Dana Fisher

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.

Last night I recorded a podcast with Dana Fisher, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University, and author of the recently published book: Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns is Strangling Progressive Politics in America.

The podcast should be up on the site early next week (Monday or Tuesday) and I'll be posting a review of the book at the same time. It's an excellet study on how canvassing operations like The People's Project - despite their ability to quickly and efficiently build lists and raise money - are detrimental to the longterm health of the progressive movement. We touched on a lot of topics during the podcast - the history of canvassing and the operating models of these organizatios, the (lack of) utility of canvassing as an "entry point" into progressive politics for young people, Republican and Democratic GOTV strategies in 2004, community and local infrastructure building (something that these canvassing operations have allowed lazy Democrats to refrain from doing), and I'm sure much more.

The book was published yesterday, and I recommend anyone interested in learning about these canvassing organizations and the (mostly negative) effects they have on the progressive movement pick it up. More next week when the podcast is ready.