[Imc-communication] imc-belgium's answer to imc-liege's disaffiliation request

[bruno at indymedia.be]

[en]

Hello all,

Please find our answer to imc-liege's request
(http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-process/2005-April/0407-o5.html) 
below. We
will send (spanish and french) translations asap; people are still 
working on those texts.

We are sorry for the length of this mail. We can only confirm that the
question for disaffiliation of belgium.indymedia.org by imc-liege is
based on false information. We feel it is necessary to extensively explain
why that information is false.

We hereby invite somebody active in an IMC abroad to come to Belgium to 
discuss
this (we can give acces to the adminstration of site & lists, ...) as 
everything that is stated
in this mail can be verified and we truly feel we have nothing to hide.

To start off, we want to make it clear that we want this conflict to
end. That is why we begin this mail with a proposal for a solution.

*************************************************
Proposed solution
*************************************************
Like we've said before, belgium.indymedia.org is in favor of conflict
resolution, not exclusion. We propose to put an end to this conflict
between the local imc's and belgium.indymedia.org in a constructive way.

We believe it is time that we acknowledge each others' right to exist as
imc's in Belgium. We never got in the way of the local imc's, and we
have no problem with the people from the local imc's in Belgium
continuing doing what they do as local imc's. We respect (always have,
always will) the autonomy of the local imc's: we expect them to do the
same in relation to belgium.indymedia.org. We will continue to link them
in the cities list on our website: we expect them to do the same.

Belgium.indymedia.org is pro collaboration with the
local imc's in Belgium, be it on a voluntary basis, without obligations
or conditions. After everything that has happened here in Belgium, the
wounds are deep, it will take time for them to heal.

*****************************************************
Our answer to imc-liege's request
****************************************************
"A collective, which is boycotted by the local activist community, is
not able to say that it's the mirror of the no-global movement."
****************************************************

The Belgium collective has strong and good relations with a broad range
and spectrum of actvist groups.

Some examples:

# BSF: We collaborate on a regular base with the Belgium Social Forum
and are one of their main media partners.
# Brussels tribunal: we organized the media coverage, press center,...
for the Brussels Tribunal. People are working to get the whole content
of the tribunal online.
# kifkif:Kifkif is a collective of mainly migrant people from the arab
community. Their main focus is racism and the bias in media towards
migrants and more particalur muslims. We respect the fact that migrant
media activists choose to organize within and around their community.
People from Kifkif post on indymedia take part in our meetings, ... when
they feel that is appropriate and visa-versa.
# Subterra:Is a colletive of actvists from Latin America living and
active in Brussel and Belgium. Mauricio from belgium.indymedia.org is
our liason in that collective to enable to cover their events and their
Peoples Carnival.
# Website voor syndicalisten:Is a collective of Trade union
media-actvists. They feel the need to have a website focussed on
unions,... They contribute to indymedia, are part our process team,..
and they use every posting in indymedia.be they feel appropriate to copy
or link to.
# Witte woede:This was the movement of Nurses and health workers that
was active for more than year to get better working condiditions and to
oppose the privatsation of Health services.  We not only had verry
strong relations with the spokespeople of that movement, the movement
itselve organized couverage of their actions on indymedia.be

The belgian activist community is also linking to www.indymedia.be /
http://belgium.indymedia.org like it never did before. Listed below are 
some 50 examples of activist websites linking to
belgium.indymedia.org:

Actions against Bush's visit to Belgium (site of the belgian peace 
movement): http://www.motherearth.org/bushwanted/index_nl.php
European march against European Summit (site of the belgian social 
forum): http://www.wsf.be/wsf2/euromanif/press.htm
11.11.11, network of belgian ngo's: 
http://www.11.be/index.php?option=com_11partners&ptcmd=PD&partnerid=139
feminist website: http://www.feminisme.be/bushabruxelles/
Collective against closed centers for refugees: 
http://cracpe.skynetblogs.be/
Website for & by Union workers: 
http://websitevoorsyndicalisten.blogspot.com/
Anti-racist website: 
http://www.kifkif.be/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&req=viewlink&cid=38

http://www.motherearth.org/bushwanted/index_nl.php
http://www.wsf.be/wsf2/euromanif/press.htm
http://www.11.be/index.php?option=com_11partners&ptcmd=PD&partnerid=139
http://www.hujo.be/LINKS.HTM
http://www.bomspotting.be/en/photo_en.php
http://www.mondialisation.be/AGCS.htm
http://www.lef-online.be/links/index.htm
http://www.wwf.be/newsletter/anim/avril.html
http://www.cncd.be/pages/actu_campagne.cfm
http://www.ffii.be/
http://www.feminisme.be/bushabruxelles/
http://www.vincentdecroly.be/page/actu/p_archive2.htm
http://www.irak.be/
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Bushwanted_press.htm
http://cracpe.skynetblogs.be/
http://users.telenet.be/copb/hetuurvandewaarheid.html
http://www.nova-cinema.com/main.php?page=links/29tv_nova.fr.htm
http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~rembrech/andersglob/
http://www.pimentsrouges.be/article.php3?id_article=37
http://users.skynet.be/suffrage-universel/indexpy.htm
http://www.kp-online.be/cgi-bin/ufds/ufds.cgi?db=data/top.txt&ini=toplinks.ini
http://stopprecarite.domainepublic.net/dokuwiki-2005-01-16a/doku.php?id=liens
http://users.pandora.be/gert.cuppens/foert.html
http://www.sap-pos.org/nl/links/index.htm
http://www.stopusa.be/home/links.htm
http://squat.net/leuven/nav/archief/actions/EUtop/dank.htm
http://www.aden.be/liens/index.htm
http://www.jeminforme.be/site/autressites.htm
http://www.palestina.be/2003/index.html
http://www.smartartmovement.org/postnuke/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&req=viewlink&cid=4&min=20&orderby=titleA&show=10
http://websitevoorsyndicalisten.blogspot.com/
http://users.telenet.be/t026308/menupage/
http://www.cheminots.be/
http://www.kifkif.be/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&req=viewlink&cid=38
http://www.quinoa.be/actions/outils/actou_index.html
http://www.hullabaloo.be/links.php
http://alterecho.collectifs.net/bienvenue.htm
http://www.paxchristi.be/links.htm
http://jcc.lautre.net/recherche.php3?recherche=indymedia.be&x=0&y=0
http://subterra.chez.tiscali.fr/carnaval/Appelauxbenevoles.html
http://www.ecolodg.be/presse/050226DWDP_Bolkestein.php
http://www.viavzw.be/static/links.htm
http://www.anarchie.be/index/links.php
http://users.pandora.be/boemtjak/ikziejegraag/diezienwegraag/index.htm
http://bap.propagande.org/modules.php?name=Calendar&file=index&type=view&eid=77
http://ondernemingssites.acv-online.be/psychiatrische_kliniek_tienen/Ondernemingsnieuws/Sociaal_akkoord_Non_Profit.asp
http://www.interfac-etudiante.be/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=124
http://www.digitales-online.org/2004/news.php
http://subterra.chez.tiscali.fr/liens.html

and there's dozens & dozens more....

*******************************************************
"A collective, which is financed by the state funds through some ghost
organisations, can't claim to be honest and non lucrative."
*******************************************************
Imc-liege also writes that indymedia.be would be "a collective, which is
financed by the state funds through some ghost organisations, (unable
to) claim to be honest and non lucrative." This, like many other
accusations and allegations, is flat out untrue.

The so-called 'ghost organisation' is GetBasic (www.getbasic.be), a non
profit that organises media workshops and works to promote media
awareness among the public. It is recognized as a social movement by
the flemish government just like the people from bomspotting (Forum
voor vredesactie), Vrede, Netwerk Vlaanderen, ...

GetBasic's fundings do not flow through to indymedia.be, as imc-liege
suggests.

GetBasic is anything but a 'ghost organisation': it employs real people,
organises real workshops, ... they need that money in order to work.
GetBasic's and indymedia.be's finances are kept strictly seperate as
get-basic and indymedia.be are two different origanisations with different
goals.

Apart from that, we find all this fuss about these fundings a bit
strange: the decision to ask for funding for the MediaCircus was 
approved when many of the people now
working for local imc's in Belgium, were still working with indymedia.be.
http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2002-August/000195.html 


Indymedia.be however, is reader/listener/viewer supported. We have a
system of subscriptions that enables us to pay the rent and our server at
all2all.org. We are 100% non lucrative and can only survive because of
the contributions of our readers/listeners/viewers. The more people
subscribe, the more we will be able to do, as we fully rely on
our readers/listeners/viewers to pay for our server & offices costs.

******************************************************
“A collective, with only 4 or 5 people really active, is not able to
represent the diversity of a country.“
******************************************************
Imc-liege also mentions that the belgium.indymedia.org collective would
only consist of a couple of people who are active: “A collective, with
only 4 or 5 people really active, is not able to represent the diversity
of a country.“

For people not living in Belgium this might look like a reality as they
only are confronted with those people who are a liaison or who want to
invest in the global network: Bruno, han, Christophe, Mara and sometimes Raf
and Claudio. But the Belgium collective is much larger and has more &
more people actively involved in the process.

14 people have acces to the belgium.indymedia.org admin pages.
20 people are part of the process team.
Our general assemblies & meetings are attented by +25 people, are open for
all and announced on the website.

All of this can be checked if somebody would like to do so.

Reading the text by imc-liege, some people might conclude that the
belgium collective excluded people: "... which took over this
alternative media by methods of exclusion".

The Belgium IMC never excluded anybody, it has always chosen for 
inclusion. Even when people
left the collective and started their own local collective the belgium
IMC never opposed such a thing and felt that it should be possible to
have different experiences within the same network.

*******************************************************
"A collective, which is build like a real professional redaction and
where 3/4 of the visible contributions are coming from this team of
drafting, can't say it applies the open-publishing."
******************************************************
Imc-liège also says (referring to indymedia.be): "a collective, which is
build like a real professional redaction and where 3/4 of the visible
contributions are coming from this team of drafting, can't say it
applies the open-publishing."

About the redaction part: yes, it is true that we try to work organised.
Yes, it is true that we have people working in our office at regular
times. Yes, it is true that we do scheduled interviews with lots of
people. But no, we do not have an editor in chief. No, we do not have a
advertising department. And no, people do not get paid for writing
articles, for making audio and video reports or for taking pictures for
indymedia.be...

The last two years, indymedia.be has evolved. As you can read in this
mail, we learned a lot from our experiences with D14 (2001), STOPUSA
(2002-2003), RESIST (2003). Since the summer of 2003, we've been
thinking, questioning, discussing, trying, ... about where to go with
indymedia.be. We think indymedia.be has the potential of becoming an
alternative mass medium. This involves organising, and we honestly fail
to see what's so wrong with that. In our humble opinion, Indymedia is
not a static thing, and many ways of 'being an Independent Media Center'
are possible within the network. Those different ways/approaches are not
only a possiblity, they are the reality of the network.

Next to that, it is not correct that 3/4 of our website's contributions
comes from 'this team of drafting', as imc-liege puts it. If you take a
look at our website, you can see that a very diverse array of people
posts to our website. And yes, they do this by using open publishing.

To be more precise, in March we had 29 features on the front page of our
website, featuring 101 articles. 101 articles were featured and those
101 articles were contributed by 53 different people. 6 activist
website's were direcly linked. Of those 101 featured articles, 30 came
from the so called "team of drafting". 12 of those were overviews and 7
were interviews.

A total of 361 articles were posted during that month. This means more
than 1 out of 4 articles get featured on indymedia.be. Of those 361
articles in March, the editorial team authored 50 (including overviews,
reports of meetings and events' announcements): Less then 1 out of
seven, not three out of four as imc-liege claims.

After the Euro demonstration in Brussels (19th of March), 24 people 
posted content
(video, audio, text articles, pictures) on indymedia.be. Those 24 people
contributed 12 text articles (the overview included), 23 picture
reports, 4 video reports and 1 audio report. This illustrates that
indymedia.be is very much alive and kicking, and not at all experiencing
a 'lingering death', as stated by imc-liege.

***********************************
Are we all members of the same party
**********************************
Of course some of us in this network have a history of activism behind
them, not all of us are in their early twenties. In imc-ovl for instance,
somebody used to be a member of the SAP (4th International). The same
person acted as a spokesperson for Rage. Someone else from imc-ovl used
to be active in the student movement of the PTB. In imc-liege some
people have ties with the PC. So what?

It's almost painful to see how much energy has been invested into
proving that somebody like Han used to be active in the PTB. So what?
Han has never hidden this or denied this.

Some people in the belgian collective were or are active in the Green
Party, some in Le Parti Socialiste, some in Catholic NGO's, some in
other collectives, ... So what?

The belgian collective has never judged  anybody`s political or
professional background, our common grounds are  the PoU and our mission
statement.

We can no longer understand why some people see the ghosts of Mao or
Stalin in every person active in the belgium collective. We have seen
people accusing Green Party members of parliament to be PTB members
because they were featured on the belgium.indymedia website. Hans from
Bomspotting has been pointed out as a PTB member on imc-liege's list, 
Manolis (a
Greek activist) & Pavel (active in IMC Chile) have been spotted as being
members of the PTB, Raf & Gerard were spotted because their books and
documentaries are reviewed on the ptb website, ...

This spotting came to a point that most activists are not only shocked
by this method of naming, accusing, ... They also look at such
accusations with uttermost disbelieve and laughter. We assume that those
who accuse, spot, name, ... believe their story. This could be explained
by a lack of understanding of the Belgian political situation. Another,
more probable explanation could be that those people don't understand
what happened within the belgium collective in the summer of 2003 (most
accusations also date and link back to the period before the summer of
2003).

It is true that the belgian collective in it`s early years mainly and
sometimes exclusively gave a voice to the most radical part of the
movement: Anti-UNICE, D'Orrazio, D14, Black Block, Pink & green,
STOPUSA, Collectif sans ticket, RESIST, AEL, ... This was accentuated by 
the fact that some people
of the collective played an active role in  those movements. This was
common practice, not only in or during elections.

A crucial and pivotal moment in the history of the belgium collective
was the summer of 2003. We could no longer deny that
belgium.indymedia.org was becoming a website by and for radical,
leftwing, white, male intellectuals. This had never been our goal, yet
we came to a point were we could no longer stay blind for the numerous
signs given by a lot of people in and outside the collective.

Our mission statement from the beginning stated that we had the aim to
build alternative mass media, yet we were close to become the usual
radical leftwing discussion forum/blog. We rediscussed and reaffirmed
our mission statement, listened to dozens of activists and decided
collectively and by consensus to try to build a real aternative mass
media. This process is still unfinished, however the numbers of visitors
has been growing with 50% every year, the diversity in the collective
and on the website has been growing, ... So we think we're on the way.


************************************
According to imc-liège, Belgium.indymedia.org would be a collective that
sabotages other imc's and exports the problem to other countries.
************************************

We invite everybody to look in the new-imc lists: we never opposed to or
restricted the existence of imc-liège and imc-ovl. We also never replied
with similar accusations. We even never wrote down our criticism or
remarks on their working. But very soon we had to see that newswires
from both local imc's got piled up with anti-imc-belgium slander. The
last months reactions from imc-ovl and imc-liège became openly
agressive. A few examples:

- during the anti-Bush protests one member from imc-belgium was verbally
agressed by some members of imc-liège while he was doing his work as a
reporter. One member of imc-liège later called this action in a mail 'a
sympathetic and efficient agression'. When the victim mailed to the
imc-liège list to mention this incident, the moderator replied "your
mails wont pass. In fact I even don't read them". See: 
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-be-communication/2005-March/0325-zo.html 
.
Somebody else replied: "The stuff about Liege is, on the other hand, 
very serious. Very serious
indeed. I wish to make this very clear to the collective in Liege: next
time you insult Christophe, you should invite the other collectives to
join you! :-P "
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ovl/2005-March/0326-zz.html

- also the mails are getting more and more agressive. On the proposal to
have a face-meeting we received this reply: "why?  to beat out the shit
of some people of imc.be/stalinistmedia.be?"
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ovl/2005-March/0327-i7.html

- just before the march against the European Summit, the only article on
imc-ovl about this event was a call to throw pies in the face of some
people collaborating with imc-belgium.
http://ovl.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/4970.php

But the issue is not new:
http://liege.indymedia.org/news/2005/03/3867.php
http://liege.indymedia.org/news/2004/07/2224.php
http://ovl.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/2991.php

We also have to face abundant provocations on our newswire. Some
imc-activists even announce these provocations.
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-france-nice/2005-April/0408-ag.html
"One of these days I'm going to post something about the PTB on .be and
we will see what happens."

And then about exporting the problem. Well, who is really exporting this
problem? We always defended that this matter has to be dealt with on a
face to face level in Belgium possibly with an external
facilitator/mediator. Imc-liège choose to wrote a text and published it
on the wiki-pages. A text that became very quick popular on several
extreme right-wing websites (see for example:
http://www.vjm.cc/vjm/francais/article064.htm and
http://be.altermedia.info/index.php?p=2349 )
So yes the matter was exported but in a very sad and infertile way.

We hope that everything in this answer is clear for everyone. Should 
anyone (be it as liaison or individual) have questions about it, please 
feel free to contact us at imc-belgium-process at lists.indymedia.org . 
Once more our apologies for this very long mail.

The imc-belgium-process team.


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