[Imc-communication] NORMAL, IL (decision deadline DEC 20, 20:00 GMT)

[Jay]

Hi imc-process, imc-communication,

Here is new-imc information from the Normal, Illinois, U.S. IMC group, 
whose documents have passed through the new-imc working group.  Please let 
me know if there are any comments before December 20, 20:00 GMT. If not, we 
can welcome them into the network.

Jay
***
Below is our application for becoming an Independent Media Center for 
Bloomington-Normal, Illinois (<http://indy.pabn.org/>http://indy.pabn.org). 
(Each letter is one of the criteria, followed by our response; after d. is 
our draft mission statement, and after e. is our long boring draft 
editorial policy). At the end is the response to the new diversity questions.

I'm not sure what name is preferred for our IMC if it is approved. Normal 
IMC might work, or Normal, IL IMC if Normalalone sounds too strange. 
(Central Illinois IMC is possible, but we dont want to stand in the way of 
a potential Peoria or Springfield IMC. Bloomington-Normal IMC is more 
accurate but would get us confused with Indiana.)

John K. Wilson
Normal IMC (<http://indy.pabn.org/>http://indy.pabn.org)

[THIS IS THE CURRENT DRAFT OF THE IMC MEMBERSHIP CRITERIA]

a. Agree in spirit to the NIMC Mission Statement and Principles of Unity



We agree in spirit to the NIMC Mission Statement and Principles of Unity.





b. Have a committed membership substantial enough to sustain a functional IMC



Our membership includes many active individuals to sustain an IMC. We have 
about a dozen core members who come to meetings, work on the newspaper, 
events, etc. We have 80 on our email list, and post announcements on other 
local activist listservs reaching hundreds of people.





c. Have open and public meetings (no one group can have exclusionary 
"ownership" of an IMC)



We have open meetings, typically on Sunday nights at the local coffeehouse 
(except during the summer), and anyone can join the group. Meetings are 
announced in our weekly newspaper and reminders sent by email.





d. Work toward developing a local Mission Statement or Statement of Purpose



We have a preliminary Mission Statement:



Mission Statement



We are a grassroots, community-based collective striving to provide 
universal access to news media without corporate filtering. This is a 
progressive outlet committed to making alternative voices heard, especially 
those of people working for justice and equality in central Illinois and 
around the world.





e. Establish and publish an editorial policy that is developed and 
functions through democratic process, and with full transparency



We've written an evolving editorial policy:



Editorial Policy



The Normal IMC website newswire is an open publishing system, and its use 
for both posting and reading messages is available to anyone on the 
Internet. The newswire is primarily intended for the posting and discussion 
of news, opinions, ideas and experiences that relate to current events and 
news, particularly that of interest to people in central Illinois. The 
Newswire is especially intended to be available and useful to peoples, 
ideas and news that are overlooked or systematically excluded from the 
dominant media.



The Normal IMC discourages postings that compromise the availability and 
usefulness of the newswire as a commons and the IMC reserves the right to 
hide or remove such postings. The principles of free speech guide this 
decision-making, and hiding of posts is done only in extreme circumstances.



Guidelines for Hiding Posts:



The following are types of situations and posts which may be hidden by the 
IMC Steering Group.



1) Duplicate Posts. If a single post is duplicated during a relatively 
short time period, all duplicate posts may be hidden or deleted.



2) Threats and Intimidation. The IMC newswire is not intended to be a forum 
for primarily publicizing hate nor for making direct threats against 
individuals, groups or classes of people. In any post under consideration 
the threatening speech should be weighed against other ideas or expression 
in the post.



3) Spamming. This is when a single individual posts multiple times in a 
short period in a manner that indicates that the poster's purpose is to 
flood the newswire or push other posts off the ftont page of the IMC website.



4) Off-Topic Posts. These are posts that are baldly and clearly 
inappropriate, whose purpose seems clearly to be other than informing, 
educating or adding to a public discourse.



5) Commercial Solicitation. The Newswire is not intended to be used for 
commercial purposes, therefore commercial solicitations and advertisements 
for commercial products should be hidden.



6) Direct Threats. These constitute direct threats on specific people or 
small, easily identifiable groups of people.



Procedures for Deleting/Hiding Articles



The active editors are chosen by the editorial collective. The editorial 
collective trusts the active editors to follow these guidelines when hiding 
or deleting posts, and providing an explanation for doing so.



Creation of the Features Column



Feature articles can be selected from the newswire by anyone in the 
editorial collective, with the consent of the collective, but normally will 
come from the Indy newspaper. Any newswire articles may appear in the Indy 
newspaper unless specifically noted as having restricted rights or clearly 
copied from another, copyrighted source.







f. Agree to the use of Open Publishing as described in the NIMC Editorial 
Policy



We agree with the concept of and practice open publishing on our site. We 
require email verification for all postings, and we are working on a 
comment system for postings.





g. Adopt a decision-making policy that is in alignment with consensus 
principles that include open, transparent and egalitarian processes



We decide by consensus when possible and use other open methods to reach 
agreement when necessary. The structure is more anarchist than consensus at 
times, though.





h. Have a spokesperson(s) willing and capable of participating in the 
global decision-making process and meetings as a rotating 
liaison/representative, with a clear understanding of the responsibilities 
that come with this role



We are working on volunteer liaisons willing to participating in Indymedia 
global decision-making.





i. Participate in the key IMC Network Communication Methods that pertain to 
the health and vitality of the Network and that contribute to the work of 
the IMC. Assure that at least one person from your local IMC participates 
at any given time on the IMC-Communications list.



We will participate in the global IMC.





j. Have no official affiliation with any political party, state or 
candidate for office



We agree to have no official political affiliation, although we may express 
support for certain candidates.





k. IMCs shall in no way engage in commercial for-profit enterprises



We are not a commercial for-profit enterprise. We are affiliated as a 
registered student organization at Illinois State University, which ensures 
this, but anyone else is open to participate in the group (apart from 
certain functions such as treasurer, which must be done by a student). We 
do not include paid advertising on the IMC website.





l. Display a local version of the IMC "I" logo on your website and literature



We have a local version of the logo on our website.





m. Include the IMC Network current "Cities List" on your site, preferably 
on the front page



We have the IMC network list on the website's front page.





"Proposal made by IMC-Women's group relating to diversity, now part of the 
new-imc questions:



A. How does the makeup of your collective reflect the diversity of the 
local community (e.g. in relation to gender-, sexual-, spiritual-, and/or 
cultural-identity)?



Unfortunately, the makeup of our collective reflects the diversity of the 
local community, which is truly awful, especially in terms of racial 
diversity. We are working on ways to improve diversity in our newspaper and 
our events.





B. If your group currently does not represent the diversity of the local 
community, particularly in relation to groups who are in mainstream society 
and denied access to vehicles of expression, what steps will be taken to 
address this on an ongoing basis?



We try to cover in our newspaper issues of interest to these communities, 
and encourage them to participate. We are considering working with 
African-American, Latino, and Native American students on a special 
supplement to our newspaper.





C. What steps will be taken to involve individuals in workfields new to 
them? What measures will be taken to overcome a gendered work division?



We've been trying to get more women involved in leadership roles.







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