Agents of Change: Clean Air Featured on Cover of ARTVOICE

Organizer Natasha Soto was featured on the October 3rd cover of ARTVOICE, highlighting our Participatory Budgeting campaign in Tonawanda & our work in neighborhoods bordering the Peace Bridge Plaza on Buffalo’s West Side.

Reporter Sarah Bishop interviews Natasha about her work using Participatory Budgeting as a way to change the decision making process and bring control to people who live in impacted neighborhoods.

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget

A little from the interview… 

Soto: Don’t do for people what they can do for themselves. People who live in these neighborhoods have the answers, they are just never allowed to utilize them. They are continuously taken out of the decision-making process and people do things for them in “their best interest” without regard to them and without asking them what they would like in the first place. Participatory budgeting is a way for people in the neighborhood to have a say-so. Read the full interview here.

More Change Agents…

WATCH: Members Tangia Delk and Will Yelder joined Natasha on ARTVOICE TV to talk about why Participatory Budgeting matters.

During this interview Tangia and Will talked about their experience traveling to Chicago to attend the Second International Conference on Participatory Budgeting this past May.

“I think Participatory Budgeting is a thing to implement in the City of Buffalo, where I live.” said Tangia Delk, “There are a lot things in our community that only we see. Outside people don’t see because they just come through – back and forth to work- we live there.”

Tags: Participatory Budgeting, PB