My sister bestowed something remarkably like wisdom the other day; she tried canvassing too.
Ok. Let me just clarify really quickly what canvassing IS, since I'm throwing the term around like poop on a Sunday. Let's ask Wikipedia to help us, shall we?
Canvassing is the systematic initiation of direct contact with a target group of individuals commonly used during political campaigns. A campaign team (and during elections a candidate) will knock on doors of private residences within a particular geographic area, engaging in face-to-face personal interaction with voters. Canvassing may also be performed by telephone, where it is referred to as telephone canvassing. The main purpose of canvassing is to perform voter identification - how individuals are planning to vote - rather than to argue with or persuade voters.[1] This preparation is an integral part of a 'get out the vote' operation, in which known supporters are contacted on polling day and reminded to cast their ballot.
Similar techniques may be used by non-governmental organizations, labor unions, religious denominations such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, poll takers, and even commercial enterprises such as door-to-door salespeople.
Delightful! Thank you, Wikipedia! Oh there's something else you'd like to add?
While converting voters would ideally be a central goal, it is difficult, requiring knowledgeable and charismatic canvassers, and time-consuming. To reach every voter in a district a canvasser cannot spend more than one or two minutes per person, rarely enough time to have a significant discussion. Persuasion canvassing will often involve the dropping of literature and campaign marketing materials like lawn signs, window signs, and bumper stickers (given to supporters). As canvassers work a population they will often make careful notes and use classification codes to record their interaction with the public.
This job is hard, may I add, when you're spending a minute or two on each person, hoping to get donations from people on the spot. By credit card. When you're NOT going door to door, but asking people to stop on the way to their lunch during their break from work, to donate.
OK. Let's go ahead and cut to the conversation with my sister. She proselytizes that you've got to live and work in a city, deal with its citizens, be its citizens. That's when you are going to build the new schools together. That's when you talk details about healthcare, referencing the same neighbors, calling the same doctors.
Canvassing, for me, felt like U.S. intervention in postcolonial worlds, looking bright-faced and dewey-eyed and being guilty, guilty, guilty of quick-fix fanaticism.
Get out of Haiti, U.S. You've done enough. Let people function.
(And Mom. Stop calling me. You're not helping.) Parents are a bit like dewey-eyed, overbearing political entities like the United States' international policy, themselves!
BUT GUESS WHAT! Amanda, my new bff from work took me to San Francisco on Sunday! We went to Castro Street, which is gay. Haight Street, which is dope. And LOMBARD STREET which is the crookedest street in the WORLD! Look!
We walked in the Bay itself, I bought Lori a really pretty bracelet
After that, we walked through the little streets on the Fisherman's Wharf, stopped to eat a grand meal of CRAB and sourdough garlic bread--which makes for an interesting fact! Amanda says that there's so much sourdough in the Bay Area, because there's so much fog! It encourages the sour dough bacteria creatures to grow!
It was a great day!
And you know what I just found out...San Francisco Pride is in a little less than two weeks! It's going to be
GAY!!!Interviewed with Barnes and Noble today, obviously left a good impression. (I'm a barista and an ex-librarian. They want this.)
All my love to everyone! I have a big paper to write about the oral traditions of West Africa. PAYCE!
