Search results

In May 2001, a Democratic-led Connecticut General Assembly passed a bill restoring the voting rights of convicted felons on probation. The measure, signed into law by then governor John G. Rowland, a Republican, made Connecticut one of the first states to successfully and significantly alter its voter eligibility law in the aftermath of the controversial 2000 presidential election. This was the culmination of a 7-year campaign started when Hartford freshman legislator Kenneth P. Green introduced a bill designed to eliminate Connecticut's restriction on voting rights of persons convicted of felonies. This investigation tells how Green and the Connecticut Voting Rights Restoration Coalition—a racially and ethnically diverse coalition of more than 40 grassroots organizations and social justice and faith-based groups and agencies working in the criminal justice system and 3 legislatively sponsored commissions for women, Latinos, and African Americans—worked together to secure passage of this landmark piece of legislation.

This study has two objectives: to determine which variables increase Latino and black political participation in the post‐civil rights era and also to determine if the factors that boost one group's participation will boost the other's. These results show that although a variety of variables may similarly enhance black and Latino political participation, the most consistent factor is exposure to mobilization in voluntary organizations. However, not just any organization will do. Membership in a voluntary organization the basic orientation of which is directed at changing the status quo, as opposed to groups that bring people together simply to enjoy each other's presence, is what is most needed to help blacks and Latinos become active in the political system.

Empirical investigations of black political activity either do not include measures for associational affiliation among blacks or take into consideration differences among black organizations in their capacity to promote political activity among their members. In this investigation, a model of black political behavior was presented that included not only the standard predictors of political activity, but also incorporated measures for membership in different types of voluntary associations. Two important conclusions emerge from this study. First, this investigation demonstrated that since the 1960s, there has been an important transformation in the organizational infrastructure of the black community: blacks changed their voluntary memberships from political to nonpartisan organizations. Second, these findings showed that the decline in group‐based political mobilization since the 1960s is partly the result of this shift from partisan to nonpolitical affiliations.

Analyzes the role of voluntary associational affiliation in Black political activity in the post-Civil rights era; data from the 1967 Political Participation in America study and the 1987 National Opinion Research Center, General Social Survey (NORC-GSS).