What's the Difference? - Organizer, Field Organizer, Canvasser

The 2020 Democratic Presidential primary season has already started, which means that candidates will start hiring staff. Most of the on-the-ground staff will be in the states that are early in the primary calendar, such as Iowa and New Hampshire. Given the number of candidates, it is likely that the titles for positions that are roughly the same will vary considerably.

We’ve seen some overlapping of titles, however, in recent years. The Obama presidential campaigns, especially, made use of the title “organizer” for the people on the ground working most directly with volunteers. This is likely given President Obama’s history as a community organizer, as well as the background of folks who helped President Obama’s campaigns develop their field and training plans, folks like Marshall Ganz and Joy Cushman. These individuals have decades of experience with long-term community organizing.

The title of “organizer” has since been used by more and more candidate’s campaigns, with varying levels of fidelity to the idea of an organizer that Ganz and Cushman had in mind. That idea came from unions, the Civil Rights movement, and other long-term community organizing groups like Faith in Action (formerly PICO). So in order to develop some clear distinctions, I offer the following definitions:

Organizer - This role focuses on building community and developing leaders. This is done through 1:1 conversations, house meetings, trainings, and coaching. The goal is to develop long-lasting organizations, centered around shared values and identity, that can use their growing power for a wide variety of purposes. These purposes can include legislative advocacy, direct action, and elections/civic engagement. The organizer is a thought-partner, agitator, teacher, pastor.

Field Organizer - The field organizer role is more limited than that of an organizer. They are given a plan, a geographic or demographic turf, specific skills, and told to execute the plan. They recruit volunteers to accomplish the plan. They may build up structures that look like those created by an organizer, but the key distinction is that the structures themselves do not determine priorities or goals. The field organizer is an doer and volunteer coordinator.

Canvasser - These folks have one job, which is simply to talk to people at the doors. These conversations are generally of two types: persuasion or Get Out the Vote. There is no true relational component to their work, which is driven purely by numbers. These folks can be truly effective for their given part in a strategy, but that part is very narrow and not up for debate or discussion.

Field organizers and canvassers are key parts of a candidates’ campaigns, but they shouldn’t be confused with the role of organizer as it exists in organizations that build long-term power. Indeed, it is not uncommon for organizations founded by staff from candidate campaigns to use the term organizer, when in fact they do not completely understand its breadth and depth.

Conflating these titles causes confusion within the larger progressive movement. I’ve seen individuals with several campaigns cycles of experience as an “organizer” (field organizer) on candidate campaigns try to move over to long-term community organizing groups, and be completely unequipped for their new role.

So let’s call a spade a spade.

Honey vs Vinegar

I was sitting in a meeting a while back where people were talking about an event that we were planning. We wanted to train people to have intentional one-on-one conversations with others, in order to build better communities. 

I made the point that persuasion requires credibility with the audience, an argument that makes sense, and emotional buy-in from the audience. In other words, I said, persuasion requires ethos, logos, and pathos.

These are Greek words that the philosopher/rhetorician Aristotle used to describe successful persuasion in the public sphere. His contexts were the courts, the legislative assembly, and public funerals. He wanted to describe and teach how good public communication worked when trying to persuade groups of people.

I taught these ideas when I was an educator. My graduate degree is in Rhetoric and Composition, which is the study of good written (and often verbal) communication. Students need to learn ethos, pathos, and logos when they write research and argumentative papers, but also as a way to discern when and how outside forces try to influence them. One of the proudest moments of my professional teaching career was when a student came to class and said, "I was watching YouTube last night and I couldn't stop analyzing the ads!"

This framework (emotions, logic, credibility) also applies to communication between individuals. I wrote in a previous post that one of the most powerful tools in community organizers' belts is the one-on-one conversation. A good one-on-one happens when two people establish credibility with one another, make an emotional connection, and when the organizer has a reasonable argument why the other person should take some sort of action.

We as a society have lost the ability to establish credibility with one another, build emotional connections, and establish trust. I have worked in politics for a little while now. I have never convinced anyone of anything on a deep level simply by providing an argument, facts and figures, or graphs.

Deep, meaningful change doesn't happen without trust. Trust isn't built by logic or data. It is built by genuine relationships, sharing of stories, and commitment to action. You cannot truly convince anyone who disagrees with you to change by yelling at them. You may scare or intimidate them. You might be able to apply enough peer pressure to make them act a certain way. But those methods don't create deep and lasting change. You can attract, and change, more people with honey than with vinegar.

Strategy and Humanity

Faith in Texas Planning Meeting

Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to see firsthand the work that Faith in Texas is doing to make Dallas a more just place. Tonight was a planning meeting for the group to discuss the upcoming legislative session, amongst other things. 

When I started doing political campaigns, one thing I noticed is the attitude that many operatives have that winning is everything. No one ever advocated violating the law. It was ok, however, to push staff and volunteers past the point of burnout. It was ok to speak in unkind ways to others because nothing mattered except for winning. Many talented people have been forever turned off from civic life because of their experiences with political campaigns. That is a shame.

That is why I appreciate community organizing groups like Faith in Texas, as well as the other non-profits across the nation that are associated with the PICO National Network. They manage to balance the need for clear wins and clear progress with the need to humanize the work of social justice. In other words, they believe the ends are just as important as the means. 

This is something that our society doesn't do well. All you have to do is read Facebook or YouTube comment threads to realize that people don't care about how they say something. We are not great at civil disagreement. Don't get me wrong, I believe there is a place for strong, assertive, prophetic speech. However, as I taught my students when I was an educator, the audience matters. You won't change hearts and minds with aggressive speech unless you have a relationship with your audience. Most of the time, honey will catch more flies than vinegar.