[CIMC-working] (serious concerns with Portland IMC) FW: [IMC-Process] Stolen "IMC"

[Chris Kaihatsu]

----------
From: Media Collective <mediacollective@students.sou.edu>
Organization: SOU Student Media Collective
Reply-To: mediacollective@students.sou.edu
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 15:02:40 -0800
To: imc-process@lists.indymedia.org
Subject: [IMC-Process] Stolen "IMC"

Andy Rice here -

Summary:

PDX IMC is undemocratic

Emulating Eugene

Endless subjective bickering will get us nowhere

Structute and process necessary:  Need formal determination of fact, to
resolve conflicts.

Democracy is the only true revolutionary process

Sparky's "update from Portland" (below) clearly reflects the elitist
approach now being taken
by Portland "IMC".   Instead of offering direct democratic involvement in
the management of a
genuine IMC site through a diverse community-wide General Collective, which
then coordinates
the work of the various committees, and sets or approves policy and practice
of those
committies, Mr.Stolen offers an opportunity to post to the wire and get
stories featured by his
hand-picked editorial clique, which has exclusive control over everything,
and must be
"trusted" to do a good job of management.

This "management" involves completely subjective "decisions" taken by an
exclusive like-minded
hand-picked clique, with no democratic control whatsoever by the larger
community which built,
uses and needs the IMC site.  While supposedly "anyone" may join the
editorial clique, the fact
rermains that if a volunteer persistently insists on compliance with
fundamental IMC
principles, such as broad and diverse democratic process, rather than simple
deference to the
extant controlling clique, they get viciously attacked with adhominem
slanders and driven away,
or purged.

While the present editorial clique does a lot of "good work", they also tend
to inject a lot of
whack subjective bullshit into the "process", and brook no real discussion
or challenge to
those "decisions".  It has been gratifying to learn that I am not the only
person in the whole
world that has some problems with the way pdx imc has been taken hostage.

Edcom emulates the Eugene "collective", which is now defunct, having lost
all community
support.  The Portland site has learned somewhat from the Eugene experience,
working harder to
avoid such immediate and complete isolation.  They do a lot of "good work".
But they are the
same as the Eugene Primtivist Chaoticist "GA" clique, in many distinctive
elements of the
rhetoric,"reasoning", and practice of that tendency.

A review of the local discussion list archives clearly indicates the
absolute contempt and
defiance of this controlling clique for fundamental IMC principles.  I am
not asking anyone to
take my word for it.  Their own adamant rhetoric speaks for itself in this
regard, including
the "process" by which the General Collective was dissolved, after months of
deliberate
agitation and sabotage to destroy the viability of the General Collective
and usurp all power
to the editorial clique.  They speek in political, cultural and poitical
terms of freedom,
creativity, diversity, and anarchy, from a purely subjective and
chauvinistic perspective, in a
reactionary, counter-revolutionary manner. It  is a fascinatingly perverse
whack tendency.

Endless bickering and "discussion" of such issues will get us nowhere.  The
only way to resolve
a dispute of this nature is a formal review of the record, in direct
reference to standing IMC
documentation, in terms of compliance or non-compliance.  There is no other
rational means of
determining whether one can "trust" the demure assurances of the ruling
clique, or my own and
others' bitter recriminations about their practice.

Nobody loyal to the IMC concept wants to see IMC get bogged down in
flamewars and infighting.
The only way to prevent that from happening is to either defer
unconditionally to whoever
manages to get over, by whatever unprincipled means, or to have a formal
democratic process for
review, evaluation and determination of fact, based on documentation and
explicit criteria for
certification, locally, and globally,

There clearly needs to be a more global proactive exercise of such process,
rather than waiting
until a local entity gets completely co-opted.  More timely  and incisive
response to problems
being raised by participants would require allocation of global time and
resources, including
intervention, where necessary.  But this will cost nowhere near as much as
waiting until gross
injustices and sabotage have been established as the status quo,
discrediting the whole
organization.

It will not be possible to please everyone all of the time.  The chaos
freaks will scream
bloody murder over "institutiionalization" and "co-optation" of the
global/local network by
"authoritarian structure freaks".  Loss of their "freedom" to run amok will
be decried as the
destruction of IMC,  COINTELPRO "sabotage", etc, etc, ad nauseum.  Either we
submit to this
intimidation and threat, and allow IMC to be taken hostage, "to avoid a
conflict", or we step
up and deal with the contradictions of trying to organize revolution in a
bourgeoise
ultra-individualist society.

I say we should  contend for the integrity of the organization according to
the documentation
and principles of the organization, including broad and diverse democratic
control, and
prohibiting hegemony by any one political or other tendency.  Like, on the
positive,
progressive tip, up front.. anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-profit,
anti-fascist.  NOT
anti-communist, but against hierarchical authoritarianism, against rule by
elites. Democractic.

Democracy is the only true revolutionary, evolutionary concept.

Andy Rice (aka android9)



Subject: [IMC-Process] update from portland re. "New IMC or reform Old IMC"
topic

> Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 12:57:06 -0800
> From: fellowtraveler@riseup.net
> To: imc-process@indymedia.org
>
> Howdy all --
>
> Recently, there was a brief discussion about an email sent to New IMC by
someone
> in portland who had questions about what community members can do if they
don't
> like their IMC.  This discussion started on the IMC-Process list here:
>
> 
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-process/2002-December/004326.h
tml
>
> Last night, in response to this, three portland indymedia volunteers attended
a
> meeting of the organization with which this individual is most associated, in
> order to address concerns that he or other people in that organization might
> have with portland indymedia.  We gave a presentation on the IMC network and
on
> how portland indymedia works, especially regarding the newswire and
> center-column feature stories.  The general focus was on how portland
indymedia
> can be a resource for that organization and for the activist community at
large.
>
> This presentation was part of an ongoing process (with which most IMC
activists
> are probably familiar) of describing what "open publishing" is, and explaining
> that there is no official portland indymedia "coverage" of events; rather the
> coverage comes from the people who post to the site.  In the case of portland,
> all an organization has to do is post a story about its event, and it will
> become a feature.
>
> I've found that these concepts are difficult to understand for many people
> because they are used to media being a passive thing, wherein the most you can
> hope for is to beg a newspaper to do a good article.  Indymedia, by contrast,
is
> an interactive thing, wherein you can just post that good article yourself.
>
> Additionally, not everyone there was aware of how much information about their
> movement and issues are already prominently highlighted on the portland
> indymedia website.
>
> We're hoping that this presentation to this organization, as well as continued
> dialogue with its members, will help them to better utilize portland indymedia
> as an activist tool, and that they will have fewer complaints as time goes on.
>
> We plan to have more of these "How you can use portland indymedia"
presentations
> with other activist organizations in town.
>
> love+solidarity,
> spArk
>

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