People-Powered Budgets

Democratizing local budgets to transform our cities and care for our communities

Every community — whether home to long-timers or new immigrants, well-off or working-class — should have the shared resources we all need to thrive. That starts with centering lived experience and neighborhood needs in determining how our public dollars are used.

The Challenge

Our local budgets determine which neighborhoods and public services are funded and which aren’t. But too often, these decisions are made behind closed doors to benefit the wealthy and well-connected — and hurt working-class residents and people of color.

Corporations refuse to pay what they owe our communities, then seek to pit us against each other to divide up a too-small pie.
Politicians backed by corporate interests redirect public resources for private profit. Instead of funding parks and schools, they sign contracts with banks charging high fees to manage public dollars, or tech firms selling flawed surveillance products that contribute to the over-policing of communities of color.
To keep people from realizing what they’re up to, those politicians make information hard to find, obscure key details with jargon, and hold meetings at times and places or in languages many people can’t access.

Our Approach

We’re bringing excluded communities into the budget-making process to demand more democratic systems and ensure public resources flow to the neighborhoods and needs that have long been ignored.

Through organizing and popular education, we’re demystifying public budgets and creating better processes so Black, Brown, and working-class communities have a real say.
We’re developing grassroots leaders who can draw on their deep knowledge of local needs to transform both how public budgeting is done, and what our dollars are used for.
We’re making corporations pay what they owe our cities and communities for the resources we all rely on, and wresting back community control over how our public resources are spent.