Our Future, Our Voice, Our Budget
In January of 2020, I was trying to find out how we can fight for a people’s budget, a redistribution of money out of the overfunded police department and into programs and services that can lift our communities out of poverty. At the time, no one had really tried to organize around the city’s budget process, but after seeing Mayor Kenney’s proposed budget that would give a raise to the police department and make cuts to every other department, I knew we needed to fight it. Then the pandemic hit and 2 months later the uprisings; and Philadelphia showed up!!! I am so proud of all the people who took to the streets and testified at City Council hearings. Together, we were able to stop the police from getting a raise they damn sure didn’t deserve after brutalizing West Philly residents on May 31st and protestors on 676 on June 1st.
Since that time, our Mass Liberation leaders have been working to provide political education around the City’s budget process, what community-based gun violence prevention strategies need to be funded by our City, and what a world without police and prisons can look like. It’s clear that community members want to feel safe in their neighborhoods and that most Philadelphians surveyed feel like cops don’t do a good job of preventing violence or responding to it after it happens. So, why do the decision makers in this city continue clinging to the lie that police keep us safe? And why do they keep claiming that there is no money to invest in our communities??
Since last year’s budget fight, we’ve been having deep conversations with folks across the City about how their communities have been neglected, and we’ve been having the same conversations with community leaders working in gun violence intervention, healing, reentry, harm reduction, tenants rights, and social work. These conversations helped shape our demands for the current budget fight.
Our communities are in crisis because of decades of divestment, so it is clear that the only way we can interrupt cycles of poverty and violence is to commit to long-term investments in the communities that have been neglected for far too long. This isn’t just about the next fiscal, the Reclaim the Budget! Platform demands that Mayor Kenney and City Council commit to 10-years of community investments. The platform includes $100 million/year for affordable housing and eviction protection, $100 million/year for gun violence prevention and youth programs, $50 million/year for behavioral health services and mental health crisis responders; $2 million/year to support parents and caregivers. That’s only just scratching the surface of the specific services we want to see funded by the City.
And this year, Mayor Kenney proposed a budget that was completely disconnected from these truths. He, and other powerful members of City Council, continued to prioritize funding for the carceral system and for the wealthy minority in the City, claiming that there is no money to fund the things our communities need and deserve. Proposals were made for a $343 million tax cut over five years by reducing the Business Income & Receipts Tax and the City’s wage tax (two thirds of the wage tax cuts going to people who live in the suburbs). Another bill, introduced by Councilmember Cherelle Parker, would've given parking lot owners (a small group of super rich developers) a $130 million tax break, claiming money would ‘trickle down’ to workers. That was never possible through this bill. $130 million could have been $25,000 directly to every parking lot worker. Cherelle Parker was lying to us. We’ve had ENOUGH!
We brought the heat directly to City Council! We organized and had people testify at budget hearings and had them call and email Councilmembers directly. We brought that same heat to Mayor Kenney, who we believe was colluding with Council President Darrell Clarke to rush the budget vote before our allies in Council had time to get amendments added. We partnered with Philly Cam and Equally Informed Philly to share information about the budget. You can watch the City Budget episode here
Thanks to the work of THIS community, we were able to get City Council back into negotiations and push back the budget vote.
Last Thursday night’s preliminary approval of the 2022 fiscal year budget reflected a drastic shift from Mayor Kenney's initial budget proposal and the trickle down economics of the tax cuts introduced by Councilmembers Domb and Parker, to a budget that better addresses the needs of everyday people in Philadelphia. It must be named and celebrated that this change in the budget would never have happened without massive public participation. We demanded $3 million for eviction defense and won it! We demanded no tax cuts and defeated two tax cut bills that would have taken revenue out of the budget and handed it over to corporations and the wealthy. We demanded $100 million for community-based violence prevention and youth programs and we see $155 million in the budget for it, with $49 million going directly into community organizations doing healing and gun violence prevention work.
We want to lift up Councilmembers Helen Gym, Jamie Gauthier, and Kendra Brooks for their tireless work inside City Hall - listening to the needs of Philadelphians experiencing community violence and demanding the investment our communities need to address it. Gym, Brooks and Gauthier called out the neoliberal tax cuts for what they were and demanded this revenue be collected and invested in Black, brown and low income communities. 13 City Council members united to demand investment in anti-violence programs. So much of budget negotiations happened behind closed doors with deal cuts between the Mayor and factions within city council. Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson played a leadership role in those closed negotiations that was necessary in this city council to reach majority consensus. Ultimately we want open and transparent budget negotiations in the future with full participation of all Philadelphians and all of Council.
As we celebrate the positive changes in this negotiated budget we also need to be real about what we need to keep fighting for. We need permanently affordable public housing, we need long-term investment in community based violence prevention programming, we need fully funded mental health crisis programs with no armed co-responders, and we need to end current tax breaks for wealthy corporations, developers and mega non-profits. We need to stop giving raises to cops and investing in carceral solutions to crises that come from disinvestment.
This fall and winter, we look forward to continuing political education across all our campaigns , having deep conversations in our communities about reimagining community safety, taking action against institutions and individuals that uphold and commit violence against our communities, and strategizing with comrades in office. And equally important, preparing to take over all levels of government in elections happening in 2022 and 2023!