[New-imc]

Thu May 29 19:14:48 PDT 2003

Greetings:

Summary:

My name is Neil Oolie. I am a member of Ithaca's IndyMedia. We have had a lot of internal problems and I frequently find myself disagreeing with Arc and Eric, and they on occasion with each other. I feel a certain sympathy with the sentiment regards removing Arc and Eric/Freedom from this list. That said I feel I must ask you to reconsider removing either or both of them from this list as participants.

1) An Intro of myself. Below is part of my intro to the us-process list:

----- snip -----

Before getting involved with Indymedia I was involved with a local
organization, The Progressive Media Alliance. I only knew the difference
between the corporate owned media, local public radio and tv, a few
small local papers and the campus papers I had been involved in at the
University of Buffalo (20 some odd years ago).

----- snip -----

The full intro is at http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-us-process/2003-May/000044.html

In response Dave's question of age I am 48.

Admittedly, I have at been viewed at times as being equally verbose and controversial as everyone else in our group, as well as chrystine, a former ithican who has also been active on this list.

2) I looked at this list at the behest of Brian, another Imc-Ithaca member. We are at the beginning of starting a formal conflict resolution process with an outside person very familiar with conflict resolution and in our discussion this list came up. Previously I only subscribed to the imc-process list and the us sub list.

I was scanning the subjects and noticed the proposal to drop Arc and Eric from the list. I feel that dropping someone from a working group in this manner is just a whisker shy of the death penalty. The problem is that in a world where we are striving for diversity of opinion and inclusiveness we are pushing out people with whom we disagree, mainly because of communication style, out of a group. What does this say about tolerance.

Further while Arc is not our liaison Eric is our agreed upon liaison. It can be perceived as ejecting Ithaca.

I do not think we want to be viewed as a monolithic system that kicks out those with whom we have problems or denies the voice of others access to be heard. This is, in my opinion one of the services IndyMedia offers which is lacking in the rest of our "main stream media"

I am not blocking this proposal, I am asking that the initiator consider withdrawing the proposal.

>From Dragon:

principle #6 - http://docs.indymedia.org/twiki/bin/view/Global/PrinciplesOfUnity

"6. All IMC's recognize the importance of process to social change and are
committed to the development of non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian
relationships, from interpersonal relationships to group dynamics.
Therefore, shall organize themselves collectively and be committed to the
principle of consensus decision making and the development of a direct,
participatory democratic process] that is transparent to its membership."

One of the aspects of the above includes, in my opinion, a commitment to try to go out of our way to work with people with whom we have political or personal differences instead of using process to try to exclude them or dictate their involvement. You may not, as i frequently do not, agree with or appreciate their method of communication, but to kick them out is a whole other story.

3) As part of my attempt to help my Imc resolve its issues, and before I looked at this list, I had already decided to ask Eric/Freedom to resign as liaison. One of the things I see is his not formally separating his own issues from the Imc-Ithaca issues. This would partly be for our conflict resolution stuff, as well as a response to what I have seen on the process and us-process lists. Until then he is our accepted liaison. There have been other posts asking that he not be considered such, but we did have consensus at two successive meetings.

Tho the original proposal only mentioned Arc I did see Eric mentioned in a later posts by gekked and boud. Later posts made no distinction between the two individuals. While this may have been an oversight it does cloud the issue. Removing Arc, or anyone not a liaison is one thing, but removing some one who has been concensed upon and (nominally at least) speaks for an accepted IMC is something else.  

4) As I have read these lists and seen several people ask that others be eliminated from them I realized that there are problems in paradise that are not being addressed. To some IndyMedia has been around all their adult life. To me IndyMedia is a very new and fragile organization. As a plant can grow to quickly and wind up with a spindly stem unable to support itself so can we. When I was first becoming involved I noticed a definite lack of purpose or goal in our philosophy. Two things come up in Ithaca. Are we here to provide the stories/media (paraphrased from one of chrystines posts/suggestions to Eric) or are we here to provide the forum or means for these to be expressed.

The very founding of IndyMedia reflects this. From what I have seen IndyMedia, as we know it, started not with what happened in Seattle, but with the switch not being turned off. IndyMedia is now world wide and is still experiencing it's birth. I would like to know how the originators feel about these issues.

Banning someone from a list like this sets a precedent that will be remembered. I would ask patience. If you do not like Arc then delete his posts from your own email. Do not deny others his council. There are times when you may not like what he says, but this does not mean others will feel his issues are irrelevant. At times the relevance is more apparent after the passage of time.  

Further there is a pattern in these requests. To me it is apparent that we want to be viewed in a certain light. To this end we are being asked to exclude those who do not 'fit in' to our accepted model. But this is contrasted with our desire for openness. Before we start on this road we might discuss the implications of, among other things, excluding whole classes of people who are not like us.

I know this is asking a lot of some people, but as we are working hard to make something good happen lets not be lazy about the work involved in keeping different voices involved.

5) The date for a decision is today. This is proposed by someone with the apparent ability to make it happen and we have been told that if there isn't significant disagreement s/he will make it so. I view there being an inherent conflict of interest in this and am asking that the person making any proposal of this type not be involved in make the final decision or carrying out the judgment of the group.

6) I apologize for the rambling nature of this post. I am not much of a writer. Before I submitted this post i did try to join the list. I do not know the policy of this list re: submissions by non list members, but I hope the moderators will understand Why I am posting and allow it through.

Some view the current state of the US, if not the world as us versus them. Lets try to avoid making it us versus us as well.

In solidarity,

Neil
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