"It will take time to realize you’re not a jerk”: Deep canvassing can bridge our gaps as citizens

It was about an hour into a late-October Zoom call with six strangers that I looked from face to face—all of us smiling, some with tears in our eyes—and asked myself, is this truly the point of it all?

As part of training for a West Philadelphia group called Changing the Conversation for Progress, we’d been asked to share stories of people we loved. One woman described being in such a state that her child, age 4, reached up to her to offer a tissue. “That’s when I knew I needed to get over the death of my mother and be there for her.” Prompted by her recollection, I reminisced about the tenderness of listening from the doorway as my father read Goodnight, Moon to my sons, and how I missed the reassurance of his presence, this Navy officer who passed away five years ago. 

“How do you feel?” the session facilitator asked us.

Connected, I thought. 

In just a handful of minutes, our stories had established an intimacy and trust I would have sworn Zoom was incapable of supporting.  

Now we would see if the same magic could work in the swing state of Pennsylvania. That is the power of political canvassing.

Both campaigns — all campaigns — present canvassing as a way to get out the vote. It becomes a bragging point when Harris has an extensive door-knocking operation, and a break-out-the-Elon-Musk-millions emergency for Trump when he doesn’t. Evidence for canvassing’s efficacy is vexed, however: social scientists have shown the practice of going door to door to have near-zero persuasive power, and, unless the message is highly personalized, an uncertain effect on turnout. Biden won 2020 despite the pandemic shutting down Democratic (but not Republican) in-person efforts.

 I’ll confess, too, that as many elections as I’ve lived through, as many issues as I’ve been passionate about over the years, I’ve mostly avoided canvassing. The few times I’ve tried it I’ve felt somewhere between useless to misused, treading the empty road between households where no one is home and no one talks. With the stakes so incredibly high for democracy this election, though, sitting on the sidelines felt untenable. My girlfriend and I sent messages to everyone we knew connected to politics, asking, how do we help. We kept hoping there would be a different suggestion, but the answer kept coming back: canvass in Pennsylvania, the swing state nearest to our home in Massachusetts. Imagine the difference a few more volunteers might have made for Hillary Clinton in 2016, one friend said: she lost Pennsylvania by only 44,000 votes. 

Then a chance conversation led us to Changing the Conversation for Progress, whose work feels genuinely hopeful. Active in western Philadelphia since the 2020 election, the nonprofit practices a new approach, “deep canvassing,” and claims an incredibly impressive record on voter outreach. In 2020 and 2022, in the predominantly Black, heavily Democratic neighborhoods where it was active, canvassed voter turnout shot up from 70% to 87%.  Even more impressively, turnout among ‘low-propensity’ voters who have sat out multiple elections rose 29%. Those gains amounted to thousands of votes, putting a tailwind behind the election of not just Biden, but Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Democratic Senator John Fetterman.

The Saturday after the training Zoom call, my girlfriend and I showed up at St George St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Cobbs Creek, a neighborhood marking the western boundary of Philadelphia. According to the most recent Census, Cobbs Creek is 95% Black and mixed-race, less than 2% white. On any worship Sunday, I’m sure the church would reflect those demographics. On this day, though, it’s the reverse; we took our place in pews that were now 95% white, and as non-Pennsylvanian. The dialogue coach later assigned to me turned out to be a neighbor from Massachusetts. 

And the speaker at the front of the room, to my surprise, was none other than Dave Fleischer, one of the founders of deep canvassing. I’d read a profile in the New York Times of his work in California changing minds about LGBTQ and transgender issues. Bald, with jacked arms even at what must be nearly 70 years of age, he moved back and forth through the room like a cross between a wrestling coach and a monk, offering what amounted to spiritual guidance in profane language. “The heart of this,” he’d say, “is to listen. Leave space. Be vulnerable. They’ve dealt with a lot of assholes, and let’s be honest, many of them have looked like us. It will take time to realize you’re not a jerk.” Two experienced coaches modeled a dialogue for us, how the sharing of stories allows a connection to form. 

Then we were put in small groups, us newbies paired with experienced returners, and we practiced our dialogues, and it was incredibly awkward-feeling. I kept looking down at the script. 

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to vote.”

 “Voting is not just political to me, it’s personal. I think of someone I love…” I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question on the script, “Who’s someone you love?”  It felt intrusive.

“You’ll see how it works,” my coach stressed. “And by the way: names are important. Use your Dad’s name. Ask the names of the people in their stories.”

Only connect

The block we were assigned was just three minutes away, still in Cobbs Creek. The mid-day sun felt summer hot, and there was little movement despite a dense line of town houses that were either glaring white or oddly dark; the effect was like a mouth with missing teeth. Many seemed scrupulously cared for, but in others a rotted half-sprung mattress would block an upper floor window, with trash strewn in the yard.

We’ve been told not to mistake our list of addresses for a to-do list. “The best form of outreach is talking to the people you encounter,” Fleischer explained.   

I felt as conspicuously white and out of place as I’ve ever felt in my life. I’d walked through neighborhoods like this in Boston—but never with the intent of disturbing anyone’s private affairs. Maybe just the opposite. I would have given wide berth to the man we spotted across the street, who was swaying slightly and holding onto a corner fence post as if for support. He looked to be in his early fifties, in baggy clothes and loosely laced sneakers, eyes squeezed mostly closed, expression slack. 

We introduced ourselves, learned his name — Tim, I’ll call him here — and in face of his confusion, my girlfriend rushed past the preambles (“If you had two minutes to tell Trump anything, what would you say?”) and got to her story, which had to do with a deacon who comforted her one day in church when she really needed it. “And you?” she asked. Too quickly, too nervously, I thought—the opposite of the way Fleischer seemed to take his time over words, to maintain direct eye contact. It was a lot harder than it looked, to be that present with a stranger. Or anyone. 

 “Can you think of someone you love,” she insisted, “Someone where you have that bond of care?”

He blinked — a long pause. Every instinct told me this couldn’t produce a real conversation. Who were we, to interrupt this man’s reverie?

But then his face softened. “My mother,” he said. “She died when I was four.  I had foster families after that. I remember her putting me to bed. It was the warmest, happiest feeling in my entire life.” Tears welled up in his eyes—and to my surprise, in mine, too. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to share about my father. For that to lead to an agreement that voting was a protection, a gift, for loved ones — and to a further agreement to make a plan to get to the polls. We exchanged names, phone numbers; this was Tim’s house. He was registered. Later, we’d smile at each other as we passed back this way. 

It shifted things, this conversational magic. We’d go on to have the conventional canvassing experience of knocking on unanswering doors — but we also shared stories with an 80-year-old Air Force veteran who’d proudly voted in every election since Nixon, a mother who was eager to share political views with us even as her kids, dressed in matching Halloween sweatshirts, pulled at her to go. I interrupted a man I’ll call Andre as he and two women unloaded groceries from a car, spoke with him for half an hour while he sat on his stoop, holding a noticeably sturdy leash on a pitbull whose gray head and golden eyes never stopped tracking me. Andre told me about the time in 1985 when the Philadelphia police bombed Cobbs Creek, burning two whole city blocks and killing people, in an effort to drive out a Black rights group. “Bombed their own city,” he said with wonder. “Felt the ground shake from where I live.”

“Here, you mean?” I asked. 

“Nah,” Andre said. “This isn’t my house.”

“Wait, then…” I was confused; there was an Andre on my list. “Can I get your full name?” He grinned without answering on that. Nor did he want to give his phone number. I settled for his promise to vote. 

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My girlfriend and I wrapped up at a corner bodega, where we recovered from the 70-something-degree weather with cold drinks, and spoke to people coming in. A man and woman, clearly high, who pulled up on scooters and proceeded to complain about Trump while rolling what looked like cigars. A Spanish-speaking father getting ice cream with his son. 

A forty-something-year-old man — call him Mike — told us he didn’t know if he could vote for Harris, given that on TV he’d seen “she’ll open the borders.” 

Instead of getting into the matter of deceptive advertisements, which is what I might have done before the training, Mike and the two of us connected first over how much he loved his nephews, and how his vote could help the next generation thrive. Once there was a bit of relationship there, and we had each other’s names, he seemed to take seriously our suggestion to look up the border bill that Harris championed, and Trump blocked. He made a voting plan.

Did every conversation work magic? I became a believer in the approach because the magic worked on me. Exhausted, dripping with perspiration, my girlfriend and I came to the end of our shift. Two hours had transformed me from feeling like a stranger on a strange block into someone waving at people whose homes and families I recognized — more people, with names more known to me, it suddenly struck me, than back on my home street in Massachusetts where I’d lived for more than a decade. 

Deep canvassing ended with a debrief — people sharing conversations and conundrums. We tallied numbers: in one day, nearly 800 full conversations, voting plans and agreements for follow-up phone calls. Sixty people had called a hotline that offered to give people a free ride to the polls to vote early.

Add the numbers up from all the days of canvassing, with the volunteer numbers growing — and you can start to see the boost this represents. “They won’t remember what you tell them,” Fleischer said. “They’ll remember that you were kind, and they’ll remember what they talked to you about — the person they love. It will remind them of their values, and why they’re voting.”

 As for me, I’d begun this process anxious about democracy, and I ended up feeling grateful to be practicing it, and far more connected to my fellow citizens. I don’t know which way the vote will go on Tuesday, of course — but I’ve filled many days this October doing as Fleischer recommended. Showing vulnerability. Listening to others

In fact, it made me long for excuses to do this not only in elections, and not with so pressing an agenda. Talking to fellow citizens across differences because we really want to know each other, and want to be comfortable across this country we share.  Wouldn’t that be something?