[Imc] A request for - what? - commitment

[John Wason]

Greens, remember when we were all excited about Ralph Nader and the Green
Party?  And then we were all excited anyway even after Ralph didn't get
elected President and he didn't even get his 5%, when we had our fundraiser
and Ralph came and spoke and said "Work! Work! Work!" and then we were
really gonna go out and work like he said and we were gonna go to city
council meetings and county board meetings and school board meetings and all
of that?  Remember all that?  We were gonna empower ourselves and others,
and make a difference in our community and in the world.  Maybe even change
it a little bit in fundamental ways.

Well, what I'm asking is a little more modest than going to every single
governmental function.  But it is about work.  There's this little place in
Urbana called the Independent Media Center, where we Greens meet twice a
month as a matter of fact.  And the folks at the Independent Media Center
are a bunch of ambitious folks, ambitious like the Greens, who decided that
the corporately-owned press wasn't telling us the whole truth, and that
information is power, and that maybe we could empower ordinary people to
tell the truth as they saw it, and go out and dig a little for that truth
that the corporately-owned media isn't telling us.  And that maybe they
could empower themselves and others, and make a difference in the community
and in the world.  Maybe even change it a little bit in fundamental ways.

So the IMC did a web site and a weekly radio show on WEFT.  A couple of
different radio show, actually.  But then some folks thought that it might
be a good idea to do a newspaper, to reach those (like me, in fact) who
maybe don't hang out at web sites and don't listen to WEFT.  

And so a collective was formed, and some folks volunteered to be editors,
and a few other folks volunteered to be writers/reporters, and after a lot
of meeting and decision-making by consensus a paper was born, called the
public i (italicized, but I can't do italics with Eudora 2.2).  And some
folks worked really hard researching stories and writing stories and editing
stories and laying the paper out, and in just about a week the first issue
of the paper is actually going to come out, an 8-page tabloid that looks
really nice with some very well-written articles and some great graphics and
some extremely creative newspoetry and even a really funny cartoon.

But you know what?  Doing a paper is a whole shitload of work, we found out,
and there are people with jobs and school and other commitments who are
already pretty tired.  Some of them are even saying that they're not gonna
be able to do it any more unless they get some help.

Now there are some things that won't have to be done every time, like
agreeing on a name for the paper and setting up e-mail accounts for the
editors and finding a printer and all of that.  But there are still stories
to be researched and written and edited, every month we hoped.

And that's where you Greens come in.  Greens and IMCers are pretty
symbiotic, or should be.  We share a lot of the same ideals.  We want to
make our world a better place, and we know that it starts with a vision and
then it takes an assumption of personal responsibility and a whole lot of
work, work, work, just like Ralph said.

So I'm thinking that you Greens have things you're interested in and care
about and are already involved in, government and politics and environmental
issues and human rights and labor issues and all of those things.  And
amazingly enough, those things are precisely what we've been trying to write
about in the public i!

And therefore I'm suggesting, if you've read this far, that one way you
could "kill two birds with one stone", if you'll forgive such a gory
metaphor, is to attend those city council meetings and explore and research
those environmental issues and other things you're already so passionate
about, and then WRITE AN ARTICLE ABOUT THOSE THINGS for the public i.  Those
of us who are still editors will help you frame the issue and suggest
sources and so forth, and you might even want to become an editor yourself.

If we don't get some more help, on the other hand, I fear that the public i
will be just a brief one-shot flash in the pan, full of sound and fury and,
ultimately, signifying nothing.  And maybe that's the way it's supposed to
be.  But I think that just a little effort by a critical mass of people
could keep the thing going, and give the reading public a dose of
reality-based journalism that it sorely needs.

Whatever happens, thanks for reading this e-mail.  And sometime around the
end of next week, do pick up your very own copy of the public i free at a
distribution point near you.

John