Linking Financial Literacy with Justice
Want to further justice on the streets? Start consuming financial reports en masse….
Millions of dollars are being invested ostensibly in the interests of communities, without very little actual knowledge of those communities and with at best very mixed results. Budgets related to schools, infrastructure, health and policing are not just random figures like many treat them, only to be handled by “beancounters”, those “good with numbers” or politicians. These reports provide a very detailed overview into how cities and their services function and demonstrate the massive investments contributing to the success or failure of millions of people.
Budget Accessibility
Many public sector budgets are usually available online, but assume high financial literacy, such as this one from Oakland, California. These financial reports are transparent, but are not accessible because many community members do not understand them enough to build an informed opinion. And frankly, who has the time?
The enormous sums of money involved need to be better explained and communicated differently than to a traditional specialist audience. Data is just one part of the equation. Data must be accompanied by narratives and the visuals to act as a catalyst for change.
Legible, engaging financial reports out in the community
How cities function and are funded needs to become interesting, or made more interesting. Largely perceived as boring or elitist, the financial, socio-economic and psychological implications on every one are too crucial to leave to financial elites. This is where communicators can do a world of good in telling the story of financing urban environments.
Accountants know numbers, writers know letters. And so, does a well-drafted narrative accompany financial reports? Narratives provide context, bolstering the meaning of data. How to design those reports for maximum effectiveness is also crucial.
Do people realize that most settlements regarding police brutality are paid for by the city, in other words by everyone?
Most of these reports are online, however, with the flood of information available online, is easily lost. Easily referenced, yes, but usually buried through lack of attention or an overflowing inbox or notification stream.
Community outreach campaigns need to be diversified — public service billboards, large posters for inner city schools and community centers affected by neglect and police violence and even a bus.
Building citizen knowledge to help inform policy
For his/her turn, the average citizen needs to make an effort to better understand discretionary and non-discretionary funding, debt service and what programs fall into “prevention of violence”, the purpose of tree maps and cosmographs. Here is a brief example of Oakland’s budget data in various visualisations.
Does the average citizen in urban centers understand the amount city’s debt amount, the annual budget allocation to the police or social services? Do s/he realize that most settlements regarding police brutality are paid for by the city, a.k.a. everyone? That the difference in capitol outlay of a road for cars and a road for bikes is about threefold? In other words, bikes do not pollute the environment, make no noise and consume millions of dollars less in the actual building of a road.
As another example, a street light is broken, which costs a few hundred dollars to replace, but because of a backlog is delayed. That backlog indirectly facilitates a burglary on the street or a mugging, which, the human suffering and tragedy aside, in turn costs a considerable amount of financial and human resources to investigate.
Rewording slogans to win supporters, leading to policy change
The preliminary budgets which explain the potential reallocation of police funding (“defunding the police”) are clear to those who follow the subject matter very closely. However, there is a risk that such slogans can potentially hurt the cause, particularly in those only reading headlines or scanning their news feeds.
Such slogans may win over those who do not understand the subject’s complexities, but also scare off those who make a knee-jerk reaction of fearing a city “without a police force”. Phrases such as “reforming community safety/policing” may be more effective than “defunding the police”.
Shorter-term action would be to take a city’s annual report, its budget and start to understand where the money is invested. This would then lead to a series of questions regarding why certain policies were followed and others not. The more informed an activist, then more effective s/he will be.
Looking at the United States alone, it is fascinating (or more frightening) to see that 15.29% of the US government budget is dedicated to the Department of Defense. The Department of Education receives only 3.14%. Covid-19 relief, as of September 2020, has cost $1.62 trillion. To give some context, the second Iraq war cost $3 trillion, not counting the tragedy of lives lost and forever changed.
The more that these figures and programs rest with the public and tech elites, the longer justice and equity will take to be deployed on the streets. Our collective new year’s resolution should be to educate these elites about better communicating data and community activists regarding the role that financial literacy can play in bringing about change.
Richard Dion is a governance and regional development consultant based in Germany, working on financial literacy and justice issues in resource rich countries.
