[New-imc] san francisco

[Otto Nomous]

Hi Mike,

On Wednesday, January 7, 2004, at 12:00  AM, Mike R wrote:

> Rereading the 2 letters, the SF people were not so much trying
> retrieve personal items as much as they were taking inventory of items
> belonging to the SF collective.  indybay needs to give SF access to do
> this.

This has already been done. The indybay group had agreed with Josh and 
Ian from sf.indymedia.org to come to the IMC space on December 15th at 
7pm to do exactly that. All of their equipment were boxed up for them. 
They came and took inventory. I will paste Mark Burdett (a member of 
indybay.org)'s explanation below:

"josh and ian came to pick up his equipment, he was also going to turn 
over indybay as per my personal emails with josh, ian and ryan.  but 
when he got there he said he could change over the DNS but hadn't been 
"authorized" by his collective to give us indybay.  he said he felt 
really uncomfortable about it.  but he wanted to wait another day for 
authorization from his collective.  after that if they still wouldn't 
budge he said he would quit that collective and give it to us.  We were 
clear that the situation "wasn't ok" with us since it violated the 
mediation, and we didn't think he or his collective had standing to do 
that.  of course we couldn't make him give it to us, but we wanted to 
be clear that we couldn't consense to what "his collective" was 
demanding.  josh ended up getting angry from all the pressure and just 
leaving, both josh and ian left without taking any of josh's stuff.  we 
actually didn't realize that at first and i was shocked and dismayed 
when i realized that after all that they had left without taking the 
stuff.

this thing about an "attack" isn't true.  there were other people 
around.  ian stayed around after josh left and didn't complain about 
any "attack".

--mark"

> SF's accusation about the press credentials is serious. If indybay is
> encouraging the police to reject the legitimacy of SF's credentials,
> that can seriously endanger them at any press event and hurt in
> general the concept of open media access.  I propose that the
> credential issue be expediently resolved.

Their accusation is absolutely false, of course. I'll let the person 
(Peter) who actually dealt with the press passes speak for himself, 
which I'll paste below:

"This is a personal response to the letter regarding alleged violations 
of the mediation agreement. I want to address some of the 
misapprehensions about my recent interaction with the SFPD.

My goal was to get new cards for our reporters saying SF Bay IMC and 
pave the way for the SF IMC to negotiate to get their own. I started 
out by speaking to two civilians in Public Affairs who questioned the 
right of any of us to continue to have press cards through them. Then I 
was offered an appointment for a face-to-face conversation with Public 
Affairs' Sergeant Neville Gittens who said on the phone that we could 
clear things up. This is what I thought we would do.

Gittens’ agenda, however, was to interrogate me regarding the fake SFPD 
press cards that bear an IMC logo, that someone made for us in 2000. He 
said making the cards amounted to counterfeiting. His feeling was that 
the department had been "mocked" and officers had been endangered. He 
asked me to arrange for the person or persons who made the cards to 
come in and talk with him. AT NO POINT did I tell him I would do this. 
He said without this there would be no more co-operation from his 
department.

I asked him if he would press charges against that person or persons 
and he said he was “not about pressing charges.” I asked him if our 
cards were revoked and he said "no." Without my requesting it, he 
offered we could keep the cards we have.

So I did NOT, in fact, negotiate ANYTHING with Gittens. I answered a 
few questions, said a few innocuous things, heard him out, and left. I 
don’t know of any way I could have better served the IMC in this 
incident than by what I actually did.

I hope this clears some of this shit up. I feel the words I used in 
communication with others in the IMC network about this were really 
twisted in your letter. Using this incident as an example of our 
breaking the mediation agreement is clutching at straws.

Peter Maiden"