Progressive Technology Project (PTP) is organising resistance to oppressive corporate technologies through political education, movement building, and creating people-controlled technology that serves the needs of community organisations. It is the home for collaboratively shaping the role of technology in the social justice movement in the United States.
Real systemic change will only be achieved by people of colour, Indigenous people, immigrants, women, low-income people and LGBTQIA+ people who are building power to make changes in their own communities. This reality hinges on technologies that are transparent, democratic and free from corporate ownership. PTP’s staff and board are community organisers who offer the social justice movement alternatives to manipulative Big Tech, which operates in ways that run counter to the values and missions of our organisations.
PTP is fighting for a just technology transition for the social justice movement – a divestment from Big Tech and an investment in liberatory movement technology, where the technologies used by the movement are democratic and free from corporate ownership.
- PTP is building a movement to resist oppressive corporate technology through coalition building with the wide network of movement technology providers and organisations to collaboratively drive divestment from corporate technologies and investment in a digital rights ecosystem.
- It provides political education on the relationship between technology and social change by increasing awareness of the intersection between Big Tech and almost every political issue on which the left is currently engaged, from climate change, to democracy, to policing and militarisation.
- It trains social justice groups how to strategically use technology by equipping organizers with the skills and knowledge they need to understand non-corporate tools, and use them in their day-to-day work, and by helping organizations build technology skills and leadership internally.
- It provides people-controlled technology including Powerbase, PTP's open-source, non-corporate database built by and for community organisers, and many more movement technology options through its vast network of movement technology partners.
