[New-imc] task rotation - quitting new-imc to be more local

[boud]

<new-imc,imc-romania>

hi everyone,
   i've been active in the new-imc working group for 2 years now - since
August 2001. 

In August 2001, there were no IMCs in Asia (apart from IMC Israel, in
West Asia), and the only IMC in central/eastern europe was IMC Prague,
which didn't have a genuine local collective. 

And there was no indymedia collective where i live (Torun, Poland).

Now, there are several functioning IMCs in South, East and South-East
Asia (Oceania ;), and half-a-dozen functioning IMCs in CE Europe:

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcCEEurope

including IMC Poland and what might eventually turn into a local IMC
Torun collective.

i feel i've done my share of work in helping some of these new IMCs
get going, and in helping IMC France get through its crisis and reform
as a horizontal network of city IMCs, so now i'd like to get more
involved in my local IMC. 

IMHO, IMC PL has started to have some real effects on the activist
community, acting as a catalyst, helping communication, inspiring
alternative websites, and also providing new information for debate on
some issues in the (tiny) community, such as the issue of how much
free speech is acceptable. It also has had a role in clarifying some
elements of the debate between "acting local" and fascism. A
widely distributed magazine, "Obywatel" (citizen), which is (was!)
widely respected by activists as a radical publication analysing and
opposing economic globalisation, published an article by Horst Mahler.
Not everyone agreed on whether this was acceptable or not in the name
of free speech, but when it was made clear that Horst Mahler 
had given a talk "The Final Solution: Solving the Jewish Problem"
http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/mahler/
there was not much left to debate. (This was only one element of the
"Obywatel" debate, but to me it was the clearest.)

IMHO we (in IMC PL) haven't really started doing outreach to
grassroots groups, we've only networked more or less among people,
nearly all young, perceiving themselves as activists. And we still
have a lot of work to do to get the basics of face-to-face meetings
going in a way which are genuinely non-hierarchical.

And the fact that our server has been offline for 6 days and we haven't
organised yet to do anything shows that as a group we are not yet as
functional as we really need to be...

On the positive side, for anybody who read the global feature on the
homeless people in the house Guliwer, they are no longer threatened 
with eviction. It seems that the Soros foundation was not willing to
risk the publicity of evicting homeless people, and so is now "sponsoring"
Guliwer rather than evicting it :). (This is not an official report, BTW,
i'm just summarising my interpretation.)

Anyway, it's time i quit new-imc and act local. Most of my experience in
the group (learnt and copied from others) is documented "howto" style
on the TWiki
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/NewImc

and i've just added a brief history of IMCs in India:
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcIndia

The World Social Forum in Jan 2004 will be in Mumbai - and chances
are new-imc volunteers will have to deal with more demands by
people who insist on having their collective urgently recognised without
actually going through a minimum of organising. (People wanted 
IMC Hyderabad for the Asian Social Forum, claiming that it would keep
going afterwards, but after a few days they disappeared into thin air
and we have a ghost mailing list).

So if people ask, just point to the above page - i invited imc-india
and imc-mumbai lists to correct/improve the TWiki page.

The only IMC i'm still "officially" responsible for is IMC Romania,
(which is why i'm cc-ing to imc-romania), and i think they're now well
enough into the process that when they're ready to submit their
documents, they should be easy for any volunteer in the group to
do the formalities - no need to wait for me.

So i'm unsubscribing from new-imc, but you can find me around more
locally (imc-pl-torun at lists.indymedia.org) if you're wondering
where i am :).

i should say thanks to everyone for the way we've worked together.
The group has been quiet for about half a year, but i think it's
continuing to develop one of the crucial communication nodes of the
network for making the world a better place.

BTW, Torun is the city where a famous revolutionary was born: Nicolaus
Copernicus ;) .

solidarity
boud