[imc-baghdad] ideas

[Andrew Stern]

hi there all,

just spent a bit reading all the posts to this list, its great to see 
so much enthusiasm and feels good that there is a forum to coordinate 
all this finally.

i am a portland (or) based indymedia volunteer and photographer, been 
involved in this movement of movements for a bunch of years and 
indymedia specifically for about a year since i helped to organize 
the imc caravan that traveled throughout south america last year.  i 
do alot of independent media stuff outside indymedia as well, 
including a radical publishing project called "We Are Everywhere", a 
book due out soon <http://weareevrywhere.org>

in terms of imc-iraq, i have been communicating with jacquie about 
this for some time, and am trying to get over there myself and if i 
am able to would love to bring equipment, money, whatever is needed. 
we just did a benefit for this here in portland with a tape of 
bignoise and iraqjournal.org stuff that jacquie provided us with, was 
a great event where we had peace activists who have been to iraq and 
palestine give presentation as well as show these really powerful 
films.  unfortuantely it was a sunday matinee on one of the most 
beautiful days portland has seen in a long time so we didn't raise as 
much as i would have liked but I do have $300 that is ready to go 
towards equipment or whatever the folks on the ground in baghdad want 
it for.  i also sent a tape to people in santa cruz and LA and 
although i haven't heard from them in a bit, i hope that they are 
busy setting up a benefit.  i highly reccomend that everyone 
interested in this get a group together to do a benefit screening, 
its not too much work if you have a few people and although $300 
doesn't sound like much, if we had imc's doing this all over the 
place, well it will add up.  i can send people dubs of the tape if 
they want, and i'm sure there is other stuff out there.....julia, do 
you have material as well?  just for ideas, you can look at our 
benefit and flyer here in portland 
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/04/62309.shtml

one other thing that i did is to write an intro to the newspaper 
proposal, and sort of divided it into two sections: immediate funding 
needs and long term.  the proposal they wrote is great, but its a ton 
of money and so i tried to break it down a bit based on all the mails 
i've read so that we could at least get some immediate needs met. 
also, it seems that the only way to get stuff in or out is to 
physically deliver it (money or equipment or anything) so i wrote in 
airfare for two people to bring stuff.  this situation may have 
changed and i just read something about problems at the border so if 
anyone has an update on this let me know.  i will post it to the wiki 
so people can see it.  i am not a grantwriter, so feel free anyone to 
change or add to it to make it better.

one quick option for a bit of money is the left-over money from last 
years caravan.  i think its about $3000.  obviously this would not be 
enough to fund airfare and equipment but maybe if there were some 
folks going anyway who had their fares covered this could be used to 
buy equipment here and bring it there?  funding something like this 
would certainly fit with what we all decided the caravan mission 
is/was: imc networking, assisting emerging imcs.  sascha, i know you 
are involved with this process with some others so maybe we could try 
to expedite the discussion of this somehow?

solidarity,
andy

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