It’s called deep canvassing, a community exercise that is different from standard canvassing. Standard canvassing involves knocking on doors for the purpose of persuading the household residents to support a cause or a candidate. Deep canvassing also involves knocking on doors, but instead of engaging in persuasion, invites those who answer to engage in a brief conversation guided by some prompting questions: what do you care about? What do you see as the strengths of your neighborhood, community, country? What keeps you awake at night? Fundamental to deep canvassing is a commitment and discipline to listen. To take note of people’s passions, fears, and hopes. All of this is inventoried and passed on to local candidates running for office. A premise of deep canvassing is that the brief time spent together can foster a relationship — and deepen appreciation and understanding of one another. In a small, but signifiant way ,deep community can be a building block for creating community.
I was trained in the deep canvassing model a couple of years ago and was dispatched to practice it in several local neighborhoods in an off-election cycle. The conversations were fleeting, the relationships were transitory, but they are well remembered. And I think they made a difference — on both sides of the conversation. My partner and I have been recruited to offer deep canvassing training later this spring to people who are willing to go out and listen to their neighbors. We look forward to it.
In a society that seems to becoming ever more transactional, deep canvassing may seem fanciful, if not a waste of time. The transactional emphasis that is so much a part of our lives stresses the need to get people to vote, yes, but more importantly, to vote for the “right “person. Energy and effort certainly needs to be given to the retail aspect of electioneering. But that is not enough. Already I am hearing people getting caught up in the quadrennial sweepstakes for the 2028 Presidential election., which is two a half years away. Who is the front runner? Who has the most money and best ground game? Who has the best chance? These and other questions will be continually dissected by an insatiable media, and will threaten to consume our attention, and bludgeon our minds into a despairing passivity.
Voting is important, yes, and we need to do all we can to ensure that eligible voters have the freedom to vote without fear or discrimination; and to make sure that the elections are fair and equitable. But there is a temptation to focus so much the jousting between candidates that we lose sight of what is happening on the ground. And forsake the need to listen to and to build relationships with our neighbors. Being a good citizen requires us to engage beyond the voting booth.
Given the national turmoil that constricts our minds and souls, and which seems to work its way into nearly every conversation, I think it is important to reverse our attention from a focus on potential candidates to a commitment to fostering and creating community. And that is happening. The people of Minneapolis have given a powerful example; some have suggested the city be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. “Neighboring “was — and continues to be — on full display. Their wisdom and experience is being exported to other communities across the country.
Pockets of compassion are emerging in big and small ways. Hope is being offered. Relationships are being built. It is hard work. It is satisfying work. Some of those relationships are fleeting and transitory. And yet they are having an impact. An impact on the candidates themselves — at the local, state and national level — who are witnessing these demonstrations of solidarity and care, and are shaping their campaigns accordingly. The grass roots are feeding, shaping, and guiding the grass tops.
Besides listening, another quality that needs to be held is a resolute commitment to nonviolence. This is hugely important, and sometimes difficult, given the violent rhetoric that swirls around us — and the literal violence that shut down the White House Correspondents dinner on Saturday night, April 25. Violence, however it is carried out, is an action of separation, if not an attempt for domination. We hear and see too much of that. Non-violence not only can disarm violence, but has the capacity to bind people together in their humanity.
Our witness, work and commitment are needed. Canvass yourself, canvass your neighbor. Listen, learn and build solidarity.
