Civic Participation Essay

Do you think there can be too much participation in the community? Well according to some there isn’t enough participation going on in our communities at all. Citizen participation may be a process in which people take part voluntary or legally forced to do either alone or in a group. According to our book, communitarian view praises citizen participation not just in the voting but by participating in groups and working with their neighbors to solve the problems of the community. One way to participate is volunteering as civic participation.

Civic means working to make a difference in the civic life of the communities through both political and nonpolitical processes. You can volunteer at different places, for instance: children groups, shelters, mentoring programs, and soup kitchens. Some hesitate to volunteer because of reasons such as: lack time, worry about risk and liability, not knowing how or where to start so you can get involved, or not having the right skills and experience (Booth, n. d. ). When talking about participation the one that big are voting and the people who go out and vote.

One thing about voting, you can vote on the local, state, and national elections. Voter turnout in local elections is much lower than in state or national elections. It can be because of the issues are much smaller, a wide variety of candidates, the timing, or media coverage. As of August 26th, 2015 there are 218,959,000 Americans eligible to vote, but there are only 146,311,000 who are registered to vote. According to the voter registration by demographics there were 69. 1 percent in males and for females was 72. 8 percent. 73. 5 were white and 69. 7 were black (Voting Statistics, 2015).

Some reason some not going out to vote was they was too busy, ill or disabled, not interested, registration problems, transportation problems, or just forgot. Unlike a few decades ago there are now many minorities and women who are being elected into governmental offices. In fact over half of the largest cities that are located in the United States have a minority of women as their mayor. According to our book Politics in States and Communities, these government officials are being elected in majority white populations as well as mostly black areas.

The nation has begun to grow and there are fewer concentrations of ethnicities groups, instead everyone is beginning to mingle together. This is evident in the different elections and people are becoming less concerned with the ethnicity of the person and more concentrated on the views of the candidate. Although this may be the case, people are still voting for their own ethnic groups. Records show that the increased number of minority elected officials may be related to the increase of those minorities in general.

According to the New American Leaders Project at the time of the 2010 Census reports, there were a total of 68 cities that were majority Asia Pacific Islanders Americans, while in 1980 there was not one single city with a majority population of APIAs. To parallel with this growth by 2012 there were a total of 613 Asia Pacific Islanders Americans who had become an elected official of some type. Another example that demonstrates the parallel increase of concentration and elected officials is the Latinos. In 2000 there were 825 Latino majority cities but there were none in the year of 1980.

This increase resulted in a total of 5,850 Latino elected officials by the year 2010. (NALP,2015) This also shows that many people will vote based off the same ethnicity. However, blacks that run for government possession where they are the minority try to emphasize that race don’t matter while in areas where they are the majority they try to acknowledge that kinship. It is said that the first election may be won based on ethnicity while the reelection will be based off of their ability to get things done. Dye, 1969) When Latinos run for office in a highly concentrated white area they will say they are for things such as stricter laws, better school, and property values. On the other hand they will fight for things such as laborLatino alliances, and focus on building winning in the more urban areas. Women in Local Politics are a little different than the minorities. They are usually elected in areas that are more educated and diversity populated. There are almost 20 percent of women who are holding political offices.

However of the 249 women who have been granted the opportunity to hold such possessions, only four have been African American, one is a Pacific Islander/Asian, and one has been Latino. The women who decided to run for office get more of the neighborhood votes than the males do. (Dye, 1969) The final topic of Chapter 11 is interest groups in community politics. The first thing that was specified was the overall influence ability that interest groups have in different areas of political government.

According to the textbook in local politics interest groups are “more obvious. Therefore the influence of interest groups is more evident verses at national or even state levels. First off, civic association is a type of interest group that by definition means “an organization of citizens that work to filter its own view of the best interest of community. ” This is a very popular type of interest group that deals with keeping the city as great as possible. In the larger cities there are usually hundreds of civic associations. There are only a few civil associations the smaller cities.

The next interest group is more for those business men who put money into commercial properties or even industrial properties. This group is called the taxpayer group. The taxpayer group usually supports the idea of the least possible amount of taxes as well as the least possible amount of government services and activities. The third type of interest groups is the environmental and growth management groups. While the title may seem to insinuate the growth of the community that is the complete opposite of what this group really does.

They actually are against any type of highway construction, tree cutting, noise and pollution, increased traffic, and other things of the likes. In other words, they are against the community growth. Based on the textbook supporters of this type of group are commonly liberalist upper class citizens that are also homeowners and very secure in their field of work. In addition to the other kinds of interest groups neighborhood groups are also important. These supports are against any rezoning that would let a new business and extra traffic into their neighborhood.

They don’t mind protesting the new incoming business. They are also known as NIMBY which means ‘Not in My Backyard. ‘ As you can tell NIMBY and growth management share many of the same ideas. Lastly banks have a type of interest group of it its own. They are the opposite of environmental and growth management and the neighborhood group. This is because they are profitable because they are the maintainers of business, industrial, and commercial properties. Each interest group has its own special role. These were a few of the types of interest groups and their roles.