We are excited to introduce the newest addition to the APC member network: the Progressive Technology Project (PTP).
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.
The organisation believes that 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 is fighting for a just technology transition for the social justice movement, advocating for divestment from Big Tech and investment in liberatory movement technology that is democratic and free from corporate ownership. To advance this goal, PTP builds collective resistance to oppressive corporate technologies through coalition-building with a broad network of movement technology providers and organisations, working collaboratively to strengthen a digital rights ecosystem rooted in shared values.
At the same time, PTP provides political education on the relationship between technology and social change, raising awareness of how Big Tech intersects with nearly every political issue currently shaping the left, from climate change and democracy to policing and militarisation. It also supports social justice organisations in the strategic use of technology by equipping organisers with the skills and knowledge needed to adopt non-corporate tools in their daily work, and by helping organisations develop internal technology leadership. In addition, PTP offers people-controlled technology, including Powerbase – its open-source, non-corporate database built by and for community organisers – alongside a wide range of other movement technology options made available through its extensive network of partners.
APCNews spoke with PTP’s director of resource mobilisation, Natalie Brenner, to find out more about what inspired them to seek membership in APC.
Why did you decide to join the APC network?
Part of PTP's mission work is coalition building. We strongly believe that to fight Big Tech and to fight for a digital rights ecosystem, we must work together with as many other like-minded organisations and networks as possible. The global and US non-profit and NGO industrial complex and capitalistic systems would like us to continue fighting for resources and competing against each other so that each of our organisations remains small, under-resourced and with limited capacity.
We reject this system as a part of our mission. We believe that PTP has really important insights and connections with the US social justice movement and this movement is poised to connect with its global partners and allies to fight for justice across multiple issues, and that technology is the common denominator in these fights. PTP wants to support APC in many ways, and in turn needs support from organisations like APC. This type of collaboration is imperative to our collective success.
What do you think you can contribute as a member, and what do you expect from APC?
Progressive Technology Project has been working with the social justice movement in the United States for 25 years at the intersection of technology and human rights. As we've evolved with the needs of the movement, always taking direction from the movement, we have two and a half decades of deep experience, connections and insights into the movement's use of and politics around technology at the same time that we more broadly organise resistance to Big Tech. Hopefully, some of this experience and perspective will be valuable to APC and its members.
What we'd love to see from APC are opportunities to connect, both virtually and in person, with the global network of people and organisations working for a just technology future, and to strategise together about how to resource and expand our collective efforts towards a future where technology and data are owned and controlled by the people.