[CIMC-working] (about global collective structure) Fwd: [IMC-Process] New IMC or reform Old IMC: Dealing with Disputes

[Chris Kaihatsu]

-- Forwarded Message --

Andy Rice here, speaking as usual, as an individual who happens to post from
the Media Collective where I do most of my work.

This is in response to the dispute in Houston IMC, referenced by the recent
post from Nick, below, inviting debate on the issues there.

Summary:

Need Clarification re: Roles and Goals of Resolve and Process

Proposal:  Resolve Deal with Disputes, In Detail, Process Deal with Refining
the Process.

Need More Transparency and Disclosure on the Part of List Administrators and
Moderators, and Their Methods.

Proposal:  List All List Admins/Moderators on Each Message, Linked to a More
Comprehensive Resume/Intro.  Also a Link to List Criteria for Posts
That Criteria Should Define and Ban Adhominem Dismissal and Slander Employed
to Evade Legitimate Issues of Fact and Documentation.

Need Full Discussion of the Details of Disputes, and Then Actual Resolution,
Democratically

Proposal:  It is Necessary to Call for Consensus, and a Vote, When Lacking
Consensus.

Need for IMC "Courts" and "Police"

Proposal:  Revoke Passwords of Non-Compliant IMC or Individuals

Need a Real Vote, not Aquiescence by Silence

Proposal: That Vote Must be Active, Not Passive, Including All Participants

Democratic Collective vs Chaos

Proposal: Resist Entropy!

Resolve list, and Process list have gone back and forth and around and
around, as to whether and how to address details of personal disputes.

Lately, Process seems more willing to post such items, and Resolve seems
more reluctant.  It seems to depend mostly on who happens to be "acting" as
"moderator" or "adminstrator", or whatever, and there seems to
be no real democratic process for picking who will do that, or exactly how
they will exercise that substantial power.

I raised objections to some individuals taking on that role, because I
didn't trust their judgement or objectivity.  It seemed the main reason they
wanted to do it was to suppress positions they didn't agree
with.  I saw no discussion or acknowledgement of my objections, nor any
indication of whether they just went ahead and took on the job anyway, or
not.  That does not make me feel confident about the process.
Some of my posts have been suppressed, and some have not, for what seems
like arbitrary reasons....like one "side" gets to speak, but the "other"
does not?  That perception, whether completely accurate or not,
really sucks.  I have been bounced back and forth between "Process" and
"Resolve" for months now, with no real process or resolution whatsoever that
I can discern.

While the current list administrators are supposedly listed on the main list
info page, (which takes a special effort to investigate..I think they should
be listed on each message, with a link to their personal
intro) there is no way to know whether that is actually current, or who else
may not be listed, as was recently discovered on one list, that someone had
the password, but others were not aware of it.

The whole thing must be absolutely transparent, and subject to full
disclosure as to affilliations etc, not just "whatever". If a certain
tendency has hegemony over a list, or any other venue, "independence" is
lost.  I want to see more explicit info on who each administrator is, and
exactly where they are coming from, politically.  Their "intro" especially,
should be a full resume, not just some brief nebulous
rhetorical gush. We need to be able to more easily detect possible bias or
prejudice in their practice.  It should not just be "oh, I do lots of stuff,
and I really want to do this, so I'm just going to jump in
there and do it, because I think IMC is really cool".  Democracy is NOT a
matter of "trust",  or "whatever". It is a matter of complete transparency
and full disclosure, the only legitmate basis for rational
decisions about anything.

I definitely understand the need to keep flame wars out of the venues for
dealing with more technically oriented process discussion.  But there also
needs to be a venue for people to air the details of their
grievances, rebuttals, etc, too.  Hopefully that could be kept civil, rather
than devolving into flame war, but what one person considers flames could be
what another person considers freedom to speak candidly.
Much of the discussion about how to run Resolve has been about sluglines and
keeping "on topic", which are not bad concepts, but these cannot be allowed
to merely become ploys to avoid and suppress free-wheeling
discussion or to exercise cultural prejudices about someone's manner of
speaking.

If differentiation is to be made in that regard by moderators or
adminstrators, any criteria for that should be clearly and democratically
established, and linked on every listserv issuance, and it certainly
should not be exercised based on personal, arbitrary, subjective, and
perhaps capricious administrators' opinions of the poster's style, the
issue, or the position taken.  What needs to be banned is adhominem
dismissal and slander, in evasion of legitimate issues of fact and
documentation.

It seems to me that a whole separate list is needed just for discussion of
the details of dispute, and that it should be relegated to Resolve, and the
Process list reserved for the more technical discussion of
the nuts and bolts process of conflict resolution (which some Resolve
administrators are now saying Resolve is for, the technical discussion of
resolution process, not the details of dispute).  Resolution of
conflicts  is rapidly becoming the most pressing process issue for the
network, and should be recognized as such, and not shunted off to Resolve
just to sweeep disputes under the rug.

Resolve should not be for discussing process, so much as for actual
resolution, the first step of which must be hashing out the details of the
dispute, it seems to me.  That doesn't rule out process discussion
there, toward actual resolution of the particular dispute, but you can't
"resolve" anything without talking it out, in detail.

Also I think it's imperative to recognize that "discussion", in and of
itself, will usually not be enough.  If it has come to the point of being on
a global list, that means there are more or less intractable
differences of opinion, often in regard to the actual facts of the matter.
How do we get to the real truth?  How do we tell who is lying, exaggerating,
misinformed, or extrapolating unfairly or irrationally?  I
have found this difficult, and often impossible to ascertain, from afar.  I
think part of the resolution process will require more direct on-site
investigation, and even intervention by the global network, in
many cases. At the very least, a full active poll of all participants is
necessary.  It's time for Global to start revoking passwords.

Another main point I would make is that endless contentious bickering
resolves nothing.  At some point, there must be a call to consensus, and
lacking consensus, a vote, to make a decision on some kind of
material resolution of disputes.  Was a "purging" legitimate or not?  Is the
new policy, or protocol, or structural change or whatever, consistent with
IMC Principles of Unity and other documentation, or not?
Without a genuinely democratic process, what can we possibly accomplish,
except  defacto bitch sessions about faits accompli?  We also need a more
comprehensive and explicit poll of all participants, not just the
"vote" of silence.

I want a decision about Eugene "imc" and Portland.  They can call me a liar,
a whack troll, a cop, etc. etc, all they want, but I want a motherfucking
vote on the issues of contention, based on documentation and
facts, and not a "vote" that everyone is tired of the bitter conflict, so
let's just forget about it, and see what happens.  That can only result in
debacle after debacle, like the Eugene GA "imc" viciously
driving away their entire commuity, and now being comatose for 6 months, and
Portland's edcom inviting rightwing "Libertarians" to take over the venue,
on a nationally syndicated radio talk show, no less,
resulting in the spamming of the entire IMC network with fascist and
protofascist propaganda and harrassment.

If I "lose", after a reasonable examination of the facts and the
documentation, then so be it. I would have to accept that, whether I really
liked it or not.  (That's not what happened in Portland, where the
General Collective reviewed matters, and decided in my favor...but then
edcom pulled their illicit coup, and dissolved the GC!  What the fuck is up
with that? How dare the IMC network allow such things to
happen?)

Please pardon my French, but !@#$%^ it, I demand a formal review more
substantial than just another @#$%^&* flamewar!  And the same goes for
Houston, Palestine, Belgium, and any other entities where intractable
conflicts have emerged.

I think we need an IMC "court", and IMC "police", because
counter-revolutionary elements and tendencies are so prevalent. Such
structure and process are fundamental requirements of genuine democracy. The
chaos
freaks can scream bloody murder about their "freedom" to run amok, and try
all they want to draw parallels between my position and phony bourgeois
"democracy" or hierarchical authoritarian "Fascist Stalinism",
but they are full of shit!  It doesn't have to be that way. None of the
examples they raise ever even really seriously pretended to be genuinely
democratic, so they are not relevent comparisons.  We are talking
about whether we really want IMC to be really democratic, or not.

All we need and want is justice, and that is what the chaos freaks really
hate and fear, more than anything, in their own privilige-seeking rabid
bourgeois  anti-communist ultra-individualist culturally
chauvinistic elitism.  Anarchy calls for the suppression of
counter-revolutionary tenedencies, by coercion, if necessary.  It is not a
"fuck-all, anything goes" theory or practice, even among the chaos freaks,
who are just about as ruthless and exclusive a tendency of hegemony-seeking
weasels as you can find anywhere, for all their bogus "anarchist" rhetoric.
There is another way!

Either IMC is a "collective", or it is not.  People should make up their
minds, put their mouth in gear, and speak up!  That, and insisting on a fair
vote, are what democracy is about, not rioting in the streets
and running amok, which are actually indicative of a profound lack of
democracy, and should not be embraced as any kind of strategic goal for
revolutionary struggle.

FIGHT ENTROPY!  ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Andy Rice (aka android9)


> Subject: Re: [IMC-Process] New IMC or reform Old IMC
> Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2003 01:39:33 -0500
> From: Sarsnic@aol.com
> To: imc-process@lists.indymedia.org
>
> Ken, Robert,
> I am available to discuss your accusations in person or online, but I believe
the proper international forum would be the resolve list.  Perhaps some of
the "blind followers" would like to be involved as well.
> Peace,
> Nick Cooper
>
> Ken wrote:
> >How does Nick Cooper get away with this?  Nick has a small group of blind
followers who support him no matter what he does.

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