pan-IMC process, fundraising Re: [CIMC-working] (serious concerns with Portland IMC) FW: [IMC-Process] Stolen "IMC"

[Chris Kaihatsu]

> It sure is hard to figure these things out.

Yeah, I haven't looked into the conversations cited by these dissenters --
I've just been forwarding stuff that seems topical....


> 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.

Because of our relatively strong hand in site management? I think the IMC
Network spirit of local autonomy would be the prevailing factor for us.


On another matter, we need to get our shit going in fundraising and
growth/outreach directions. There are a few volunteers I need to respond to
(whose submissions haven't been responded to).

I think Emily's assistance with graphics/image/promotional projects will
give us a boost.


Chris





on 12/12/02 10:51 PM, Ian Bicking at ianb@colorstudy.com wrote:

> 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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>> 
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