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. 

#CareNotCages Keeps Communities Safe

The unprecedented events of 2020 have revealed to all Californians what marginalized communities have known for decades: incarceration, family separation and deportations are public health crises.

It’s time to invest in real solutions to the systems of inequality that uniquely endanger populations that are disproportionately impacted by policing, incarceration, family separation and deportations: Black, brown, and Indigenous people; TGI (transgender, gender-variant and intersex) folks; and those immigrating to our state to build a better life for themselves and their families. 

The B2SL coalition––Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), Dignity not Detention Coalition, and Justice LA––represents more than 150 grassroots organizations.

2023-2024 Budget Priorities

Budget2SaveLives is excited to share our 2023-2024 Budget Analysis, outlining some of California’s current plans for spending and our recommendations for how funding could be better utilized to truly support all Californians. Governor Newsom’s 2023-24 proposed budget includes many examples of positive spending. However, there are significant gaps in the social safety net that continue to go unaddressed. B2SL is calling for an increase in positive spending to address the needs of all California residents, including good jobs, health care, clean air and water, education and housing.

This is a call to action. The B2SL Super Collective is welcoming local and state budget advocates across California to collaborate, organize and stand with us to move forward our collective priorities across intersecting movements for community equity and justice. A culture of fiscal austerity and abandonment is unacceptable in a state as prosperous as California.

We are looking for partners who seek to identify and address the gaps in much needed services and programs across the state, utilizing budget advocacy as an organizing tool to achieve our goals. In our analysis, you will find examples of state priorities where spending must be reevaluated. We’re looking to connect with leaders in the fields below to help connect the dots between our shared, non-carceral budget advocacy goals.

As we approach budget hearings and deliberations, we have an opportunity to let California know what an equitable budget really looks like. We hope that you can find this analysis as a resource for your advocacy and we encourage you to share widely.

We stand with all community members and advocates working to change our state budget every year, and we invite collaboration on pushing the state to do better.

Read the Analysis HERE.

2021-2022 Budget Priorities

Together, we’ve created two 2021-22 legislative policy proposals focused on community services and alternatives to incarceration that seek to create lifelines of hope for community members across the state.

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!

OUR MEMBERS

OUR COALITIONS REPRESENT THESE ORGANIZATIONS

(Coming soon)