Participatory budgeting

Participatory Budgeting Is Gaining Momentum In US. How Does It Work?

March 27, 2017 Kristine Wong, Create! Budgets, Participatory budgeting

By Kristine Wong for Truth Out - It's tax season in the US. With the deadline looming to pay Uncle Sam less than a month away, many are wondering -- or grumbling -- about how their tax dollars are allocated in the first place. But now participatory budgeting, a concept in which citizens get to vote democratically on how a particular pot of public funds will be spent, has been gaining traction across the US over the last few years, and promising to give citizens a voice in these matters. The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 that aims to "deepen democracy, build stronger communities and make public budgets more equitable and effective," is one of the most visible groups working with cities

Portugal Announces World’s First Nationwide Participatory Budgeting Project

December 22, 2016 Cat Johnson, www.shareable.net Create! Participatory budgeting, Portugal

By Cat Johnson for Shareable - Participatory budgeting is becoming increasingly popular, with more than 1,500 programs worldwide. The concept is simple: People submit ideas for what government should spend a portion of its money on and then vote on the best ideas. Until now, however, the process has been limited to cities and regions. Recently, Portugal became the first county to instate a nationwide participatory budgeting (PB) process with Orçamento Participativo Portugal. While the amount allotted for the project is relatively small in its first year...

Real Power: Reflections On Participatory Budgeting

December 4, 2016 Eric Dirnbach, , www.publicseminar.org Create! Finance and the Economy, Participatory budgeting, Participatory Democracy, Urban

By Eric Dirnbach for Public Seminar. Participatory Budgeting was first used for the municipal budget in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 1989, and since then the PB movement has grown to over 3,000 cities around the world. Portugal recently announcedthat it will use it for the national budget. PB is being used in more than 40 communities in the U.S. New York City is in the midst of its 6th cycle of PB and the program has grown to 31 out of 51 City Council districts. Each district has been allocated at least $1 million for proposed projects. The requirements are that each project cost at least $35,000, last 5 years, be located on city property, and be brick-and-mortar type infrastructure projects such as fixing up a playground or library. I voted in the final PB project selection last year. My district had been presented with 21 options, and chose five projects from among them: a senior center renovation, planting street trees, school science lab improvements, school technology upgrades, and a library renovation. When my City Council Member Mark Levine announced the beginning of this current PB round, I decided to follow the entire process.

How To Make City Budgets Racially Just

October 30, 2016 Paulina Phelps, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Equity, Governance, Participatory budgeting, Racism

By Paulina Phelps for Yes Magazine. The amount of money spent on hiring sworn law enforcement officers to patrol public schools shot up nearly 40 percent between 1997 and 2009, despite the fact that crime in school has steadily declined for decades. A coalition of civil rights groups, including the NAACP, argues that this policy funnels kids of color into the school-to-prison pipeline. But that debate doesn’t always make it into the process of setting the budget, which is where important decisions, like how much money goes to counselors in schools and how much goes to police, ultimately get made. Budgets are usually determined by elected officials and their advisers, while ordinary residents may only get a chance to comment at a public hearing.

How Communities Are Using Direct Democracy To Shape City Budgets

October 10, 2016 Brandon Jordan, www.wagingnonviolence.org Create! Direct Democracy, Participatory budgeting

By Brandon Jordan for Waging Nonviolence - A recent poll conducted by Gallup found that the percentage of Americans who trust the public in handling issues is at an all-time low. Reasons for this vary, with eroded faith in institutions playing a role. Yet, in more than 40 neighborhoods across the United States, a new tool called participatory budgeting is boosting confidence among citizens in working with neighbors to solve problems together.

Baltimore: One Year After The Uprising

April 23, 2016 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Create! Baltimore, killed by police, Land trusts, Participatory budgeting, Police violence, Public Banking, Worker Cooperative

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Last April after the killing of Freddie Gray Baltimore experienced an uprising. It was not what was shown on television, which highlighted a few hours of burning cars and buildings, but a week long event that brought the city together. People of all ages and races called for transformation of the city so it corrected the injustices of decades of neglect and racism in the poor black communities of East and West Baltimore. As you can hear from our first two guests the problems of police violence continue to plague Baltimore but residents or also organizing to make the call for change a reality. A year later there is a lot of community organizing going on, as you can hear from Derrick Chase and Abdul Salaam below, which will take time to show results. The city is also going through a major local election where a new mayor and city council will be elected.

Participatory Governance, Of, By And For The People

February 2, 2016 Ruth Needleman, www.portside.org Create! Participatory budgeting, Participatory Democracy

By Ruth Needleman for Portside - Here in the states, we know what it means to see our democratic rights attacked. But do we have a vision of what an expansion of democracy and popular participation in government might look like? Oakland, New York, Minneapolis, among others, are exploring the possibility of “participatory budgeting,” an initiative to shift decision-making on development projects from the government to the community, and increase citizen engagement. In order to better understand the process, delegations from these cities visited Canoas, an industrial city of 350,000 in Southern Brazil.

Newsletter: Economy Of The Future-Economic Democracy

September 5, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter Commmons, Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, Labor Day, Land trusts, New Economy, Participatory budgeting, Public Banking, Worker Cooperative

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance - This Labor Day weekend rather than looking at the history and current struggles of workers, we look to the future and imagine what will work be like in 2025 or 2050. What will the overall economy look like? What is our vision for an economy that works for the people? There are some major trends that indicate we are in the midst of a radical transformation of what work means and how people will have income. There will never be enough jobs in the future so we need a new way to ensure people have money on which to live and to keep the economy going. It is time to figure out how to provide people with a basic income where everyone receives a single basic income to provide for a comfortable living whether they work or not. To create wealth among workers, worker ownership through worker cooperatives or worker self-directed enterprises need to be encouraged. It takes roots to weather a storm, and the storm is here.

Can Gov’t Budgets Become Democratic? Participatory Budgeting

August 13, 2015 Laura Flanders, www.grittv.org Create! Democracy, Economic Democracy, Finance and the Economy, Participatory budgeting

By Laura Flanders for Grit TV - Can budgets and even the federal reserve be brought under public control? One radical tool for grassroots democracy that is taking hold is Participatory Budgeting. Josh Lerner is co-founder and executive director of the Participatory Budgeting Project and is the author of two books, both released last year: Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics, and Everyone Counts: Could Participatory Budgeting Change Democracy? Also on the show: what is the Federal Reserve, and what role could it have? Connie Razza works with the Center for Popular Democracy and their “Fed Up” campaign, working to make the federal reserve work for the 99%.

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Participatory budgeting