[New-imc] my rollcall

[evan at protest.net]

Honestly i think i already gave one but there is no harm in giving
another.

I'm evan, aka rabble. I've been doing indymedia tech stuff since N30.
I've helped start at least a dozen imc's some of which have turned out
well and some of which have had dificulties. I've also visited / worked
with maybe half the imc's in the network. I wrote the code for the front
page of active indymedia sites both the newswire and teh features (center
column), although many people have had a hand in editing things. I
write/wrote the imc-tech summary. In addtion to indymedia i founded
and am an active part of the collective that runs protest.net. Right now
i'm in bolivia helping the imc here get started.

I think that for indymedia to grow we need a solid new imc process for two
reasons. First to educate and bring new media activists together as imc's
and particapating in the network. The second is to filter out groups /
companies/ sectarian sects, which want to own an imc. This second one is
about making sure that we have a solid network. Like it or not indymedia
is a brand and it stands for radical media work where we advocate for
social change, democratize access to communciation, and are an open bridge
that brings together a diverse spectrum of the left. We are an institution
through which we can undermine the hegemonic dominance of neoliberalism.
We need to have a new imc process to make sure we continue as a radical
media project with substance.

A bit about why i pushed to start the new imc process:
When indymedia started we didn't have a process for there being multiple
imc's. Maffew proposed moving the seattle indymedia site to
seattle.indymedia.org from where it had been www.indymedia.org. For
BioDevestation a few months later i got together with a few other peopel
who'd been at the imc in seattle and we started the boston indymedia
center. We just asked maffew for help setting up the cod and did it.

Then there were confernece calls and engery going in to organizing the dc
imc. Mostly the organizing was done via a couple big conference calls.
After that we had imc's popup. The UK folks setup a site called uk
indymedia for their mayday protests. Things spread. During the summer mako
who was crashing on kellan and my couch for the summer worked with teh
australians to write a script to easily create new indymedia sites. From
that point on all you had to do create a site was send an email and we
gave you a site for where ever you said you were.

After a while this process developed problems. First we didn't even know
how to contact these new imc's, we didn't have any idea if these were real
groups or just one person with a computer. Many of the imc's from that
era died because there never was any real organization behind them.
Bolivia where i am now is an example, now there are real groups in 5
cities coming together, but the first bolivian imc was maybe one person we
don't even know. In early 2001 the canadian ngo, Alternatives, wanted to
help start imc's to cover the ftaa protests in Argentian and Quebec city.
They didn't ahve open publishing, and opperated in a pretty top down
manner especially in terms of money. By the time they joined we were
having some brief discussions on the imc-process list about new imc's
joining the network but it was basically still up to tech. In the tech
collective we found our selves making more and more political decisions
which we didn't feel like were approiate for a tech group.

After the Quebec city protests there was an imc gathering in san francisco
with mostly us imc's although there were people from alberta, vermont,
belgium, and chiapas if i recall. It was a very painful and dificult
meeting but we did come up with the provisional membership criteria,
points of unity, and to create a new imc process. Since then teh process
has grown even though we still have serious problems as a network. We need
to be making decisions about who joins the network even if we don't like
it. The new imc process is making that decision explicitly a political and
not a technical decision. If we are going to grow to be the powerful force
we want to be we need to figure out a decision making process that
reflects our rhzomatic organizing structure. If we just let anything go
and have no way of colaborating and saying we support eachother then we
doomed to only have been a possiblity.

in solidarity,
evan


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                                         |    www.anarchogeek.com      |
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| [Indymedia] is at the convergence of several critical trends: the    |
| rebirth of activism, the maturation of the internet and the          |
| crystallisation of what they see as a new evil in the form of        |
| out-of-control corporatism.                      -The Independent UK |
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