Grassroots Advocates Call for Teamwork, Budget Advocacy, Openness About Equity, Leadership Development

By Holden Slattery, Public Health Advocates

As advocates, we must pay close attention to the budgets that our elected officials develop. Budgets determine whether vulnerable people receive the support they need to thrive and whether threats to community health are prevented. Too often, budgets instead reinforce the status quo.

We can change that by pressuring our elected officials to prioritize public health, health equity, and racial justice in their budgets. At Public Health Advocates, we believe we must do so right now, as billions of dollars are going to local governments for COVID-19 pandemic recovery through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Advocates everywhere must use their voices to say: 1) this money should directly benefit the low-income communities and communities of color who have been harmed most severely by the pandemic; and 2) community members should decide how it is spent.

In California, our cities and counties received $8 billion in ARPA money last spring, and they will receive another $8 billion this spring. Nationwide, local governments are receiving $130 billion through ARPA. California COVID Justice, an initiative of Public Health Advocates, has hosted a series of events to spread awareness about these funds. We’ve told people that the great flexibility of these funds and the intent of fostering pandemic recovery allows the funds to be spent on all kinds of initiatives to improve community health. But we’ve realized that many people lack experience doing grassroots advocacy. If you’ve never spoken with members of your city council or county board of supervisors, it can seem overwhelming.

That is why, at our most recent “ARPA Lunch and Learn” we brought together a few grassroots advocates to hear about their experiences. We spoke with Ryan McClinton, Program Manager for First Response Transformation; Monet Boyd, Staff Planner for the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII); and Rahel Teka, Communications Manager for the Participatory Budgeting Project. They reflected on their advocacy experiences in their jobs, as members of local coalitions, and in other phases of life – and they shared some great insights.

Join Forces and Advocate as a Community

In Sacramento, McClinton has been an advocate for police accountability and diagnosing underserved mental health needs, especially in the Black community. He organized with Sacramento Area Congregations Together to establish a use of force policy for the Sacramento Police Department, paving the way for a statewide use of force policy that California passed in 2019.

“I’ve done lots of advocacy work, but always with community – because it’s collective work and that’s how we get movements built,” he said.

At BARHII, Boyd is part of the Regional Black Housing Agenda, a coalition of 40 Black-led organizations working to provide housing and support services for Black communities in the Bay Area. She wants to continue doing projects in partnership with community organizations, and co-developing strategies so that they can ask for funding together.

“It’s powerful when you can go up together as one unit and say: you have to fund all of us because it’s all connected,” Boyd said. “I really want to learn how to do that work, so that we tell our stories together, because you have to have a holistic approach to equity.”

Participatory Budgeting Has Tremendous Potential

Participatory budgeting is a process where community members decide how to spend public money. The Participatory Budgeting Project, one of the organizations championing this concept, has empowered more than 400,000 people to directly decide how to spend $300 million in public funds in 29 cities. They also anchor a coalition called Democracy Beyond Elections, and one of their current projects is to encourage cities to use participatory budgeting for ARPA funding.?

Teka, who is part of these efforts, sees the moment we are in right now as a portal. The pandemic and the ARPA funds for recovery represent an opportunity to turn community-led decision making and participatory budgeting into norms in local government.

“We’ve never been here before,” Teka said, “so no one can tell us we can’t do it this way just because it’s never been done this way before.”

McClinton also believes strongly in participatory budgeting and has been active in budget advocacy in Sacramento, including around Measure U, a fund that aims to uses sales tax revenue to support underserved communities in Sacramento – although it has often gone to the police budget. A coalition McClinton was part of established a community-led advisory board to oversee the use of Measure U funds and push for equitable spending. However, they have had to keep a close eye on implementation, as local officials have tried circumventing that board to reduce its power.

“These decisions are being made – none of this is just the way things are – and who is making those decisions is going to be the key to getting to the root of some of the solutions,” said Teka.

Fold Equity into All Aspects of Advocacy

McClinton, Boyd, and Teka are all advocates for racial and cultural equity, and they all agree that equity needs to show up not only in policy solutions but in how people are given access to the spaces where decisions are made. ?

One of the principles in Teka’s work is to give community members real decision-making power, not create a fa?ade of community participation.

“It’s not an invitation to come along, it’s an invitation to build together and have your time be respected and to have real decision-making power,” Teka said.

McClinton said it’s important to think about how information is presented, and how organizers can meet the needs of people who don’t speak English as a first language.

“When we’re thinking about racial equity, it’s how do I look beyond my privilege?” McClinton said.

Teka said there is often a fear of failure when it comes to naming what true equity looks like. But she believes it’s best to be open about inequities that show up in grassroots advocacy and to make improvements over time.

“Being able to name when things aren’t quite shaping up or things aren’t quite specific enough doesn’t have to be a stopping point,” Teka said. “It can be exciting, and it can be the next step.”

When it comes to policy solutions aimed at equity, Boyd’s work at BARHII has involved advocating for targeted approaches to pandemic recovery and housing that meet the unique needs of Black, Latinx, and Pacific Islander communities – instead of using proxies for race or a race-neutral approach.

“I think one thing we have to remember when doing racial equity work is you can’t take a soft approach because systematic racism is not a soft approach,” Boyd said.

Last year, BARHII published the COVID-19 Equity Investment Guide to help policymakers foster an equitable recovery.

Develop New Leaders to Carry the Baton

The benefits of organizing and advocating as a community are multiple. There’s obviously power in numbers, and a wide variety of perspectives are needed to achieve equity. It’s also about using advocacy movements as an opportunity to help more people develop as leaders – especially younger generations.

“This work has to continue for the long term,” McClinton said. “So, who are we developing? Who are we bringing along? Who are we making sure we open the platform to – who can step in and take it to another level?”

The work we are doing on ARPA is not only to direct more funding to the low-income communities and communities of color who need resources and support. It is also to bring more people into grassroots advocacy spaces and communities – so that leaders like McClinton, Teka and Boyd can pass the baton to many other advocates in communities everywhere.??

California COVID Justice: Recovery, Response & Repair is coordinated public health response to COVID-19 and the inequities it has laid bare. For updates and opportunities to get involved, join our email list. ?

For our advocacy tools to advocate for equitable ARPA spending, go to phadvocates.org/ARPA?