[New-imc] Proposed new IMC!

[boud]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2002 rcp9 at cornell.edu wrote:

> Proposed IMC Name:	Zimbabwe

> we’d like to have write for the site. One option, and perhaps a
> better one, would be to organise online. It’d be helpful to get some
> sort of list going to do this. Again, for the reasons mentioned
> above, a Zimbabwe-based list isn’t viable. And although it is certain
> that the police will infiltrate any other list, meetings on the net
> put individual writers in less personal jeopardy.

>  We’d like to get something up and running soonish, though. The
> elections draw ever closer, and it’s going to be increasingly hard
> to find out what the hell is going on in Zimbabwe from any source
> – foreign journalists have been deported, and the arrests of
> independent local journalists cannot be far off. The possibility of
> anonymous and widespread posting is one way of militating against
> this.

Hi, I'm just one of the volunteers on new-imc and know nothing about
Africa. 

But since your question is urgent and I happened to be online here's a
quick answer for a mailing list, and a "temporary" IMC site.  I also
have a comment regarding openness/security, but I think this is still
very much an open and evolving question (within the new-imc working
group) for countries with the greatest security dangers.

-- mailing list --
I think that new IMCs are generally encouraged to start up a mailing list,
even well before they have the project going properly. This is simply 
to help people discuss. Just send an email to:

listwork at lists.indymedia.org

telling them you've contacted new-imc and you should be able to start
up a list which will be publicly archived at 

http://lists.indymedia.org 

I think it's clear that you know enough about Indymedia principles and
have the right sort of intentions to at least start up a list!
A question which you will have to debate with the others in your project: Do
you want the subscriber list to be 
 * open to any web reader [I would suggest no] 
 * open to any subscriber [I would suggest yes]

There's an option for subscribers to hide their email addresses, even
from other subscribers (but not from the list administrator). 

-- temporary site --
 I don't know what others think, but it would probably be reasonable
as a temporary solution to use the http://congo.indymedia.org site for
postings until the new-imc process (in whatever way this happens) goes
through, since noone is managing the site at the moment. There's a
shared border, isn't there?

-- openness/security --
 Can't you cooperate with elite groups, university professors, NGO's?
I realise that there is the risk that they are compromised to some
extent with the security forces/government/companies and may
be... elitist... but since it would probably be best to coordinate
with them (in a non-hierarchical way) some time in the future if
you're interested in building long term non-hierarchical, open
structures for making a better society, the effort might be worth it.

For example, surely the Zimbabwean government would not risk attacking 
an open Indymedia meeting held in the Amnesty International office:

http://web.amnesty.org/web/contacts.nsf
ZIMBABWE*  amnestyzimbabwe at yahoo.com
AI Zimbabwe Office 25 E - Bible House 99 Mbuya Nehanda Street Harare
ZIMBABWE

In any case, if you can organise many people via the mailing list,
by the time you organise a meeting, the numbers may simply be too big
for the security forces to do anything.

Anyway, just my 2 cents worth.
boud