[Imc-europe] report Bern meeting

[gradozero]

these are the minutes of the IMC meeting in bern.
twe can leave the text on this list for 3 or 4 days, to suggest or add
something
and then we can put it on the wiki page and on other imc working
lists...

ciao, francesca



IMC europe meeting Bern
21/09
general discussion:
imc nl, italy, swiss, france, germany, belgium,uk


discussion agenda
1 what is indymedia, goals, objectives, finances,
2 open publishing/ editorial policy  experiences...
3 network, local autonomies, decentralization, commmunication
infrastructure,
4 legal issues, licences up-dates and exchange of experiences..


1 what are the main objectives of indymedia?, how do you define
indymedia?

-indypendency from corporate and political parties, religion...
-reporting strategies are very individual, based on emotional and
subjective experience
-grassroot media, spreading tools, sharing knowledges
-political practice of horizontal organizing (how do you structure it?)
-involvement in local communities, resources (human resources,
materials...)
-grassroot communication infrastructure
-strategies and debate
-the reporter is an activist: becoming media becomes  a political
practice
-independency from political parties , keeping diversity both on
political and gender issues
-importance of local autonomy in network building
- the focuse should be on how to use the site, keeping the network fluid
and not a  close defined collective.
-methods: direct democracy , consensus on political decision-making ,
-being on the ground (nomadism and contamination with the local
practices and culture).
- IMC is only a site but there is people behind making actions and
communication.
sometimes the users and the im collective are toatally on different
political positions.


2 editorial policy:

-how to hide postings

specific editorial policy is  up to local imc's considering the main
goal ito give the possibility to everyone to produce their own
information.
right wing postings: the issue is wether to sensore them or not, even if
they usually are a provocation . it shouldn' t be about discussing left
or right wing policies , we should just stick to the application of the
imc  principles of unity.
imc uk is getting many antisemitic postings, but they allow to discuss
it and are thinking to have a separate forum for discussions. The site
is about people the users and we are the administrators, but the site
should be the focus: this will help to get out of the politics of the
group, to stay with the integrity of the site, keeping it fluid. The
solution is that the users give us integrity.  uk have meetings every
week on mailing lists, keeping up a process in an organic way.
italy: lots of statics..people insulting each other in the newswire, one
of the proposals to stop this is making a forum for discussions, at the
moment they are discussing also other possible solutions. The main
difference between users and admin is the collective effort to produce
informations.
irc is not  a decision-making site, it's mainly used in emergency cases.
Italy stress the importance of mailing lists to improve the decision
making process based on consensus. open mailing lists are very important
in italy to reach out to other people that can partecipate. italian
people are aware of the formal and informal strategies in menaging a
site and they are  trying to build a balance bewtween these two levels.
nl: they are using the german: if they have too much statics in the
newswire they turn them into open publishing in the second page. the
solution is having open and hidden tresh. there are different cultures
of using the internet in europe so it's very hard to make omogeneous
rules..
A big task is to involve more people in the editorial team..explain how
the site is working.  joining the editorial list by face to face
meetings but the access to it can be very easy. irc is a communicatio
tool and not decision-making tool. in the netherlands tehre is a very
close contact between techies and editorial team trhough irc.
belgium: many discussions about centralization and decentralization they
are still working out..
there is a balance in the division of work in imc belgium, every list is
open but not finances. editorial list is very high traffic the rest is
quite slowly. for urgent matters they use irc and also to work out
proposals before they go to the appropriate list. meetings once a  moths
are open.
swiss: people do not have daily internet access but try to do indy
anyways. in zurig they opened an indymedia cafè. the principal of open
publishing on a political level should be diffuse as a  pollitical
practice  independently of imc. trial for the imc persons was cancelled
(concerning latuff drawing), the ground for the charges was
antisemitism. the judge is specialized on trials against nazi. the
political situation in swiss is very fragmented and imc swiss is left
marginal and very little partecipated, people watch it but don't
partecipate.
imc france: in paris they have  a new list fore a new collective, it's a
subscription list. marseille, toulouse , strasbourg, nice...they are
developing organically in a territorial way. indy france closed because
of personal relations , indy france was discredited. it became a context
around ultra left and antisemitics in a context of elections.


3 legal situation:

criminal and terrorists bills are working on a european level, and there
are in europe meetings with lawyers to coordinate the legal support.
noborder.org/strasburg/legal (under the european association of
democratic jurists).
italy:
-italy imc has been raided because of genova's trials. In taranto ,
bologna, florence..
in taranto(south of italy) there has been many problems for people doing
imc. in florence they took a lot of materials. in bologna there was the
biggest opeartion. police took a lot of materials(specially videos and
hard drives) , the operation aimed to separate the movement.
Learning from this experience (the confiscation of video footage
containing illegal actions) italy imc is writing an 'how to for media
activists' implication of imc italy  in legal support after the G8
summit was very big, and in the winter there will be most of the trials,
so imc italy will continuing to give legal informations and advices.
next week there will be a firts public  trial for ecn.org (main movement
server) against Caradonna. there might be a big fine coming for
defamation.. this trial involves both freedom of information and
historical memory.
-holland:radikal nuclear transport article frobidden in germany put in
the xs4all homepage, xs4all was suite, the dutch banhoff won the  case .
An article was posted on imc and lots of mirror sites were created alla
round the world. imc nl had a link to the site and not even to the
forbidden article.  imc nl was asked by DB to remove the archive. they
didn't do it facing the consequences and they lost the case. alla the
pages on the internet are connected to all the other pages..in a sense
the judge wanted to remove all the linx. they still don't have all the
money (4000 Euros), they are going through an appeal. there was a big
newspapaer that also got linx but they weren't suited. researchers are
making a study on this case that involve the all cyberpace regulations.
they are asking support from mainstream journalists and associations.
indymedia nl is an organization registered , so that's why it was
suited.
thinking about how to use global finance (this is a good case of
cooperation) at this moment is lacking decision making process. 1000
dollars for this case was taken from global founds.
rise the topic on the MDD, thinking about  a solidarity day on the trial
day to put in the european lists.
 In the neoliberal citycouncel of a'dam there was a threat of suiting
imc nl because somebody commented Pym F. killing was the right thing on
the nw. they also had a other theat beacuse of right wing propaganda.
-euskalherria: the website is threatened to be closed because of
batasuna declared illegal. they need legal advices and also on how to
handle the nw. they use  a software that split the web and the
publication part.
-the uk model: for suspicious of  a crime they can get a key, as long as
they have some vage proof that a criminal offence might happen.
-imc germany: small legal problems, once police called them for articles
describing disruptive actions, they did'nt give any log files to police
jet.
-in italy about logs there is a special policy of not keeping logs, but
italy imc hasn't be called for that formally. there is a european
mandatory that is implementing obbligation to give logs.


4 Ford issue

the grant was developed in 5 steps and the 15 of septemebr was the
deadline for the 3th step, so there was really little time to discuss
the issues between all the imc's.
The most important thing was to give solidarity to imc argentina from
the other imc's. there were only few imc's collective statements and
many e-mails by individuals. imc global created an affinity group to
work on the grant, but local imc's didn't make any effort to give
collective statements on a decision that concern the all network.
the main argoument expressed in favour of getting the money from Ford
was that the money had no strings attached but it could help to
strenghten the 'face to face meetings' of imc network.
-can indymedia take this kind of money?
to take into account:
process issue / local to global relation in building  a network,
-the global network is there to facilitate decisions and processes...why
indy media didn't take  a collective position on this?
-every imc should have  a laison to the global list.
-the important thing to discuss is how to use grants and consider that
the imc network can't depend on continous money imput from foundations
or donations.

collective imc positions discussed in the european meeting:
1 it's dengerous to take money when foundations are intervening in the
network building
2 when we have the all network involved in the money request we have to
consider the local cultural situation
3 respect local autonomy
4 we need to stimulate imc's to take collective positions and not only
individual statements


workshop

European Social Forum
Italian IMC is making a proposal to all  the european imc's to evaluate
the european social forum event as a possibility to get out imc's
contents and practices based on consensous decision making and
decentralised/horizontal organizing and bringing an alternative media
discourse into mainstream media and left wing media.
italy imc's is evaluating, together with the local imc from Toscany the
possibility of participating to the building up of an Independent Media
center, external to the official esf site (probably occupying the
university of political science in florence) where to set up workshops
on the isuues of :
-education/knowledges - independent communication- media activism and
immaterial work- methods and practices based on consensous
decision-making
the IMC space will be also a space for video intervews and video
streaming, radio streaming...
The resources are very little and the european imc present are
interested on a personal level to the proposal but can't contribute in a
collective way because there has been no collective discussion around
the esf. the level of engagement in the esf proposal is generally very
low, apart of specific proposals coming from imc uk and italy (focused
on media protests and MDD towards the UN conference on information's
society in geneve).
workshops for the IMC space will be proposed by IMC italy and there will
be a call out for an imc european wide partecipation.


Media Democracy Day
coordination list: mediademocracyday@riseup.net
promoting alternative media in a subversive way, building actions
exploring possibilities to connect different altmedia groups.
there is a campain in the uk to hilight protests against police
repression towards black communities.
actions proposed by imc uk:
subvertising advertisments with water proof materials. imc uk got  a
prize from a mainastream magazine and they will present the MDD in the
award.
plans to squat a building in london , there will be at the same time the
anarchist bookfare,
 two main workshops on corporate press (also with corp journalists
involved) and an activists conference will be set up.
looking at mainstream media critique, because in the uk even major tv
have been banned so it's possible to link the issue with the mainstream.

italy imc: MDD is in the same day of the general strike . the MDD should
be constructed towards the UN world Summit on information's society in
Geneve on 2003. IMC Italy will hook up with chainworkers and build an
action platform around media grassrotts social activism and immaterial
workers. imc italy will write a documet  that link up the general strike
in italy and the need for an independent media forum/action on a wider
platform.

imc nl: they will make actions around the courtcase against imc, and the
fact that the Dutch Government wants to sell several radio stations
- suggestions: make  a map of the alternative media grups on a european
level.

imc swiss: they will organize worksops

- During the MDD there will be also the lounch of the european newsreal
.


22/09
Plenary IMC european meeting:

find solutions to have meetings partecipated by eastern europeans and
imc's in the middle east.
there should be a clear agenda, a clear stimolation for partecipation
and a clear statement of partecipation from everybody. network building
is important so it's possible to combine the european indymedia meeting
with other events happening on a european level.
there was an horganizational problem for this meeting, so we need a
process to make the organization work. the  proposal is to create a
common fond to get resources for IMC's with less economic resources and
working  groups to organize visas and supply to other needs.
 a proposal is to nominate somebody from each local imc's to take the
task over .(a delegation should be send by each imc's)
making smaller meetings can be a solution, just informal to keep up the
network and exchange informations(ex on a wiki page, already suggested
for this meeting).
Making an IMC europe meeting happening is a need beacuse IMC's  are
working on a very different level. There is  a lack of communcation on
both local and global level, we have to involve smaller and
disadvantaged imc's  in the discussion and the preparation.
developing a non internet communication system and translation system is
needed to involve other imc's.
Estabilishing a global imc europe meeting each year plus regional
meetings if needed.
-There should be a cost sharing system (putting up an internet common
account before the meeting).
-Putting efforts into visiting people face to face.
-Trying to use contacts also outside the mailing list and reach out to
the imc's there weren't here this time, asking them why they couldn't
come
-We shold send out the minutes from this meetings and  proposals very
early, so people will have time to translate them and can be easier for
them to participate.
-We will set up now working group for : contact point / visas
arrangement / finances.
-We should focus on shared-projects so that people has something
practical to share and work on.
-We should focus on setting the steps for the meeting to happen and make
them clear in the outcome of themeeting , and make clear the way  we
thought of proceeding.
-There should be a  group taking responsability for getting the
information across to the people that are not here.
preparation for next meeting should focus on : process (contact,
outreach, periarticipated agenda) / visas-money / shared projects
gradozero (gradozero@inventati.org), changsing(changsing@paranoici.org),
anna(anna@nadir.org), blicero(blicero@ecn.org), bal, antje
(clara@ifrik.org), bruno (phelix@altern.org), suzq (suzq@riseup.net),
joeri (joeri@indymedia.be)