leadership lab deep canvassing

Previous research, though, including a study of teenagers in an Outward Bound program assigned to either mixed-race or all-white groups, suggested that lasting prejudice reduction happened after weeks of regular contact. "They were very transparent about all the statistics," she 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?" The idea is that people learn lessons more durably when they come to the conclusions on their own. After the canvass, the groups filled out four follow-up surveys, up to three months later. The canvassers don't try to build rational arguments for why someone should think one way or another. Had he been completely honest, he might have said, Im here to make you less prejudiced. What does it take to divert someone away from prejudice and toward greater acceptance of others in order to build support for progressive causes? After the dust settled, Broockman and Kalla went on with their experiment on transgender prejudices. Deep Canvassing to Shift Hearts, Mind and Votes. ", The Leadership LAB of the Los Angeles LGBT Center trains people in canvassing techniques aimed at reducing prejudice. It likely wasnt because someone berated you. Its a reminder that our political opponents arent always as rigid or ideologically severe as they appear in our minds. (This definition is sourced from The New Conversation Initiative). Her second conversation, she said, was with a black man in his 50s who was a seven on the 10-point scale. If you would like to see first-hand what these one-on-one conversations are like, we encourage you to sign up to canvass with us. I would totally vote in favor, the woman says of a transgender protection law. But for transgenders? For example, KED wont support Republicans or, potentially, certain Democrats facing primary challenges. 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. To run an ad campaign you just need a bank account and a media consultant. Topping and dozens of other canvassers were a part of that 2016 effort. 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. (These methods may make it easier to scale up in a bigger campaign.). But when it comes to changing minds, they work. "I told him that my father is fighting cancer right now. Fleischer began getting the sense that just talking and listening to people was making them more accepting of same-sex marriage. It's of a real voter and a canvasser from the Leadership Lab, a program of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which spearheaded this canvassing method after losing the 2008 Proposition 8 ballot. Nancy Williams, right, who is transgender, talks with a voter as part of a canvassing effort in Los Angeles. The technique might be used to target any societal prejudice or be used to increase prejudice, Broockman acknowledges. Beginning in 2014, the Leadership Lab teamed up with Planned Parenthood to canvass in support of pro-choice policies. The canvassers thought the conversations were changing people's minds, but Fleischer says he couldn't know if it was working without independent verification. Deep Canvass, found to be successful at reducing transgender prejudice. organization. Fleischer then returned to his scale, asking Nancy what number felt right for her now. 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. Specifically, the canvasser asks the voter to recall a time when he or she was discriminated against. Tweet 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. Giving grace. I'm David McRaney, and this is the final segment about deep canvassing. After the canvassing, 29 percent of the people in the placebo condition said they strongly supported policies inclusive of undocumented immigrants. Studies on deep canvassing suggest a conversion rate of 10%. The news crushed Fleischer. She seemed to be connecting Jacksons experience to that of her gay friends. Over the last eight years, and through more than 12,000 conversations, The Leadership LAB has developed a new kind of persuasion they call deep canvassing. Now we can show experimentally that when you take away the two-way nature of the conversation, the effects go away, Broockman says. Ella then managed the Leadership LAB project at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where a team of more than 1,000 volunteers and staff collaborated to innovate new methods of voter persuasion and prejudice reduction and apply them on the ground to help win LGBT rights campaigns across the country. The groups feared a backlash against a recent ordinance that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. There's this belief that if we just say the . Jackson grew up as a girl, but he knew even when he was 5 or 6 that he was really a boy. ballot measure by a mere 80 votes. Youve probably had a time when people have judged you unfairly? he asked. It is a landmark study, according to Elizabeth Paluck, a psychologist at Princeton University who was not involved with the work. She smiled shyly and asked Fleischer, the Leadership Labs director, how she could help him. Canvassers can get mugged, they can get lost, they can get attacked by wild geese, Michelson told me. Steve Deline has been organizing around the methodology of deep canvassing, across multiple movements, for 13 years. Anyone can read what you share. Were just beginning to learn how to do this well, but its important. Immigration particularly that of asylum seekers loomed over the 2018 elections. 6. But after shooing the dog into another room, Nancy appeared in her doorway again. We work to empower volunteers to connect the personal to the political with voters in order to make long-term, meaningful impacts on elections. Massachusetts voters could choose to keep or throw out a law that banned discrimination based on gender identity. 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. Broockman says that public opinion about gay people has improved by 8.5 points between 1998 and 2012. groups argued that transgender people (or those pretending to be) would pose a threat to children in public restrooms. graduate student in political science and statistics, who said he could design a study to assess the long-term effectiveness of Leadership Lab canvassers at increasing support for same-sex marriage among voters in Los Angeles who had supported Prop 8. Its a real heart-to-heart between strangers. Thats what the Mormons use, he said on this sunny, bird-chirping Saturday in February. hide caption. There, Executive Director David Fleischer, collaborating with political scientists David Broockman and Josh Kalla and a host of staff and volunteers, have been working for years to iterate a model called deep canvassing.. Because abortion is such a politically polarized issue, he said, it could just be that we have to get better at making voters trust us and open up. But it could also be that the Leadership Labs transgender canvassing success is an anomaly. He and several collaborators struggled for years to get to this point. Nancy, it seemed, was a supporter no need to worry about her. Ella then managed the Leadership LAB project at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, where a team of more than 1,000 volunteers and staff collaborated to innovate new methods of voter persuasion and prejudice reduction and apply them on the ground to help win LGBT rights campaigns across the country. Canvassing for climate action: Heres how to make it work, 2021 (Podcast 40:53 mins). You can connect to their values in that way. The Leadership LAB works to reduce prejudice and change voters hearts and minds. He also helped lead a second Deep Canvass operation in three states in 2021 during the federal immigration debate. 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. The study's conclusions differ from the conclusions of the LaCour's falsified study from 2014 in one crucial way, Broockman says. Door to Door, Thats refreshing and useful. The first of the three experiments was pretty much a replication of the 2016 study, but on the topic of rights for undocumented immigrants. This recorded webinar gives a walkthrough of the deep canvassing design process including instructional materials, tips sheets, and sample scripts. Oh, yes, Nancy said. Are Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney in love, or are they good actors? Its not easy to confront people whose votes would seek to hurt you, and then try to change their minds. Green was skeptical that the canvassers were as persuasive as they thought they were. Though Fleischer thought his new approach was working, he wanted to know whether the persuasion lasted. Earlier that morning, Leadership Lab volunteers sat on stackable chairs and watched video clips of front-door encounters on a projector screen. LaCour appeared to be breaking new ground, showing that one brief but memorable interaction could reduce prejudice. Finding common humanity. Becky Bond, a Bernie Sanders campaign adviser and an admirer of the Leadership Labs work, says that the Sanders campaign has focused on marshaling the enthusiasm of volunteers to persuade people. No, Im sorry, she said. As Riley prepared to leave for the next house on the block, the woman called out. Its also volunteers who schedule, recruit for and manage in-person canvasses. He vowed to keep at it, but soon there was no need. He had lied to us. In a deep canvass, we go to the turf where voters have voted against our causes in the past, and we find out why. It has also attracted controversy. I wasnt sure she would return; the last two voters hed met pleaded busyness. All three places are experiencing demographic change, with a growing and diversifying population of immigrant residents, says Kim Serrano, the messaging research project manager at the California Immigrant Policy Center. There are other potential problems. 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. Deep canvassing has been proven to be an effective way to help more people vote. Since 2018, as the cofounder of the New Conversation Initiative and the New Conversation Institute, Steve has been a key partner in the development, rigorous testing, and implementation of deep canvass programs on issues from climate to immigration and policing. In 2008, he was in Ohio mobilizing African-American and Latino voters for Barack Obama when California residents passed Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage in the state. They dont say if they are pleased or hurt by the response. Both types of canvassers could instigate change. Not every campaign can afford to run canvasses. 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. There wasn't, however, any indication that those who started out with very negative feelings about transgender people were particularly resistant to the conversation. If the effect persists, Broockman says, the technique could be used to reduce prejudice across society. Deep canvassing is a long-term investment, but the impact is cumulative. 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. I think in todays world, many communities have a call-out culture, says David Broockman, a UC Berkeley political scientist who has run these experiments with Josh Kalla, a political scientist at Yale University. Let's say you want to beat Candidate X who won in Michigan by 10,000 votes. Each week, we explore unique solutions to some of the world's biggest problems. David Fleischer is the Director of the Los Angeles LGBT Center's Leadership LAB. Its not about calling people out or labeling them fill-in-the-blank-phobic. The fraudulent study called into question the validity of the Leadership Labs deep-canvassing approach. Theres this belief that if we just say the right words, the voters going to change their mind. 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. The modern form of deep canvassing was developed by the Leadership LAB of the Los Angeles LGBT Center. Going door to door, a Los Angeles-based activist group tries to reduce prejudice against transgender 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. 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 []. In Pennsylvania and beyond, Eboni has also supported organizations on outreach, strategy, program management, leadership development and political education. 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. "The LGBT community and our allies were shocked and upset," Fleischer says. Steve Deline has been organizing around the methodology of deep canvassing, across multiple movements, for 13 years. Fleischer asked her to rate that support on a scale from zero to 10. To test whether transphobia could be overcome during a face-to-face encounter, Broockman and Kalla measured a 2015 canvassing effort in Miami by volunteers from the Leadership Lab and SAVE, a local L.G.B.T. Its almost the opposite of growing up today in the age of Facebook and political polarization, where its easy to always be among like-minded people, your self-isolation complete before you have your first beer., At first, Fleischer and his team tried cerebral arguments and appeals to fairness in their doorway conversations with same-sex-marriage opponents who didnt express deep religious objections. After the canvass, the study participants answered the same questions about transgender people that they had answered before the study, including how positively or negatively they felt towards transgender people on a scale of 0 to 100. (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.) Through a deep canvass, we can at times identify a voters deeply bias and prejudices, views that may not be identified through polling or focus groups but can be utilized by your opposition. Its a type of conversation thats closer to what a psychotherapist might have with a patient than a typical political argument. Its of a real voter and a canvasser from the Leadership Lab, a program of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which spearheaded this canvassing method after losing the 2008 Proposition 8 ballot initiative in California. But I dont have any friends like I do my gay friends., Fleischer nodded and removed a picture of his friend Jackson from his wallet. ", Williams says around the time she began volunteering with the LGBT Center, she canvassed a man who didn't support nondiscrimination protection for transgender children. Over a 2-hour shift, our volunteers will complete an average of 5 conversations. You can also contribute via. The impacts these conversations had on feelings of prejudice, Broockman admits, are about a third as strong. In 2012, Steve embedded with the Minnesotans United marriage equality campaign, which mobilized over 14,000 LGBTQ and ally volunteers to have more than 220,000 deep canvass conversations on the phones, contributing to a first-ever ballot box victory that many thought impossible. Right, because otherwise you have the biggest secret in the world, and everyone thinks something about you thats not true, Fleischer said, before pivoting to a story about Jacksons being demeaned by a waiter in a restaurant. And its this meta-perception, Bruneau finds, that then fuels ongoing conflict and dehumanization. Theres also the question: Is it worth the effort? That failed miserably, he said. The canvassers also share their own stories: about being an immigrant, about being a member of the LGBTQ community, or about just knowing people who are. He enlisted a graduate student at UCLA named Michael LaCour to see if there was a measurable effect. 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. Listening to a political opponents concerns. 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. "There's something special about caring about why [people] feel the way they do. Its also a challenge to change a campaigns habits and make the goal of canvassing be to successfully relate to other people. Treat it like the most normal thing in the world. We will retain the data and also send the digitized data back to the volunteer. But the more they analyzed LaCours study design and results, the more problems they found. Its up to volunteers to add specific candidates, districts, elections, or geographically-specific voting information to our templated #KnockEveryDoor scripts. You can register at this link. Susmik Lama is a one-and-a-half generation Nepali immigrant to the United States, born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, who now calls Philly home. I have friends who are gay.. Insights from Deep Canvassing: Proven Scripts for Transformational Outreach, The New Conversation Initiative, Netroots Nation, 2021 (Video 60 mins). But there is a similarity, because at the root theres the feeling of being judged, of having someone make assumptions about you, and that does not feel good.. In the runup, conservative news outlets were blaring headlines about a scary immigrant caravan marching north through Mexico to the US southern border. Which is to say: Republicans assume Democrats dislike them more than they actually do, and vice versa. Theres still a script, but its designed to help the canvasser build a good rapport with a voter. The Leadership Lab has honed the deep canvassing method through years of intensive, in-house analysis of their work ( Denizet-Lewis, 2016 ). But how does it work? A typical state or national campaign, even one with a ground-game focus, doesnt want its volunteers spending 10 or 15 minutes at a door. 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. She ended a solid 10, a rating he was confident could survive opposition messaging. Here is a collection of resources about deep canvassing scripts including script examples and ideas, video training and podcasts. Im with Black Lives Matter, and I know a lot of trans people, the woman told Riley. Those who had discussed prejudice they'd experienced felt about 10 points more positively toward transgender people, on average. Oops. Dave Fleischer, director of the center's Leadership LAB, welcomed the academics' independent measurement of its canvassing program. Though there was currently no ballot measure in Los Angeles to worry about, there was a palpable urgency to the Leadership Labs work. 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. He and LGBT Center volunteers began talking to as many people as they could, trying to understand why they lost Prop 8. 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. And in that moment, he points out that a transgender nondiscrimination law would help people who feel discriminated against at school or work. He then did something few political consultants would advise: He introduced her to the oppositions favorite argument. Sample Scripts for Deep Canvassing: Signature Gathering and Voter Research, CallHub, 2022 (Online article). 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. 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. Canvassers (who may or may not be members of the impacted community) listen nonjudgmentally. Dont try to change someones mind alone. 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. Armed with a no men in womens bathrooms message, anti-L.G.B.T. How Do You Change Voters Minds? The distinguishing feature of a deep canvass is you take a lot more time to talk to voters and have a bona fide two-way conversation about real experiences that shape their thinking about the issues. Keep in mind the media environment the canvassers were working in. Remarkably, we dont know very much about what forms of campaign communications are most persuasive, he said. 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. How much does a deep canvass program typically cost? Prejudices are often deep, obstinate beliefs. . issues, he believes this kind of canvassing could change peoples thinking on everything from abortion and gun rights to race-based prejudice. (Its hard, he adds, to directly compare the two papers, though, since the 2016 effort focused a bit more on combating prejudice, and this one more so on policy. Which makes it feel like a big departure from a lot of the current political dialogue. Video example of deep canvassing. It costs money. He has been organizing for over 20 years, with deep experience in community organizing, electoral politics and the immigrants rights movement. The biggest gift you can give someone whose mind you want to change is a supportive environment that lets them think about their experiences and how those experiences affect their opinions on issues. A partner organization that isnt doing electoral work may ask its members to canvass via #KnockEveryDoor. Is First Republic Banks failure sign of a slow-motion banking crisis? What a roller coaster of emotions," he says. Contact Cambridge, MA, USA (617) 702-4787 [email protected]. These scientists keep proving that reducing prejudice is possible. See also the AYCC website for more information about deep canvassing and an example of a useful Climate Conversation Report Tool. And the data shows it works. This toolkit is full of useful links to materials they have developed and shared including Climate Action Scripts online and in person, Script Iteration Examples and lots of training resources. 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.

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