Question

Group Basics

What are the issues your group is concerned with?

What are some examples of legislation your group supports or opposes?

What actions does your group take to try to influence policy and the public agenda?

What resources make it influential? Give specific examples: (e.g. use of the media, lawsuits, direct lobbying, public information contributions, etc.)

Which parts of the government does your group target, i.e. which executive branch departments and congressional committees?

Political Ideology

What is the group’s political ideology?

Does it favor one political party over the other? If so, does it have a history of supporting certain political candidates?

What is it doing to support their favored candidates? Make the connection between their political ideology, the legislation they support, and the party they support.

OR If you think your group is absolutely neutral, say so.

Many interest groups are neutral. Discuss the issues that your group is concerned with and then, for the points in this section you will do the following. Find and summarize two news articles relevant to your interest group. You can use http://news.google.com/ or any of the media resources located on my blog to find such articles. Use the information to show how your group is trying to influence public policy.

Your Assessment

Assess your group: What are its strengths and weaknesses?

How effective is it in achieving its agenda? Back up what you say with specific examples demonstrating their effectiveness or lack thereof.

List of Interest Groups

You should be familiar with the following Interest Groups. Basically, I want you to know the types of issues these groups are involved in and whether they are generally supporters of liberals or conservatives, or are non-ideological. If you were to be given an issue, you should know which interest groups would be involved. For example, if the issue is an affordable medication for seniors, you should be able to identify AARP as group (among others) who advocate for this issue. The groups with an asterisk are among the most active, and therefore receive considerable more attention by media outlets for their activities.

1. AARP – American Association of Retired People*
2. Christian Coalition*
3. NARAL – National Abortion Rights Action League*
4. ACLU – American Civil Liberties Union*
5. Club for Growth
6. NEA - National Education Association*
7. AFL-CIO – American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations*
8. Council on American-Islamic Relations
9. National Resources Defense Council
10. ABA - American Bar Association*
11. EMILY’s List
12. NOW – National Organization of Women*
13. American Conservative Union
14. Environmental Defense Fund
15. NRA – National Rifle Association*
16. American Farm Bureau
17. Family Research Council
18. PETA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
19. AIPAC - American Israel Public Affairs Committee
20. Handgun Control, Inc.
21. Public Citizen*
22. AMA - American Medical Association*
23. Moveon.org
24. Sierra Club*
25. ATLA - Association of Trial Lawyers of America
26. NAACP – National Association of Colored People*
27. US Chamber of Commerce
28. The Business Roundtable
29. NAM - National Association of Manufacturers*
30. Veterans of Foreign Wars*

Answer 1

Group Basics

What are the issues your group is concerned with?

Our group is concerned with issues related to equality of Black Americans.

What are some examples of legislation your group supports or opposes?

We as a group support the policies and legislations which are based on equality of Americans. We oppose legislations and policing practices which are detrimental to innocent Black Americans.

What actions does your group take to try to influence policy and the public agenda?

For influencing policy and public agenda, our group runs local campaigns and programs to support the equality among we Americans.

What resources make it influential? Give specific examples: (e.g. use of the media, lawsuits, direct lobbying, public information contributions, etc.)

Resources for example, involvement of social media, support from local public as well as social activists make it influential.

Which parts of the government does your group target, i.e. which executive branch departments and congressional committees?

Our group is not against government, but as we are seeing in current situations, our group targets the administrative departments such as Police policies which are root cause of these incidents.