[New-imc] IMC Ambazonia - nearly ready - a comment + suggestions

[boud]

Dear vally, edwin, other Ambazonians, 
   Sorry that noone's replied to you so far on your new-imc
application (apart from jay when you contacted initially, a month or
so back) - please remember that Indymedia is purely based on
volunteers. Despite several calls for new volunteers, we seem to be
quite thin on the ground at new-imc. i've already talked through a 
few new IMCs, and i'm hoping to quit the group, which is why i didn't
reply earlier. 

In the future, if you wish to volunteer someone to be part of the
new-imc working group to help talk through other new African IMCs,
please do so - for obvious reasons, you might be more sensitive and
understand the local conditions better than someone like me who's
never lived in Africa.

Anyway, i'm delighted to see that you've worked through most of the
steps for forming an IMC:
- mission statement  ("introductory statement")
- editorial policy
- decision making process
- response to membership criteria
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2002-November/004187.html
plus you have a functioning site.

My feeling is that you're ready to be proposed to the new-imc group,
but i have (1) one comment which i feel should at least be discussed, and
(2),(3) two suggestions. 

i'd be more comfortable proposing you if you could at least give some
responses. 


### comment which IMHO requires some discussion ###
(1) diaspora vs local; electronic vs face-to-face decision-making?

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2002-November/004187.html

>  c. The political situation in Ambazonia makes it dangerous to hold
> public meetings in the true sense of the word. We made phone calls ,
> talked to people individually and send emails to many individuals
> and mailing lists .  We are continuing our outreach especially by
> approaching individuals, as that is the way projects that could be
> target for repression by the authorities are run out here. We’ve
> succeeded to assemble a solid team of activists, journalists and
> students both from home and in the Diaspora.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2002-November/004195.html

>  Ambazonia-Indymedia {WASHINGTON DC-Metropolis Branch}:
> *********Call for OPEN MEETING:************** 
> 
> This message is to solicit consensus from all members on when we can
> meet this week as an Ambazonia-Indymedia group. Recall Chris of
> DC-INDYMEDIA has already offered to be there (along with others) to
> give us a preview of the IMC world and answer all our questions.

People in the network are generally uncomfortable with the idea of an
Indymedia collective controlled from abroad by a diaspora. This
doesn't mean that expats cannot be involved, but problems are, for
example, that expats can only get second-hand information, they cannot
do the face-to-face outreach to a wide variety of local groups of
people who experience the day-to-day hardships directly, they risk
dominating over the locals, and after all, they are not affected
by local news in the way that locals are affected.

So the preference is that while expats can be very supportive, it
really should be local people, who really live in the place of the
IMC, who "control" the site and make sure that it's open,
non-hierarchical, consensual, etc. and that there are reports on a
wide variety of local events.

Please don't take this negatively - as long as there *are* locals
involved, and the plan is to transfer most of the control to the locals,
and if there is a clearly functioning, open, communication between
diaspora and locals, where it is clear that the diaspora do not
dominate, i don't see people complaining too much.

There are high-security-risk places where IMC's have been created,
where local meetings *do* happen, like in Palestine - AFAIK, IMC
Palestine is not an expat site, though i'm sure there are probably
*some* expats involved. There are other places like India, where
initially there only seemed to be an expat support group, but
eventually a local collective took over.  And there are some collectives,
like Madrid, where there seems to be quite some fluidity between local
and global.

Anyway, please take the following questions as helping you to clarify
or stimulate more thinking about these issues.

(1a) Roughly what are the proportions (numbers) of diaspora:locals involved?
50:50? 9:1? 1:9? 20:180?

(1b) Could you tell us a bit more how you see local grassroots groups
getting involved, *in* Ambazonia? Do you have a vision of how to cross
the electronic to non-electronic divide, including both content
production and consumption? Do you have goals for local internet
training, in free software, of course, so that more and more locals
can get involved 

(1c) In your decision-making method, you say nothing about how to know
that *every* or *all* member(s) has(ve) been consulted or agree on
something. At the moment your list archive

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-ambazonia-contact

is closed to non-subscribers, so it's difficult to judge whether this
is done on the list or not. Is this communication done purely on this
one mailing list, or do local groups in Ambazonia also meet
face-to-face and make sure everyone is consulted (according to the
different elements of your decision-making method)?



### suggestion ###
(2) ImcAmbazonia TWiki pages

A tool which i think can help as an extra communication tool, which
encourages collective, constructive collaboration, is the TWiki pages.
i've started one for you here:

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcAmbazonia

If you like it, please register
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/TWiki/TWikiRegistration

read the syntax info
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/TWiki/TWikiShorthand

and then just edit the page - and encourage everyone in the collective
to contribute, edit, improve these pages.

Given the practical difficulty in face-to-face meetings, the advantage
in having an extra virtual meeting and document-organising spot seems
to me like it could be very useful. (Although people with poor
download rates are likely to prefer email to web, people who can read
an Indymedia site should also be able to read and edit TWiki pages, it
seems to me.)


### suggestion ####
(3) open archives for the mailing list, or a second list with open archives?

Right now, your archives:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-ambazonia-contact/
are closed to non-subscribers. 

It might seem like this protects against policemen etc reading the
emails, but they simply have to subscribe and they'll read them 
anyway. Unless you have a very paranoid policy regarding who may
subscribe, in which case the group would not be open and would be
contrary to indymedia organising principles.

People needing high security should learn about anonymity (relative,
not absolute) of email addresses.  (E.g. French speakers can probably
get an address at  http://www.no-log.org )

A problem with closed archives is that the authorities can make stupid
claims, e.g. "this is a terrorist group", and the "ordinary public" 
cannot check up independently. The advantage of open archives is that
any such ridiculous claims immediately are seen by the internet-connected
community as rubbish.

However, it is a local decision, for the people in Ambazonia, and
diaspora supporters, to make "locally".

An alternative to opening up your main list is to start a second list,
which is openly archived, e.g. imc-ambazonia-open . Or when you are
ready to open specialised lists, e.g. imc-ambazonia-editorial, you
can make *these* lists openly archived.



Hoping to hear from you soon,
solidarity
boud (volunteer IMC PL)