[New-imc] Online form: Proposed new IMC! (imc athens)

[tfraley at uga.edu]

Submitted by: todd fraley <tfraley at uga.edu> on Thursday, September 4th, 2003 @ 9:50:59 am (-0700)

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Online Form Fields
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imc_name:
imc athens

city:
athens

state:
ga

country:
usa

contact_name:
todd fraley

contact_email:
tfraley at uga.edu

contact_phone:


tech_name:
scott eustis

tech_email:
thurston at uga.edu

tech_phone:


supporting_groups:
Athens Common Ground 

regional_focus:
yes

issue_focus:
yes

event_focus:
yes

critical_dates:
Sept 11th Showing of GNN\'s Sept 11th analysis and other 

resources:
We don\'t have many computer or silicon-network resources, 
although the university holds those resources, yet to be 
sufficiently tapped; we are just beginning to accumulate 
technical resources for ourselves for the purposes of 
deconstructing the corporate media bias.  We will try, 
however, to use our newbie status to our advantage, by 
showing everyone we can how to generate media, in order to 
foster local voices who are able to critique media from the 
perspective of those who have generated it. 


outreach:
For now, we hope to help coordinate volunteers and workers at local and alternative media outlets, such as Athens Weekly News and WUOG 90.5fm, in order to foster and spread local and alternative voices.  We also have a community focus, sponsoring events and screenings at bars, clubs, and 
restaurants; perhaps more than other IMC\'s; but we feel that there is a lot of work to be done internally in Athens to bring political discourse, opinion, and discussion down from our resident ivory tower and into the bars and plazas, and from the plazas into our homes and lives. 

We are planning public showings of films to which all are 
invited--publicly by flyering; we are also affilitated with 
Common Ground Athens, a imminent 501c3 Activist and Community Resource Center / Infoshop coordinating local community centers and issue-focused community and activist groups.  one of the principles of Common Ground Athens is to promote public political discourse across the multitude of lines drawn onto and that one can draw around oneself in the United States, including culture, class, race, gender, and political affiliation.  We hope to help our Common Ground find its voice. 


introductory_statement:
During this most recent bombing run and subsequent media 
spectacle in Iraq, it has become apparent to us how 
purposefully blind the corporate media can be to items that 
may be politically unpleasant, and how we must speak out 
ourselves if no one speaks for us, on the street and over the 
airwaves.  The movement of the FCC to consolidate the 
corporate media of the u.s.a. even further is cause for even 
more alarm.  We in AthensGAusa have worked to attain access 
to venues and media outlets in our community; we seek to 
strengthen ties among the expert voices within the university 
that are ignored or misconstrued; and also recognize the 
importance of empowering ourselves and others to become the 
grassroots media; in order to foster the free flow of 
information into, within, and out of our community--that free 
flow of information so necessary for democracy.   

In becoming an IMC, we wish to strengthen our fledgling group- 
-and though ourselves, our community--with an existing and 
growing network of like-minded individuals around the globe.   
Athens is a town with a high turnover of young people who 
could participate in local and alternative media, and the 
Indymedia name is one that is either generally known to or 
readily accepted by people with the values we seek and seek 
to instill into the mind-space of our town, and through our 
town, to all of yours.  Thanks for being, Indymedia!