Al Owski’s Reviews > The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy > Status Update

“ "The core of organizing is we want to create change in the world and change in structures and policies and rules," he said. "But it is a craft that first and foremost is designed to help change people, and help people shake off any limiting beliefs, whether those are about ourselves or about society, and replace them with something else." ”

“"It is amazing what opens up when you recognize the person across from you, wherever they are at, that there's a reason they're there, and that there's probably some unmet human needs on the other end of that," Goehl told me. ”

“Goehl believed it was vital to be just as present in the off-season.”

“Goehl harbored an abiding faith in this meaning-making project, and it grew out of his experience knocking on doors. "Over and over, you would see somebody have something wash across their face. They'd be like, 'I never thought about that.' Or, 'I've never connected my struggles to this other person's struggles.' Or, 'I've never thought about the fact that I am focused on the wrong culprit in this story.' ”

“ "Absent positive, generative meaning makers in people's lives, the only thing that's left is the far-right preacher and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and, increasingly, proud white nationalists," Goehl said. "So every day we forfeit being involved in helping people make meaning of what's happening, we forfeit a chance to help move some people toward us, and that's a lot of people." ”

“What they were seeking wasn't to be found in thirty-second campaign ads or proposals for better health care, Goehl believed, as important as those things were. What they were hungry for was a way of making sense of it all. They were in the market for... "home." Goehl's fear was that the cruel and hateful and greedy in public life were more ready to give them that than his own allies were.”

“The term Goehl used for this process was "meaning making." The way he saw things, the country was in the grips of great forces of change—demographic, economic, political, climatic. Even before voters were angry, and so many of them were, they were lost, discombobulated, unsure of how to see themselves and the world- voters of all backgrounds, all persuasions. ”

“Was there a time you needed support? Was there a time you needed health care but struggled to access it? Was there a time you were counted out because of factors beyond your control? The goal of this stage, according to the report, was "to end with individuals self-generating and explicitly stating aloud implications of the narratives that ran contrary to their previously stated exclusionary attitudes." ”

“In this early phase of listening to subjects on the door justify their opinions, grace was essential. As a report on deep canvassing on the news site Vox put it, "The new research shows that if you want to change someone's mind, you need to have patience with them, ask them to reflect on their life, and listen. It's not about calling people out or labeling them fill-in-the-blank-phobic..." ”

“The canvasser's opportunity wasn't to implant something of their own... Rather, it was to pit some things going on inside them against other things going on inside them, to get them to re-rank these things.
Yes, you don't like immigrants, but you like that immigrant you know. Or you don't favor a pathway to citizenship, but you know what it means to be overlooked and shut out...”