[New-imc] Re: IMC-Binghamton

[Bill Huston]

Thus spake Arc:
>I will clairify.  There is exactly one person (Bill) plus one remote
>tech which he has never met in person or on phone.  

Arc, this is a mischaracterization!! I have told you repeatedly
that I am associated with MANY local people and peace groups.
I am chair of the Media Access Committee of the Broome County
Network for Peace and Socical Justice, which represents
about 20 local organizations and perhaps 200 local activists.

Just yesterday I met with Tim Grippen, who's non-profit Opportunities
for Broome publishes the Labor Community Reporter, a local print-only
indy newspaper, about publishing his content online as part of our
local indymedia project.

>This tech lives in a
>neiboring city, Vestal, and claims to be deaf and thus cannot talk
>on phone.  This is also the tech that setup and maintains the website.

What an interesting choice of words!  

   "He claims to be deaf"  vs. "He is deaf"

You make it sound like Rick is lying or his word is suspect! Why?

>Bill has also expressed a strong rejection to having regular meetings or
>even attempting to outreach to more people before the IMC becomes
>official. 

NO I HAVENT! I have NO objections to outreach and meetings! I think
they are a fine idea. I just would like to be added BACK into the
DNS because I have important content to syndicate (Scott Ritter
audio, and perhaps transcript, local coverage of the Jan 18-19
events, etc)


>To stay focused on this application (IMC-Binghamton):
>I don't feel that I ever expressed this as a requirement, however,
>because Bill has no previous experience with Indymedia or even our basic
>organizational model having him meet with some of us and see how IMCs
>generally work would be a really good thing in my opinion.

I agree, for the near future. But this should not block our being
admitted into the collective now.

>I believe, atleast in this case, that the best way to go forward with
>this is for Bill to visit another IMC or two and see how we operate.  I
>invited him to meet with people here, and also if he's going to DC I
>offered to introduce him to some of the DC-IMC folk.  

I will be in DC, but may not be able to seperate from my group. However,
contact info for the DC group would be appreciated.

>Without him
>realising the need to have other people involved and start having IMC
>meetings I think this application is pretty doomed.

You have doomed us from the beginning by setting up arbitrary rules
about how our local IMC should operate. I am not opposed to meetings,
outreach, etc. But meetings which include my deaf webmaster are 
unecessary and counterproductive. Please don't suggest that we
MUST meet in person so that he can speak to me in a language
which I don't understand (sign language) because, frankly,
that's fucked up.

AUTONOMY! The word is mentioned several times on the new-imc web
page. "We are a collective of autonomous groups". Oh really. That
means IMC Binghamton should have the power to estabilish our own
policies for meetings, etc. Is autonomy a core IMC principle, or is
it a false veneer? Like Bush saying, "We're a peaceful nation" as we
bomb Afghanistan.

>As far as my earlier proposal I am in no way trying to impose that on
>IMC-Binghamton.  

Funny. It sounds as if you are blocking our admittance until
we follow some rules about meetings and number of members 
which is so vague as to being impossible to follow.


>Since the cities are so close and our
>memberships will often mix I also think it's important to build
>solidarity between the two IMCs right from the start.  

This is a fine idea. But we have important content to syndicate
NOW. We are organized NOW. The present lack of these meetings
should not block our admittance.

>I, for one, think having another IMC so close to us would be totally
>awesome and want to do whatever I can to make it happen.  Some of the
>other people here in Ithaca have expressed similar enthusiasm for it.

Great. Can we move forward? I propose/request/beg to be re-added to the DNS. 

   1: We need this as an organizational tool
   2: We have already posted URLs to Binghamton.Indymedia.org on
      local weblogs before we were yanked from DNS. There is an
      upcoming public access presentation (Scott Ritter video)
      which also mentions this URL.
   3: We have important content to syndicate.

The fact that our site appears down (because DNS doesn't resolve)
appears real bad, especially since one of these (BCVoice) is
run by and read by a bunch of neanderthal right-wing conservative
warmongers. Being yanked from the DNS makes us look like we are
either incompetent or disorganized.

Who blocks my request to add binghamton.indymedia.org back to
DNS?


Best Regards,
Bill Huston