Natalie Brenner
North St. Paul, MN
Director of Resource Mobilization > Progressive Technology Project
Natalie Brenner began her movement work with Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP)—an organization building international, unarmed peacekeeping teams in areas of violent conflict across the globe. This work solidified for Natalie the importance of taking the lead from impacted communities themselves—gleaned from the methodology used by NP—while so many other organizations were helicoptering in to provide externally developed “solutions” that ultimately harmed, rather than helped the communities they intended to serve. Natalie joined the Progressive Technology Project staff in early 2011 and while throughout her decade+ with the organization she has overseen the finances and administration, she’s also become an accidental techie; working on front-line technology support and deeply engaging with both PTP program groups and with PTP’s partners in the social justice movement. She’s always drawn on her early experiences with NP to continue taking cues not only from the organizations served by PTP, but also from the wider communities served by those organizations.
I think that the work of MFMT is unique and invaluable. To have a space where we can flex our politics around technology and its use in our communities is so important. I'd like to see MFMT continue to develop what it is already doing, gain more members, expand our reach, more effectively communicate our work, and attract more resources so that the staff are paid a good wage and that we can expand our capacity. This being said, I feel that this must be done carefully, because I think it's imperative to preserve the mission, vision and politics of MFMT. I also think that we'll need to continue developing and expanding the organization's infrastructure and capacity as we fight against increased technology hacks and attacks, and efforts to stifle or corrupt our work or the work of our partners. As far as long-term visioning, I resonate strongly with the mission of May First Movement Technology, to build "...movements by advancing the strategic use and collective control of technology for local struggles, global transformation, and emancipation without borders." I'd like to explore together how we are successfully doing this at our current scale, and how we may continue expanding this important work.
