Progressive Volunteer Tech: Where are we now
This is part one of the Progressive Coders Network strategy moving forward. For the complete strategy, view the document here.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign has empowered the activist tech community in so many amazing ways. It has brought many new people into the conversation, encouraging them to take part in the political process. His firebrand progressive message has resonated with a lot of us, and his vision of an equitable society has galvanized innovators to stand up and contribute. His stand on not taking Super PAC money — which handicapped his run — has inspired engineers, designers, and project managers to donate their time and efforts in creating a huge number of applications that have accelerated Bernie’s campaign and revolutionized the role of tech in politics.
Volunteers have created mobilizing tools months before campaigns have invested on their digital efforts. Starting from May 2015, this amazing community has created a wide range of websites and apps that provide voting information (voteforbernie.org), volunteer event lookup (bernie2016events.org), and 80+ applications. This did something new and amazing in today’s politics: volunteer tech has been instrumental in mobilizing millions of people to make Bernie the democratic nominee.
But we must not stop there. There is more work to be done.
Various groups, from Political Revolution to Brand New Congress, have started looking for candidates that reflect Bernie’s platform. These candidates will not rely on dark money, but will rely on grassroots efforts to help their candidacy. It is our duty, as the tech volunteers that helped build Bernie’s movement, to continue helping these candidates.
The enthusiasm for Bernie’s message within the tech community is still very much alive. Ideas are continuously being discussed on the best ways to engage the public, voters, and volunteers. It is in our best interest to continue cultivating this culture of innovation and camaraderie within the community. Fortunately, we have an amazing means of propagation of information through our social media and news partners.
This community has loosely communicated through CodersForSanders in Reddit (r/codersforsanders) and Slack. We have started great ways to identify and relieve needs of the movement (#pitch-zone), and through that we have allowed idea makers and project managers to throw their ideas to the community and have those ideas realized. In our study of what worked and what didn’t for CodersForSanders, we realized that some sort of organization would have been very helpful in making the movement more sustainable. We also realized that creating a culture of building relationships and camaraderie could go a long way towards furthering our efforts. A good organization is built on good relationships. Moving forward, we must build this culture across the nation, building a network of engaged and progressive developers who want to push Bernie’s 12 point plan through the creation of engaging, and mobilizing applications.
In this election cycle, grassroots technology has proven to be an integral part of accelerating a candidate’s message and candidacy. The job of ProgCode is to cultivate, engage, and empower grassroots tech to help progressive candidates continue the fight in the federal, state, and local level.
