Gp210 Week 5 Assignment

Name: Dion B Francis

Student I.D: G00099458

Week 5 Assignment

1. What is the group's website?

2. What are the issues your group is concerned with?

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

4. Assess your group: What are its strengths and weaknesses? Back up what you say with specific examples demonstrating their effectiveness (or lack of effectiveness).

The interest group I chose to do my assignment on was the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the group can be found on the web at www.AARP.com. The major concerns of the AARP are hunger, income, housing and isolation. The American Association of Retired Persons vision is "a country that is free of poverty where no older person feels vulnerable." and to do so they encourage AARP members to hold their elected representatives accountable for how they address (or fail to address) these issues. In fact, as one of the largest interest groups in America the AARP's principal tactic to influence government is to mobilize its members to express their opinions to their legislators on key issues identified by the AARP. The strength of the American Association of Retired Persons comes with its' number of member, the AARP boasted a 38 million approximate members. That could be seen as a very valuable asset to any politician running for office. But on the downside to that, the AARP neither endorses nor funds candidates, and because it subscribes to a bipartisan solution to the issues it takes an interest in, it is significantly less effective than it could be otherwise.

Work Cited

www.google.com

www.wikipedia.com

www.aarp.org