It sure is hard to figure these things out. After reading the Finland
criticism, I have to admit I thought the Finland collective was trying
to do what it had to do, and some of what we do... (the person who
critiqued Finland entirely discredited himself in my eyes when he said
he spammed the Finland newswire because he was frustrated with them...
but that's another issue)
I don't know much about Andy Rice, or really about the Portland site,
but the message he copies at the bottom sounds entirely reasonable to
me. His argument makes him seem more like a troll than a constructive
member of the Portland collective...
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.
I don't think we've had to deal with much dissenters so far, at least
not while I've been involved, but otherwise how is this different than
our process? I hope we can avoid these problems, but if they come up I
suspect the current CIMC participants will be the Bad Guys in these
discussions.
Oh well...
On Thu, 2002-12-12 at 19:11, Chris Kaihatsu wrote:
> ----------
> 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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--
Ian Bicking <ianb@colorstudy.com>