About us

What is the Progressive Technology Project?

PTP is a social justice movement partner with a mission to strengthen grassroots organizing groups to achieve their goals more effectively and efficiently through the strategic use of technology. PTP is committed to social justice work because we believe that real political change can only be achieved when people of color, indigenous people, immigrants, women, low-income, LGBTQ, and people whose lives intersect these communities collectively build power in their communities to drive systemic change that dismantles oppressive structures, inequalities, and conditions. Learn more

Powerbase

The database for community organizers

Digital Security

Holistic approach to movement security

People Of Color Techie Training

Fighting racism within movement technology communities

Technology Strategy

Bringing politics & technology to organzing, grassroots fundraising, and communications

Voter Project

More than voter turnout

Next Gen Technology

What is revolutionary technology and how do we develop it?

Testimonials

We have worked with hundreds of movement organizations over our 20 year history.

  • I learned things in this [Grassroots Fundraising & Technology] training that will greatly increase my organization’s ability to have successful fundraising campaigns.

    Misha Cornelius

    Black Organizing Project

  • PTP helps our organization combine communications and technology to go further.

    Christina Parker

    Grassroots Leadership

  • PowerBase is a gift for organizations large and small that want technology that is designed by and for organizers.

    Robin Schneider

    Texas Campaign for the Enivironment

  • Thanks to PTP’s REVERB team Iowa CCI has not just one, but TWO new websites that are simple, affordable and – get this – useful.

    Hugh Epsey

    Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement

From our blog

Read more

We See You. We Stand With You. Black Lives Matter.

on June 5, 2020

We at the Progressive Technology Project stand in solidarity with Black-led protests in Minneapolis and other cities around the country in response to the murder of George Floyd by police. We stand with movements rising up to resist police and state violence. We stand in solidarity in the fight for the lives and liberation of Black people…Indigenous peoples…and People of Color Communities. We believe that change comes from the grassroots, through movements led by people of color from the global majority who have been systematically excluded from the power and wealth that they have produced.

Continue reading

Read more

Beyond COVID 19 and Disaster Capitalism: Why We Need Sustainable, Secure Left Tech Infrastructure for Social Justice Movements

on May 6, 2020

by Jeremy Saunders, Co-Executive Director of VOCAL-NY and Board Chair of Progressive Technology Project, and Alice Aguilar, Executive Director of Progressive Technology Project Image credit: “Photogamer — Jan 22, 2008” by RedRaspus is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Covid-19 has exposed the failures of our health, economic, and emergency response systems. Our priorities now are to take care of ourselves and one another, creating communities of care. Front-line movement groups are organizing to respond to the immediate needs of their communities, while struggling to move much of their on-the-ground organizing work online.

Continue reading

Read more

Amazon and Palantir feel the heat

on July 12, 2019

Progressive Technology Project staff joined many Powerbase using organizations this week to protest both Palantir and Amazon’s contracts and complicity with ICE. Over a hundred people showed up monday morning in front of Palantir’s office. Several days later, hundreds more protested Amazon’s annual developers conference at the Javitz Center in New York. Over the last several years, corporate technology’s true colors have been emerging: Facebook’s pathological disregard for privacy, Google’s employment of over 120,000 temp and contract workers (more than half their total workforce), and Yahoo’s security breach exposing 3 billion accounts just to name a few.

Continue reading

Read more

The Technology Behind ICE

on January 28, 2019

What do databases, the cloud and a morally unjust immigration system have in common? It turns out: quite a lot. According to a recent report from mijente, “technology companies [are] playing an increasingly central role in facilitating the expansion and acceleration of arrests, detentions, and deportations.” In the course of researching Palantir, the relatively unknown software company with huge Department of Homeland Security contracts (founded by the famously right-wing Peter Thiel), mijente discovered that many roads lead back to a much more familiar company: Amazon.

Continue reading