Free
& Open Source
Campaigning.
I'm Reed.
they/them.
Co-founder of The Bunker Operations — a Canadian worker co-op building sovereign, open-source infrastructure for grassroots organizations.
Four years with Councillor Janz. Now: AB for Abortion, Pride Corner, and PIA.
Run of show.
Rules of show.
For this session, I'm playing instructor. I reserve the right to keep us on track.
Ask anything, anytime. Just be patient if the answer is "later." Or post it async at answers.publicinterestalberta.org — we'll get to it.
I'm a technologist, not a deep expert in any single tool. If you can add to something, please do. We'll have time to share — and we're building an artifact together.
This is a working session. Work with the room, work alone — both are fine.
We're going to build PIA's server together.
Together, in this room. In groups. In a browser tab. No installs. No signups.
Anything we put on it today will be free for you — for as long as it is maintained.
Not a souvenir. A real server. A real URL. Yours.
What does your organization pay for every month that you'd cancel tomorrow if you could?
What software do you already share with another org — the campaigning equivalent of splitting a Netflix login?
THE
CASE.
Software is political.
Every login form, every database, every email through a corporate server is a political artifact.
Political artifacts — political information in general — are among the most valuable data there is.
The question isn't whether software is political.
The question is whose politics.
Information about people retains its power as long as those people are alive, and sometimes as long as their children are alive. — Maciej Cegłowski · Haunted by Data · 2015
The Political
Industrial
Complex.
Today's political system is an industry. The political industry has an incentive to increase political spending. — Dave Dodson · Forbes · 2021
The same SaaS sells to your union, your party, and the agencies surveilling all of you.
Not ideologically aligned. Just extractive.
Not a metaphor.
A group photo.
Zuckerberg. Bezos. Pichai. Musk. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the swearing-in of a president who ran on mass deportation, press intimidation, and rolling back civil rights.
These are the people who own the rails your campaign runs on. They picked a side. The question is whether you keep paying them rent.
NationBuilder.
Same SaaS. Receipts:
- Donald Trump · 2016 campaign
- Brexit · both Leave and Remain
- Bernie Sanders · 2016
- Rick Santorum · 2016
- Jill Stein · Green Party 2016
- Mitch McConnell
One vendor. Opposite politics. Same extraction.
NationBuilder publicly confirmed that both sides of the Brexit referendum ran on its platform. By 2018, "Donald J. Trump for President" was among its highest-paying clients.
The platform doesn't care who wins. It cares that everyone pays.
Almost all
Canadian
political data
is stateside.
The Alberta referendum? Stateside. Your CRM? Stateside. Your members' addresses, donations, voting history — stateside.
Who wins when both sides pay American oligarchs?
Our movement,
on Mailchimp.
It's been working fine. Until the day it isn't.
Same
picture.
Prime evil:
Meta.
Amnesty International found Facebook's algorithms amplified hate against the Rohingya in the run-up to the 2017 massacre in Myanmar.
A US jury found Meta liable for designing Instagram and Facebook to be addictive to kids — March 2026.
Meta's platforms are the #1 reported venue for the online trafficking and grooming of children — internal docs and NCMEC reports both say so.
This is the company we hand our movements, our member lists, our event RSVPs, and our kids to. Every Facebook group is a hostage situation.
The platforms we organize on
are damaging.
Addictive by design. Bad for kids.
Corrosive to social fabric.
If you're a left-leaning organizer using American products — you are a target.
Not theoretical. Already happening. Let me show you what one small Alberta non-profit's server logs look like.
Someone is already at the door.
Several hundred thousand probe requests a day. Most days. Almost all from US-origin IPs. This is one small Alberta non-profit. They are playing offense already.
It's not
yours.
You're a tenant. They're the landlord. The rent goes up.
You. Are. The. Tenant.
RENT — MAILCHIMP★★★
Platforms die because they were always going to die. First they're good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. — Enshittification · 2023
The medium
is the message.
— Marshall McLuhan · Understanding Media · 1964
The platform you organize on isn't a neutral pipe. It is the politics.
Take a breath.
Yes — it's bad. And there are people, projects, and whole governments already doing the work.
You are not alone in this.
Almost the entire
internet runs on
free & open-source
software.
Including all the expensive tools you pay for.
Marketing is the only reason we pay for software.
Software
anyone can use, share,
modify, and redistribute
— source code and all.
You run it. You study it. You share it. You improve it.
No license expiry. No price hike. No deplatforming.
1 → 4
Run.
The program, for any purpose.
Study.
How it works. Modify it.
Share.
Copies with your neighbours.
Improve.
Share your improvements.
Public money,
public code.
It's already here.
- Government of Canada — official open-source software catalogue at code.open.canada.ca
- City of Edmonton — municipal open-data portal at data.edmonton.ca
- CIRA — funds Canadian civic tech (and yes, you can apply)
- Open North — runs the API for every Canadian elected official
- The Tyee · Press Progress — independent media, FOSS-leaning stacks
- Us — yes, hi 👋
Stop paying
for sadness.
| Stop | Run | Replaces |
|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | Listmonk | Intuit's bill |
| Eventbrite | Mobilizon | Per-ticket fees |
| Google Workspace | Nextcloud | The surveillance bill |
| Slack | Mattermost | $7.25 / seat / mo |
| SurveyMonkey | LimeSurvey | Per-response throttles |
| Salesforce | CiviCRM | The Salesforce tax |
Do the math.
Option A — pay rent
Option B — own the deed
Your budget,
looking around.
One year of Mailchimp pays for ten years of Listmonk on used hardware.
Investing in learning today saves hundreds of thousands over your movement's lifetime — and keeps you safer.
Someone
always does.
Honest answer: staff time, or a contract.
Dishonest answer: Mailchimp. They hide it in your bill — and extract their margin from your members' data on the way through.
A thousand
neighbourhood
lists.
Will out-organize any single national list.
Less leaders. More doers.
Distribute the tools. Distribute the campaign.
If we make the tools cheap, easy to use, and as powerful as the competition.
And this is possible.
When we arm workers with the right tools,
they make change themselves.
Grassroots
orgs should
not be funding
their own
surveillance.
Sovereign infra is here. It's cheap. It works.
7-yr-old Lenovo ThinkCentre from a shop on 124 Street.
It is hosting this presentation.
LIVE
TOUR.
The whole stack.
- 7-year-old Lenovo ThinkCentre, $149.99
- Ubuntu Server · Docker · Gitea · Pangolin · MkDocs · Listmonk
- Hosting PIA's web presence right now
- Documented top-to-bottom in a markdown vault you could fork
Build·
Teach·
Distribute.
The tools we use, we show you.
The stack we run, we share.
The code, we hand over.
NOW
YOU.
Every tool.
Every link.
Hosted on PIA's own server — running on the stack you're about to design.
Take it home. Fork it.
// technically: I clickjacked the domain. it's fine. it's FOSS.
Open it in your browser. Add your group's section.
--- [Insert Group Name] Write your content ---
That's your spot.
QR on your table.
25 minutes.
- 1. Pick one corporate tool your org pays for
- 2. Find two FOSS alternatives
- 3. Write a 200-word writeup in the pad
Use the handout. Use the web. Talk to your group.
Three windows.
One room.
The pad.
Where you write.
The docs/.
Where we draft
The site.
Where it lands.
DEPLOY.
It's live.
It's yours.
The room wrote everything on it. It stays up. Send your team the URL.
Take it.
Run it.
Fork it.
Everything you just saw runs from this. Your org has the same stack tomorrow.
WHERE
TO.
CMlite.
The stack you just watched, packaged.
For orgs that want the sovereignty without the maintenance burden.
- You bring the hardware or we source it
- We wire it up & teach
- Sliding-scale for non-profits & labour
We don't price by what we think you'll pay. We price based on labor, invoiced, like a normal transaction.
A free API.
The whole
public record.
The only public, full collection of Canadian Hansard, every politician's social media, and every other place they publish — in one place.
A social-media-free way to stay informed about what these people are saying and doing.
In your CRM. Your dashboards. Your systems. Free.
A worker
co-op.
Edmonton.
Workers, with the right tools, will build the future. We just help.
We build the stack. We run the stack. We document it so you can fork us.
Your org.
Your members.
Your tools.
We'd rather build infrastructure with you than sell to you.
Nothing to lose
but an expensive
subscription
or two.
The strength of our neighbours is in this room.
Take this home.
Live site
pia2026.
publicinterestalberta.org
Repo
github.com/adminatthebunker
/PIA-BNKOP-SERVER
Handout
pia2026.
publicinterestalberta.org
Sign up · talk
bnkops.com
admin@thebunkerops.ca