Session Description:
This session will be an introduction to participatory budgeting and how it has been applied in Latin America and North America. Participatory budgeting is a process in which city residents directly decide how part of a municipal or public budget is spent. After being pioneered in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, participatory budgeting has spread to hundreds of cities around the world. It has helped communities gain democratic control over budget spending and policy decisions in municipalities, public housing, schools, and organizations.

Participatory budgeting seeks to redress the injustices and democratic shortcomings of the status quo by placing decision-making about tax dollars in the hands of community members. By challenging top-down government decision-making, it has led to more informed and equitable spending decisions, more accountability and transparency, and more active and organized communities.

Agenda:
1. Intro to Participatory Budgeting: Michael Menser
2. Participatory Budgeting experiences in the North: Guido Milani, Italy
3. Participatory Budgeting experience in the South: Edgardo Lander, Venezuela
4. Participatory budgeting in the US: Representative of Lawrence Community Works (Lawrence, MA)
5. Facilitated discussion about how participatory budgeting works, and challenges and opportunities
Moderator: Juscha Robinson, Liberty Tree Foundation

The panel will address many of the cross-cutting themes of the US Social Forum, by discussing a concrete way to address economic and social inequality, building on existing budget organizing, and exploring new possibilities for participatory budgeting in the US.

Discussion will be conducted in English, with oral interpretation in Spanish. Handouts in English and Spanish will be provided to participants.

This session is co-sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, Planners Network, New York City Aids Housing Network, Urban Justice Center, and Lawrence Community Works. It will be followed by a workshop on June 30th (sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies) in which participants strategize and plan how to implement participatory budgeting in their communities in the United States.