[Imc-uk-process] san francisco indy troubles, part 2

[Anarcho Babe]

Hm,

we had a discussion on the women list - for some strange reason people 
asked the sf lot(s) what all the conflict was about and maybe hoped the 
girls and women would be more forgiving towards each other with leaving the 
tech issues out, but they weren't. There was a lot of slag towards each 
other and finally a person unsubscribed in protest because of personal 
attacks towards each other. And finally the discussion was sort of banned 
from the list, with the thread of putting people on moderation. The reason 
why i mention it now, is that a lot of accusations were made about previous 
- current - possible - suggested love relationships indymedia volunteers 
had/have with each other in SF.
So it does not seem to be "just" about the issues of who controlls which 
domain name and who gets access to which equipment, but also a lot of  
irrational hurt hate love feelings.

So, i hope its not perceived as an ignorant attitude when i express i would 
like to stay away from the conflict as far as possible.

cheers Ulla




On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 18:56:08 +0000, Jack Cleaver <jackc at jackpot.uk.net> 
wrote:

> Antonis wrote:
>>
>> As for your question of what other IMC's in Europe are doing, I can
>> answer for what happened in Athens. We were watching the situation
>> till early January (that is, we read the e-mail that was sent out
>> globally), but decided we shouldn't intervene.
>>
>> This was not only because we couldn't have a clear picture of what
>> was happening but also because many of us, including me, were
>> seriously freaked out by the way the whole dispute was handled
>> (hiring a mediator? an "expert" to solve a problem within a group 
>> supposedly working towards the abolition of experts? we live in a
>> strange world..)
>
> ISTM that their choice to hire a mediator isn't really a good reason for
> UK choosing not to intervene. So what might be good reasons, both for
> and against intervention?
>
> Firstly, it's not clear to me that the split is particularly damaging to
> Global IMC. I appreciate that some of the principals in the dispute are
> "high-profile", but I'm not aware of any threat to disengage, or
> anything like that. Anyhow, the enormous stature of someone's profile
> shouldn't be taken as evidence that they are indispensable, or even
> valuable. I make this observation out of ignorance - no doubt others are
> better-informed, and can put me straight; it's just that neither Y's
> original post, nor his post of today's date, show that the split is the
> cause of substantive out-of-area damage.
>
> There is the "small" matter of the quantity and type of material being
> posted to the us-process list (and there have been suggestions that the
> dispute doesn't belong there). Some of the posts are sufficiently nasty
> that they bring Indymedia generally into disrepute, to a small extent;
> but it doesn't take a particularly close inspection to see that the bad
> attitude and bad faith are pretty much localised, and are not attributes
> of Indymedia in general. I don't think it's at all obvious that the
> discussion is inappropriate on that list. ISTM that taking the dispute
> private is actually wrong; dealing with the issue secretly would leave a
> bad taste, and could leave problems for the future.
>
> Secondly, while it's painful to observe one's relatives fighting with
> one-another, it's not easy to predict how any given intervention is
> going to change the situation. So if one were to come up with a message,
> one would want to have some specific goal in mind when drafting it; one
> could then consider how likely it would be for the draft message to
> achieve the desired goal. And note that intervening in someone else's
> fight may just bring a heap of ordure down on your own head; note this
> post from March 1.
> http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-us-process/2004- 
> March/000430.html
>
> When some 'bad situation' has arisen, there is an understandable desire
> to try to fix it. However it's often the case that a bad situation can't
> be fixed, that there is no intervention that would make it all better
> again. In those situations, intervening just stirs up the mud. I'm not
> saying that this is such a situation; just that before intervening, we
> should have a clear aim, and a clear idea about how the intervention
> might support that aim.
>
> The split is irrevocable. These things happen; I think the best outcome,
> for IMC Globally, would be for both sides of the split to continue as
> useful and welcome members of the family, if possible. My impression was
> that both sides are indeed committed to ongoing engagement, so that's
> good. But my feeling for now is that this is something to keep an eye
> on, rather than to intervene in.
>
> For my part, I'm not interested in reading very much more stuff
> emanating from SF-IMC. The editorial team are using their site to
> publish personal attacks on individual IMCistas, and refusing them any
> right of reply. "Nessie", in particular, seems to be the kind of
> individual that would make anyone want to split.
> http://www.sfimc.net/news/2004/03/1683899.php
>
> But local editorial policy is autonomous, and so it should be.



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