Mission
Our mission is to empower people across Birmingham through community education and organizing, ensuring neighborhoods have direct and democratic control over local resources and municipal spending while holding our government accountable and responsive to community needs.
Vision
We envision a Birmingham where all communities thrive with just, democratic, and direct control over local resources and municipal spending.
Identity Statement
We advance our mission by working alongside residents living in neighborhoods and communities that are on the frontlines of municipal neglect and disinvestment.
PBB Programmatic Pillars
- Community Organizing & Education
- Policy Advocacy
- Research & Data Analysis
What we’re about
Educate: We understand popular and political education as essential to building the depth of knowledge and political alignment necessary for successful advocacy, organizing, community governance, and collective liberation.
Advocate: We are advocates for collective governance and liberation, but intersecting oppressions demand that we contend with a broad set of issues. Our labor is to advocate beyond a single issue and exercise collaborative resistance.
Organize: Relational, grassroots organizing and building collective power is our work. We believe that change happens when informed, educated, and aligned people at the grassroots (with the support of social institutions) apply pressure to individuals and institutions that wield decision-making power.
Resist: We resist beliefs, policies, and structures that do not give our people the chance to thrive. We engage in and support direct action, social pressure, and other forms of resistance.
Build: We believe critique seeds resistance, but liberation is found in our actions to bring our imagination to life. It is not enough to resist what doesn’t serve us; We must build what we deserve.
Program Areas
We’re building participatory democracy, strengthening collective governance, and fighting for transparent, accessible, and accountable local government in the by:
Advocating for Participatory Budgeting
We advocate for various forms of participatory budgeting and participatory democracy.
Building Community and Neighborhood Power
We work to increase access to power and resources for historically marginalized Birmingham residents, Neighborhood Associations, or the Community Advisory Board.
Increasing Civic Engagement
We support historically marginalized Birminghamians right to fully participate in local government, including voter registration activities, providing tools, workshops, or education on navigating bureaucratic systems or processes, and advocating for transparency, accountability, and accessibility to local government.
Fighting for Environmental Justice
We believe that environmental justice is racial and economic justice. That’s why PBB fights to create environments and structures that help historically marginalized neighborhoods feel safe and prioritize their health and well-being. We advocate for budget increases for parks, sewage and wastewater infrastructure, and oppose construction or industry that would reallocate budget funds and increase environmental hazards.
Creating Anti-Carceral Futures
Our anti-carceral work rests at the intersection of budgeting and Birmingham’s carceral infrastructure. We organize and advocate for decreasing funding to the city’s police and immigration enforcement budgets and increasing funding for social services and community-led safety initiatives, and divesting in technology that criminalizes Black, brown, low-income, disabled, and LGBTQIA+ bodies.