These Bernie Alums Think Theyve Found the Secret to Reaching Trump Voters.
How a group of Democratic organizers fell in love with “deep canvassing.”
This post originally appeared at Mother Jones.
'On an icy Saturday afternoon in early February, the rebuilding of the Democratic Party was happening in Jessica Williams’ Long Island living room. Williams, a social worker who in her free time hosts a podcast about dance, supported Bernie Sanders during the presidential primary but hadn’t volunteered for a political campaign in years. Everything changed in November. “I was like, holy crap, this democracy business is a whole lot more fragile than I realized,” she says.
Williams discovered a new group, Knock Every Door, that was organizing post-election canvasses in areas that had swung toward Trump in November. She signed up to host her own event and posted an invitation on Facebook. Eight people, mostly millennial supporters of Sanders who had never canvassed before, responded.
Their assignment was to go door-to-door in Williams’ neighborhood in Stewart Manor, New York, asking anyone who was home a series of questions about the 2016 election. But it was a wholly different kind of canvassing than the kind typically conducted by political campaigns, which target select voters from curated lists and train volunteers to be as efficient as possible. Williams did not have a list of names. There was no literature to hand out. She had no candidate or policy to talk up. The object was to get voters talking about the election — and not let them stop.
“Think of this as like a Terry Gross interview,” Williams suggested, as they munched on pizza before heading out. “We’re just trying to get them to open up a little more.” '>>>
http://billmoyers.com/story/bernie-alums-think-theyve-found-secret-reaching-trump-voters/#.WMNfFaBm91c.facebook
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