Baltimore IMC : http://www.baltimoreimc.org
LOCAL Commentary :: Media
John's Indyconference Dispatch #1
Author
- John Duda
Date Created
- 19 Feb 2005
Indymedia doesn't meet often. Getting everyone scattered throughout the world, or even throughout a single continent, in the same place, at the same time, when you are trying to gather together a dispersed network of individuals and autonomous collectives, and with little to none in the way of money to make this happen, has proved difficult.
The usual lure is a major counter-summit or protest, when the movement converges, so does Indymedia, but amid the tear gas and the frantic recabling of the temporary radio studio, relaxed long-term discussions of vision and structure usually fail to manifest themselves.
This weekend in Austin there's a space and a time to have some of these discussions: about a 125 people have made it to Texas as part of the Indyconference, which is proving to be a mixture of a somewhat straightforward conference on alternative media with a more freewheeling parallel track of unofficial IMC network meetings and workshops. Sadly, whether due to lack of funding or communication, most of the imc's and imcsista's here are from the U.S. But while not ideal, that's ok, there's a lot to be talked about and a lot of information to share just among the dozens of imc's in this country. Even finally be able to connect a real face to an irc nick or an email address you've been working alongside for years is satisfying and strangely vertiginous.
The usual lure is a major counter-summit or protest, when the movement converges, so does Indymedia, but amid the tear gas and the frantic recabling of the temporary radio studio, relaxed long-term discussions of vision and structure usually fail to manifest themselves.
This weekend in Austin there's a space and a time to have some of these discussions: about a 125 people have made it to Texas as part of the Indyconference, which is proving to be a mixture of a somewhat straightforward conference on alternative media with a more freewheeling parallel track of unofficial IMC network meetings and workshops. Sadly, whether due to lack of funding or communication, most of the imc's and imcsista's here are from the U.S. But while not ideal, that's ok, there's a lot to be talked about and a lot of information to share just among the dozens of imc's in this country. Even finally be able to connect a real face to an irc nick or an email address you've been working alongside for years is satisfying and strangely vertiginous.
Day 1 saw, among other simultaneous workshops, an informal, semi-structured open discussion where people from all over the country shared their reflections, both positive and negative, on where indymedia is at, how it got there, and where it's going. Since the network hasn't officially convened, in person and as a decsion making assembly, since 2001 (!), much of the vision of indymedia as a project and as a political intervention has been transmitted informally, by examples, following circuits of colloboration and mutual aid, hashed out while waiting with camera in hand for the police line to start moving against the demonstration or elaborated while debugging running code in the chat.
The questions raised by the five years of indymedia growth and development as an intercontinental media network obviously didn't get resolved in this one two hour encounter, but it's refreshing to at least have them been put on the table.
What is Indymedia anyway? Are we "alternative journalists"? Or "media activists"? Do we produce independent news, or facilitate independent news production? Or maybe Indymedia is a concrete exercise in media critique, not so much offering an alternative as a corrective? The most powerful story of the session had to be when someone explained how they had come to Indymedia, and how this encounter had literally saved their lives, and the lives of the indigenous community in southern Mexico that they were living in as a human shield against paramilitary violence. A story, posted onto Indymedia spread the word about imminent repression far enough and mobilized enough concern around the world that the violence to come was prevented. Is it more useful to think of Indymedia not primarily as a media project at all, but as a part of a sort of distributed nervous system for globalized social movement?
How open are our sites and our collectives? Is there a single political line that Indymedia and Indymedia's more or less adhere to? Or a perceived line? Do we need to focus our politics, or broaden them? Will striving for higher levels of professionalism draw more people in, or keep people out? To be very blunt, why is Indymedia, at least in North America, so overwhelmingly white, and how do we change this? Is Indymedia functioning as a media project reaching outside the closed circuit of radical activists? If not, how do we break out of this circuit, how can IMC's approach underserved communities and marginalized struggles, not imposing a view and a model upon them, but in open colloboration, entering into specific struggles in a manner that makes sense for those struggling, and not necessarily those documenting it? To take the specific case of counter-summits, it was pointed out that while the convergence against the WTO in Cancun was amazingly successful, little thought was given to what remained in Mexico after the protest was over. When "the movement" left, and with it the huge international Indymedia presence, carrying out the struggle against neoliberalism on the same terms(activist convergence with a focus on militant street action) proved a disastrous invitation to repression, in Mexico City and then Guadalajara. At the next big convergence in Miami, things went a bit better: activists focused on connecting the macro issues of free trade with the way in which local communities of marginalized workers were dealing with these same issues on the micro-scale. When Indymedia left, it left behind the catalyzed proto-formation of what would become a strong local IMC. What can be learned from such contrasting experiences? How does one do media activism on behalf of and on the terms of those most vulnerable in their struggle, and not out a imperial sense of global righteousness?
What is the function of the Indymedia "brand"? Certainly a catchy name and a flashy logo have done a lot to help make the hundreds of IMC's, past and present, recognizable sites of media colloboration, but at what price? Does the promotion of Indymedia as such, and simultaneously as a sort of umbrella concept covering all independent media, act as a barrier to colloboration with media collectives and organizations outside of the IMC network?
And to end this chain of examples, how do we work together as Indymedia in ways that are more productive, without engendering hierarchies or burning ourselves out?
The beauty of Indymedia, like any network of autonomous collectives, is that there doesn't have to be a single answer to the questions raised. Instead, hundreds of different answers, some better than others, will get tried, modified, evaluated, and hopefully shared.
The questions raised by the five years of indymedia growth and development as an intercontinental media network obviously didn't get resolved in this one two hour encounter, but it's refreshing to at least have them been put on the table.
What is Indymedia anyway? Are we "alternative journalists"? Or "media activists"? Do we produce independent news, or facilitate independent news production? Or maybe Indymedia is a concrete exercise in media critique, not so much offering an alternative as a corrective? The most powerful story of the session had to be when someone explained how they had come to Indymedia, and how this encounter had literally saved their lives, and the lives of the indigenous community in southern Mexico that they were living in as a human shield against paramilitary violence. A story, posted onto Indymedia spread the word about imminent repression far enough and mobilized enough concern around the world that the violence to come was prevented. Is it more useful to think of Indymedia not primarily as a media project at all, but as a part of a sort of distributed nervous system for globalized social movement?
How open are our sites and our collectives? Is there a single political line that Indymedia and Indymedia's more or less adhere to? Or a perceived line? Do we need to focus our politics, or broaden them? Will striving for higher levels of professionalism draw more people in, or keep people out? To be very blunt, why is Indymedia, at least in North America, so overwhelmingly white, and how do we change this? Is Indymedia functioning as a media project reaching outside the closed circuit of radical activists? If not, how do we break out of this circuit, how can IMC's approach underserved communities and marginalized struggles, not imposing a view and a model upon them, but in open colloboration, entering into specific struggles in a manner that makes sense for those struggling, and not necessarily those documenting it? To take the specific case of counter-summits, it was pointed out that while the convergence against the WTO in Cancun was amazingly successful, little thought was given to what remained in Mexico after the protest was over. When "the movement" left, and with it the huge international Indymedia presence, carrying out the struggle against neoliberalism on the same terms(activist convergence with a focus on militant street action) proved a disastrous invitation to repression, in Mexico City and then Guadalajara. At the next big convergence in Miami, things went a bit better: activists focused on connecting the macro issues of free trade with the way in which local communities of marginalized workers were dealing with these same issues on the micro-scale. When Indymedia left, it left behind the catalyzed proto-formation of what would become a strong local IMC. What can be learned from such contrasting experiences? How does one do media activism on behalf of and on the terms of those most vulnerable in their struggle, and not out a imperial sense of global righteousness?
What is the function of the Indymedia "brand"? Certainly a catchy name and a flashy logo have done a lot to help make the hundreds of IMC's, past and present, recognizable sites of media colloboration, but at what price? Does the promotion of Indymedia as such, and simultaneously as a sort of umbrella concept covering all independent media, act as a barrier to colloboration with media collectives and organizations outside of the IMC network?
And to end this chain of examples, how do we work together as Indymedia in ways that are more productive, without engendering hierarchies or burning ourselves out?
The beauty of Indymedia, like any network of autonomous collectives, is that there doesn't have to be a single answer to the questions raised. Instead, hundreds of different answers, some better than others, will get tried, modified, evaluated, and hopefully shared.
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