May First Movement Technology is an organization of activists & organizers that make use of the Internet to connect communities on the ground with members predominantly in the US and Mexico.
As a movement organization we respond to the activities and developments within our movements’ for change and seek to respond to those activities by developmenting and reflecting in our membership and leadership those movements’ demographics and culture.
The role of technology in all these movements is particularly important. Because communications technology represents the most eloquent expression of democratic spirit and human collaboration, it is vital to the success of our movements. At the same time, we must be conscious that particular effort has been made to lure people and movements of color into the use of corporate-owned social media and other proprietary tools and that the Internet’s Left has done little to prevent that and that, in many of these movements, Internet activism isn’t a priority.
These are the challenges we face and we cannot face them unless we are predominantly comprised of and led by people of the Global Majority.
Finally, we believe it is essential to bring together politically progressive technologists of all backgrounds, particularly people of color, to begin to coordinate a strategy for response to these repressive measures and to advance the protection of the Internet’s neutrality and free software development.
For these reasons, we will conduct our work and guide our organization’s work with this intentionality. Specifically:
We ask all who work with us to support us by challenging our activities when they don’t reflect these principles and noticing them when they do.
Approved by the membership in November 2015 as part of our official documents.