No subject

    The strength of the IMC as a concept comes directly from its
    organizational structure; namely, a decentralized network of
    **autonomous** collectives... we have local IMC's throughout the 
    world that are **autonomous** in their decision making...

WTF does "autonomous" mean, if we can't decide local policies
about how many people we have in our group and how often we
meet, and even if we do meet? 

Are you all a lefty-liberal-progressive-alternative media
collective, or some kind of fascist borg imposing all kinds
of arbitrary rules upon new people for no good reason?

>> We have that, and a website. http://binghamtonindy.org. In fact,
>> we were in the DNS as binghamton.indymedia.org for about 1 day, 
>> but now that's been removed for some reason. 
>
>The reason DNS was taken down is because binghamton is not an IMC yet.

That is a tautology, circular reasoning. Again: can someone clearly
state what we need to do to proceed? Also, please refer to some
online documentation if you could, because these rules seem arbitrary
to me.

>An IMC consists of several people, typically atleast a dozen, who have
>an equal part in the decidion making process, meet regularly, and
>collectivly make decidions.

Please cite some online docs which states how many people an 
IMC needs to have. This rule, if it in fact is a rule, means that 
there will probably never be IMCs in small towns, because of
failure to meet some arbitrary number of members.

Not every place is an Ithaca, Austin, SF, or Madison. Binghamton
is a pretty conservative place. That all said, I am on the
Media Access Committee of the local Broome County Network of
Peace and Social Justice Coalition, which represents about 20 
groups. We have regular meetings, and media issues are a big
part. 

>DNS, and inclusion on the cities list, is not a goal.  It's a result.

It may not be a goal for you; you are already there. It DOES happen
to be a goal for me for 2 reasons, already stated:

   1) I've already advertised content on binghamton.indymedia.org
      before we got yanked from the DNS. This makes us look bad
      to the right-wingers in town we are trying to counter.

   2) The website will be an organizing tool

>That's awesome, then you already have connections with the people who
>are likely to help you. Next advertise to these groups that a meeting is
>going to happen and that anyone who's interested in creating an IMC
>should come.  You should not say "join me", because there currently is
>no group to join.  

There IS a group! You aren't listening. There are perhaps 200 members
of local Peace and Social justice groups locally, and I belong to 
a coalition of 20 member organizations, which I serve as media-access
coordinator on a committee of 6 people. These 6 people (with webmaster
Rick) ARE the Binghamton Indymedia Center. What more is necessary????

>Here's an example of what I'm trying to help you avoid (from a recent
>posting on the imc-ithaca list, from one of it's female members):
>
>> why am i not surprised that it's 2 men who "started" the imc in
>> binghamton and are invited to come to ithaca and talk with the imc
>> here about problems encountered over the last 11 months? are the
>> remaining imc men prepared to relate the difficulties the imc has had
>> with the way it alienates womyn? great.

Well, I'm not sure what problems you've faced there, but whomever the
speaker is should not pre-judge my character by the fact that my gonads
are external ;^) I'm rather offended by the sexist prejudice exhibited
by a speaker who presumably been victimized by such. This is not 
a way to help stop gender-based discriminiation, it seems to me.

>Once the IMC
>exists, once the website is up, you're going to have a ton of people
>joining the IMC - many of whom are not dedicated to making it happen but
>rather will simply want to control how it happens, if you don't have a
>good foundation these people will cause the same things to happen there
>as have happened everywhere else.  

Again: AUTONOMY. Let us solve our own problems once they occur. Please.
Offer you assistance when we cry for help. Mentor us. 

But why prevent us from entering the collective due to some hypothetical 
problem which we presently DON'T face and may never face? 

>That's why the IMC doesn't exist yet.  That's why the DNS was taken
>down after it was mistakenly put up.  You need a group of people to get
>together and collectivly create the IMC, not get people to join you in
>the effort you have started.  

You have framed this in a way where it is impossible to proceed.

To new IMCs ever give up? Or does the borg-fascist collective just
eventually admit them after a suitable amount of whining over the
arbitrary rules?

Frustrated,
Bill Huston

--
Bill Huston

Herbivore Hangout:        http://vegdot.org
Binghamton Public Access: http://BinghamtonPublicAccess.org
Public Access TV general: http://PublicAccessTV.net
Broome County PeaceNet:   http://bcpeace.vegdot.org

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed,
citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only
thing that ever has. -- Margaret Mead



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