Older citizens’ civic activism now amplifies their policy influence

Evidence

In the mid-1970s people forty-five and over accounted for one-third of the participants in local meetings about town and school affairs and the same fraction of all letters to the editor, but twenty years later their share in both public meetings and editorial pages had risen to one-half. One does not have to assume that this older civic generation is unusually selfish—the opposite is probably true—to be concerned about the self-disenfranchisement of younger groups. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 882

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: generational asymmetry in civic participation as a quiet driver of the local-taxes-for-schools squeeze, where the most active voters have the least stake in school funding.
• XREF: connects to: Generational political subjectivities shape how members practice commoning in housing cooperatives. — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning:…, 51

Broader Connections

• Generational political subjectivities shape how members practice commoning in housing cooperatives. #expands (0.72) — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning, 51