Budgets and the Morality of Money

Youth Organizing X

Shari, Jay, and Matt explore the role of budgets in organizing - and how to make budgetary processes of all sorts more accessible and equitable. Shari walks through the steps in the participatory budgeting process and how it can make budgets into the positive moral documents they should be in communities through democratizing decision making power. Jay shares his experience in the budgeting process at his school, what he calls a bit of a "black box." Shari and Jay unpack how budgets are moral - and historical - documents. They share their advice on how to break down barriers of inaccessibility for folks to engage in budget processes of all sorts by asking good-faith, deep questions.

Resources Referenced:

• Shari's 2020 TED Talk
• Participatory Budgeting Project website
• Democracy Beyond Elections
• Law for Black Lives
• Transgender Law Center
• BYP 100
• Student Voice
• Youth United for Action Facebook page

Bios:

Shari is the Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project. She joined the Participatory Budgeting Project after working for 15 years in local government. When she was the executive director of the Department of Youth Engagement and Employment for the City of Boston, she launched the first youth-led participatory budgeting (PB) process in the United States, Youth Lead the Change. Davis initially got involved in city government as a student leader in high school, serving as the citywide neighborhood safety coordinator on the Boston Mayor’s Youth Council. In 2019, she was honored with an Obama Foundation Fellowship for her work on participatory budgeting and in summer 2020 she delivered a TED Talk on the power of PB.

Jay Philbrick is a college freshman studying economics and public policy at Brown University. Originally from North Yarmouth, Maine, he graduated from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics, where he served as President of the Student Senate and a voting member of the school's Board of Trustees. Throughout high school, he served on the Board's Advancement, Program, and Student Welfare Committees, where he focused on strengthening the school's mental health and Title IX resources to better protect students. In his free time, he leads Maine's branch of TeleHealth Access for Seniors, a non-profit that connects seniors with used electronic devices to promote telemedicine adoption, and he is also one of the youngest members of the Electoral College in American History.