[IMC-US] Re: [New-imc] Re: Proposed New IMC -- IMC-US

[boud]

hi sascha, susanna, everyone,

#####
SUMMARY - this is a SUGGESTION, it is NOT a block
Is it practical for those people and local IMCs strongly motivated
to syndicate info from USA IMCs into a bunch of 5-10 regional IMCs
of which several deliberately cross the violence-based borders of the USA,
fully including Canadian and Mexican IMCs right from the start?
#####

  i guess one reason for preferring cross-border regions than national
boundaries is that a national boundary encourages negative, defensive
reports - defending against the crimes of State - while cross-border 
regions are more likely to come up with positive, constructive 
reports about alternative structures to those of violence-based States
(where USA is a State).

susanna: i guess part of the question is how much work you are willing
to do to discuss your profound discomfort with others in Philly IMC 
and to do the communication and organisation work to really construct
a regional NENA (north-east north america) IMC syndication site.

IMC Philly has (apparently) known about the IMC US proposal for at
least two months, and if you as an IMC really feel you should block
the proposal, then the most constructive way to do it would be to
make a clearly consensed on decision within IMC Philly, and then
bring it up on imc-process. However, it would be good to show that
you're also willing to work on a reasonable counter-proposal - such
as to create regional, cross-US-boundary, syndication sites.

Both of these require time to communicate, consense - but these
are required, by definition, for creating any sort of collective. 

IMHO, the arguments in favour of syndication sites are very strong,
whether or not they have an additional component of a people
collective, but the arguments in favour of cross-border regions are
also very strong. And the two are compatible, IMHO (even in in CE Europe
we're still a long way from this).

The NENA mailing list exists:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-nena/

hmm. It seems that lee at eds.org has already set up a test syndication site
for NENA!!! :)))
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-nena/2003-July/000152.html

So maybe in this sense alternatives to US IMC are *already* being tried...

On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Sascha Meinrath wrote:

> > To create a "U.S. IMC" ignores the bonds of affinity that already exist
> > between IMC activists in Seattle and British Colombia, say, or between
> > mediactivists in California and in Mexico.  "America" is much bigger than
> > the U.S., and I wouldn't like to see us confine ourselves to a
> > self-definition based on borders.

> On Wed, 3 Sep 2003 suzq at riseup.net wrote:

> The goal is not to create boundaries, but to build capacity and resources 
> for people accessing Indymedia news.  I don't believe that an IMC-US would 
> detrimentally effect the relationship between Seattle and British Colombia 
> or California and Mexican media activists.  


So why not:

NENA - north east north america
NWNA - north west north america   Seattle, British Columbia, ...
SWNA - south west north america   California, ..., northern Mexico

plus other regions?


There's no need for sharp boundaries, especially in syndication, it can't
hurt if some stories are syndicated "up" to a couple of different neighbouring
regional sites.

Why not use the US IMC mailing list to help people group into a small
number of regions which deliberately violate State boundaries?

IMHO this should not be that difficult. If local US IMCs as
collectives are to really be involved, rather than just people acting
as individuals, it seems to me that having NENA etc rather than US IMC
would be more likely to be bottom-up grassroots and involve more
people.

IMHO, the people asking to create US IMC should at least *attempt* to
organise and participate in regional, cross-border IMCs such as NENA
before trying to create US IMC. If the cross-border IMCs fail, then US
IMC could be a fallback position as a "better-than-nothing" regional
IMC.  In fact, i think the main argument for a US IMC - for more
efficient info access - is a "better-than-nothing" argument - NENA IMC
and so on are not yet developed, so US IMC is better than no regional
IMCs at all (in that part of the world).

Someone gave the argument that accessing 30-40 IMCs each morning to
select the most interesting USA articles is simply impractical. But
accessing 5-10 regional IMCs, especially those closest to where you
live, should surely be much easier. This would also encourage stronger
cross-border info flow.

Anyway, i just want to make it clear that *this* message is *not* a
block of any sort, it's just an analysis by an individual who lives in
a region which has been organising norther summer anti-border camps
since summer 2001. 

My earlier "block" was in the sense that US IMC is applying as "an IMC"
to the new-imc working group, and simply has not provided most of the
info requested in:
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/NewImcHowTo

For example, there is no decision-making method. The argument that
people have many indymedia skills is not the same as actually
consensing on a general decision-making method and answering the
principles of unity and membership criteria. And the fact that US IMC
people didn't seem to autonomously know how to solve a simple
technical problem (http://newimc.indymedia.org not working) suggests
that they are not yet well organised as a collective...

As i said above, IMHO a real block could only validly come from a
decision by a functioning local IMC (not just an individual) in the N
America region that has worked or is presently actively working on an
alternative regional syndication site in the region - eg. NENA - and
which presents this as a constructive counter-proposal.

solidarity
boud (new-imc and IMC PL volunteer)


On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Sascha Meinrath wrote:

> Hi Susanna,
> 
> On Wed, 3 Sep 2003 suzq at riseup.net wrote:
> 
> > It looks like my response to this didn't go through the first time, so I'm
> > re-sending it.
> > 
> > I am _profoundly_ _disturbed_ by the idea of setting up an IMC-US.  The
> > monstrous organizational tasks involved might be countered by making it a
> > largely software driven "syndication site," but do we really want the
> > voice of America on Indymedia to be developed by a computer program,
> > rather than by human collectives?
> 
> The proposal clearly states that a collective of people would be involved
> at every aspect of the editorial process.  The only computer program part
> of the proposal is to automate the syndication of the newswire to draw
> stories from participating IMCs.
>  
> > I understand the need to lower U.S. domination of Indymedia, but the only
> > way I see an Indy-US as doing this would be to have Indy-US features
> > replace features from local IMCs within the U.S. on the Indymedia.org
> > features-syndication newswire, thereby reducing U.S. stories on the global
> > newswire to about 1/46 of their original frequency.  This sounds like a
> > good idea, but the question is, which national features would go to the
> > newswire, and how would they be selected?  And would we have national
> > liaisons with the global lists, rather than the current system of local
> > U.S. IMCs having individual liaisons?
> 
> Features would be produced and selected by the Editorial Working Group of 
> the IMC-US.  The IMC-US wouldn't usurp or replace any existing IMCs -- it 
> would simply be a place for drawing connections between the stories 
> published by the many US-based IMCs, a place to get information from 
> across the United States, and a place where stories and issues that have 
> national impact can be found.  The current system of local IMCs having 
> liaisons to the global lists would in no way be impacted by the IMC-US.
> 
> > I'm not sure how many local IMCs within the U.S. want to be identified as
> > part of a "national IMC."  As a member of the Philly IMC, I certainly
> > would not want to be identified this way.  I've always thought of
> > indymedia as being internationalist in tone, transcending national
> > borders, deliberately focusing on the regional and local, grouping itself
> > based on affinity and on geographic boundaries, rather than state lines. 
> > I fear that an Indy-US would lose its regional autonomy and local focus,
> > and that efforts to cover "National News" would wind up being dominated by
> > news from Washington, DC, as news of changing governmental policies are
> > defined as "national" news.
> 
> As mentioned in the proposal, each IMC can choose to opt out of the IMC-US 
> syndication system.  No one in the project is interested in changing the 
> current dynamics of local autonomy and focus of individual IMCs.  The goal 
> of the IMC-US is simply to be a venue for highlighting stories from across 
> the US and draw connections between the events and stories that appear on 
> multiple US IMC's websites.  
> 
> > To create a "U.S. IMC" ignores the bonds of affinity that already exist
> > between IMC activists in Seattle and British Colombia, say, or between
> > mediactivists in California and in Mexico.  "America" is much bigger than
> > the U.S., and I wouldn't like to see us confine ourselves to a
> > self-definition based on borders.
> 
> The goal is not to create boundaries, but to build capacity and resources 
> for people accessing Indymedia news.  I don't believe that an IMC-US would 
> detrimentally effect the relationship between Seattle and British Colombia 
> or California and Mexican media activists.  
>  
> > I would be much more comfortable attempting closer integration on a U.S. -
> > regional level, via conferences and IRC chat, as is already being done
> > among Northeast US IMCs, before attempting integration on a national
> > scale.
> 
> This is already being done on an ad-hoc basis throughout the US.  Over the
> past several years there have been multiple conferences, IRC chats,
> gatherings, visits, and e-mail lists that are building communication and
> information-dissemination among Indymedia participants.  An IMC-US has
> been talked about all during this time and there is currently a critical
> mass of interested people from across the US who think it's a good idea,
> are full of energy to create the site, and have the experience and skills
> to make it a sustainable endeavor.  In many ways, the process of setting
> up an IMC-US has been going on for years, the IMC-US affinity group feels 
> that it's time to move forward on its implementation.
> 
> In solidarity,
> 
> --Sascha Meinrath
> Urbana-Champaign IMC
> 
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