In another condition, the canvassers didnt share their own story, but instead played a video of someone experiencing prejudice and then based the conversation around that. She recounted that when Jie was 3, the toddler responded to a question about possible Christmas presents by asking: Could Santa turn a girl into a boy?, Rileys devotion to Jie had a visible impact on several voters, including the mother of a 7-year-old girl. Were asking voters not to discriminate, to be less prejudiced, and we need to walk that walk, she said. Training resources will include a structured training pipeline of live calls and webinars, training guides, recorded videos, and volunteer-to-volunteer coaching calls. With a deep canvass, we want to figure out whats relevant to voters. Beginning in 2014, the Leadership Lab teamed up with Planned Parenthood to canvass in support of pro-choice policies. Keep in mind the media environment the canvassers were working in. Im a campaign person; youd do anything for 3.5 points, says Fran Hutchins, the deputy director of the Equality Federation who worked on deep canvassing efforts reported in the new study. I felt like I could deal with facing the possibility of losing my dad and I could deal with the possibility of being rejected by the people I loved. But this work isnt about that. In 2014, Fleischer and his team modified their canvassing work to persuade and mobilize voters by phone. 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?. Jeffrey Fountain/Courtesy of Los Angeles LGBT Center. The canvasser shares vulnerably about their own life and asks curious questions to create mutual understanding grounded in lived experience. Eager to know if his abortion canvassing was persuasive, Fleischer asked Broockman and Kalla to measure it. In the new study, Kalla and Broockman put deep canvassing through a more rigorous test. Her second conversation, she said, was with a black man in his 50s who was a seven on the 10-point scale. Let's say you want to beat Candidate X who won in Michigan by 10,000 votes. As part of the LA LGBT Centers groundbreaking Leadership LAB team, he helped create the original deep canvass approach. The effect of most campaign messaging is short-lived and can evaporate in as little as 3-5 days. Insights from Deep Canvassing: Proven Scripts for Transformational Outreach, The New Conversation Initiative, Netroots Nation, 2021 (Video 60 mins). 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. I asked Steve Deline what he thought. So the research suggests that deep canvassing works. "It was a really ingenious test of the change. Thats a new finding. Thats likely a lot of people. Cutting edge political science research shows that canvassing is one of the most effective tactics in an activists arsenal (to read more about this, check out Deep Canvassing 101). The mans daughter, though, would have none of it: She practically pushed him out of the way to tell Riley they were a 10. 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. It is a landmark study, according to Elizabeth Paluck, a psychologist at Princeton University who was not involved with the work. Costs in the early training phases are somewhere around $200,000 - $250,000. Without that theoretical understanding, its difficult to generalize and use the approach in other settings, Bruneau says. There wasn't, however, any indication that those who started out with very negative feelings about transgender people were particularly resistant to the conversation. They urged voters to talk about anyone they knew who was gay or lesbian and, more important, to speak about their own marriages. Nancy had mostly dismissed Fleischers how did that make you feel? questions, but his personal story prompted a shift. Nancy had no such seemingly relevant personal experiences, nor did she appear particularly concerned about bathroom safety. To run an ad campaign you just need a bank account and a media consultant. That doesn't mean everybody came away feeling more positive about transgender rights. That campaign completed 3,000 conversations, and persuaded over 40 percent of those people to support the amendment. Heres a 2015 video example of deep canvassing. Let a person be who they are.. 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. That doesnt tell you about the person inside., On this particular day, volunteers would be canvassing in a predominantly black neighborhood, so Gardiner reminded them to be sensitive to experiences of race-based discrimination. 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. 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. 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. Dates: March 31 from 1:00-2:00 PM EST and April 7 from 1:00-2:00 PM EST. Dave and C Deep Canvass Conversation One of the first times I felt successful on a canvass was when I got to Hs house, on a cul-de-sac of nicer []. newsletter. Its much easier to put all your volunteers in a cozy phone bank where everyone gets to hang out and eat pizza.. People are what makes Advancement advance. Is First Republic Banks failure sign of a slow-motion banking crisis? If a group wanted to oppose him in the next election, you would want to have 50,000 conversations to change 5,000 voters minds. This is an edited version of a longer conversation. Those who had discussed prejudice they'd experienced felt about 10 points more positively toward transgender people, on average. Massachusetts voters chose to protect trans rights, and Topping believes deep canvassing helped. 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. In short, very little, she writes in the same issue of Science, adding that the new studys results stand alone as a rigorous test of this type of prejudice-reduction intervention., Fleischer is planning more interventions. If you would like to see first-hand what these one-on-one conversations are like, we encourage you to. He handed her a small video player, on which she watched a Baptist minister in Houston make the case about bathrooms. "He kept saying high school is hard for everybody. Then they should try to change the voters minds. Canvassing needs to be managed. A typical canvassing conversation might have ended there. First, theres a learning curve involved in setting up a deep canvass because this method is so different. Whats missing here, she says, is a theoretical understanding for why the change is occurring. A gray-haired Hispanic woman named Nancy cracked open the front door, though not enough to let her little dog eat our ankles. And an uptick in 10 points on a feeling scale of 0 to 100 doesn't sound like an epiphany. Volunteer's go door-to-door, talking to strangers, and often change their attitudes about things like same-sex marriage and transgender rights. In one, a social worker (a social worker! Barrett marveled) announced that being transgender is a mental illness; in another, a man matter-of-factly said he hoped to develop a straight pill to change gay people. Leadership Lab-trained volunteers were found to be successful at reducing transgender prejudice in front-door conversations, the effects persisting months later in follow-up surveys. The payoffs are small and incremental, but they are real. After the first canvass I attended, the Leadership Lab project manager Ella Barrett seemed uncharacteristically sullen. . First, theres the magnitude of the impact. Canvassers (who may or may not be members of the impacted community) listen nonjudgmentally. Volunteers may also canvass as part of an issue-specific advocacy campaign. In the age of Trump, theres a compelling push to call things what they are. But remember, the impact of these conversations can last nine months or more. Deep canvassing was born - and can be boiled down to two key skills: Vulnerability and curiosity. A shocked and embarrassed Green requested that Science retract the study; soon after, Princeton rescinded a teaching offer to LaCour. Rather, the deep canvass is built on a different set of assumptions than a traditional canvass. Think back to the last time you changed your mind about something important. Its just not easy. Were out talking to voters about an important issue Fleischer began, only to have Nancy excuse herself and walk away. He also admitted to lying about having received funds for his study from several organizations, including the Ford Foundation. "The LGBT community and our allies were shocked and upset," Fleischer says. Join us for the following two webinars on Effective Lobbying and Deep Canvassing, both presented by Olivia Chow and the Institute for Change Leaders in partnership with the Sustainability Network. Through the power of a year-long, cohort experience, your leaders connect with and discover alongside others. But research shows that the impact of our deep canvass conversations can last nine months or longer. You dont know if theyre at McDonalds on their iPhone, and you cant always be sure what theyre saying to voters. 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. Even as Trump was talking about the caravan, we see that Republicans in our study are moving.. I think people dont talk enough about the focus on persuasion we had, because the story line became, Oh, they won because turnout was so high.. Over the next few minutes, she recounted several instances of racism after moving to Los Angeles from Central America with her husband. Taken advantage of us. Fleischer is especially interested in learning whether deep canvassing can affect peoples thinking on two issues racial prejudice and abortion rights. Armed with a no men in womens bathrooms message, anti-L.G.B.T. Here is a collection of resources about deep canvassing scripts including script examples and ideas, video training and podcasts. 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. The Leadership LAB works to reduce prejudice and change voters hearts and minds. These scientists keep proving that reducing prejudice is possible. At Vox, we believe that everyone deserves access to information that helps them understand and shape the world they live in. Our team is made up ofamazing creative, organizational, and political consulting talent committed to achieving political and advocacy goals. 3. Im with Black Lives Matter, and I know a lot of trans people, the woman told Riley. Typically, the conversations begin with the canvasser asking the voter for their opinion on a topic, like abortion access, immigration, or LGBTQ rights. It could take awhile. But instead he began with a simple question: If she were to vote on whether to include gay and transgender people in nondiscrimination laws, would she be in favor or opposed? But not both.". The experiment, like all the ones in the study, was run a bit like a drug trial: The voters were randomly assigned (before the canvassers even knocked on their doors) to receive either the full deep canvassing conversation treatment, a watered-down version where the voters and canvassers dont exchange personal stories, or a placebo condition, where voters were engaged in a conversation that had nothing to do with immigration. Canvassers can get mugged, they can get lost, they can get attacked by wild geese, Michelson told me. I know it exists, and I hear stories, and I see them on TV. Had it all been wishful thinking? 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. I see transgender people as the same as I see myself, Nancy told him. He and his colleagues started the effort in 2009, shortly after the Prop 8 constitutional amendment and struck down same-sex marriage in California. These deep conversations, I suspect, may be more cost-effective in the long run because the impacts are durable, Serrano says. Instead of pelting voters with facts, we ask open-ended questions and then we listen, Dave Fleischer, the LGBTQ rights organizer who developed the technique, told me in 2016. Or for issues like the acceptance of genetically modified foods? If they met a voter who wanted to get rid of the law, they wouldnt call them out for prejudice. He also hopes it will usher in a new era of political persuasion. Danny Timponais Movement Politics Field Director for Peoples Action. ", The conversations are short, usually 10 to 20 minutes long. Whats the coolest thing about this method of canvassing? At Peoples Action, he helped build and execute a groundbreaking immigration Deep Canvass experiment in the fall of 2019 that targeted rural voters and persuaded them on pro-immigrant perspectives. And he can grow a better beard than I can!. Susmik now works on Peoples Actions National Field Team, supporting deep canvassing and movement politics work. David Broockman and Josh Kallas measurement of this projects impact become the landmark study that brought deep canvassing into the national spotlight, proving that it had the power to lastingly reduce prejudice. 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). Eden Mayle Field Manager Maria Do Field Organizer Deep canvassing has since been proven to change hearts and minds and find common ground across differences by. Steve Deline has been organizing around the methodology of deep canvassing, across multiple movements, for 13 years. Volunteers who want to work on an election happening in their community or a nearby community will have the option to use a fill-in-the-blank style voter ID or GOTV script. A partner organization that isnt doing electoral work may ask its members to canvass via #KnockEveryDoor. Melissa Michelson, a political-science professor at Menlo College in Atherton, Calif., who studies voter mobilization and public attitudes on L.G.B.T. Broockman and Kalla published the results in Science on Thursday. Though Fleischer thought his new approach was working, he wanted to know whether the persuasion lasted. "I told him that my father is fighting cancer right now. David Fleischer is the Director of the Los Angeles LGBT Center's Leadership LAB. Something went wrong. We will retain the data and also send the digitized data back to the volunteer. Its worth noting that some of the results were less strong than those Broockman and Kalla reported in their 2016 paper. organization. Fleischers staff at the Los Angeles-based Leadership Lab which goes door to door to reduce bias against L.G.B.T. Cost: $50 for both sessions Our organizing philosophy was outlined in the book Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything which was co-authored by Becky Bond, one of the volunteer chief organizers at #KnockEveryDoor and featuring stories about several other co-founding staff and volunteers who worked together on the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign, including Texas Zack Malitz, Hannah Fertig, Lynn Hua, Sam Ghazey, Cole Edwards, Kenneth Pennington, Hector Sigala and Max Cotterill. And while the effects may be small, only moving opinion a handful of percentage points among those canvassed may be worth it, too. 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. Volunteers will be responsible for localizing the script they wish to use. Deep canvassing is when volunteers and organizers engage in extended, empathetic conversations, with the goal of combating prejudice and shifting beliefs. I made a mistake, she said. The woman eventually told Riley that she had voted against gay marriage in California, but that she now regretted that choice. Staying grounded in our real lived experiences instead of opinions. All Muslims are often blamed for single acts of terror. Namely: Its larger, and it targets more issues, both trans rights and policies protective of undocumented immigrants. That means not making assumptions based on the voters age, race or their religion. Tennessee and the Central Valley have been the sites of large-scale workplace raids by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in recent years, she says, and various cities in Orange County have attempted to opt out of the California Values Act. Thats a state law that limits the collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement. 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. An IE may ask its volunteers to canvass via #KnockEveryDoor. The Los Angeles LGBT Center's Leadership LAB (Learn Act Build) specializes in deep canvassing and organizing through volunteer leadership development. Theres plenty of work that offers some possible mechanisms by which opinions change. Matthews career as an organizer started in on the west side of San Antonio, where he worked with other students to push back on the absurd amount of debt first-generation immigrants like himself were having to take on to have a chance at a college degree. It has also attracted controversy. There were days it was just hard to face that and everything that I was going through with my transition at the time. The two other experiments in the study targeted transphobia. 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. 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. A candidate may ask their volunteers to canvass via #KnockEveryDoor. The numbers get a bit bigger when you just focus on people who actually entered into the conversation, he says. Its about sharing and listening, all the while nudging people to be analytical and think about their shared humanity with marginalized groups. He likes to say that he has been talking to people who disagree with him since he was 4. Most notably, Ella led the LABs collaboration with SAVE, Miami-Dades leading LGBT group, to develop and measure a deep canvass model that could reduce transphobia. Ella Barrett has a deep love for building dynamic teams and innovative systems to create measurable social change. Are Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney in love, or are they good actors? ballot measure by a mere 80 votes. "We found non-trans allies had a lasting effect as well," Broockman says. In a deep canvass, we go to the turf where voters have voted against our causes in the past, and we find out why. (One clinical therapist I showed it to said it sounded a bit like motivational interviewing, a technique used to help clients work through ambivalent feelings.) Dave Fleischer a short, bald, gay, Jewish 61-year-old with bulging biceps and a distaste for prejudice knocked on the front door of a modest home in a middle-class neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles. He was only half joking. Advancement Leadership Lab was established in 2018 as an experiential and community-based approach to leadership transformation through an investment in people, curriculum, and lifelong community. Does this give us any guidance on how to talk to folks we dont agree with? She told voters about her own transgender child, Jie, now an adult. Her passion for social justice and teambuilding began in the woods of Timber, Oregon, where her family built a large community home around the core value of radical acceptance. (You can read the full deep canvassing script here on page 47.). You can do training and prep together prior to canvassing and then come back and debrief afterward. Her passion for social justice and teambuilding began in the woods of Timber, Oregon, where her family built a large community home around the core value of radical acceptance. Studies on deep canvassing suggest a conversion rate of 10%. 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 effort helped defeat the anti-L.G.B.T. 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. Steve: So my name is Steve Deline, and I am a field organizer at The Leadership LAB at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Take a mental break with the newest Vox crossword, Sign up for the How much does a deep canvass program typically cost? "Out of that outrage and despair, people wanted to do something very constructive." Its too bad that the takeaway was that only gay people could persuade people about gay marriage, Broockman says about LaCours retracted study. 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.