[New-imc] IMC: Anarchists or Authoritarians?

[Bill Huston]

Thus spake boud:
>   bill sent me an offlist email, so i won't quote his words,
>but since the issues are public issues, i will respond here
>on  imc-binghamton and new-imc.

boud, 

Your posting the contents of a private message to a public 
forum is a rather gross breach of accepted internet ettiquette.

I'm generally all for openness, however, this does not mean that
any and all private communitations *should* be made public, without
the prior consent of all parties involved.

I've read and understand your feelings on the issue, and appreciate
these points:

   o  The decision on what parameters to set on an indy list ... are a
      local decision for the local IMC.

   o  ... the new-imc working group has no power to force any new IMC
      to even have a mailing list ...

   o  Indymedia is only Indymedia if it's ... non-hierarchical

And let me quote this once again from newimc.indymedia.org 
(highlighting added): 

    The strength of the IMC as a concept comes directly from its
    organizational structure; namely, a decentralized network of
    **autonomous** collectives... we have local IMC's throughout the 
    world that are **autonomous** in their decision making...

IMC-Binghamton, being autonomous, has and should have the power
to make these decisions.

>bill, IMHO it would be much harder for local US people to see how
>the IMC Binghamton collective is organising if the list has secret
>archives. 

There is a difference between "secret" and "non-public". There are
reasons why *for now*, this list will remain non-public, which I 
discussed with you, and you should be understanding of. This is 
and should be our right as an autonomous local IMC to establish 
this policy as local needs dictate.

>There's also the global indymedia readership. 

Information for global consumption will be posted on our main
site as stories and features. 

>For obvious reasons, people around the world are very much angry 
>with "the USA", and people thinking of starting an Indymedia group 
>in West Asia, South Asia, ... might be very suspicious about Indymedia 
>if they could not read the archives and see things for themselves...

You are reading much into this. I seriously doubt that anyone in West Asia
even knows Binghamton exists, nor cares about reading internal planning
by its members. 

This brings up a question I have about editorial policy, which I will
provide in a seperate email. 

Regards,
Bill Huston