(This is the sixth in a series of posts about a particular breed of ground operations that is increasingly popular among progressive organizations. I'll argue -- and I'm not the first to do so -- that this model of 'grassroots' activism is unhealthy for the progressive movement; that it saps vital energy and does not effectively advance our cause.)

In this series, I've written about the PIRG/Fund canvassing model, which is currently being outsourced (through Grassroots Campaigns, Inc) by the DNC and MoveOn for their field operations. In my first three posts, I described how these canvassers appeal to potential donors about the urgency of a given cause, but ask only for monetary contribution, even though this money is just used to pay for the operation itself. In my fourth post, I discussed the unsustainable working conditions in these operations. In the last post, I analyzed the canvass model as a wholly top-down operation in which each participant is interchangeable and all interactions are scripted. In this post, I'll contextualize this curious form of 'activism' within the history of American civic life.

There's more...