Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities

Amid political repression and a deepening affordability crisis, Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities challenges everything you thought you knew about “dull” and daunting government budgets. It shows how the latter confuse and mislead the public by design, not accident. Arguing that they are moral documents that demand grassroots participation to truly work for everyone, the book reveals how everyday citizens can shape policy to tackle everything from rising housing and food costs to unabated police violence, underfunded schools, and climate change-driven floods and wildfires.

Drawing on her years of engagement with democratic governance in New York City and around the globe, Celina Su proposes a new kind of democracy — in which city residents make collective decisions about public needs through processes like participatory budgeting, and in which they work across racial divides and segregated spaces as neighbors rather than as consumers or members of voting blocs. Su presents a series of “interludes” that vividly illustrate how budget justice plays out on the ground, including in-depth interviews with activists from Porto Alegre, Brazil, Barcelona, Spain, and Jackson, Mississippi, and shares her own personal reflections on how changing social identities inform one’s activism.

Essential reading to empower citizens, Budget Justice explains why public budgets reflect a crisis not so much in accounting as in democracy, and enables everyone, especially those from historically marginalized communities, to imagine and enact people’s budgets and policies — from universal preschool to affordable housing — that will enable their communities to thrive. [Adapted from publishers’ description.]

ISBN: 9780691251318 | Princeton University Press

Praise

The brilliance of Su’s book lies in its ability to make participation seem less daunting, more necessary, and absolutely possible. — Aaron Cayer, Places

I love the practicality of Budget Justice. This is something we can take action with now. — Aaron Landsman, Urban Omnibus

Under overwhelming conditions of state violence, Budget Justice is a useful tool for anyone trying to discern what possibilities for material relief — and transformative change — can be won by engaging city budgets. — Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid

Celina Su’s Budget Justice is a prophetic and powerful call to reimagine how our society allocates its resources — and to whom. It is a blueprint for a moral revival in public policy. Su reminds us that budgets are not neutral — they are moral documents that reveal our deepest priorities. In this age of poverty amidst plenty, Su challenges us to engage in participatory budgeting and demand that our institutions serve the people rather than militarize our communities. Read this book, study it together, and then take it to the streets. — Rev. Liz Theoharis, Poor People’s Campaign cochair and coauthor of You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take