Orlando Bailey and Shari Davis, welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you for having us, Stephen.

We're excited.

- Excited to be here.

- Okay.

Orlando, I'm gonna start with you.

Tell me about Urban Consulate: In Session, how you come up with this, and what you guys are hoping to achieve.

- Yeah.

Thanks, Stephen.

First, I wanna tell you a little bit about Urban Consulate for those folks who may have been living under a rock since 2015.

Urban Consulate is a- - Gonna say, it's pretty, it's been around a while now.

- It's been around.

But it's a space where we can meet people to have critical conversations about cities.

And I came on as host in 2018.

And we've explored cities in a really multifaceted way, from equity, equitable development to equity and jobs, equity and construction.

We talk a little bit about community development in that sector.

Just all kinds of things that amazing black people are doing in the city and around the nation.

And so in 2021, we released a survey asking our audience, what do you wanna learn about?

If you could learn about one specific thing or multiple things, what would it be, right?

And so we got feedback around participatory budgeting, equitable real estate, commercial development.

Architecture, but with an activist approach.

Narrative power and storytelling, as well as community organizing and, you know, artistry, right?

And so we took that feedback, and we looked, we did a national scan and a local scan of like, who the experts are in these particular areas.

And for participatory budgeting, who other than Shari Davis?

But like, in the arts field, right, we talked to Jessica Care Moore and community-organizing Devita Davison, Darnell Adams for equitable development, Dr. Craig Wilkins for activist architecture, myself for amplifying black voices, right?

Folks who are in this space doing the work, who can teach an audience how to do it.

And so it's our version of a "masterclass," quote, unquote, but we're calling it In Session.

- Yeah, yeah.

So Shari, you're from the Participatory Budgeting Project in Oakland, California.

I wanna have our viewers learn a little more about that, but also how that connects in with what Urban Consulate's doing.

- Yeah, totally.

Well, thank you so much, Stephen, and it's so good to see you, Orlando.

The Participatory Budgeting Project's mission is to transform democracy.

And at the center of that is centering community members most impacted by public budgets and decisions.

And so that is black and brown people, folks that have been formally and currently incarcerated, individuals that may have been pulled into the justice system or have a jaded experience by local government.

They may also have an experience that looks like a long history of exclusion.

Participatory budgeting and participatory democracy creates the opportunity for people to build power, to make decisions that are equitable, to build processes that are accessible, to decide over things that impact their lives in a significant way.

And so we build and design a process with community that looks like community members having a say over what the process design looks like.

That looks like building spaces for radical imagination for folks closest to the issues, to really dream about solutions and use their practical lived experience, to direct investments toward building communities that work for us, that are built by us.

And I think that's really how it connects to the amazing work that's happening with the Urban Consulate and with this opportunity for In Session, for folks to really understand or be introduced to innovative opportunities, for folks to kind of direct what happens around them.

- So give me some examples of how this ends up looking different in communities where you're doing it than the processes and the institutions that we already have, like in government and business and nonprofit.

What is adding these other voices to the process end up looking like?

- Participatory democracy and participatory budgeting is radically different.

And this has been a growing movement, right?

And so it's relatively new in the United States.

But in the last 13-ish years, where we've seen participatory budgeting grow, it's grown from instances where community members are maybe deciding on a couple hundred thousand dollars or deciding on maybe a million dollars in their community to multimillion-dollar processes, like what's happening in LA right now with the LA REPAIR process.

And REPAIR is a long acronym, but one of those words, one of those R's in there, is about reparations.

And so what does it look like for community members to be able to address harm by directing resources into most harmed communities historically and traditionally?

That's what the LA REPAIR process is like.

And participants in that process are saying things like, "Wow, I've never had an opportunity to make decisions about public funds.

I've never had an opportunity to actually drive resources to root causes that I experience, and that my expertise, my lived experience in this community, says are very present and valid."

It also looks like one of the largest participatory budgeting processes in the country right now, which is in Seattle.

It's a nearly $30 million participatory budgeting process that includes a multimillion-dollar divestment from the local police department, and again, an opportunity for community members to direct how that funding is spent to build safe, strong communities.

- Yeah, man.

- How serendipitous is it, Stephen, that right now Detroit is going through budget season, right, and the fact that we just erected a reparations task force to look at the feasibility of what that could look like in the city of Detroit?

- Yeah, I mean, we've been kind of circling around this idea of more participatory budgeting, more inclusive decision making in the city.

I think think we're gonna get there sooner rather than later, at least I hope we do.

I do wanna talk a little about Jason Reynolds and the session that you're planning with him.

Talk about that.

- Yeah, so Jason Reynolds, he just finished his term as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature with the Library of Congress.

He's a number one New York Times bestselling author and literally one of my favorite people to read and to watch.

And so with the amazing experts at our feature in In Session, we wanted a premiere that was splashy, with a name that would get people out, revved up, and excited about it.

And Jason Reynolds, I mean, who's a better ambassador for learning in the United States than Jason Reynolds?

And so on April 5th, at the Garden Theater, at 6:30, I will be in conversation on stage at The Garden Theater with Jason Reynolds to talk about his work, his love of learning, and to celebrate the amazing experts that are in the series, and to premiere the series that evening on April 5th.

So we are really, really excited that we got Jason to come and be a part of it.

- And the idea here is some sort of instruction for people.

People are supposed to take away from this a real empowerment around the ideas and the material.

And again, Shari, that's where your work really overlaps with what they're doing here at Urban Consulate.

- Yeah, I'm really excited for folks to hear from all of the experts.

I feel like my modules in In Session are really an opportunity to think about what radical imagination looks like, what it looks like to bring an Afrofuturist lens to this work, what it looks like to think about us surviving and thriving and building a blueprint toward that.

And so I'm excited to share those reflections.

I'm really excited to also hear from the other incredible experts in this series.

- Yeah, yeah.

Orlando, talk more about how this overlaps with this moment in Detroit and the things that we are doing, the things that we are thinking about, the things that we are talking about all of a sudden.

This is a really different time than just three or five years ago in the city in terms of how activated I feel like people are around this question of who gets to have a say, who gets to sit at the table, who gets to make the decisions.

- Well, first off, I love that question, Stephen.

And, you know, the consciousness of Detroiters has been rising by the minute.

And what is reflective of that is the In Session series.

And so when folks are talking about, you know, architecture and activism in architecture, when you walk into a new space, how does it make your soul and spirit feel, right?

Do you feel welcomed by the architecture?

Is it a reflective of a culture that is familiar to you?

And Dr. Craig Wilkins breaks that down immaculately, right?

We are always having conversations around development.

Just yesterday, the city council approved tax abatements for District Detroit.

A lot of Detroiters have things to say about development and how it's done.

Well, Darnell Adams has been at the forefront of a lot of equity-based development projects here in the city of Detroit, whether it is closing a gap on that capital stack in the performer, or his role currently at the Gilbert Family Foundation and implementing a $500 million spend down, right?

So he's there to talk about that and how he's been doing it.

And for me, what's so important is that Detroit is the largest majority-black city in the nation, right?

Does the record reflect that?

And if not, how do we get the record to reflect that, right?

How do we get black people on record?

How do we get black folks to recognize the power that already exists within themselves to tell their stories?

And to document what is observed is so important.

And so, so many things that are literally reflective of the time that we're living in.

And we didn't anticipate that, but it happened.

- Yeah, yeah.

Well, I guess the hope is that this adds fuel to the fire, right?

This pushes all of those things and all of that consciousness to a higher level.

Tell people how they can attend the talk with Jason Reynolds on April 5th.

- Well, we're sold out, so- - You're sold out.

- Listen, we're sold out.

We sold out already here.

- So you can't go.

(laughs) - But there is a waitlist.

Oh, more seats will open up.

So you can go to urbanconsulate.com to sign up for the waitlist.

And hopefully we'll see you April 5th, 6:30 at The Garden Theater.

- Yeah, yeah.

It's gonna be exciting.

All right, Orlando and Shari, congratulations on the work, and thanks very much for being here with us on "American Black Journal."

- Thanks, Stephen.

- Thank you.