[Imc-finance] Ford Foundation -- clarifications from the UCIMC:

[Sascha Meinrath]

Hi everyone,

In an effort to diffuse some of the miscommunication going around I wanted
to clarify a few things.  Many active IMC participants have been working
on the Ford Foundation grant for many months.  A group of Indymedia
activists formed an autonomous affinity group to do this.  In addition,
this group, "encuentros," affiliated with the Urbana-Champaign IMC to help
get funding to support IMC organizing and communication.

The group is not, and has never been acting or speaking on behalf of the
Global IMC Network -- it is an autonomous group of people working with the
UCIMC.  The funding we are looking for would be utilized by multiple IMCs
(at their discretion) to support regional gatherings of IMC participants,
and in this way, would help strengthen the IMC Network as a whole (and
thus, perhaps comes the recent confusion).  But this is not a Global IMC
Network project.

Recent postings to multiple Global lists have made it clear that the
process being utilized was not made clear enough to other IMC participants
by those of us who have been working on this project.  So I want to be
explicit about what this group is (and is not) and clarify my concerns
concerning disempowering individual IMCs working within the Network.

The Urbana-Champaign IMC has worked with multiple different IMCs and
Indymedia projects -- our goal being to support local Indymedia activists
with the resources we have available.  We have helped fund IMC-Nigeria,
IMC-Palestine, IMC-Argentina, DC-IMC, NYC-IMC, IMC-Chiapas, etc. and have
been the fiscal sponsors of multiple other media projects.  We have
supported the individual decision-making processes of these sponsored
projects and do not feel that it is our place to question the financial
decisions and funding sources of these projects.

At no time have the decisions of one of our projects been scrutinized as
has the Ford Foundation grant.  Certainly, many of these projects have
made individual decisions that would be dissapproved of (and perhaps even
despised by) other IMCs and Indymedia participants.  But a major strength
of our Network is the coexistence of mutual support _and_ autonomy of
individual IMCs and their projects.  We share a common goal of creating
media, global justice, democracy, transparency, etc. but certainly differ
in our ideas and tactics on how this should be achieved.  I am deeply
concerned that the work of an autonomous group of Indymedia participants
not be undermined by misconstruals about who they have been speaking for
or representing.  Anyone wishing to read the actual grant will see clearly
that the Grantee is the UCIMC -- not the Global IMC Network.

Portrayals of the Ford Foundation as either good or bad presents a false
dichotomy of the situation -- a few aspects of the Ford Foundation are
quite atrocious; at the same time, many of the programs and organizations
that the Ford Foundation has funded are among the most liberating and
radical in the world -- they have certainly done an amazing amount of good
in the world also.  As I have mentioned before, I fully respect
IMC-Argentina's desire not to accept funding because of the Ford
Foundation's history in Argentina and will work to find other funding
sources for those who do not wish to accept Ford Foundation funding; but I
think that it is innappropriate for individual IMCs to have veto power
over the work and financial decisions of other IMCs.

In the end, I know that many IMCs would benefit greatly from having access
to travel funding; it is somewhat of a Faustian bargain about whether to
accept these funds.  However, it is also a decision that should be left to
the affinity group that has been working on this project for the past six
months.  If we do otherwise I fear we will seriously undermine autonomy
and trust within the Network.

In solidarity,

--Sascha Meinrath
Urbana-Champaign IMC