For years community organizers in Long Beach have released the People’s Budget with demands for more investment in community resources like job training, educational opportunities and language access plans in order to enable the city’s non-English speaking residents to be more meaningfully engaged in city government.
This year’s document comes at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the city to recalculate the current fiscal year budget to try and close a funding gap of up to $40 million and protesters are pushing for police reforms and demanding a defunding of the Long Beach Police Department.
Today we’re talking to James Suazo, incoming executive director of Long Beach Forward and Audrena Redmond and Dawn Modkins from Black Lives Matter LBC, about specific demands their organizations have for the 2021 city budget and how they think they can be accomplished.
You can view the whole discussion on the People’s Budget here.