[IMC-US-tech] Re: [IMC-US] My Disappeared Proposal

[Sascha Meinrath]

Hi Garth (et al.),

> Specifically I asked if ACORN would be a recipient of the $200,000 Soros
> grant that U-C recently recieved.  While Chicago is limited in U-C's
> internal decision-making process, in this case we would be compelled to
> block such involvement in the IMC-US project as the Soros funds have
> been linked to some rather nasty deals involving major doner capture.
> (I can find the details on this issue if anyone wants).

The recipient of the Open Society Institute (which is funded by Soros)
funds is the Community Wireless Network, a project that is sponsored by
the Urbana-Champaign IMC.  Two founders of the CWN are also founders of
Acorn Active Media and hope to build synergies between the two groups.

There is no doubt that some of the projects OSI has funded are rather
nasty deals -- on the other hand OSI has funded a lot of radical projects
(including Indymedia).  I think it's more helpful to remain a critical
consumer of major donors than to write off projects wholesale that have
received OSI funding.  This latter attitude would mean purposefully
isolating oneself from pretty much everything -- including Indymedia.

The OSI funding in question is to build open-source, open-architecture
community wireless networking software, allowing activists to build
bandwidth-sharing Internet infrastructures utilizing ad-hoc routing (e.g.,
the entire network grows organically as new nodes join).  The funding
comes with no strings attached (other than creating the software).

> I also raised some questions on why the group formed outside of IMC, and
> if those reasons are perhaps self-defined reasons that should limit
> involvment of the group in name (not necesarily people).  I think I
> asked specifically if this separation with IMC (as an IMC working group
> or project) was because an important element is to provide employment
> for the ACORN members.  Bear in mind, I am not necesarily faulting ACORN
> for wanting to get paid for the work it loves, I'm raising the point (as
> have others) if this is appropriate to the IMC project.

The assumption that Acorn Active Media formed outside of IMC is false.
Acorn is composed entirely of people who have been active in Indymedia for
years.  Acorn sought, and recently received, fiscal sponsorship from the
UCIMC after fairly extensive discussion.  A goal of Acorn Active Media is
to create a sustainable model for continuing to do technological
development for the global justice movement.  Every member of the Acorn
Active Media collective has been working in more corporate climes and
would like to devote themselves full-time to more activist projects.
More importantly, Acorn Active Media has had time to devote to getting the
IMC-US site up-and-running before several projects the group is working on
themselves get up-and-running.  The only thing Acorn Active Media was
asking for was acknowlegement for the work it was doing.

> Lastly, I don't mean to snub the offer of ACORN, perhaps it will turn
> out as something works very well.

I've talked with several people off-list who are interested in helping get
the IMC-US up-and-running.  If we can get someone(s) to do the necessary
programming, design, etc. to get the site up and running, that would be
awesome!  I'll follow up with folks -- either way, it would be great to
get the site up and running.

--Sascha