[New-imc] Intro from Cville VA

[lexus51 at juno.com]

Hello, 
I am new to this list. What follows is an introduction, first of myself,
then of the incipient Cville indymedia organization in Charlottesville
(Cville) Virginia, USA.

My name is Alexis. I have lived in central VA for 17 years, at Twin Oaks
community (the largest secular income sharing commune in the country) for
8 years, and in Charlottesville for 9 years. I have worked on a lot of
different evironmental and social justice issues. I was part of a group
that fought a high-voltage power line going across several states,
including VA. I worked (successfully) to put bike lanes in Cville. I led
a campaign to kill a proposed new walmart here, and started a community
economy organization (tradelocal.org). I have worked in local electoral
politics, to throw our neoliberal democrats and bring  in more
progressive people. I have built the first strawbale house in Cville,
which is an environmental demostration house, an activist  hub, and an
asylum for high-functioning crazy people. I have some electronics
background, and computer experience with html, linux, and php, but really
don't like working with computers, but luckily we got lots of radical
geeks around here. I have traveled the east and west coasts of the US and
worked short-term with a lot of grassroots groups. My interest in
indepedent media stems from, forgive me for being obvious, but the
mainstream media is obscenely biased in the corporate direction at this
piont. I have found that with local issues, which is mostly what I have
worked on, the local media is helpful. But with larger issues concerning
the environment or foreign policy, the mainstream media isn't just a lost
cause, they are unabashedly cheerleading the warmongers.  I really want
to do a multi-level blast here, make as much noise on as many levels as
possible, to get out real information to people. Should be interesting to
see what happens....

Brief intro to Cville indymedia (forming)
A formal introduction that addresses specific questions about who we are
and what we plan to do will come later. This is a brief intro just to let
the reader know we are here.

Cville is progressive for Virginia, which isn't saying much. But we do
have an energetic core of people here who want to make a difference. We
have people from a number of social justice and environmental groups who
are excited about a media center. We  have people with computer skills
(lots), video, graphic, print, radio. We have a good collection of
expertise. We have plans to more fully integrate some of the local social
justice groups, but that is just getting started really. We have had a
couple of small events, a few potlucks and a video showing (of the KM 0
about cancun). We are have reviewed the online "new indymedia" documents.
We are drafting our own visions statement, organizational princples etc,
partly as a matter of becoming an "official" indymedia, and partly
because we need to do that for ourselves. 
We will post our vision statement etc. at an appropriate time.
be well
alexis

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