[New-imc] Re: [IMC-Process] in support of the ANMCLA Venezuela IMC proposal

[Adriana]

Hi Al,
thank you for such an inspiring message!
I totally understand the context in wich those messages i refered as
"strange" were sent. It was definitely a moment of tension.
Having said that, i should add that personally i`m a volunteer in
new-imc working group because i really want to see grassroot comunities
making media everywhere in the world. On the other hand, is our
responsability to not only instruct new groups about the indymedia
process but also to build a relationship based on trust,and most of the
times virtually. 
Recently, we were really surprised to see IMC Bolivia making available
an indymedia list serve to receive support to the presidential candidate
Evo Morales. I was in Bolivia myself and understand perfectly that he
represents the interests of the cocaleros, the campesinos and the
indigenous comunities. Moreover i personnaly met the people who are in
Indymedia Bolivia, handeled their application and personnaly like the
proposasl Evo Morales is adressing. But no IMC should have such an
explicit position, or be used as a tool to gather people into one
ideology. Open Publishing philosophy is about diversity.
This episode in Bolivia, as during the coverage of the coup Chavez
suffered, caused a lot of criticism from some collectives from the 
Latin American Network.
Aiming to avoid preconcepted judgments i try to make things as clear as
possible and support groups to do the same. 
Perhaps we are having misscomunication problems.
In the beginning of july, Gabriel from ANMCLA asked wheather they could
become an Indymedia and my answer in spanish is here:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/cmi-venezuela/2002-July/000007.html

Right after the coup the last message Mr. Aponte sent us is answered in
this message: (also in spanish)
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/cmi-venezuela/2002-April/000004.html

I`m eagered myself to see an Indymedia Venezuela working and to see
their list serve, which is cc here in this message so is the new-imc
list, being used by such a big collective you described.
Thank you again for such an inspiring message. Your help and suggestions
regarding IMC Venezuela application are very much appreciated.
peace,
dri
PS: Congratulations on Narconews! I have it as one of my links to
independent journalism for a long time now ;) I would appreciate a lot
to read "The Medium is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against Media" -
since i study a lot of contemporany comunication theory. Would you send
me?


On Sat, 2002-07-27 at 23:07, Alberto M. Giordano wrote:
> 
> 
> >
> >Al,
> >
> >Maybe you can help Adriana with some of her questions since you're in
> >touch with the people involved.
> >
> 
> 
> Thanks, Michael, for the quick response.
> 
> And hello Adriana.
> 
> I am happy to offer my observations and any information I have, and can 
> answer your questions based on reporting I have already done, but with the 
> proviso that I write from Mexico, and not Venezuela, and I do not speak for 
> any of the organizations there. I am simply speaking as a supporter and 
> participant in the IndyMedia movement.
> 
> By way of brief introduction, I publish the Narco News Bulletin - 
> http://www.narconews.com/ - reporting on the drug war and democracy from 
> Latin America.
> 
> I have lived and worked South of the Border since July 1997, when I spent a 
> year in Chiapas in Zapatista communities. I believe it was 1996 when I met 
> Michael and the folks at Paper Tiger and collaborated with them on the Free 
> the Media conference and Steal This Radio in New York. I have been an active 
> participant in Indymedia, both in Spanish and English language sites, and 
> have collaborated frequently with Indymedia journalists including the 
> Brazilian cartoonist LaTuff, the NYC-IMC collective, Chiapas IndyMedia and 
> others.
> 
> In 1996 I authored "The Medium is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against 
> Media," a document which upset many of my former colleagues in the 
> commercial media (prior to 1996 I was political reporter for the Boston 
> Phoenix, and had published in the Washington Post, American Journalism 
> Review, and scores of "alternative weeklies" and other publications. I 
> ocassionally write for The Nation. I also spent five years hosting a daily 
> AM talk radio show in Massachusetts and was a regular guest host on the ABC 
> TV affiliate there; my years have been spent in print, Internet, TV and 
> radio, including both pirate and commercial radio.
> 
> I returned to New York on five ocassions last year to defend Narco News, the 
> Mexican journalist Mario Menendez and myself from a multi-million dollar 
> lawsuit by Banamex-Citigroup that attempted to shut down our website. NYC 
> IndyMedia was very supportive of our defense, and last summer I participated 
> in its radio webcast about the free speech issues involved with IMC 
> journalist Mike Burke.
> 
> In December 2001 the New York State Supreme Court ruled in our favor and 
> furthermore established, for the first time under U.S. case law, that 
> Internet journalists now have the same First Amendment protections under the 
> Sullivan v. NY Times precedent as commercial broadcast and print media.
> 
> When the court victory occured, I was in Bolivia, reporting on the plight of 
> the coca growers and investigating the assassination of union leader 
> Casimiro Huanca. Given the urgency of the matters in Bolivia, and with 
> dozens of requests for interviews about the court victory in my mailbox, I 
> granted only one of those interviews - with Mike Burke of IMC New York - and 
> sent all other reporters to IMC-NYC to get their story from there. I did 
> that to send a very clear message to the commercial media about whose 
> victory it truly was: that of the independent media networks. There was also 
> a tremendous response from IMC users that are posted below that interview, 
> which appears at:
> 
> http://www.nyc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=14874&group=webcast
> 
> This is all in the way of saying that I am, in my daily life, an IndyMedia 
> journalist. Narco News often has worked with IndyMedia Chiapas (on the 
> Zapatista caravan coverage) and utilizes IndyMedia Mexico City for public 
> discussions of our articles. In that city, we are currently setting up a 
> physical space for a weekly "immedia salon" to create an "off-screen" 
> component to authentic journalism.
> 
> So, again, not officially speaking for the Venezuela proponents, but as one 
> who has exhaustively investigated their movement, seen and heard it first 
> hand in Venezuela, I will offer my response to your comments below....
> 
> >>
> >>Hi Michael,
> >>i`m the person who is dealing with the Venezuela aplication. The
> >>situation there is very complex, and they applyed right before the goup
> >>in april. By that time, Douglas who was the contact info, sent us a
> >>strange messages complainig about international support even thought we
> >>worked on a global features.
> 
> I would strongly urge you not to take his complaints personally. His country 
> was going through a coup d'etat and, for various days, a military 
> dictatorship that was raiding many of the 25 Community TV and Radio stations 
> that make up the network that applied through Mr. Aponte for an IndyMedia 
> site. Those very same Indy journalists were being hunted by the 
> dictatorship. One was tortured and arrested.
> 
> During that time, I was extensively reporting on the coup and counter-coup 
> at Narco News. See:
> 
> Three Days that Shook the Media
> 
> http://www.narconews.com/threedays.html
> 
> ...for a detailed blow-by-blow account of those events and the behavior of 
> the commercial media.
> 
> Last month, I went to Venezuela, met and interviewed many of the Community 
> Media journalists. Part I of my resulting series on the Community Media in 
> Venezuela begins this coming Monday on Narco News.
> 
> The 25 TV and radio stations that make up Mr. Aponte's network, all strictly 
> (and by law) non-profit, all strictly (and by law) not partisan and 
> unaffiliated with any political party, and all are strictly (and by law) 
> organized horizontally and democratically with real grassroots neighborhood 
> participation on a scale that truly reaches and involves the masses. No 
> single United States independent media project, to my knowledge, and not my 
> own Narco News which just received its 16 millionth hit yesterday, enjoys 
> this level of popular audience and grassroots participation that these 
> Venezuela Community Media stations have built.
> 
> In other words, this network upon whose behalf Mr. Aponte applied - which 
> goes under the umbrella of Associación Nacional Medios Comunitarios, Libres 
> y Alternativos (ANMCLA) - consisting of 25 Community broadcasters and 
> various websites and newspapers - are, by any independent media standard, 
> the most advanced in any country in this hemisphere and probably on earth. 
> So while I don't personally know Mr. Aponte, although am a big fan of his 
> group's newspaper Proceso, I would strongly urge you to be forgiving about 
> any "strange mail" or complaints he waged during this time of intense 
> pressure in which his network was placed under siege and pursued by soldiers 
> and police on a scale that has not happened in this hemisphere since the 
> 1973 coup in Chile. Furthermore, Mr. Aponte is one player among a great many 
> who are the daily movers and shakers of this painstakingly democratic 
> movement with no paid staff or bureaucracy.
> 
> These 25 radio and TV stations - all in alliance with each other -function 
> much like "pirate" radio stations in the US and elsewhere. Some have been 
> around since the 1970s, and have deep roots in their communities. These 
> stations were legalized by the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution and a 2001 
> telecommunications law set forth the absolute conditions for their 
> existence, again, that they be non-profit, organized democratically from the 
> community, pluralistic, give voice to all comers, and be strictly 
> non-partisan in terms of political parties or religious creeds.
> 
> So, I can answer definitively that this network is horizontally organized 
> and unaffiliated with any political party.
> 
> I think it would be a damn shame if communications problems or a rocky start 
> - particularly in light of the intense persecution and pressures on this 
> network - prevented the larger IndyMedia network from enthusiastically 
> accepting the proposal of this ANMCLA network to host Indymedia Venezuela. 
> The "punk rock" proposal, seems to me, to be apolitical, far less organized, 
> less professional, and far less representative of the masses and the true 
> strength of the Community Media by leaps and bounds.
> 
> To that end, I am fluent in Spanish and would be happy to facilitate or 
> translate communications in any way to expedite this process.
> 
> If you agree not to distribute it until we publish it on Monday, I would be 
> happy to send you an advance text of Part I of our series on the Community 
> Media - this first installment is about the persecution against them by the 
> pro-coup forces and commercial media - which I think would give you a solid 
> idea of the breadth and truly vanguard nature of the work this ANMCLA 
> network is doing down there.
> 
> If there is any opposition at all to this network's application - and with 
> those two questions about political parties and horizontal organization 
> answered, I don't see what other obstacle there could reasonably be -- I 
> would then like the opportunity to address the committee that decides these 
> matters and advocate, as an unaffiliated party, in support of the ANMCLA 
> proposal. You may feel free to forward this communication to anyone involved 
> in the decision-making process. And I am happy to answer - or if I don't 
> have the answer, investigate and find the answer to - any other questions 
> you or anyone would have.
> 
> In sum, I think IndyMedia would make a grave error to reject this original 
> application by the ANMCLA network, as offered by Mr. Aponte.
> 
> To the contrary, I would urge you to strive to make it happen. I feel 
> absolutely certain that neither you nor anyone in the IndyMedia networks 
> would later feel unhappy with that decision. To the contrary, to invite the 
> ANMCLA network to host an IndyMedia Venezuela would be a major coup (ahem, 
> maybe I should find a better term! But you know what I mean!), because, as 
> one who travels and reports throughout this hemisphere, I do not see any 
> other region or country where the Independent Media movement - whatever name 
> or title it uses, and in this case it is ANMCLA - has achieved such a broad 
> base of public support, relevance and impact as these compañeros in this 
> democratic, non-profit and non-partisan network have achieved in Venezuela.
> 
> My series on the broader subject of Independent vs. Commercial Media in 
> Venezuela will be published Monday at this URL:
> 
> http://www.narconews.com/communitymedia1.html
> 
> (That link will go up at Midnight Monday Morning).
> 
> Thank you for your consideration, and please keep me posted about how I can 
> help move the project forward and participate in this process.
> 
> salud y abrazo,
> 
> Al Giordano
> Publisher
> The Narco News Bulletin
> http://www.narconews.com/
> narconews at hotmail.com
> 
> 
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