October 28, 2009  The first of nine neighborhood assemblies will take place in Chicago’s Ward 49 on November 3, as part of a groundbreaking participatory budgeting process. Community members will elect representatives and agree by April on youth, environmental, and other projects to be funded by the ward’s $1.5 million discretionary budget. The budgeting process, modeled after a democracy movement in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has been crafted by community members in partnership with Associate Professor Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Josh Lerner, of the Participatory Budgeting Project. As Ward Alderman Joe Moore told his constituents, "You have a date with democracy." Watch a video of preparatory meetings among community leaders below.