Image Description: Volunteers wearing masks painting the ground and chatting with in front of the Lakeview Library in Oakland, shaded by trees under a clear blue sky.

What’s the People’s Budget?

The People’s Budget Amendment is the Community Democracy Project’s campaign to put Oakland residents in charge of the city budget through participatory budgeting.

In response to the city council’s failure to listen to the demands of thousands of people to invest in Black Lives, we’d hosted a F*ck Your Budget Assembly the day before. Nine badass guest speakers led a fishbowl conversation with 100+ attendees, and we invited our fellow residents to build their own budgets. 

Image Description: Photos of Fuck Your Budget Guest Speakers from Centro Legal, Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, Repaired Nations, Anti Police-Terror Project, Community Democracy Project, Melanated Social Work, and People’s Community Medics

This morning, we painted the results from the all budgets submitted:

Image description: Painted on the ground, a bar graph of the Oakland People’s Budget compared with the 2021 City Budget. The police bar of the People’s Budget is much smaller than the City Budget. The People’s Budget bars for housing, human services, library, parks & rec, race & equity are much larger than the City Budget bars.

Image description: Bar graph of the mock budget survey results showing an 11x (44% to 4%) decrease in police funding with that money redistributed to other departments. See most current results.

See the People’s Budget Survey most current results.

Image Description: Upside down city department names painted on brick, “Police, Fire, Housing, Human Svcs, Library…”

Before we began, three legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild met us in front of the iconic Pergola pillars that open onto the lake. They stayed and assessed the arrest-risk for us, ready to protect our free speech rights .

Image description: Legal observers, in masks and neon green National Lawyers Guild hats

The legal observers read the vibe: clear blue skies, a turnt up #BlackLivesMatter playlist, a tai-chi class, and kiddos all around. They concluded that our action was relatively low-risk but they stayed a while longer just in case.

Image description: Two parents and a small child reading “HELLA PEOPLE POWER” painted on the ground.

We’d deliberated for weeks about what to paint! Pie chart or bar chart? The complete budget or the top 5 departments? Rainbow colors or A’s colors? Percentages or dollar amounts?

We wanted to show how the People’s Budget reflects our values so much more than the current city budget does. The People’s Budget results showed people in Oakland cared about each other, by decreasing funding for police and increasing funding for services and departments that help our communities.

Image description: Paper print-out of bar graph grid under an orange traffic cone

We decided to paint bar graphs that show the current city budget, side-by-side with the People’s Budget. As we worked, so many folks stopped to offer their support, and some even jumped in to help!

Image description: Painters in masks sit/stand 6 feet apart from each other show-casing their artwork!

Black Lives Matter – Los Angeles also created a budget survey recently. It’s no surprise that their mock budget assembly came up with similar results, moving the majority of police funding to community services and departments!

Image Description: Pie chart of BLM-LAs budget priorities (45.61% universal aid and crisis management, 27.61% built environment, 25.06% reimagined community safety, 1.64% law enforcement and policing)

At the end of the day, we realized that we’d bought way too much paint. But the streets of Oakland are a canvas for all of our collective creativity. Where do you want to see #PeoplesBudget painted next?

Image description: Masked person on knees painting “Race & Equity” on the ground.

Take the survey to ensure your vote is counted before we paint the next People’s Budget! 

Moms 4 Housing is “a collective of unhoused and insecurely housed mothers, organizing to reclaim vacant homes from real estate speculators.”

One of the most disturbing parts about the armed eviction of the mothers of Moms 4 Housing is knowing that we paid for all of it.

The taxes we pay funds the county sheriff. And Alameda County and the City of Oakland overwhelmingly fund law enforcement over housing.

At least 45% of Oakland’s general budget goes to law enforcement. Yet, in the middle of an affordability crisis, Housing and Community Development gets 0% from our general budget.

This spending does not match our values. When surveyed, Oakland residents put housing in the top three issues we care about.

However, our local government treats it like an afterthought.

The status quo is failing to provide real solutions for the unhoused people of our city, preferring instead to double down on the use of force.

It’s an approach that is as inhumane as it is uneconomical. Cities that guarantee housing, like Salt Lake City, show that it costs nearly three times less to provide an attractive place to live than it does to police and provide emergency services for those living on the street.

And as Moms 4 Housing points out, “There are four times as many empty homes in Oakland as there are people without homes.”

Instead of force, what if our city doubled down on the use of compassion? What if the people of Oakland could decide the fate of our city? Imagine the future we could create for babies who hecka love people power?

These are not hypothetical questions. They are realities within our grasp.

Over the course of eight years, the Community Democracy Project (CDP) has built a movement to put Oakland residents in charge of the city budget.

By amending the city charter, we can enable participatory budgeting, which would allow all of us to choose how the city spends our money.

At CDP, we are inspired by the groundswell of local activists, organizations, and concerned citizens who are standing with Moms 4 Housing.

It’s clear that together, we have the love, wisdom, and will to decide our city’s future for ourselves.

You can show solidarity by supporting Moms 4 Housing and other local housing advocacy organizations:

• East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative – “We create pathways for everyday people to organize, finance, acquire, and co-steward land and housing on our own terms because Housing is a Right Not a Commodity.”
• Causa Justa – “[We] work to fight for resident decision making regarding development and pushing the government to prioritize housing and tenants’ rights.”
• Bay Area Community Land Trust – “Making affordable housing a human right, through democratic co-ops.”
• The Village in Oakland – “Creating autonomous solutions under leadership of unhoused women and pushing the city of Oakland to make real housing happen.”
• Safer DIY Spaces – “Assisting at-risk live/work and artist community spaces with core safety improvements, full legalization, construction financing, and public policy initiatives.”
• EveryOne Home – “We envision a county where all residents have a safe, supportive place to call home.”

These organizations are working every day to ensure that housing is respected as a human right. We can all be part of building that reality.

On April 11, we hosted a panel on Oakland’s housing crisis that featured representatives from Causa Justa, The Village, Oakland Warehouse Coalition, Safer DIY Spaces, EveryOne Home, East Bay Community Law Center, and City Council representative Rebecca Kaplan.

Some highlights from our panelists:

-More than 3,000 people are living on the streets of Oakland.
-There’s currently over 2 million square feet of unused city-owned land.
-There are more vacant properties in Oakland than unhoused people.
-The majority of unhoused people in Alameda County are not sheltered or in encampments, but on their own.
-The majority of Alameda County’s budget for helping the homeless comes from the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT—it’s time we examine the local budget to see where we can give more!

Thank you to everyone who came out! If you were inspired and have notes or takes to share, let us know by replying or posting on our FB page.

Our panelists are fighting for our unhoused and at-risk communities in many different ways—and it was clear we need control of the budget to enact the solutions they’ve identified. Are you ready to step up and make a People’s Budget a reality in 2020? Reply to this email and we’ll plug you in to one of our many action groups

COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS!

This week’s conversation hour will celebrate the political momentum fueled by the Bernie Sanders campaign. Join us to share what excites you and/or what concerns you about Bernie and help us create an action plan for activists AFTER the Bernie Presidential Campaign. (This Sunday! May 29, 2016. OMNI Commons. 6:30p.m.)

RSVP here!

TEXT BANKING HAPPY HOUR

Join us at Lost and Found TOMORROW for happy hour and a good old fashioned session of text-banking in which we text message our supporters to keep them updated about our campaign! Thursday, May 26. 2040 Telegraph Ave. 6:30 p.m.

MAKE A DONATION!

Although we are all volunteer, we need money to cover meeting/event space, printing and campaign materials, and building our campaign war chest for when we relaunch the signature drive. Make a donation!

Thank you for being a part of this beautiful movement,

-Tia and the CDP Team

Practicing and Balancing Self-Care

Though many of us are familiar with the concept of self-care, the basic definition isn’t necessarily the ideal method. Lovemme Corazón said in an interview with Nia King:

“[T]he term used has been very oppressive, it’s like ‘You need to be out in your community, you need to be doing all your work, and you need to go home and take care of yourself.’ … [C]ommunal care is having a friend cook you dinner, going home and having someone watch a movie with you, going home and talking to someone, or just doing something with someone so that you’re intimately involved with each others’ lives.”

In living out this movement, we don’t want to re-create the exploitative intensity of work-rest-work-promotion-crash.

We imagine with roots in compassion.

Last week, Chelsea presented some key ideas for communal/self-care, and the necessity for sharing practices and building accessible networks of care. We planned out our week. What’s yours? How can we be a part of your world: personal, activist, spiritual, creative, or anything else?

Chill + Connect!

We are getting together tomorrow at OVO Tavern & Eatery at 6 pm to call our supporters to let them know how we can all be a part of the project. Meet us, other supporters, and talk about how we can make things happen for Oakland. RSVP for details.

Choral Calisthenics!

This Sunday, April 17 from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at the Omni Commons, we’ll be tuning in to a different station – learning some basic singing techniques and exercises with the multi-award-winning, talented Victoria. It’s a continuation of our Self-Care series: singing is good for your health!

Cultivate the Cause!

Although we are all volunteer, we need money to cover meeting/event space, printing and campaign materials, and building our campaign war chest for when we relaunch the signature drive. Make a donation!

Choose Community

The Community Democracy Project promotes active citizenship, community learning, and direct democracy by putting the people in charge of the budget. Our voter initiative will change the Oakland City Charter so that we the people decide how our tax money is spent. There will be empowered neighborhood assemblies throughout the city where people can come together to discuss community issues and determine public priorities by directly voting on the city budget.

Before we re-launch the signature gathering campaign, we have set a goal to first establish a core team of 30 committed volunteers. If you are ready to help make democracy real, join us. Contact us directly for more info.

C you soon!

Tim and the CDP Team