Who We Are

ProgressivePunch.org is a privately-owned website. By providing information on a broad range of issues deliberated by Congress and applying a progressive analysis to the votes cast, ProgressivePunch wants to raise public consciousness by highlighting progressive votes and exposing non-progressive votes. It also hopes to influence the future voting patterns of legislators, not only by making their votes visible and transparent, but also – as we build the website – by facilitating the transmission of messages from the public to these legislators, thanking them for good votes, chastising them for bad votes, and calling upon them to "do the right thing" as future votes arise.

 

The Team

Joshua Grossman

The key person in ProgressivePunch is Joshua Grossman of Berkeley, CA. Joshua is a social entrepreneur. He has an extensive background in a wide variety of social change endeavors such as political campaigns, co-producing a video for PBS on the destruction of the Redwood forests in California, serving as an interpreter for earthquake rescue teams, etc. His most successful entrepreneurial venture in a more conventional sense is his co-founding of America's largest environmentally friendly paper company, New Leaf Paper. While Joshua has not been employed by New Leaf since 1998, he retains a significant minority stake in the company. New Leaf is putting all profits into growth and Joshua derives a negligible current income stream from the company.

Joshua has closely tracked politics in all 435 Congressional Districts across the United States since he was 13 years old. He knows the names of all the members of Congress off the top of his head, as well as their voting records and the political demography of their districts. Some of the impetus behind the web site is an effort to make much of this information as well as much additional information available to a much wider public.

Ben Barcellos

Ben is our brilliant, industrious programmer who keeps all the plates spinning all the time and makes it look easy to boot. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and currently lives in Windsor, CA.