Houston People's Budget 2026
BUDGETS, COMMUNITY, AND JUSTICE
By Griot, P.K. McCary
Last night, I attended the Houston People’s Budget meeting as an elder, a Griot, and an activist. What I heard beneath the facts, figures, and urgent testimony was not just a budget crisis, but the absence of restorative justice.
The issue is not only what is being cut, underfunded, or dismissed. The deeper issue is that we continue to live inside patterns of practice where decisions are made without moral accountability, without the people most affected in the room, and often with such speed and immunity that by the time the public responds, the harm is already done.
What disturbed me is that so many in the room knew the truth. They were trained, informed, loving, and courageous. They brought evidence. They spoke from conviction. They exposed the harm clearly. And still, I left with the same question: “what helps us move beyond proving what is wrong into building what is right?”
Because this is not just about facts. It is about a missing moral compass.
We are living in a time when courts are crowded, while police arrest people for not having a place to sit or lie down. We know mercy and justice must walk together. We know transformation is possible. We know what should be done. But how do we help communities act before power finalizes harm? How do we build responses rooted in humanity when humanity itself is treated as an anomaly?
That is why Sankofa matters.
A deck of cards may seem simple, but in the right hands it becomes a tool for civic imagination, restorative inquiry, and collective commitment. It can help us ask better questions, learn together, name harm honestly, and build practices that move us from reaction to repair. It can help youth and elders alike develop the language, courage, and discipline to imagine justice not only as protest against what is wrong, but as practice toward what must be made right.
The question is not whether we know the problem. The question is whether we are ready to build the moral and communal tools to answer it.
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