Budgeting By The People
Imagine if government budget processes weren’t obscure and remote, but were designed so that you, collaborating with other members of your community, had a direct role in deciding how your tax dollars were spent. The latest edition of The Next System Podcast shows where participatory budgeting is actually working and how it could transform what democracy looks like. Host Adam Simpson talks to Shari Davis of the Participatory Budgeting Project, Lorian Ngarambe of the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative, and Yale University Ph.D. student Alexander Kolokotronis.
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Listen…A Master Class in Building the New EconomyA free online course starts Monday that is a master class in movement building for a sustainable, democratic, and socially just political economy. The eight-week course, “Towards Co-operative Commonwealth: Transition In a Perilous Century,” is ideal for both newcomers and veterans to social change work, and participants can leverage the course material and instruction team expertise to advance their own projects and activist work locally. The course is presented by Synergia Institute, a cooperative of educators and practitioners committed to progressive system change, and the Canada-based Athabasca University.Enroll…ICYMI: The Public Ownership RevivalEconomist James K. Galbraith calls Research Director Thomas Hanna’s latest book, Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States, “deeply-informed, thoughtful and beautifully written.” This book offers the most comprehensive analysis of the scope and scale of US public ownership, effectively debunks frequent misconceptions about the alleged inefficiency and underperformance of publicly controlled enterprises, and argues that public ownership offers powerful, flexible solutions to current problems of inequality, instability, and unsustainability.Get the book…