[IMC-US] relationships, ego, pride, and features

[bht]

not having a clear vision or idea for indymedia.us creates a big 
problem.  i have been thinking about it alot and i dont really want to.  
but i have and such is life.

i am finding the problem in my head (and it will come out choppy...and 
if you havent noticed i dont spell check or re read what i write before 
i send it...) to big with ego and pride and feelings and things like that...

more explanation, damnit more!

so, we all work on a local imc porject and they all vary.  some vary to 
the extreme that the barely even recognize each other.  enter indy.us, 
where all of these 'collectives' or 'affinty groups' or 'tactics' are 
supposed to converge and create something beautiful.  i dont know where 
the discussion started or how it came about, but the folks involved with 
indymedia.us started to be called an 'affintiy group', on the imc-us 
list it states a few time that it is the working list for the imc-us 
affinity group. 

as i understand an affinity group, it is a group of folks that feel 
comfortable with working together and can do so well.  the affinity 
groups has a common vision and a general agreement on tactics.  the 
affinity group is tight because of these common points.

people from portland go to alot of out of town protests.  at every one i 
have been to, someone tries to organize a portland or cascadia affinity 
group and get all the folks from this part of the world together to do 
some action together in the name of cascadia.  the common vision there 
is cascadia and the forests and things such as that.  however, i rarely 
go to them.  i am usully with an affinity group already and that is the 
imcistas from portland or the folks that i have actually become friends 
with and share a vision with.

beleive it or not there is a wide range of ideas coming from cascadia 
and i couldnt imagine it being easy to have fifty people that dont 
regularly work together try to pull off an action together. 

that is kind of what idy.us is like right now.  it is called an affinity 
group because we all consider ourselves in some way shape or form part 
of the indymedia network or part of indymedia.  however, because 
indymedia has no clear common vision, so we have no clear common 
vision.  our affinity is based on a word that is interpreted in many 
different ways, it is based on a ghost.

sometimes the actions that the cascadians attempt go great, sometimes 
they fail miserably.  the same can be said for indymedia.  i think it is 
because we fail to really talk about vision and our goals and what the 
hell we are doing this for, yet we do it.  we continue to do it.  awhile 
ago a friend of mine asked me why i did organizing work.  and i couldnt 
really explain it.  she felt that i was doing it to fill a void in my 
personal life and that was why i couldnt explain it.  she was right. 

i was doing things for personal reasons and trying to advance myself 
personally, basing most everything on the ways and patterns truths and 
lies that i was brought up on.  which wasnt the best way.  after awhile 
i got to sit and really think about why the hell i immerse myself in 
these things and spend alot of my time doing indymedia work.  and i have 
come to some clear conclusions and they arent exactly what one would expect.

but i am doing it and i think that i am doing well and i enjoy it.  i 
know why i am doing it and i dont try to fill av oid anymore i am not 
ashamed to say it, and am i proud of the fact that through indymedia and 
the folks i have met in portland and elsewhere helped me to understand 
that and really helped me grow as a person and erase those voids i was 
constantly trying to fill.

now, here i am.  and i am frustrated becasue i see this project and this 
inadequate means of communication (email, irc, etc) and there are good 
people putting out energy into this project and alot of people leeching 
on and just trying to get on in there...which (and i have alot of 
passion in my person this very moment) in some sort of way reminds me 
that i was talking about something else.

i think it is important to define to editorial roles of indy.us.  many 
imc collectives exist with editorial boards that compile and write 
features for their local sites and they think the features are great and 
they put alot of time into them and they they they.  things become 
owned, it becomes their feature and they want to see that get good 
comments, becuase that feels good.  so they want it to be on their site 
and then they want to promote it on indy.us. and on and on.

i am not singling out anyone here, but my thought processes brought it 
to this that eventually pride and ego would be major players in the site 
with no vision or goals or guidelines.  because everyone has a different 
agenda and may not even know that other folsk dont necessarily agree 
with them.  i think that leads to folks having hard feelings and feeling 
isolated.  especially in the case with features, becuase if someone 
writes a feature and for whatever reason someone else doesnt want it to 
be featured, is it possible that personal emotion and hurt because of 
that could creep into things?

at portland imc the features are culled from the newsiwre volunteers add 
linkks to stories, maybe an image, thats it.  pdx imc volunteers do not 
write the features, although since it is open publishing volunteers may 
also write articles.  there is a bit of a buffer between the volunteers 
and the writers.  the allows for an aura of selflessness that 
contributes alot to the health of the site and the speed of the feature 
wire and adding it all up the popularity of it.

i want to nip it before it happens, i want to know for what purpose 
people are involved in indy.us.  i want there to be more of a reason 
than 'no one else could do it'.  i dont want to get folks involved 
simply to say that we have folks involved, who wants to share visions 
for this site and how it can interact with the greater imcn and perhaps 
be a great tool for communities across the us to use?

i am hard up to give out admin accounts, because lack of process allows 
whoever wants to do something for as much as they want to do that, and 
that can shape the (actually that HAS shaped) what the site is.  and we 
have never talked about it.  we have never asked each other if we feel 
comfortable with the way the site is moving or where we want it to move.

the dominant forces in this society dictate that if we "build this raft" 
and put it blind to sea it will be overcome.  however, if we build this 
raft, point it in a direction and then hold course of that direction 
until we get where we want to go, we have a much better chance of not 
being overcome.

i dont know if that makes sense or not, i am typing and thinking so 
furiously.  okay.  i am just going to stop.  i think that i have made my 
intentions clear enough.  i want to talk about vision.  i want to really 
know what people want to do and what this site is what role it plays and 
where it fits in.  that knowledge is paramount to my involvement with 
this project as it is currently just sucking up too much of my time.

i can clarify if necessary, but righ tnow i am just going to stop.  as i 
am just stopping alot of things.  good luck with this endevour.

bht
portland imc volunteer
(ps.  i dont mean to be melodramatic, i am just frustrated because i 
feel like i have been trying to make these points since i got involved 
with this project and it is always sidetracked.  i have put alot of 
energy into this and have more to put into it, as long as i agree with 
where it is going.)