[New-imc] Re: IMC Tallahassee-Red Hills: Internal DEADLINE NOVEMBER 27, 2002

[Dubravko Kakarigi]

Greetings,

Thank you for consideration.

At 10:15 AM 11/21/2002 -0800, you wrote:
...
>1.  can you move your current organizing list to lists.indymedia.org and 
>set up a list or lists for your local (you can do this through 
>listwork at indymedia.org)?

Yes, we were thinking we would start using lists.indymedia.org once we are 
affiliated.

>2.  does having tallytown.com pose a problem in that it is a .com and will 
>it become tallytown.indymedia.org once approved?

Sure enough! This is only a temporary URL which will change to 
something.indymedia.org or to our very own domain. Possible names are being 
discussed and will be decided upon soon. We face an awkward situation that 
our name is fairly long (Tallahassee-RedHills IMC) albeit meaningful and 
any shortening will mean a compromise of sorts. One of our members, 
scott at elasticlimit.com, had some excellent thoughts expressed in his post 
at http://www.tallytown.com/cgi-shl/IMC/board.pl/read/60 .

>3.  i'm curious about how the regionalism will work.  i think this is 
>exciting and am just curious.

We are inclined toward thinking in terms of a bioregion rather than just a 
political region. We would like to stimulate this way of thinking to help 
us get out of the mold of traditional politics and rather embrace sense of 
belonging and being a part of this part of the earth that creates a 
meaningful unit. This will require more work from our outreach WG, but we 
do have contacts in some parts of our bioregion (Red Hills) who are not in 
Tallahassee and will nurture this even more. All of the counties in this 
region voted decisively for the non-Bush candidate.  That was a unique 
occurrence, most other counties went to Bush.

>4.  they don't have an introductory statement like we usually ask imcs but 
>i imagine their mission statement can work.  what do others think?  i 
>personally really enjoy seeing how diverse the statements can be and i 
>hope we continue to ask for these with each new application.  they are 
>slightly different from a mission statement.

Back in May when we filled out the on-line "application" Bennett submitted 
an intro statement which I quote below. Would this work? It is slightly 
out-of-date but is still true.

"The 2000 election galvanized progressive groups in Tallahassee and in 
Florida.  With the ever-growing corporatization of the commercial media, 
there needs to be an alternative in Tallahassee that is actively networked 
with the rest of the state.  IndyMedia affords the ideal vehicle or 
rallying point for progressive groups, in that it can service all who 
participate under a neutral banner.  This may help overcome the territorial 
impulses of any organization that keep these groups separate, and in many 
cases unaware of each other's presence.
The coming 2002 election will be of national interest and will focus on 
issues that are critical to Florida. Tallahassee, being the Capitol, is at 
the center of this activity.  This election more than any in our recent 
memory promises to hinge on the media outreach of a well-funded, highly 
organized incumbent administration.  There needs to be an alternative 
available to the media saturation that has already begun throughout the 
state that is distorting the public record.  The people need more 
information than is available through the corporate media.
More long term, we envision a statewide portal with satellites throughout 
the state.  We want to focus the Tallahassee site on the Red Hills 
bioregion.  This region runs from the Gulf of Mexico into Southern Georgia. 
Tallahassee is at the center of this region that encompasses much of what 
is called The Big Bend area of Florida."

>5.  dubrovko, do you have people ready to join imc finance and 
>communication and process as liaisons?  has there been any discussion 
>about that?  has anyone been following the global lists?

We touched the issues of financing gingerly and have not had any 
commitments yet. However, our by-laws clearly state that there will be (is) 
a Fundraising WG and it establishes its charges. We have been encouraging 
each other to participate in various global lists of interest - I am not 
aware of individual choices members might have made. But each WG is now 
formally self-organizing and participation in the global communication and 
work is part of that, and we want to have the support base as wide as 
possible.  Additionally, there are a number of older individuals with 
established roots in the community who are actively engaged in the IMC, so 
sustainability of membership may not be as problematic as in IMC's with a 
more transient makeup.

>6.  has your collective had any discussions about funding and 
>sustainability - economic democracy?

Funding is one of the important areas that has been neglected so far - we 
have been heavily concentrating on getting us off the ground - but will be 
taken up as a part of our meeting of the Collective on Dec 6. One of the 
duties of the Collective as an organizing unit is to chart the direction 
for our IMC for the next year. Funding is certainly an important component 
of that.

>7.  what contact information would you want to have in the contact 
>database for the network?  this would enable us to contact your collective 
>with important network-wide proposals and issues.  many imcs have chosen 
>to use their local list, but it can be an individual who is responsible 
>for getting that information to the local collective.

Our imc at tallytown.com list would work fine for the time being. It is a 
closed list in that only members can post, but anyone can become a member 
upon approval (we want to prevent spammers). It is a wide list with about 
60 email addresses on it.

>8.  have you had any contact with other local imcs in your region? we 
>really encourage regionalism and networking with imcs nearby.

Yes indeed. When Sharpie was visiting Florida a few months ago we had 
conference calls with Central Florida. We have individually been aware of 
efforts in Gainesville, Tampa, and now Miami. Part of the reason we are 
getting our own server set up is also so that we can help other IMCs in the 
region (or elsewhere) with the technology. In addition, I think there will 
come time for either a Florida IMC or for some coordination about 
state-wide issue coverage. We do have an excellent "clearing house" Web 
site here at http://www.whoseflorida.com/ which one of our own (Bennett) 
has been keeping going for over 1.5 years now.