Black Lives Matter Movement

The Black Lives Matter Movement

• May 25, 2020, a teenage clerk called Minneapolis police about George Floyd for using a possible counterfeit $20 bill
• Floyd was cooperative during arrest, but a struggle occurred placing him in a police car
• Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
• Floyd became unconscious approximately 6 minutes after Chauvin's knee was placed on Floyd's neck.
• Protests erupted in Minneapolis and 140 other cities after Floyd's death and the body-cam video release
• Protesters damaged public and private property with tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets
• Black Lives Matter protests continued for two weeks for law enforcement reform and racial inequality conversations
• Derek Chauvin was fired from the Minneapolis Police Department and was charged with third-degree murder upgraded to second-degree murder
• Three officers were charged with aiding and abetting murder
• The death of Michael Brown was similar in 2014, and protesters called for officer arrest, chanting, "Black lives matter."
• The social movement began with the Twitter hashtag #BlackLivesMatter after George Zimmerman's 2013 acquittal for Trayvon Martin's death in Florida
• Black Lives Matter became part of the national conversation

Shifting Public Opinion on Race Discrimination

• By 2020, public opinion on police-citizen interactions shifted
• Many Americans, especially whites, were surprised by the anger over the Ferguson events
• African American communities thought the issue should have had the public attention sooner
• According to John Conyers, almost all African American males have been stopped for driving while black
• George Floyd's killing and protests sparked attention to racial injustice, impacting public opinion
• A June 2020 Pew Research study indicated that 2/3 American adults supported Black Lives Matter and 38% strongly supported it
• Police officers were also affected with 86% reporting that officer fatalities between law enforcement officers and African Americans have made their jobs harder and 93% were concerned about safety

Take a Knee: Shaping Public Opinion in New Ways

• Athletes and celebrities have called attention to racial injustice
• In August 2016, Colin Kaepernick protested against racism and police-community relations and refused to stand during the national anthem
• Kaepernick stated that the issue was bigger than football
• Kaepernick chose to kneel instead of sitting during the anthem and other NFL players, athletes, and high school students joined the "take a knee" movement in 2016
• Protests expanded in NFL’s 2017 season with increased tension, and Donald Trump criticized Kaepernick
• Mike Pence left a 49ers-Colts game after 49ers players kneeled

What is Public Opinion?

• Public opinion includes the beliefs and the attitudes of individuals
• A representative democracy needs an understanding of public opinion
• If elected representatives do not know what the voters want, representing them in policymaking is difficult
• Two perspectives exist with the meaning of public opinion
• One perspective is that the average citizen is unable to express opinions on issues
• Another perspective is that individuals can get information based on their political ideology to make inferences
• Aggregating individual opinions can send signals to representatives
• The lack of coherent opinions among citizens creates a challenge to the democracy
• The percentages of Americans were not able to provide basic answers about the government, such as being able to name one or more branches of the government or naming constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights
• Younger people, lower-income Americans, and minorities fared worse in their answers about political factual knowledge, and there has not been much change over the past decades
• Americans believe that the local news topics are important

More Optimistic View of American Public Opinion

• Most scholars agree that Americans lack opinions issues regarding politics
• Researchers disagree on whether a person needs to have views on politics to have an opinion
• Individuals use interactions with the government to make sense of problems
• Identification with a party can assist the voter through choices and opinions
• Political scientists have emphasized the "wisdom of crowds"
• The public remains collectively rational

Trying to Measure Public Opinion Accurately

• Two requirements exist for effective representation in a democracy
• Voters must have opinions and preferences
• Elected officials must respond to preferences
• Citizens communicate with officials but they may not be typical voters
• Direct communication does not convey citizen preferences
• Elections measure the preferences of citizens
• Elections have limitations with ineligible voters not voting
• Elections revolve around a small set of issues

Scientific Polling

• Focus groups can be useful to understand what people think about a political topic
• Focus groups can not paint a picture to an entire constituency
• Scientific poll:A representative poll of randomly selected respondents with a statistically significant sample size, using neutral language
• Sample: A group of individuals from a larger population used to measure public opinion
• Random selection method chooses poll respondents
• Scientific polling is straightforward, selection occurs to find out the group's thinking
• Valid scientific polling requires random selection
• Pollsters need to minimize uncertainty about the opinion

Conducting Polls

• Samples must represent the population as accurate as possible
• Voluntary response polls, such as call-in polls, are suspect
• The poll that oversamples or undersamples individuals based on characteristics is a problem
• Weighting adjusts results based on group participation percentages in the survey
• Pollsters include a measure of the sampling error (margin of error) in their surveys
• Increasing the sample size decreases the error, but also increases cost

Types of Surveys

• Surveys need to be randomly selected because they are not reliable if not
• Example of a straw poll as an unofficial tally
• Entrance survey measures whether voters change their minds
• Exit polls may overrepresent voters favoring a candidate and influence an election
• Exit polls can be useful in showing patterns of voting
• Benchmark polls gauge candidate support and issues
• Tracking polls determine support level for candidates or an issue

Potential Problems with Polling

• Campaign Media may show tracking polls to cover news, rather than candidate policies
• Nonrandom selection poses challenges because samples are not representative
• Other issues are that caller ID prevents obtaining a random sample
• Online polls let anyone participate
• The question order affects results of a public opinion survey
• Question wording must be specific and guide the survey taker

Challenges of Using Polling to Measure Public Opinion

• The presidential campaigns demonstrated polling limits
• Polls underestimated the support for President Trump
• Some groups of voters are less likely to answer polls
• One working hypothesis is that "those who won't answer voice support for the president"
• Voters changed due to COVID-19
• The election showed challenges of what pollsters will face where credible polls help representatives understand what voters want

Effects of Public Opinion on Democratic Representation

• Public Opinion is determined by individual's identification with a party
• The Pew Research Center observed a majority of Democrats said working with black helps local communities, compared to 38% of Republicans.
• Public opinion differs along gender lines
• Women may vote more for Democratic-Party candidates
• Public opinion is split in the basis of racial and ethnic groups
• Researchers, candidates, and elected officials etc, use opinion polling to understand the public's viewpoint

Public Opinion and Policymaking

• Critics argue that public officials are elected to lead, not follow
• Public opinion can be wrong because people are not knowledgeable
• It is necessary to measure the decree to public opinion
• Ife measures Congress in policymaking process
• Congress may ignore public option
• Congress passes a bill based on what politicians agree with
• Policymakers and candidates pay attention to public opinion
• Black Lives Matter changed perceptions of race discrimination showing that politicians ignore public opinion at their peril,

Political Ideology

• Political ideology is a set of beliefs about the desired goals and outcomes of a process of governance.
• A right is something guaranteed that the government can not take away.
• A privilege is something that government can take away.
• High costs of healthcare have been a source of debate
• Health Care debate reflects political ideologies about the role of government.
• Some believe healthcare is a right when other's view it as a privilege regulated by market forces.

Health Care

• Obama's healthcare belief was to require people to purchase insurance.
• Obama called on Congress to address the cost of healthcare
• Democrats crafted their healthcare reform that the government should require people to purchase insurance.
• Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA)
• Trump ideology did not believe it was the government's role to make people purchase insurance and was unable to repeal ACA
• The United States is a diverse society where public policies reflect the attitudes and beliefs of citizens
• Some people favor stability over individual liberties
• Others favor the protection of liberty over policies to encourage public order
• The ideology refers to a party's philosophy about the role of government
• Party identification is party's attachment to a political party
• Republicans associate with conservatism with fewer regulations

Democratic/Republican Ideals

• A Democrat associates with liberalism and government control
• Libertarianism favors little government intervention
• Republicans favor freedom to form a business free government regulations
• Democrats view the issue of sexual privacy
• Parties differ on economic issues
• Democrats favor tax increases to the wealthy than businesses
• Parties want to relate with their members
• Parties display partisanship

Government Involvement in the Economy

• All societies wrestle with the question of the role of the government
• Government Intervention in the Economy
• In 1776, Adam Smith wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
• Smith wrote that economic prosperity is best obtained by individuals freely pursuing their economic prosperity
• In a laissez-faire economy, less government gets involved between citizens and businesses
• The Federal government acted in the economy to support the Transcontinental Railroad
• Other end of the spectrum is command with much economic activity and price of goods
• The US the mixed economy

Monitoring The Economy

• Federal government collects data about to economy through data
• GDP measures the total value of goods and services
• A decline the the economy indicates recession
• Economists analyze this through the unemployment rate
• Rate of inflation rises with the price of goods
• Oftentimes there is trade off with inflation and employment

Business Cycles and Theories of Economic Policymaking

• Policymakers have ideas to define the problems
• Economists use cycle to show the active the economy
• Cyclical nature shows up and down of economic performance
• One theory relates from interest
• Government should counter balance
• Governmental economic should continue money to economy

Monetary Theory and Ideology

• Democrats support Keyesian policy
• Supply side supports the demands between services
• Republicans support supply side economics
• Budgets support increase in military spending
• In 2001 there cuts
• Federal budget has different taxes
• Military and offense spending are both high

Challenges and Risks of Conducting Monetary Policy

• One must have healthy growth without the money to get goods
• The federal reserve has critics
• Some questions the independence when Congress takes action
• President Lyndon Great society made insurance
• Tax dollars support religious schools
• Issues relate economic and support