A more direct Democracy now: Participatory budgeting

[the_future_modernes]

2010 Chicago’s $1.3 Million Experiment in Democracy: For the first time in the U.S., the city’s 49th Ward lets taxpayers directly decide how public money is spent.

On Chicago's far north side, citizens are taking democracy into their own hands. Through the first "participatory budgeting"experiment in the United States, residents of Chicago's 49th Ward have spent the past year deciding how to spend $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars. Over 1,600 community members stepped up to decide on improvements for their neighborhoods, showing how participatory budgeting can pave the way for a new kind of grassroots democracy, in Chicago and beyond.

From Porto Alegre to Chicago

Chicago may seem an unlikely site for participatory democracy, given the city's famous patronage system and lack of transparency in public finances. Faced with this system, community groups end up competing for budgetary scraps—an exhausting struggle. But frustration with backroom dealing is in part what makes Chicago and the United States ready for new ways of managing public money.

In 2007, Alderman Joe Moore discovered an alternative at a US Social Forum session on participatory budgeting. There, he learned about Porto Alegre, Brazil, where since 1990 tens of thousands of people have been directly deciding how to spend as much as 20 percent of their city's annual budget. Moore also learned how participatory budgeting has gone global, spreading to over 1,200 cities around the world and winning the United Nations' recognition as a best practice of democratic governance.

No U.S. city had let citizens directly decide how to spend public money, but Moore saw Chicago's 49th Ward as the perfect place to try.

MORE

The start: 2002 Porto Alegre's Budget Of, By, And For the People

Fifty thousand residents of Porto Alegre—poor and middle class, women and men, leftist and centrist—now take part in the participatory budgeting process for this city of a million and a half people, and the numbers involved have grown each year since its start in 1989. Then, only 75 percent of homes had running water.

Today 99 percent have treated water and 85 percent have piped sewage. In seven years, housing assistance jumped from 1,700 families to 29,000. In 12 years, the number of public schools increased from 29 to 86, and literacy has reached 98 percent. Each year the bulk of new street-paving projects has gone to the poorer, outlying districts. In addition to these achievements, corruption, which before was the rule, has virtually disappeared.

Democracy is thriving as citizens gain competence in talking with the mayor, specialists in agencies, and fellow citizens of different means.

The participatory budgeting cycle starts in January of each year with dozens of assemblies across the city designed to ensure the system operates with maximum participation and friendly interaction. One study shows that poor people, less well-educated people, and black people are not inhibited in attending and speaking up, even though racial discrimination is strong in Brazil.

One experienced participant described the dynamic as follows: “The most important thing is that more and more people come. Those who come for the first time are welcome. We let them make demands during technical meetings—they can speak their mind and their anxieties. We have patience for it because we were like that once. And if a person has an issue, we set up a meeting for him, and create a commission to accompany him. You have the responsibility of not abandoning him. That is the most important thing.”

Power and learning

Each February there is instruction from city specialists in technical and system aspects of city budgeting.

Regular folks learn fast because what they are learning empowers them to change conditions that limit or extend their lives. This is perhaps an extension of the teachings of Paolo Freire, the Brazilian educator who enabled peasants to quickly learn to read by making use of materials about power, landlords, and politics, and by a learning process of liberation as well as deliberation.MORE

Wikipedia article:Social Movements practicing Partiscipatory Democracy

The Six Nations:Oldest Living Participatory Democracy on Earth

The people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroquois [1] Confederacy, call themselves the Hau de no sau nee (ho dee noe sho nee) meaning People Building a Long House. Located in the northeastern region of North America, originally the Six Nations was five and included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth century. Together these peoples comprise the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Their story, and governance truly based on the consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American history. The original United States representative democracy, fashioned by such central authors as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, drew much inspiration from this confederacy of nations. In our present day, we can benefit immensely, in our quest to establish anew a government truly dedicated to all life's liberty and happiness much as has been practiced by the Six Nations for over 800 hundred years. [2] MORE

Wikipedia links to Criticism

Reviewing the experience in Brazil and Porto Alegre a World Bank paper points out that lack of representation of extremely poor people in participatory budgeting can be a shortcoming. Participation of the very poor and of the young is highlighted as a challenge.^[6] Participatory budgeting may also struggle to overcome existing clientelism. Other observations include that particular groups are less likely to participate once their demands have been met and that slow progress of public works can frustrate participants.^[6]
MORE

From this World Bank paper: PARTICIPATORY BUDGETING IN BRAZIL* Quick and easy read btw



Liberty Tree's 2004 Prospects for Participatory Democracy in the USA


The Participatory Budgeting Project


In light of the ongoing lets gut the poor to feed the rich trends happening around the world, what do you guys think of this alternative?