Description
A bold vision that empowers communities to solve our cities most pressing problems
Amid political repression and a deepening affordability crisis, Budget Justice 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 democracyin 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 ones 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 peoples budgets and policiesfrom universal preschool to affordable housingthat will enable their communities to thrive.
Author: Celina Su
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 09/09/2025
Pages: 296
Weight: 1.3lbs
Size: 9.29h x 5.98w x 1.34d
ISBN: 9780691251318
Language: English
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