[New-imc] Draft Principles of Unity of IMC-Pilipinas

[boud]

hi tonyo,
   i think that if you want to be accepted as part of a non-hierarchical
indymedia collective, whether IMC Pilipinas or IMC Manila, you are going
to have to make more effort to build up trust - by showing in practice
that you accept open, non-hierarchical organising methods.

Back in Jan/Feb 2003, you failed to carry out a simple consensed-on decision
as mailing list administrator:

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-pilipinas/2003-February/000025.html

Maybe that was just a misunderstanding, but if you want to try to organise
indymedia, there are going to be many, many small decisions like this. For a 
mailing list, it's not that drastic if there's a problem, but when it comes
to editorial decisions on sensitive subjects - when to hide an article or not,
what the exact wording and links in a central column feature should be - things
are just going to turn into power struggles if people cannot build up trust.

If you make an effort, i'm sure you could earn the respect of the collective,
but it probably requires being honest about power structures.

It is certainly possible for individuals from hierarchical leftist
groups to participate in Indymedia, there are even many members of
political parties in some indymedia collectives. (In IMC PL the
hierarchical leftists support Indymedia, but only post to the newswire
- they haven't tried to dominate. :)) But AFAIK this gets discussed
openly, and the people from hierarchical groups show, by practice, and
by accepting certain organising methods, that *within the indymedia
context*, they accept non-hierarchy.

AFAIK, you are active in a big coalition of grassroots leftist groups - it would
be great if people from these groups could contribute to IMC Pilipinas or
IMC Manila. 

In any case, it looks like the only indymedia collective so far organised
in Pilipinas is the Quezon City group. If some of your members live in Manila,
i would strongly suggest they participate in some meetings of the group - but
they should be sensitive about questions of non-authoritarianism, decentralisation,
etc. and show that they accept being part of a consensual, non-hierarchical group.

i think shayne from perth is helping the quezon city group organise, i haven't
been watching closely - but my impression is that the group is probably close
to being ready - in any case, i'm sure shayne will help there.


everyone at IMC Pilipinas:

IMHO, the idea of creating IMC Manila rather than IMC Pilipinas is
definitely a good idea, since it seems to reflect the reality of the
group.

To create the list imc-manila, just fill out the form at

http://newlist.indymedia.org 

and in the "any other comments" box you can say something like 

"The most active people in the imc-pilipinas group made a local
decision to be IMC Manila rather than IMC Pilipinas, so we'd like to
make a new list imc-manila, but leave the old list running for general
coordination between IMC Manila and any other local Pilipinas groups
who get organised."

And a general reminder:
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/MembershipCriteria
>  NETWORK MEMBERSHIP 1. Network Membership is open to any group that
> accepts the above criteria for membership. In the case of several
> requests from the same city or region, we will encourage them to meet
> and work together.

solidarity
boud

PS: for new-imc people, the IMC Manila group have their 
principles of unity responses (22 July 2003) and editorial policy
on the TWiki:

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcPilipinas#THE_NEW_PRINCIPLES_OF_UNITY_disc
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcPilipinas#EDITORIAL_POLICY

so probably the next thing is to check off the 
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/MembershipCriteria


On Thu, 24 Jul 2003, tonyo cruz wrote:

> Hi!
> 
> Here is a draft being discussed offline and online. Some of these are 
> culled from Principles of Unity of other IMCs as well as from the draft 
> that was previously posted.
> 
> For our collective consideration.
> 
> STR,
> Tonyo
> 
> 
> 
> Proposed Principles of Unity of IMC-Pilipinas
> 
> 1. IMC-Pilipinas aims to establish and maintain a non-profit, 
> non-corporate, pro-people Independent Media Center for the Philippines that 
> will uphold and advance the struggle against oppression and exploitation 
> (especially by forces of imperialist globalization and war), a fight shared 
> by the Filipino and the world’s peoples.