Podcast and Review: Activism, Inc.

After a successful day of canvassing, a group of idealistic young progressives gather together and cheer their hard day's labor in service to The Movement. "This is what democracy looks like!" they cheer before heading off to their mandatory socialization period.

The chant reeks of pure earnestness and energy, both of which I, too, possessed during my brief stint as a canvasser for NYPIRG the summer after college, but in Dana Fisher's new book, the scene is tragically ironic. If Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns is Strangling Progressive Politics in America tells us anything, it is that this is not what democracy looks like. And it is not what progressive politics should look like either.

I sat down with Dana Fisher for a Podcast a few weeks ago to talk about the book and her findings.

Click to download the complete podcast (35 minutes)

Part I - History of Canvassing
Part II - Young People: Cogs in the Machine
Part III - 2004, A Post-Mortem
Part IV - Solutions, The Field Infrastructure of Life

Dr. Fisher has agreed to come on the website and respond to your comments, so please leave any questions or observations you have in the comments section. If this works out, our future podcasts will have a "call for questions" beforehand to incorporate into the Podcast Q&A. I'll apologize upfront for my lack of interviewing skills. If you think I missed something, or didn't drill down enough . . . well . . . you know what to do.

A review (and a handy chart) after the jump.

Activism, Inc. is an indictment of the outsourced canvas model. In her book, Fisher describes, in kinder, gentler terms, a sweatshop for activists. Her interviews with 115 canvassers for The Fund for Public Interest Research (referred to in the book as "The People's Project") paints a picture of a list-building, money-raising machine that has the art of canvassing down to a cold, hard science. She observes that while this model produces incredible efficiencies in its core tasks, it has the unfortunate side effect of eliminating deep ties to local communities, and burning out young leaders, both vital components of a healthy, growing movement.

There's plenty to criticize here, below minimum wages justified as proof of "committment to the movement," long hours, suspected union-busting, lack of infrastructure building, talent burn-out. In the rest of this blog, I'm going to focus solely on the effects this model has on the development of new leaders for the Progressive Movement. If you are interested in discussions about canvassing and 527 groups, canvassing and the Party Committees, or issues of fair-pay, these links go to some damn good MyDD diaries on the subject. Of course, questions about these topics are certainly welcome in the comments for Dana's response.

W/r/t youth engagement, Fisher notes that canvassing outfits are increasingly the sole entry point into progressive politics for young people who lack the connections or the financial means to work the now requisite unpaid internship at a progressive organization or campaign. And outfits like The Fund exploit this gap in progressive infrastructure by boasting that they are training future leaders of the progressive movement. Activism,Inc. puts the lie to that claim, noting that the burnout rate for canvassers is incredibly high, and even the most successful canvassers frequently find their work with the Fund to be a dead end that provides no way to advance beyond the low-paying, long hour jobs with The Fund. The chart below (Fisher, 2006. P 62.) illustrates the typical life cycle of a canvasser and what it takes to get to "the top."

I've literally worked graveyard data-entry shifts with less turn-over (though in many respects the jobs are probably similar). As interview after interview makes clear, canvassing operations are a gauntlet, designed to weed-out "unsuccessful" workers as quickly as possible in the name of meeting a sign-ups or money quota. Coupled with the dearth of paying entry-level jobs, this means that, for the vast majority of young people, involvement in progressive politics is over before it's even begun.

Fisher makes it clear that the situation isn't much better for those who make it to "the top." In her interviews, she found only 1 canvasser who moved on to a position at one of the organizations with which The Fund contracted; a disturbing fact backed-up in her discussion with some of those contractors who stated a preference to promote from within their own organization or find new talent elsewhere.

In the end, Activism Inc. identifies few easy solutions to the dilemmas outlined in its chapters. In our podcast, Fisher notes that fixing the canvassing operations is probably a lost cause. Fair wages and hours can make a bad labor situation better, but won't solve the problem of dead-end job prospects awaiting the most talented organizers. Change is unlikely to come from within these outsourced operations, and it would not solve the other problem - that the tactics that make these operations so efficient also keep the progressive movement atrophied at the local level.

Rather than band-aid a bad situation, Fisher suggests that any solution entails a longterm plan to embrace what she labels the "Field Infrastructure of Life" (an idea that, on this site, we usually refer to as Living Liberally).

As evidence to support this claim, she notes that, in 2004, Republicans didn't outsource their field operation to groups that throw away workers who don't make quota. And they didn't airlift volunteers in from other parts of the country to knock on strangers' doors. Rather, they encouraged every supporter they had to reach out to their own social networks, however big or small. Among parishes and garden clubs, book clubs and softball leagues, Republicans performed quiet, and highly effective, GOTV work among their friends and neighbors.

That's the future - and the solution - that Activism, Inc. hopes for. That progressive organizations will stop outsourcing the movement and start reconnecting the pieces at the local level. That issue groups like the Sierra Club,NARAL, and electoral committees like the DNC will stop taking the cheap, easy way out by hiring outsiders to manufacture grassroots operations, and take the time to build their organizations at the local level. That they will start to build institutional knowledge at the local level - knowledge than can be transferred from one campaign to the next - and revive the progressive field infrastructure of life.