Community organizations from all across the country came together last year to launch #WeMakeThisCity — a campaign for infrastructure and public goods that increase community wealth, health and justice. With one year of campaigning behind us, we have a lot to celebrate!
This post is part one of a series about the vital work of #WeMakeThisCity organizers across the country. Their hard-fought wins prove that by building power locally, we can strengthen our cities and create a just future, together. Each part of the series highlights the work in a different city.
Winning a Community Budget in San Diego, California
Budgets sound wonky, but organizers in San Diego have shown that they can also be a tool to advance racial and economic justice.
Faced with underinvestment and over-policing in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, frontline communities and progressive advocates San Diego, CA banded together to build a better quality of life for all residents.
The Community Budget Alliance, a coalition of community groups from across San Diego, seized on the 2019 budget cycle as an opportunity to fight for a more equitable city.
They lobbied the City Council and the Mayor to fund the public goods that support thriving communities — from parks and recreational spaces, to protections for renters, to environmental justice, to translation services.
They held budget teach-ins and organized actions.
They turned people out to City Council meetings in droves.
And they won.
Far too often, our local governments feel inaccessible. The Community Budget Alliance takes seriously the idea that, in our democracy, we elect people from our communities to serve the public good. Elected leaders have the responsibility to tap into our collective expertise about where, how, and why we spend our tax dollars.
Because people organized, the Community Budget Alliance is advancing racial and economic justice through the City budget. They won:
- Renovation of a community park in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood, which the City had neglected for 50 years
- Translation services to make community planning more democratic by allowing more residents to participate
- Living wages for waste and recycling workers
- Development of a Mobility Action Plan that centers environmental justice communities
- A racial justice approach to the City’s Climate Action Plan
- A racial disparity study in City contracting
- Funding for enforcement of San Diego Minimum Wage & Earned Sick Leave policy
These wins build on funding that the CBA secured in last year’s budget for things like:
- Reporting on the racial impact of police stops
- Replacing police with paramedics when 911 calls involve medical or social difficulties
- Making streets safer for pedestrians in low-income neighborhoods
Here at the Partnership for Working Families, we’re so excited for the dedicated and courageous activists who took a stand for these historic wins for their community.
Their work is a testament to the progress we can manifest when #WeMakeThisCity. This campaign is about fighting for community-controlled, publicly owned institutions, structures, and services, while standing up against corporate giveaway and privatization plans. We’re working to ensure all people have access to the systems and structures needed to live full and healthy lives. This includes transportation systems that connect us to work, schools and services, the ability to afford housing in the communities we love, access to clean water and energy and so much more. Public infrastructure connects us all and should serve the needs of the people, not the pockets of corporations.
Could your friends and neighbors benefit from a #WeMakeThisCity initiative in your town? Reach out and join us!
The Community Budget Alliance is a collaboration between more than 40 organizations– including civic, environmental, faith, labor and other community organizations.
Partnership for Working Families is a national network of 20 affiliate organizations driving a progressive agenda to harness the power of cities for change in our regions, and leverage that up to the state and national level. Our powerful coalitions of community groups, labor unions, faith networks and environmental organizations are building governing tables with a grassroots base of power to advance a vision of just, sustainable, equitable and democratic communities.
