2013 Fellow

Saqib Bhatti

Project Description

This project seeks to radically transform our municipal finance system by organizing the communities most impacted by public budget crises around provocative campaigns to renegotiate bad Wall Street deals. The project will engage unions and community organizations around the country to develop and implement strategic corporate social responsibility campaigns to stop banks from using their economic and political power to mislead taxpayers and to win a fair deal for our communities. By focusing on Wall Street as a common national villain, the project aims to turn local budget fights into a national movement to protect vital public services and fix the broken municipal finance system.

The municipal finance system is supposed to exist to serve the public, but Wall Street has converted it into a scheme to privatize public dollars. Instead of using their scarce financial resources to fund essential services like children’s healthcare, our cities and states are forced to pay billions of dollars every year to big banks. Since the start of the economic crisis in 2008, cities and states have been forced to shred the social contract by slashing Medicaid, closing schools, and making cuts to public safety, yet they have faithfully paid Wall Street banks billions of dollars in excess fees and interest. We cannot let our communities’ needs take a back seat to Wall Street greed. It is time to fundamentally change our state and local governments’ relationship with Wall Street.