[indymediabg@yahoo.com: Re: [New-imc] roll-call]

[Val T]

Being the founder of the original initiative, I think I have to throw my 
2 cents.

First of all, as Blicero wrote the desire of the old collective to move 
on with the initiative is not dead. I also agree that the cooperation 
with the new group could really speed up the process. In fact, people 
from the old group bug me every couple of weeks "where we are with the 
site". The problem is that I'm the only technical person in the old 
group and I did have problems with fully cyrillizing the sf-active, it 
was a little bit above my head. Although the site is 80-90% functional 
there are still some work to be done.

When the people from the "new" group contacted me the other day for the 
first time, I was very excited and I explained to them in detail who are 
we and that we'd love to work together. Here's a translation of part of 
my email to them:

----------------------
Hello, I'm glad that you contacted us! If you are the people behind 
"Anarcho-Resistance", I wrote to you exactly 7 months ago at the 
following addresses:
anarchy at bulgaria.com
anarchy at gbg.bg,
ilzus at anarchy4.every1.net,
NewGenerationForever at abv.bg,
skinflick at hotmail.com

Unfortunately, nobody replied back then, but as they say "better later 
than never" - welcome "on board" :-)

Another group that we tried to establish a contact was the Movement "Che 
Gevara" at  che-sofiabg at mail.com and http://www.che-sofia.hit.bg They 
haven't responded either.

[...]

I started working on the site but cyrillization and the bilingual 
concept - Bulgarian and English - wasn't exactly  trivial for me. If you 
have a good PHP programmer, he/she can be of great help.

If you want to get a better idea of the process, see:
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/NewImcHowTo#NEW_IMC_PROCESS_HOW_IT_WORKS
At the moment we're at step 5 of 10 :-)
See also http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcBulgaria - this is the 
working area of the project, so to speak.

Please give me some name and phone # for contact, so we can speak in 
length and assign the tasks so we can move this initiative further.
---------------------------

Now I received a second email from them with more questions and 
"concerns" but without bothering to tell anything about themselves, even 
not introducing themselves. I spent couple of hours and wrote them a 
long email where I believe I laid out my vision for a friendly 
collaboration based on the Principles of Unity. I hope this time they'll 
open up a little bit and accept the offer to work together.

Again, the thing that bothers me is that I contacted them 7 months ago 
and back then they didn't respond. But now they claim:
We have discussed this  idea for a long time. We have looked for other 
groups and people to cooperate with for realization of Indimedia 
Bulgaria, but finally we decided to start this project alone (with 
individuals from some environmental groups), because there were no other 
serious interested people and groups.

One of the people in our group is Alexander Vanchev who hosts and 
maintains the Bulgarian branch of Z Magazine http://radr.net/ZBG
I just spoke with him and he told me he knows many of the people behind 
"Anarcho-Resistance" and spoke highly of them. He even hosted a mirror 
of their site some time ago. He mentioned someone "Mitaka" from that 
group. If he is really the guy we're dealing here with, Alex hopes 
things will work out.

On the other hand, there's always the possibility that these are some 
totally different group of anarchists.

By the way, Blicero, no, we're NOT "composed mainly of marxists". In 
fact, we already had similar exchange with you on 08/09/03 and I 
explained to you that this is simply not true. But I guess once they put 
the label on you, it sticks :-) I personally consider myself an 
anarchist. However, my views evolved a lot (I think) since the old days, 
so I don't like to use this labeling because it immeaditly limits the 
base of people I can work with and brings a lot of preconceived notions. 
The other two more active people in the group, Alex and Atanas, are not 
Marxists either. Actually, there's a whole group around Atanas that none 
of them are Marxists either.

Anyway, I'll let you know how things develop.

Val


Blicero wrote:

>On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 11:30:42AM +0800, Shayne O'Neill wrote:
>  
>
>>If the old collective is dead, I think its a shoe in that the site be
>>transfered over to the new mob......
>>
>>Nice e-zines btw.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>ok
>i have more time i will go into detail
>the old group requesting was small but quite determined
>and we set up together the whole site
>they were in the phase of outreach
>
>so i don't think the desire of the old collective to setup an imc is dead
>and the cooperation with the new group i think could be really a speeding up of
>the process
>
>the problem i fear is that the old group is composed mainly of marxists while
>the new group is composed of anarchists
>so i would like that the new group tries hard to contact the old group and see
>if it's possible to develop a work together
>
>i think this has always been the process for a new imc to start :)
>
>ciao
>blicero
>
>ps: bart i can get in contact with the new group and discuss this directly with
>them . Can u point me at the start-up of this new bulgaria imc process?
>
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