Introduction

• When you think about personal finances, what relevant behaviors/ action steps most immediately come to mind? What are some of the largest expenditures in your household budget, and have they ever stressed you out? If so, what did you do in response? What other responses felt most possible/ palatable to you?

• Take a quick look at reports of “average monthly spending” by Americans, like this one. How does your spending compare? (Don’t worry, there is no right answer to this question. If you don’t know, that’s important information, too.) Are any of the numbers striking to you? What’s missing from the chart for you?

  • Note from Celina: For me, it’s childcare, especially when the US Department of Health & Human Services says that childcare shouldn’t cost more than 7% of a family’s income. Recent reports suggest that it’s eating up 15 to 22% of most American families’ incomes. & my family spends way more than 7% of our income on health insurance, with premiums now doubling for many Americans.

• If possible, take a short trip around your neighborhood, or pay attention on your commute to work, with an eye towards city needs and services: What are some ways in which your life is made easier or more difficult by city infrastructures and services, or lack thereof? These could be small or big. Do you have a sense of how your city made decisions regarding the design, implementation, maintenance, and changes of these programs and projects? Did people like you—however you define yourself here—have any say?

 

Part I. Opacity Abets Austerity

 

Chapter 1: Moral Documents

• When you think of your city’s budget, what most immediately comes to mind? Do you hear about it in the news? If so, what are some common news headlines and popular debates around it? 

  • Potential activity: enter “[your city] city budget” into a web search and glance at the first 2 pages of results, especially in the “news” category.

• Based on what you know or have heard, what sorts of programs and investments does your city hold most dear? Are there some parts of the budget politicians would never willingly cut? What are those?

• If you were to interpret city budgets as moral documents, what sorts of values are prioritized in your city’s current budget? What is considered right and righteous in its implicit vision of the city, and by whom? Is there a public issue that greatly upsets you, or gets you riled up? Is this something that needs to be made right, or redressed, in your view? Is there a discrepancy between how you would like it to be handled, and how your city currently handles it? Is this reflected in the city budget?

 

Chapter 2: Flip the Gaze

• The book claims that many individuals are accustomed to being judged by their financial decisions, and to narrating their deservingness—through personal statements outlining their achievements and personal challenges, including possibly traumatic ones, for example—in order to access public goods like higher education. By contrast, governments don’t usually get such intense public scrutiny. Have you ever looked at your city’s budget? If so, was it easy to find, read, and interpret? If your city announced a big budget cut, would you be able to immediately guess its implications for your life?

• Potential activity: enter “[your city] city budget” into a web search again. Spend 5 minutes on the latest official budget materials you find. What did you learn?

• Who makes decisions regarding big contracts for your city? Does the average resident in your city know?

• Are there “better,” higher-income neighborhoods in your city? Lower-income ones? What makes them different? Do you have a sense of the history of urban planning in your city (regarding, for instance, landlines before the civil war, redlining, urban renewal, and tax credits), or how these neighborhoods developed over decades to be this way? When people in your city/ town talk about inequalities or the budget now, do they ever mention or try to explicitly address some of the histories that led to these inequalities?

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Chapter 3: Follow the Money

• Is it possible to “follow the money” where you live? Does your city issue popular budget reports or documents? Does it have accessible budget websites? Are you able to easily compare different parts of the budget? Can you access and understand where your city’s public money comes from, and where it goes?

• If you can, think of a recent loss of funding in your city. Did politicians present their rationale for the cuts? Does the program now seem to be running more efficiently? Is it able to operate without affecting basic operations, and meeting community needs? Is it possible for you to judge whether the cut was necessary, and whether policymakers really considered all of the options available to them?

• Do you have a sense of how state and federal forces and powers are currently shaping your city’s finances?

 

Chapter 4: Austerity for Profit

• Where you live, are fees and fines a major source of local revenues? Do you know if these tend to be regressive ones, which disproportionately affect low-income people? Do they feed into punitive policing practices, as they did in Ferguson?

• In your city, who currently gets a big chunk of your city’s budget, or public subsidies through tax write-offs? Do they continue to receive contracts or funds from your city, even as other programs face budget cuts?

• Are there any major developments (like stadiums, apartment buildings, shopping complexes, campuses, or office complexes) in your metropolitan area? If so, were these deals controversial, and how did they get approved? Is the general public aware of the terms of the deal made? Has the community benefited?

• Think of daily operations at local public schools, or another part of local government: Do you see market logics at play? What aspects of the work are mediated through private contractor portals, entities, apps, materials, and consultants? In what ways is daily life oriented around measurement, documentation, outcomes assessment, and surveillance of the work being done, rather than the work itself? 

 

Chapter 5: A Right-to-the-City Budget

• How do you understand the phrase “right to the city”? Have you ever encountered it before, and if so, in what context? Is this a helpful framing for you?

• Do you feel like you have the right to fully inhabit your city? Do you feel like you belong there? Do you feel secure there? What are some of the factors that enhance or impede these rights for you? Is the right to a city—and its budget—a helpful framing for you?

•  How does your local built environment—whether you live in a residential area, near public transit, etc.—shape your political sense of place? If you live in an urban area, what makes your city great? Does your city budget give you the resources and power to amplify what makes it so?

• Do you feel like you have the right to shape/ reshape the city, and to make decisions that help make it better for you and people like you? What are some of the factors that enhance or impede these rights for you?

 

Interlude: An Interview with Makani Themba

• What stands out to you most, from Themba’s work in Jackson to address its water crisis and suffering during the covid-19 pandemic? How did the Jackson People’s Assemblies make a difference?

• Do you have a political park of your own, similar to what Themba describes?

• In your view, what are some key important tensions in the sort of work Themba describes?

 

Part II. Democracy is a Daily Practice

 

Chapter 6: No Taxation without Participation

• Did your friends and relatives all vote in the last Presidential election? Local elections and midterm ones? Are they politically active? If not, why not?

• When you think about civic engagement or democratic participation, what do you think of? Was it easy or difficult to think of democracy as something beyond elections, as this chapter argues?

• Outside of protest, have you had opportunities to participate democratically with other people? What was the situation?

 

Interlude: An Interview with Tarson Nuñez

• What stands out to you most, from Porto Alegre’s experiences with participatory budgeting? Were there any non-negotiables you would bring to your own city?

• Nuñez talks about the landless people’s movement as being simultaneously inside and outside, and of the need for democratic experiments to both show fast results and stay connected to longer-term social change. Does this point resonate with you, and what aspect seems most challenging to you? 

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Chapter 7: An Invitation to Participatory Budgeting

• Try to answer the most common question on flyers advertising participatory budgeting in New York City: How would you spend $1 million in your neighborhood? What immediately comes to your mind?

• What do you think about the evolving participation of youth in New York City’s PB process? Are there folks you expect to be left out in a similar process in your city? What would be needed for them to feel truly invited and welcomed to such a process?

• Think about what you would want this kind of process in your city to achieve. What are the top 2 or 3 outcomes you would want?

 

Chapter 8: Terms of Deliberation

• New York’s PB process did an impressive job at reaching out to different sorts of constituents, including those from historically marginalized communities. Yet, many of them expressed that their ideas tended to be sidelined and excluded from the ballot. What stands out to you, in terms of why this happened?

• Are there local groups that are already well-organized, and tend to dominate local debates about public goods? Who are they? What would it take to help these folks to listen more and engage in more open debates, and to help other folks (who are participating for the first time) to get heard?

• In the past, when you showed up at governmental offices– the DMV, a budget hearing, a consulate, the school principal’s office, or any other place with an official vibe– were you able to get what you needed done? Did you get to make the claim or argument you wanted to make? What factors were at play?

• Have you had chances to deliberate decisions with others? To choose an option that would then be applied for multiple people, like an office policy, or a PB project? If so, were you able to center questions of vulnerability and equity in your discussions?

• In PBNYC, many participants talked about highlighting commonalities as helpful in building connections, but some also warned against resorting to a “lowest common denominator” and minimizing inequalities. How are the framings of targeted universalism and intersectionality-as-method helpful, or not, in these discussions?

 

Chapter 9: Actionable Knowledges

• Think about your workplace or neighborhood. Can you name something that you know well partly because of what you’ve learned through experience, rather than through formal lessons and books? In what ways is that sort of local, experiential knowledge already informing institutional policies? In what ways is it not?

• Note from Celina: My neighbors know which intersections feel dangerous and when, what sorts of resources or activities local tweens want these days, or which plants are most likely to thrive in the narrower, shadier community garden on my block, rather than the one a block away. At work, I have a sense of the rhythms of the semester, and when I need to adjust my pedagogy, in a way most new teachers do not. Sometimes, these faculty perspectives inform university policies; often, they do not.

• In PBNYC, technocratic policy-making ended up sidelining more innovative or creative project ideas and selection criteria, since bureaucrats prioritized the projects they deemed most “efficient” and expedient. The context of austerity then exacerbated this. What factors stood out to you, or do you think made the biggest difference?

• What changes do you think would help to shift this dynamic– so that residents and government officials would be more likely to deliberate and work together?

 

Chapter 10: No Algorithms, No Shortcuts

• What lessons do you draw from NYC’s experience with PB, in terms of institutional design (the process’s rules and structures)? In terms of the process’s norms and culture?

• How can governmental processes adapt to context, so that residents don’t end up in situations of having voice but no power? How might processes like PB help to impact other governmental institutions and processes, like city council elections and budget hearings?

• Do the terms do-it-yourself democracy and participation industrial complex resonate with you? How so, and how not? 

• In your view, what does a PB process need to be meaningful and impactful? What would you name as your top 2 non-negotiable essentials?

 

Part III. Citizens Make Cities

 

Chapter 11: Neighborly Citizenship

• Think about a major need you or your family is preoccupied with lately. In what ways are the associated services currently public? In what ways are they private, or somewhat privatized? How do you go about securing these services for your household?

• In what ways does the emphasis on “choice” in school choice and public life help you to make your preferences known? In what ways does it not feel satisfying? 

• Do you have opportunities to talk to and interact with people you’re not personally friends with, on community needs or public issues? What are these opportunities?

• What is your city’s ecosystem of participation like? What sorts of invited spaces are there, and what sorts of invented spaces are there?

 

Chapter 12: Inventive Solidarities

• If you are (or were to be) a member of a counterpublic around a shared experience or identity, what might it revolve around? Do you have safe spaces to get to engage with other members of this counterpublic? What sorts of inside jokes, “you know you are ____ if” memes, etc. pop into your mind? Which of these have implications for policies and resource allocations? 

• Have you had opportunities to engage in making, building, creating community or communal projects, rather than fundraising or choosing between predetermined options? Did you participate in any mutual aid organizing during the covid-19 pandemic? Have you felt like you needed to model being a good friend, colleague, parent?  What were such experiences like for you?

• Are you aware of different solidarity economy entities in your daily life– via products you purchase, worker cooperatives, spaces like community gardens, etc.? 

• In your mind, when groups become vulnerable to resource hoarding rather than resource sharing, how can groups continue to emphasize cooperation, rather than competition?

 

Chapter 13: Budget Lines of Desire

• How do you and your neighbors engage different spaces in your city’s ecosystem of participation? Is it possible to engage in a different ecology of citizenship, one that draws upon the respective strengths of both invited and invented spaces?

• Do the concepts of lines of desire and tactical urbanisms resonate with you? Can you identify examples or instances of small acts that officially defy the rules but everyone does anyway and help to define your sense of place, or “hacks” in urban space that make your city a bit more livable and accommodating? 

• Does the idea of insurgent budgeting– of sneaking in ideas that wouldn’t usually be funded by local government– resonate with you? Can you identify counterparts or examples in your city? When does the term insurgent apply, and when is it not quite the right word, or overstated?

• What would help local policymakers to allow for more ideas, projects, or policies from invented spaces outside of government to be invited into and funded by government?

 

Interlude: An Interview with Marc Serra Solé

• Serra Solé emphasizes moving beyond existing political parties as vehicles for citizen participation and mobilization. What might a “maximum of internal democracy” look like in your city? 

• What successes from Barcelona en Comú’s experience stand out to you?

• In Barcelona, groups of residents worked together to demand much higher allocations in services like social housing, participated in decision-making to decide on city priorities, and got major grants from local government to carry out cooperative, justice-oriented projects. Which of these feels most difficult to imagine happening in your city, and why?

• What takeaway from their experience would you want to relay to a neighbor of yours?

 

Chapter 14: Insurgent Budgeting

• Before large-scale, structural or revolutionary change happens, what sorts of incremental steps or compromises feel worthwhile to you? What sorts of changes feel like they would unfortunately just represent co-coptation, or feel like deal-breakers? Are the questions on pages 212-213 the ones that you would also ask, or do you have different questions for non-reformist reforms in mind?

• Is the matrix on page 214 helpful for you? Drawing from the policy domain you know best, what sorts of projects or policies would you put in each quadrant?

 

Epilogue

• What sorts of spaces and practices do you wish to engage in these days, between elections and protests? Why do these stand out to you?

• What do you think needs to be done at the city level, in order to connect cities nationally and internationally, to build greater scale?

• What do you need now to keep going, to continue to work with others, to build durable power?