In this session, we will explore why your direct participation in the budgeting process at home, at your schools, and at the city government level is the best way you can see your social justice priorities come to fruition. As they say in my favorite musical, Hamilton: “follow the money and see where it goes.”

1. Advancing Social Justice through Democratic Engagement in the
Budget Process
“Don’t tell me your values, show me your
budget and I’ll tell you what you value”

2. Problem: How Do We
Accomplish…
Problem: How Do We
Accomplish…

3. Things Dexter Horne
Values
• Living a healthy lifestyle (exercise and
meditation through writing)
• Funding progressive causes
• Doing what I can to preserve our shared
environment
• Creating new laughs and remembering past
laughs with friends

4. Things Dexter Horne Spends Money On…
36%
14%
30%
5%
15%
0% 0%
DISCRETIONARY
Entertainment (movies, bowling,
cigars, etc.)
Alcohol
Food (restaurants and such)
Travel
Coffee
Charity
Gym Membership
*Soda

5. “Budgets are the
quantitative
representation of
what’s
important” - The
National
Association of
Colleges and
Universities
Budgets

6. What to expect from
this presentation
• A new paradigm: to further social
justice you have to do more than
change hearts, you have to change
the allocation of our public resources
• Why? Because that allocation is a 1:1
reflection of our priorities
• How? By engaging in our election
systems at all levels, and by
advocating for participatory
budgeting at more local levels.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-ND

7. What’s Important to
You?

8. Activity

9. Imagine that we’ve just combined the
budgets of all your schools, and that you and
your peers now have the opportunity to
improve your respective school-communities
by deciding how this pooled budget is spent.

10. Step 1: Brainstorm
Individually, think of two project ideas that
you think could benefit the following
communities in your school:
• Classmates, professors, classrooms
• Whole school
• Projects that would benefit future
students and professors (5 years out)
• Place ideas on the appropriate chart paper

11. Step 2:
Brainstorming
sub-
categories
Divide into teams of three
(sound off 1,2,3)
In your groups, further
divide the project ideas of
your team into 3
subcategories. For example:
School beautification
Recreation
Environment and
Sustainability

12. Step 3: Design
Teams
• Further divide into Design Teams, one for each
of the subcategories.
• Each Design Team select a note-taker, then
discuss and organize the project suggestions
using the prompts on Page 1 of Student
Handout A: What’s the Big Idea?

13. Step 4: Select and Explore
• Each Design Team must now select a project to
explore and use Student Handout A: What's the Big
Idea?, Page 2 to describe and evaluate the benefit of
this plan.
• Design Teams rejoin their groups and take turns
presenting their project ideas using the Rapid
Feedback process from Student Handout B: Rapid
Feedback.
• When making presentations, use stopwatch app to
keep each team honest on time

14. Step 5:
Reconvene
What surprised you
most during the activity?
What questions and
suggestions were most
helpful?
What changes would
you make to your
project and/or pitch
based on the feedback
your team received?
What project(s) are you
most enthusiastic
about? Why?
If you wanted to
implement one or more
of these school
improvement projects,
how could you fund
them?

15. New York’s Participatory
Budgeting Project
• Public Money:
https://www.amdoc.org/watch/publicmone
y/

16. Post-video
• Initial thoughts?
• In your opinion, what difference does it make to have individual
residents make budget decisions?
• How could Participatory Budgeting improve your community’s
relationship with your student government, your college or university,
your city government?
• What challenges might you face when trying to implement a process
like this in your school or hometown? Do you think you could do it?

17. Take-Aways: Getting Involved in the Budget Process
Federal and State Government
(representative democracy)
• Show up to townhalls and meetings with
your reps.
• Vote for reps. with interests most closely
aligned with your own
• Run for office yourself!
Local Government, Colleges, Universities
(direct democracy)
• Show up to meetings and lobby for what is
important to you
• Be aware that the budget process is year-
long and most of the important agenda
setting starts early
• ADVOCATE FOR PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING

18. Sources
• Image of Michael Scott: someone named Jodie Cheever’s pinterest account. URL:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/28288303883468182/
• Pie chart of Federal government’s 2017 discretionary spending from the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary
Policy at Brookings. Retrievable online at https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/12/13/the-hutchins-
center-explains-federal-budget-basics/
• Pie chart on the state of Kentucky’s budgeted general fund expenditures from 2016-2018 from the Kentucky Center
for Economic Policy’s (KCEP) Our Commonwealth: A Primer on Kentucky State Budget. Retrievable online at
https://kypolicy.org/dash/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Ky-Budget-Primer-2018-edition-1-8-17.pdf
• Pie chart on the city of Louisville Metro’s approved executive budget for fiscal year 2017-2018 from Louisville
Metro Government’s Building Momentum: Approved Executive Budget for 2017-2018. Retrievable online at
https://louisvilleky.gov/sites/default/files/management_budget/fy18_approved_executive_budget_book_8.2.17.p
df
• Participatory Budgeting image is the property of the Participatory Budgeting Project
• Participatory Budgeting activity and accompanying discussion questions come from Allison Milewski of PBS. Her full
curriculum, including activities not used in this workshop, can be retrieved online at
http://archive.pov.org/publicmoney/lesson-plan/#resources