Budget 2 Save Lives (B2SL) is a multi-year vision to move California toward a “Care First” future by investing in healing and rehabilitation, divesting from incarceration and policing, and ending the economic austerity that endangers the lives of countless human beings.
Budget 2 Save Lives (B2SL) is a super collective of coalitions led by Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), La Defensx, Dignity Not Detention Coalition, Reimagine LA, People’s Budget Orange County, and Freedom for Immigrants. Collectively, B2SL represents more than 150 grassroots organizations.
Join us at the B2SL 2024 Convening!
We’re hosting a hybrid convening on November 18th and November 19th in Los Angeles, CA! B2SL continues to be a hub for various sectors engaging in budget advocacy, this convening will support relationship building among different movements and an opportunity to learn to support one another. It will also provide an opportunity to bring together budget advocates across the state of California interested in gaining tools and sharing resources in anticipation of budget season. B2SL will be releasing new materials and providing budget advocacy tools to support advocates.
You can RSVP by visiting bit.ly/b2slconvening !
#CareNotCages Keeps Communities Safe
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#CareNotCages Keeps Communities Safe ♡
B2SL is an ongoing, collaborative and intersectional budget advocacy space based in California and established during the unprecedented events in 2020 that revealed to all Californians what marginalized communities have known for decades: incarceration, family separation, and deportations are public health crises. Our collective seeks to create a container and vehicle for statewide budget advocacy, while educating the public on the need to divest from the carceral industry and invest in sustainable, community-based solutions.
B2SL’s mission is to convene and coordinate budget advocates from the state, local, and federal levels to envision and implement strategies for a Care First future for California. B2SL’s intersectional budget advocacy is unique because it is anchored by abolitionist values and centers community voices.
Our Work
Our strategies include building people power, comprehensive budget analysis, identifying points of intersectional advocacy, public education, capacity building, and technical assistance.
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We create annual budget analysis overview documents and training sessions, which provide an accessible overview of the California state budget.
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B2SL serves and partners with local and state community-based organizations and other nonprofits across California. Our training and resources are available to the wider public, with the goal of making Budget Advocacy tools accessible to the masses. We work with and aim to reach groups and individuals interested in decarceration, while simultaneously addressing other intersectional issues such as gender justice, environmental justice, transportation, housing, and healthcare, among many others.
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B2SL provides individualized technical assistance to campaigns across the state including budget process workshops, campaign strategy support, and connections to strategic partnerships and alliances.
Budget Advocacy Resource Library
Welcome to our comprehensive Budget Advocacy Resource Library — your go-to archive for all past B2SL analysis documents and Budget Advocacy Breakdown recordings. Whether you’re a seasoned advocate or just getting started, this library offers a wealth of valuable resources to help you better understand and navigate the complexities of budget advocacy.
Inside, you’ll find reports, in-depth analyses and video recordings of past breakdown sessions, all designed to provide you with actionable insights and expert perspectives on the budget process.
Dive into the archive today and equip yourself with the tools you need to champion effective budget advocacy!
A JUST TRANSITION
A Just Transition: A framework developed to aid in the economic shift away from extractive economies & oppressive systems, such as the oil and gas industry, prisons, policing, and surveillance, towards more sustainable regenerative economies & systems of care, such as green jobs, behavioral health crisis responses, and community based solutions to mass incarceration. A Just Transition builds economic and political power to support marginalized communities such as: formerly incarcerated, Immigrant, Black, Indigenous, rural, communities of color and areas of high need. The Just Transition framework seeks to provide solutions that includes but is not limited to labor, jobs, land use, sustainability and economic stability. Budget2SaveLives uses this framework as a way to move toward the abolition of prisons, police, and jails. To read more about A Just Transition and the values and principles that guide us, click HERE.
A budget is a statement about our values.
As California wastes billions of dollars of tax revenue on jails, prisons, and detention centers built to solve problems that are actually socio-economic, too many people have fallen victim to California’s culture of punishment and austerity.
Shifting our fiscal priorities from cages to care will provide immediate relief to our most vulnerable communities and establish the long-term, cost-saving infrastructure California needs to address some of its most imperative crises.
Most importantly, divesting from incarceration and investing in the health and wellness of our state’s residents will undoubtedly save the lives of countless people inside and outside of cages. Though we remain in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have a historic opportunity to enact a “decarceration budget” for California––a new vision for community safety that aligns with the hearts and minds of the vast majority of the state’s electorate.
What We Know
Incarceration is a Public Health Crisis
COVID-19 in jails and prisons threaten Public Health and Safety in California
The health of each of us depends on the health of all of us
Racial Justice is Health and Economic Justice
Family separation and deportations are inhumane and must end
California must reduce its jail population and close jails
California must reduce its prison population and close prisons
California must reduce its immigrant prison population and close these cages
California must decriminalize and decarcerate its youth
California must Create and Fund Opportunities for Local Governments to Implement Community-Based Systems of Health, Reentry, and Alternatives to Incarceration
Healing is a human right
Communities have a right to heal, with
A BUDGET TO SAVE LIVES!
Do you share our values? Click here to endorse Budget to Save Lives!
OUR MEMBERS
Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB)
CURB is a statewide coalition of over 80 grassroots organizations working to reduce the number of people imprisoned, reduce the number of prisons and jails, and shift state and local spending from corrections and policing to human services. CURB bridges movements for environmental, racial, and economic justice and has stopped more than 140,000 jail and prison beds from being built and filled.
JusticeLA
The JusticeLA Coalition––in partnership with grassroots organizations, advocates, directly impacted communities, and stakeholders––works to reduce the footprint of incarceration by stopping jail expansion and reclaiming, reimagining and reinvesting dollars away from incarceration and into community-based systems of care. With our movement partners, we stopped LA County’s $3.5 billion plan for jail expansion and helped create a framework for a ‘Care First, Jails Last’ Los Angeles.
FREEDOM FOR IMMIGRANTS
Freedom for Immigrants is devoted to abolishing immigrant prisons, while ending the isolation of people currently suffering in this profit-driven system. We monitor the human rights abuses faced by immigrants detained by ICE through a national hotline and visitation network, while also modeling community-based alternatives to detention that welcome immigrants into the social fabric of the United States.
Dignity Not Detention
The Dignity Not Detention (DND) coalition is a partnership of visionary organizations across California formed in 2015 to fight immigrant detention at the state level. Together, we passed a series of groundbreaking state reforms including AB103 (first state-mandated, state-funded review of detention centers), SB29 (pulling local actors out of immigration detention), and most recently AB32. These reforms have become a model for detention reform nationwide. Our collective mission is to end detention in California so that we may help pave the path to ending detention nationwide.
The organizations leading AB32 implementation are currently: Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), Immigrant Defense Advocates (IDA), Freedom for Immigrant (FFI), Human Rights Watch (HRW), California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (CIYJA), Kern Youth Abolitionist (KYA), Inland Empire Coalition for Immigrant Justice (ICIJ), Resilience Orange County (ROC), Interfaith for Human Integrity (IM4HI), Immigrant Defense Project (IDP), Human Impact Partners (HIP), Detention Watch Network (DWN), Pangea Legal Services, Centro Legal De La Raza, ACLU, AFSC - San Diego, SIREN, Immigrant Legal Defense (ILD)
Are you fighting for a #CareFirst future? Click here to submit your proposal for B2SL endorsement.