[IMC-US] the future of the no $ proposal

[Joshua Breitbart]

I'm just going to reiterate my earlier objection that the arguments 
in favor of this proposal have been based on rhetoric rather than 
principle. Of course the NYC IMC is going to find it inflammatory 
when you say things like "Payment creates hierarchies."

The NYC IMC stands for all of the principles articulated in the 
proposal as reasons for being all volunteer - flattening hierarchy, 
encouraging new volunteers, sharing responsibility, building 
collective processes, not being a typical NGO. It is offensive and 
divisive to suggest that we don't.

We have decided that the best way for our collective to adhere to 
those principles and to achieve those goals - along with others like 
accountability, consistency, and making useful media - is to 
compensate a couple of people for some specific tasks. From another 
perspective in another city with other people, you might think that's 
the wrong choice. But if you have faith in us as your partners in 
Indymedia, you should respect the actions that we believe are 
appropriate to our local conditions.

The only thing in the proposal I would say the NYC IMC disagrees with 
is that being all volunteer is "in keeping with the original purpose 
and roots of IMC." A lot of those people getting that footage of 
rubber bullets in the streets of Seattle or organizing the first 
Independent Media Center were paid employees of media organizations. 
And at the meeting in San Francisco in April 2001 that introduced the 
Principles of Unity, the question of paying people was specifically 
left to individual IMCs to decide.

Like NIck, I am looking forward to discussions of best practices in 
Austin. But I hope it goes a lot deeper than "don't pay anyone" (or 
"pay someone"), which, when you take out the principles that we all 
agree on, is all that this proposal amounts to.


Josh




At 11:42 PM -0600 2/5/05, nick wrote:
>There has been a fair amount of off-list conversation about my
>proposing the Houston no $ proposal to this group, and I just wanted
>to clarify for everyone some of the things I have been clarifying
>individually to people.
>
>- I intended this proposal to refer to our participation in the US-IMC
>collective itself, not our participation in individual US collectives,
>some of which already have different guidelines.
>
>- I am not interested in passing judgement on the way other
>collectives decide to run themselves, but I do feel like we should
>have an open discussion about best practices.  We should foster
>constructive respectful debate instead of avoiding it.
>
>-  We should encourage each other to raise essential questions about
>our network, seeking to avoid taking them personally or as an attack.
>
>- Although I personally have decided not to work in indymedia
>collectives with paid members, and although I think payment of members
>of indymedia collective members is a mistake, I will not disrespect
>the work of such collectives, or criticize them to outside groups,
>organizations or media.
>
>- I hope we can spend some time on this at indyconference, but I don't
>want to spend tons of time on it, there are lots of other things for
>us to discuss.
>
>Peace,
>Nick
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