I'm excited today because we have Selena Sue, who is a professor who wrote a book that I really enjoyed called Budget Justice.

And I had the pleasure of interviewing her in front of a big group of students earlier this year to talk about her book.

And I thought everything we were talking about was so amazing.

We got to have it on the podcast.

We know a little bit about our city's budgets. We know

that, you know, police get a big share of the pie. We know when not enough money is going to,

fixing the streets of potholes and creating bike lanes and visible crosswalks. We can recognize

more so when things are not being funded than when things

are being funded. But the thing is, a budget isn't just, okay, here's the things that we got

to map out for the city this year. It should reflect the public's priorities. We should be

actively involved in what our tax money and what our city funds. There's something I'd never heard of

called participatory budgeting, which is when communities are allowed to influence funding

decisions, and that creates a lot of transparency in budgeting. I, you know, seven months ago,

did not really know how to read a city budget. I've since become more able to, but even I am confused, and it takes a lot to dig into what does this mean?

And is this an authority that has to do with this?

And what is this connected to?

And as Selena and I talk about, it's made purposefully confusing because they don't really want people like me and you to hear

what's going on and be able to complain about it or not really complain. Do activism around it.

Allow for significant changes in budget allocation. So I really love the idea that you can just

create a budget proposal for something that you want

and propose it. It's your money. It's your city. So without further ado, here's our

incredible interview with Selena Sue. Oh, and just a little thing. After we had already

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