Who We Are
Mission
People’s Tech Project helps social movements develop a positive vision of how technology can contribute to the logic of a liberatory world, rather than serve as the linchpin of an economic system that puts profit over people and planet.
Drawing from years of experience organizing at the intersection of technology, race and inequality, we support community groups fighting for social and tech justice to win a future where technology helps build dignity, justice, and liberation, rather than exacerbating oppression and harm in the hands of big corporations and the state.
Vision
We envision a full transformation of society and our economy, into a world where every person has a fully developed and dignified life, with healing for people and the planet. The full liberation of people and the planet is our north star.
We envision a strong and coherent social movement ecosystem that is armed with the analysis to anticipate and understand how technology oppresses people, and incorporates that analysis into their fights to win human liberation over the long term.
We envision a technology justice sector that is grounded in the material needs and leadership of impacted communities and their organizations, and works in step with social movements to successfully and proactively win power away from the tech sector as one crucial part of their collective work.
Read more about our vision for a world where technology builds dignity, justice and liberation—and how we’ll get there.
Values
People-centered, not tech-centered.
Technology should be a tool people use to build towards a future of dignity and liberation. Communities should set the vision for how tech can support that future instead of taking from it.
Accountable to our communities.
Directly-impacted people are the experts in their lives and in the solutions to the challenges they face. They determine what is possible and lead the work to get there.
One part of a global movement.
Tech justice is one necessary part of a future where people and the planet are free and thriving. We can and must integrate it into the growing global struggle for justice.
Transformative change is possible.
We can win the world we envision. We must transcend pessimism and despair to concretely imagine a liberated future and build the strategy to win it.
Our History
In 2022, the People’s Tech team came together under Movement Alliance Project, where staff dug deeply into questions of race, technology, and inequality.
Together our team led campaigns that forced Comcast to expand affordable internet access to thousands of low-income Philadelphians, and played a crucial role in preventing the City of Philadelphia from using harmful and biased algorithms to decide who gets jailed and who remains free before trial. We also worked to set conditions for national and local groups to build alignment around abolishing and reducing the harms of predictive analytics in the criminal legal system.
These wins helped individuals and families in meaningful ways—but the victories weren’t big enough or lasting enough to truly rein in Comcast’s power or halt the march of dangerous digital incarceration tools. We realized that as movement groups work to tear down current oppressive systems and policies, these groups must constantly reorient themselves to take on the quickly evolving technologies that continually reiterate the same oppression. To be truly armed to win, we must build a concrete assessment of how technology aggravates the core issues on which people’s organizations fight, and the movement for tech justice must shift to be more directly accountable to people’s organizing in the United States.
From these seeds and so many other experiments and history, and from the collaborative visioning work we all did together in the MAPOut (MAP’s strategic planning process), came the strategy to launch People’s Tech Project. People’s Tech will support the national technology justice movement and people’s and community organizations to win a future in which technology helps build dignity, justice, and liberation, rather than exacerbating oppression and harm in the hands of big corporations and the state.
Our Team
Please reach out to contact@peoplestechproject.org to learn more about our staff and board members.