate Advocacy Lab, 2022. (This definition is sourced from The New Conversation Initiative). A typical canvassing conversation might have ended there. Theres a smaller finding nestled in Broockman and Kallas new paper, one that might not make headlines but is worth thinking about. To Change Voters' Sympathies, It's Time to Go Deep Or for issues like the acceptance of genetically modified foods? Kathleen Campisano, Deputy Director of the Leadership LAB, . It has also attracted controversy. ), 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.. Volunteers working a 2-hour shift, on an average, can complete 5 conversations. David Fleischer discusses best practices to approach deep canvassing to impact the mind of voters efficiently. The voters were followed up with by survey one week, one month, and several months after being contacted by the canvassers. LaCour appeared to be breaking new ground, showing that one brief but memorable interaction could reduce prejudice. She didnt. While #KnockEveryDoor will focus on the mechanics of canvassing, not the campaign objective of the canvasser, there will be minimal restrictions on what volunteers may canvass for. President Trump called it an invasion, apparently hoping that by raising xenophobic, dehumanizing fears about nonwhite immigrants, as he had in 2016, hed help his party win seats in Congress. But maybe not when it comes to our neighbors. hide caption. Though there was currently no ballot measure in Los Angeles to worry about, there was a palpable urgency to the Leadership Labs work. Here is a collection of resources about deep canvassing scripts including script examples and ideas, video training and podcasts. Were literally iterating this model every day with a handful of full-time paid organizers working as peers with hundreds of volunteers to figure out whats working, whats not, and what needs to be added, subtracted or changed from our processes. Instead of a script that lasts 60 seconds, volunteers spend 10 or 20 minutes talking with each voter. The activists and scientists I spoke to for this story all agree that you cant change everyones minds. That means not making assumptions based on the voters age, race or their religion. Leadership Lab volunteers spoke with 3,330 residents in Pocatello, Idaho, a small, heavily Mormon city facing a ballot referendum that would have reversed a local nondiscrimination ordinance protecting gay and transgender people. Susmik now works on Peoples Actions National Field Team, supporting deep canvassing and movement politics work. Deep Canvassing: 7 Questions with Dave Fleischer If a canvasser sends us scanned copies of their data entry sheets, we will have a team of data entry volunteers enter them into a Google sheet. If marriage was the most valuable thing in their own life, wouldnt they also want their gay friends or gay people to experience it, too?. Most people have been judged because of gender, race or some other issue. The payoffs are small and incremental, but they are real. And an uptick in 10 points on a feeling scale of 0 to 100 doesn't sound like an epiphany. It does seem as though the two-way nature of the conversations is essential for the canvassing technique to work. You can also go more in-depth on the science behind deep canvassing by reading the academic study referenced by the New York Times' that was published by political scientists David Broockman and Josh . (These methods may make it easier to scale up in a bigger campaign.). ", The conversations are short, usually 10 to 20 minutes long. activists in another state. 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). After the first canvass I attended, the Leadership Lab project manager Ella Barrett seemed uncharacteristically sullen. Dave Fleischer, director of the Leadership Lab.CreditDamon Casarez for The New York Times. One way you could think about our study is as an effort to try to use the insights of lab studies in real-world settings, he says. 7. Keep in mind the media environment the canvassers were working in. But what weve learned by having real, in-depth conversations with people is that a broad swath of voters are actually open to changing their mind. #KnockEveryDoor
