Interest Groups in Amerikkka
Hello readers!
Welcome back to my blog. Today's post is focused on the topic of interest groups, which closely follows up to my previous post regarding political socialization. These two separate concepts connect because political socialization often results in people joining and developing groups known as interest groups. Interest groups are (typically) official organizations composed of people with mutual political, social, or economic ideologies that work to influence the government to adopt particular policies, measure, and political/legislative decisions.
Their role in the American political system is important, as they identify certain political, social or economic concerns they believe the government should take action in protecting and stapling into the government and society. Interest groups hold immense responsibility in informing political and government figures about issues they feel necessary to be addressed.
To gain support from the public as well as Congress members, interest groups use a variety of techniques to promote their policies. A primary method is lobbying, in which they send representatives to Washington D.C to advocate on their issues to Congress members. The representatives communicate directly with Congress members to provide a general summary of their ideologies and the relevance of their cause.
Interest groups usually rely on and seek out financial funding and support for their campaigns. Members within the interest groups tend to donate money in order to achieve great political influence. This funding also goes to support the campaigns of political candidates that support their goals and seek to implement their policies. Interest groups also prioritize educating the general public of their causes. This expands their demographic of supporters and members which increases their relevance and thus offers them higher influence on policymakers.
Like all things in the world, there are pros and cons of interesting groups. Positive results of interest groups are that they tend to promote democracy by opening spaces for people to freely express their voices, needs, and desires. It's also worth noting interest groups representing the voices of the minority within the majority, further promoting democracy. Interest groups possess the capacity to make real change within the government and offering authentic solutions to support their causes.
However, the policies operating benefit those within the interest groups and also prioritize their individualized opinions, opposed to overall benefit that has the interest of ALL people regardless of having a differing opinion. Not all actions taken by interest groups are exactly morally or ethically correct. History has seen numerous interest groups commit crimes such as fraud, bribery, and corruption.
There is an endless list of interest groups operating domestically and internationally. One example, is the Green Peace Organization, a non-profit independent non-governmental environmental organization that identifies a goal to preserve an ecologically and environmentally sustainable world for future generations.
The organization's mission statement is the following:
The Green Peace organization is evidently a left-wing, liberal-leaning group and clearly aligns with the Democratic Party. On their "About" page, the organization declares it's prioritization of diversity, inclusivity, and social justice, which tend to be firm priorities for those with liberal outlooks on the world.
Their liberal-Democratic stance is primarily evident through the organization identifying the obvious goal of environmentalist activism; environmentalism is an important component found within Democratic-liberal ideologies. In fact, the Democratic Party website proclaims it's stance in support of environmentalism, stating the following;
In the same page, the website officially identifies anti-environmentalism as a conservative-Republican belief by referencing a quote by President Donald Trump. Here the political division on the stance of environmentalism is made clear.
Evidence found throughout the website also offers further evidence of the political ideological alignment of the organization. I found an article titled Green Peace USA: Time for New Political Leaders to Get to Work on Climate, in which the author concluding paragraph of the article states the following:
In short, Initiative 1631 is an initiative that would implement fees. It should be noted that generally, Democratic and liberal-leaning people of society are firm supporters of Initiative 1631. On the other end, conservative Republicans don't deem environmentalism as a pressing issue that needs to be confronted, and also are against firmly government imposing regulation on business, companies, and organization. Democrats and liberals believe there should be a larger monetary investment in climate change issues, and supporting, Republicans oppose this. Therefore, the operation of Initiative 1631 is more of a liberal, progressive, Democratic initiative. The support coming from the Green Peace organization he Greenpeace USA supporting this initiative and the presence of Democratic members in the House of Representatives to promote environmental sustainability and the confrontation of climate change issues makes it more clear and evident where they align themselves politically and socially.
The article seems to argue that the dominance of Democratic members is essential in the House of Representatives to offer brighter future for environmentalism and improvement of climate change issues. A quote I will include below is a quote from the Green Peace USA executive director, Annie Leonard;
In terms of writing structure, there isn't much present to suggest pushing or persuasion to support the Democratic Party, possibly leading people to associate the article from a neutral perspective. When further analyzed, it does seem to try to identify that Democrats are the positive change America needs to reach progression of environmentalist issues. As a result, an obscured progressive and liberal bias in this article, as they are positively showcasing the success of the Democratic party winning dominance in the House of Representatives. The executive director is identifying that she is happily siding with Democrats because of their value and prioritization of confronting environmentalist issues, which shows the organization holds an overarching Democratic-liberal placement in terms of political spectrum and socialization.
The author, Cassady Craighill, appears to use ethos as the primary rhetorical device in the article. Ethos is the rhetorical appeal to the ethics of the audience. The inclusion of the most recent quote includes Leonard's mention of "environmental protection, social and economic justice, and democracy reform." The concept of economic and social justice (although social justice is seen as a more pressing issue in Democratic circles) appeals to people regardless of political party. It is seen as ethical and a core element to the American political system. This could lead to effective persuasion of members of any political party to see the dominance of Democrats in the House of Representatives as a positive for climate change among other reasons. Another way this is effective is that it could spring Democratic, and progressive citizens of society into action to become involved with support and contribution to working towards the dominance of Democratic political figures in the federal and state governments, which would, in turn, push environmentalism to be a more addressed issue in government systems across the nation.
A likely cultural influence of the article is media (television, news, social media) that condemns Trump's anti-environmentalist policies. After doing research on Twitter, the official Green Peace USA Twitter account, as well as the author Cassady Craighill (who is also the media and communications manager of the Green Peace organization) follows news sources such as CNN and ABC, which are generally considered liberal and left-leaning. Both sources have conducted extensive reporting that focuses on Trump and his threat to environmentalism, and have a strong influence on their avid readers and consumers.
After reading the article multiple times, I couldn't identify a limitation within the artifact I incorporated, as it seems to be based on fact, and includes direct quotes and doesn't seem to operate off emotion, theory or any sort of non-factual information.
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