Activism, Inc.

"Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America" is a book by Columbia University sociologist Dana Fisher, based on an ethnographic study of Fund for Public Interest Research canvass offices during the summer of 2003. Fisher argues the corporate fund-raising model mistreats idealistic young people by using them as interchangeable parts and providing them with insufficient training; Fisher also believes that the outsourcing of grassroots organizing by political groups led to the decay of grassroots infrastructure and opportunities for involvement on the left.

Fisher was inspired by her own experience as a canvasser and a 2001 lecture by scholar Harry Boyte.

FFPIR has created a website to respond to a few of the criticisms raised by the book: http://www.canvassingworks.org/. The site includes testimony by former Fund staff who have moved into leading roles in other progressive organizations and other progressive leaders, including U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (IL), Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, Dr. Woody Holton (Associate Professor of American history at the University of Richmond), and Randy Hayes of the Rainforest Action Network.

Publication details

*Fisher, Dana. "Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America", Stanford University Press, 2006 ISBN 978-0804752176

External links

*A Stanford University Press press release regarding this book can be found at: http://www.sup.org/html/book_pages/0804752176/Press%20Release.pdf

*Peter Levine, President of [http://www.civicyouth.com/ CIRCLE] (The Center for Investigative Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), whose endorsement appears on Activism, Inc. [http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/archives/000926.html retracts] it on his blog.

*Randy Shaw's critique of Activism, Inc. from [http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Has_the_Left_Been_Outsourced__3863.html BeyondChron] .

*Dana Fisher's article [http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=11993 "The Activism Industry,"] from "The American Prospect," September 4, 2006.

*David Glenn reported on controversy surrounding the book in his article [http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i04/04a01401.htm Scorching the Grass Roots?] for "The Chronicle of Higher Education."