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

[Petros]

from Evan's most recent letter:

> Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 
> From: evan at protest.net
> Subject: Re: [New-imc] Online form: Proposed new IMC! ()


> ........looking at indymedia as a primarily a website, and
> not a form or organization for media activism. My other concerns are that
> the supporting groups are mostly internationals and profesionalized
> institutional NGO's.
> 
> Where indymedia has worked in the global south such as argentina, brazil,
> ecuador, and south africa it has been because there were strong local lead
> organizing and a lot of focus on doing work which is not online. There
> have been a number of conflicts related to the role of first world NGO's
> and indymedia in the global south.
> 
> This is not to say that something couldn't be done, just that i think it's
> important to address these issues ............


> in solidarity,
> evan
> --------------


Hi,

I'm glad Evan addressed this. Thanks!
I feel that we only pay attention to this problem once or 
twice a year (and only if *severe* problems occur), meaning 
that we still don't have a good policy for preventing it, or 
for solving it.

It's a repeated pattern, and it influences a lot which 
happens "in the name of" indymedia around the world. The 
truth is that the same problem occurs in the US and Europe, 
but political life is so multi- layered that the problem is 
almost invisible.

But it is certainly visible in our relationships with 
emerging (and existing) imc groups in the third world/ 
developing world.

In our relationships with emerging (and existing) imc groups 
in the third world, especially in areas where complex and 
intense political conflict occurs, which is mostly beyond 
the understanding of our imc colleagues in the US and 
Western Europe, we tend to make terrible blunders, and we 
*still* try to deny their significance. A recent example is 
the shamefull project which was sold to us as "imc-Baghdad", 
which really was a direct intervention by westerners riding 
into the country on the heels of a US invasion. Do you ever 
wonder why the resistance has not published a single 
communique through the pages of those people who were to be 
our "future imc" people there? Do you ever wonder about the 
thousands of dollars' worth of aid which was raised and 
funnelled through imc resources for that project, and we 
still can't figure out if it has *any* relation to imc at all?

We still have a mess in our hands with that effort because 
of the way it was handled. To this day, none of our imc 
colleagues wants to take responsibility for the mistaken 
policies we followed regarding Baghdad (and as the new-imc 
work-group we allowed those mistaken policies to take place 
"in the name of" indymedia). As a result of all this, we are 
still unable to restart a process (which already failed once 
there) to set up an imc, because our presence in Baghdad has 
been discredited by our actions *and*  by our refusal to see 
what we did wrong (terribly wrong, if you ask me).

Even though some really good people from imc made efforts 
(even travelled there), to help salvage our IndyMedia 
presence in Baghdad, it keeps proving impossible to set it 
up correctly because we have not aknowledged our mistakes 
and all of our steps keep including misdirected policies 
mixed in with our best motives.

Anyway, the point is not Baghdad, but what *we* do, how *we* 
view our alliances with emerging imc groups in the rest of 
the planet, especially at the "hot spots".

Some of you may remember the blunders and fiasco around the 
setting up of the Palestine imc. We *still* suffer of those 
problems, and as some of you may know, every effort we make 
to correct our path in that relationship, falls on its face.

Again, I am referring to political and procedural problems, 
not to technical ones (those can be solved when we have 
sensible co-operation.) A prime manifestation of the problem 
is absense of co-operation itself, and our inability to face it.

Nigeria imc is another case in point. Please look it up if 
you like. Do you remember the arguments we had over it? Has 
there been any interest to re-visit those concepts, to see 
what we did wrong? Our mistakes keep plaguing us, and who 
loses? IndyMedia becomes discredited in the eyes of 
potential allies and friends because the one thing we 
*could* control, that is, who exactly we build our alliances 
with, is something to which we still don't realy want to pay 
too much attention. From the outside, our process looks as 
if we do just the bare minimum in order to "get it over with".

Once you start looking at our relationships with imc groups 
outside of Western Europe and the US, especially Middle 
East, Africa, Asia, we have problems. These are problems 
which are *essentially* a reflection of what Evan identified 
above: westerners chosing local allies with the wrong 
criteria, and also westerners not really knowing where they 
themselves are at, regarding the political process of many 
of our countries.

The solution is to give better shape to our work by 
deepening its political qualities. How can anyone forget 
that two years ago we almost approved an imc in northern 
iraq, in the middle of an area entirely controlled by 
right-wing contras, flooded by US "advisors" ?

We need to see our work primarily as political, that is, 
guided by political principles which extend into the arena 
of media and communication, not the other way around. 
IndyMedia is in the danger of becoming a media outlet with 
some "smattering" of politics - I don't mean the content of 
our pages or videos, but in the forms of organization we 
cultivate.

So, I would like to ask (again) that we start seeing the 
work of the new-imc as primarily political. We are in the 
business of helping expand a political organization which is 
the assemblage of networks of radical media workers who 
operate the unofficial/ semi-official organs of expression 
of the globalised resistance movement. Working in this 
section/ wing of the Liberation Movement, requires of us to 
build bonds with new colleagues on the basis of politics, 
*not* on  the basis of whether they know how to operate a 
server.

The explorations required to build a *minimum* bridge of 
familiarity with people who are unknown to us in distant 
parts of the earth, can not be done in a few days. And with 
each country, with each movement, with each region, there 
are particularities which can *never* be reduced to "does 
anyone object to this? no? approved!". It is criminal that 
we end up behaving like a committee whose role is to just 
smack a rubber stamp at the bottom of an application.

We are global and local political activists. I've been on 
this list for years, helping out occasionally if 
applications come in from the Middle East and Eastern 
Mediterranean parts of the world (not very many). I read 
everything - everything! - and have hardly heard of any (or 
very little) talk of politics among us, or with our 
perspective colleagues of emerging imc groups. There's a 
whole process of "feeling out" individuals and organizations 
which we should be incorporating in our process, but for 
some reason we are reluctant. I don't understand that.

I would like to see us do this work, as if it matters.

Petros
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