Thread by @KCEquityNow

The KCEN Coalition is partnering with @DecrimSeattle to create a participatory budget for the 2021 Budget Cycle.

This comes at the heels of Mayor Durkan's mere 5% proposed cut in SPD's budget during a time of *severe* budget shortfalls.

Read more here: decriminalizeseattle.com/blog

Participatory budgeting is a ground-up, democratic process where community members decide how to spend part of a public budget. The joint participatory budgeting process we partnered to create will inform and guide Seattle’s spending on the City’s “public safety” agencies . . .

. . . with a focus on SPD, the City's law department (City Prosecutors), Municipal Court, and reinvestments into the community that could generate real safety.

The nation-wide uprising of the last few weeks in defense of Black lives has focused unprecedented public attention on the destructive role of policing and bloated police budgets.

In Seattle, we and @DecrimSeattle and have been spearheading the call to defund SPD by at least 50%, and calling for reinvestments into real community safety and well-being. Hundreds of community groups and tens of thousands of community members have signed on to these demands.

The overwhelming support for defunding SPD makes clear that people will no longer let essential needs like housing, health care, & child care remain unmet in their communities while hundreds of millions are spent on policing.

The community-led participatory budgeting process announced today will help transform community demands into reality.

The City government has proven unable—despite years of protest—to reduce the police budget meaningfully. An independent community-led process is needed.

To truly reflect community needs around public safety, the design and implementation of the process to reduce the police budget must be held by community organizations, not under the Mayor’s control. #DefundSPD