[IMC-US] personal reprtback for indy folks about theNationalCOnference on Media Reform.

[inner_alchemy at Safe-mail.net]

josh -

this email is late in the making because i feel that i've spent so much time on email and not with people lately - but whatever, it still needs to be sent.

i guess one of the reasons i was not upset with freepress as others is because i've been to busy to focus on other things.  torn between getting our building (CAMP) open, getting the stlimc website back up, and then at the last minute the CAPCR thing happened... a lot of things have fallen on my shoulders.  and i will say this again - it was a reform conference - we can expect them to talk about reform!

but when it comes to working with freepress, i was in constant contact with jordan (and josh) and bht disucssing these events as they happened.  first freepress contacted stlimc.  they wanted to know how we watned to be involved.  another [undisclosed person] wanted to warn me about freepress and how they interact with imcs and while i appreciated the advise, i also wanted to see how things worked out on their own.

some of the first ideas that they had were to have a mini-conference thing at CAMP on sunday after the plenary.  stlimc and camp really dug that idea, and we waited and pushed and hoped that the building might be open by that time so we could do this, but by the time we realized that this was not a viable option it was too late.  as josh said, freepress did ask if there was any space that stlimc wanted to use sunday afternoon at the conference.  but josh, you stated that i didn't consult with anyone which is not true.  i might not have brought it to the indymedia_us list, but i sure did bring it up to the stlimc collective and no one had the energy and resources to work with it.  

between working 50 hours a week at my job, i volunteer full time trying to get the imc up and functional while at the same time i also live and work at camp so my resources were spent.  stlimc is not like indybay, pdx, or nycimc because we don't have this huge network of support, but a very few individuals who are working their asses off just to get by. josh, you did offer lots of support and inspiration, but still that didn't inspire or push other imcistas from stl to help pick up the ball.   

i admit i made several mistakes:
1.  i didn't know how many imc people were coming and didn't realize that there would be this huge need to organize around the event.
2.  i didn't know anything about this conference prior to them contacting stlimc, never have been there before or even had heard of freepress, so i didn't know how to react.  i don't feel as if i did anything wrong in the way that i tried to organize.  

josh - i will not apologize, nor do i feel i was in the wrong.  i took all the options that freepress was giving us back to our collective, as well as stayed in contact with you and others.  at the time, i didn't think to make it a us_imc endeavor, and no one but bht mentioned it (and put it on the agenda at teh indymedia thing in austin) but other than that things never flew.  

i am not going to apologize for anything, except that stlimc doesn't have the mass amount of resources and time like some other imcs.  

i still feel like we should take what we learned here and make it into something PROACTIVE.  this is why i liked jessica's idea so well, she took something frustrating and did somehting positve with it!  PERFECT!

okay - i've learned a lot from other imcistas out there on my travels.  but this list is taking up more and more of my time that i feel is counter - productive.  i'm torn with the whole process.  anyway, that's personal frustrations that are building up i'll have to deal with.  

not sure where else to go with this... any other comments.
 - betsy





BE THE MEDIA
www.stlimc.org

-------- Original Message --------
From: Joshua Breitbart < >
Apparently from: imc-us-bounces at lists.ucimc.org
To: "Working Group for IMC-US." <imc-us at lists.ucimc.org>
Subject: Re: [IMC-US] personal reprtback for indy folks about theNationalCOnference on Media Reform.
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 10:51:15 -0400

> I hope no one minds me reigniting this thread. I've been doing a little forensic
> research on the conference and I wanted to clear up a few things:
> 
> The most important thing is that the format of the independent media caucus was
> entirely the fault of Eric Galatas. Eric invited Craig Aaron and Howard Feld to
> present to the independent media caucus. So we should not blame Free Press for
> that.
> 
> Regarding the "self organized media center" – I think some people at Free Press
> would have been very into it happening. There's probably only one person who
> was worried about there being a pirate radio broadcast. Apparently, they
> offered Betsy some space for the St. Louis IMC to hold workshops and such after
> it became clear CAMP would not be available; Betsy turned them down without
> consulting with anyone.
> 
> We could have done more if we had been in communication with each other before
> the conference. I could have done more to put us all in communication with each
> other before the conference (though it probably would have required an extra
> hour in the day).
> 
> Free Press could have done more, and probably wishes that it did. It seems like
> some of them expected Indymedia to organize the way it did at the 2003 Media
> Reform Conference in Madison (not recognizing how different the local
> conditions were; and even though the Be The Media shadow conference was
> actually organized by the Madison Infoshop, WORT radio, and some Madison
> Indymedia). If people want to organize a media center at the next conference,
> Free Press would probably be into it.
> 
> One thing to keep in mind that applies both to the media reform movement and to
> Free Press specifically: these are not monoliths. Different people have
> different attitudes and approaches.
> 
> My sense is that many individuals in Free Press would have handled the CAPCR
> thing differently, as well. In the hectic days before the conference, the
> people at the top of their hierarchical structure made a different decision.
> 
> And lastly – Sascha's jacket. Almost too silly to mention, but someone said to a
> group of people I was in that Free Press told him he had to wear a suit at the
> conference. Not quite. Turns out he had the jacket on over his short-sleeve
> shirt because of the freezingness of the hotel.
> 
> None of this discounts the critiques of Free Press's ideological orientation.
> More on that in a minute.
> 
> 
> Josh
> 
> 
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