Devin Anderson, Campaign and Membership Director at African American Roundtable (Photo/AART)
By Karen Stokes
For over five years, the African American Roundtable (AART) has advocated Participatory Budgeting in Milwaukee. On April 2, their persistent efforts paid off as the Common Council approved a $600,000 Participatory Budgeting program.
Participatory Budgeting is a democratic process where community members directly decide how to allocate a portion of a public budget.
“The reason why we advocated for Participatory Budgeting is because we believe in people, we believe that residents in the African American community should have the power to make decisions,” said Devin Anderson, Campaign and Membership Director at AART.
Anderson shared that AART will play a key role in ensuring the $600,000 that was won for the community is used in a way that creates the greatest impact.
“I think the next steps are few, one is to celebrate. Organizing is hard, we’ve been working on this for five years and to have this moment is special,” said Anderson. “Then the next step is the implementation. One of the things about organizing is that after you win, it is important to make sure that you’re following up your win by tracking implementation.”
The African American Roundtable (AART) is a collective led by and dedicated to serving Milwaukee’s Black community. As part of their ongoing efforts, they will also focus on community education, helping residents better understand what participatory budgeting is and how it works.
The city will begin forming a steering committee—a group of individuals who will establish the rules, guidelines, and parameters for how the participatory budgeting funds will be used.
“When the timeline is laid out, we will be engaging residents having voting parties to make sure that our people are voting and participating in this because we know that the way information is shared is not always equal so our job is making sure that the information and this opportunity gets to all parts of Milwaukee,” he said.
Anderson also stressed the importance of keeping the funds aligned with community priorities.
“We want to ensure that this pot of money is going to what residents want and that it’s not going to the police,” Anderson said. “The Milwaukee Police get over $300 million every year and with these $600,000 we want to be funding initiatives that we hope and believe help safety that isn’t through the lens of needing to invest more to police.”
When asked about the future of Participatory Budgeting in Milwaukee, Anderson said,
“This is a pilot. If you listened to the Common Council, it’s clear they don’t currently see it as something to implement every year. But our stance is different — we want to prove otherwise and make participatory budgeting an annual process.”
“Throughout this process folks will be able to see what participatory budgeting has the power to potentially do and that it can go from this pilot to something that is more embedded within the culture of Milwaukee,” he said.
Two community celebrations are planned: a virtual celebration live on Facebook at 5:30 p.m. on April 17, and an in-person celebration on Saturday, April 26 at 5:00 p.m. Visit aartmke.org for more details.
To learn more about participatory budgeting visit participatorybudgeting.org