How a Bill Becomes a Bridge: Participatory Budgeting Celebration in Milwaukee

The sounds of bar stools scraping and friends laughing are backdropped by Bill’s Withers “Lovely Day” as caterers set up a buffet table in the back of tonight’s venue and bartenders sling out cocktails and mocktails at an incredible efficiency. In the midst of this social commotion, Devin Anderson, membership director for the African American Roundtable, stands in the center of the room and calls everyone to attention with a few call-and-response claps.

Tonight, all of these community members are gathered here at Dream Lounge Social—owned by a relative of one of AART’s members—to celebrate a monumental victory in the fight for participatory budgeting and Anderson is just getting ready to give one of his trademark speeches before he unleashes the masses onto their victory buffet.

The building and maintaining of relationships over time is hard. But I still believe it is our best bet at building the world we want.

The room quiets down as everyone focuses their attention on Anderson.

 He begins by thanking the crowd and then plunges into the heart of why this room is filled with this beaming collective tonight.

“We’re here to have a good time,” said Anderson, “to celebrate the city passing a bill that allocates $600,000 to participatory budgeting.”

The crowd cracks into a short, intense applause before Anderson continues.

“The thing about participatory budgeting is we have been working on this for several years. And for folks who are training with us today, we know that organizing is hard work; the building and maintaining of relationships over time is hard. But I still believe it is our best bet at building the world we want.”

Participatory budgeting is a system in which members of the community campaign its representatives directly to get financial resources they will then allocate to specific community needs. AART began this campaigning process back in 2019. Through several years of testifying and contacting aldermen and women, finally, participatory budgeting is being added to the “wins” column.

The African American Roundtable is a grassroots organization that provides political training in the service of Black liberation. That’s almost verbatim from the mission statement they give at community meetings. Part of AART’s core tenets is community-lead development. AART believes the community understands what it needs to feel safe and supported, and that by engaging with the community, AART can build a campaign for people to rally around and demand change. AART achieves this by holding various training sessions and community events where they invite city residents to take part in actions or become a members to gain even deeper training into the work of organizing.

[Transparency: I am currently a trainee with AART’s membership cohort]

“The process of LiberateMKE is huge,” said Ryeshia Farmer, community program manager with AART.

She echoes the sentiment of community cultivation serving as the cornerstone of movement-building. She lists the different ways in which they have helped foster a movement-building mindset in citizens.

 “Training people on the [city] budget, how it works, what it is; that a huge part of the budget is your tax dollars and that there is a process in place for you to testify. Training people on telling a good story and giving a good testimony, that was huge. And telling members in the community about our work to organize around this campaign and to get more money in our communities.”

I think not just our city needed this, the movement needed this.

As this author speaks with more people and asked what participatory budgeting means to them, the sense became very obvious: this money can be used towards things that feel most pressing to the citizens. AART gave away $40,000 in four grants of $10,000 each to four local area businesses in 2023 to 2024.

Now AART has the chance to impart even more significant investment into our community. Through different community visioning sessions, AART has developed various avenues to begin its next campaign. These areas include things like economic opportunity, green spaces and food access.

“Such a historic win in such a very turbulent time,” said Markasa Tucker, executive director of AART. “I think not just our city needed this, the movement needed this to let folks know there is still opportunity to win when you build the power, when you educate them, you politicize them and continue to invite them in to continually take action.”