Communicating about social justice in participatory budgeting in the United States: ‘Coming together’ to benefit communities

ABSTRACT

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a public deliberation process designed to advance social justice by engaging geographical community members, especially those from oppressed populations, in collective decision making about spending public funds to improve their community. This 2.5-year, applied, ethnographic, community-based study of two PB processes implemented in Denver, Colorado, examined participants’ social justice discourse during their deliberations. The findings revealed three themes: participants’ listening to marginalized voices, people from oppressed populations engaging in the PB process, and community members ‘coming together’ to benefit oppressed populations. The findings illustrate discursive themes that advance social justice during PB deliberations, and, from an applied perspective, suggest that to recruit and retain participants from oppressed populations, as well as to engage in deliberation that promotes equitable outcomes, PB organizers and facilitators in the United States should promote participants’ communication about those themes during their deliberations.

KEYWORDS:

• Communication activism research
• social justice
• community-based research
• public deliberation
• civic engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Auraria Campus had several microwaves available to students that they used to heat up meals brought from home. The microwaves were popular, with long lines of students often waiting to use them.

2 At a Campus Kitchen, students use donated kitchen space and food to prepare nutritious meals for students and community members at low or no cost.

3 Although, ultimately, PB was not adopted on the Auraria Campus, in 2021–2022, the City of Denver launched a citywide PB process that allocated $1.7 million annually, due, in part, to the activism of former Cole Has a Soul and Auraria PB participants and organizers.

4 Amara requested to be identified as Indian American instead of Asian or Asian American.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CU Engage, University of Colorado Boulder [Graduate Fellowship in Community-based Research].