[New-imc] IMC Belgium and proposed new IMC Vlaanderen

[lize]

Hey,

Almost 1 month has passed since I' ve sent out my last mail about my
view/my report on the proceeding of the proposed new IMC Vlaanderen.
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/new-imc/2003-August/004187.html
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/new-imc/2003-August/004300.html

The new imc.vl collective has organized some open meetings and finally
opened an open maillinglist for all communication. 

** the testsite **
newswire : The site is getting more known and some postings are done. A
lot of postings are double (also posted on imc.be or imc.wvl), which I
regret, but still imc.be bashing articles are banned, which seems very
positive to me.
features : a background feature on Cancun was made and from the next 5
features 3 were posted by the imc.wvl collective (all 3 also posted on
imc.be). the other 2 features were made by the imc.vl collective. 

**undone, double and competing work**
My original enthousiasm about an extra (although separately working)
Indymedia workforce in Belgium is slowing down again. 
- Except from 2 or 3 background articles no covering was done of the
protests of Cancun at the imc.vl site, although some members announced
to do this.  
- On 11 september a feature was made with kind of the same info at the
imc.be feature, but talking to guido (imc.be) and vlo (imc.nl) in irc
they were not in favour of linking to the 11 september imc.vl feature
because they considered it 'bad quality' (e.g. the sentence : 'another
11 september is possible' !??) It looks a lot like this feature was made
in a spirit of "let's compete with imc.be and try to do better". Of
course this isn't the right spirit and only creates double work and
energy spilling.

**imc-vlaanderen list**
the communication is now open and done through a mailinglist. 
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-vlaanderen/
- The list is made for process and edito work, but contains a lot of
'psychological' and 'therapeutic' mails between the members of the
collective. My estimation is 3 out of 5 mails are not really about
decision making, which makes this list look more like
'let's-help-ourselve-list' than a list of a collective preparing
themselves to get approved by global as a new IMC.
- the decision process about making a new feature seems to be very slow.
I think (hope) the collective will learn that when covering news, it is
very difficult to first have a coverage strategy and a task division :
before you agreed on this, the news has become old.

**approval by global**
I dunno about the final procedure to be recognized as a new IMC but I
read in the report of the imc.vl meeting that they are planning to go
'online', to make flyers, to do mega outreach, to have an Indymedia url
etc. before the Bombspotting action of 25th October 2003. In fact I
don't read in their report any feedback on how the recognition process
with global is going on. 

**My view**
Of course I am still convinced that we need extra Indymedia activists in
Belgium. I regret deeply both collectives cannot work together. But at
this point, it looks to me like the main motivation of imc.vl is 'to
compete' with imc.be although I don't see a lot of energy spilled on
thorough covering. A lot of discussion among the imc.vl members is what
most energy is spilled on now. 

The competing imc situation in Belgium is a very sad situation and I'm
afraid it will only get worse. The proud of both collectives is
enormous. At the bombspotting action, the two collectives will be
fysically present and will be 'competing' each other in front of all the
peace activists. We are ridiculous.

Regards,
lize