[Imc-communication] RE: [Imc-liege] PROPOSAL: Consensus in Belgium (deadline: September 4th, 2005)

[Arnaud Leblanc]

Hey Bruno,

I'm Arnaud from Liege IMC in Belgium. I respond as a person and we will
discuss the proposition soon in the liege collective and between other
Belgian imc's. 
Your response will help us to take position when we'll discuss your
proposition collectively in our next meeting.

--------
Before we can discuss and respond to your proposition, is it possible that
you precise it?

1. What is your proposition? You call it "Consensus in Belgium". What kind
of consensus in Belgium do you propose?
In my opinion, reaching a consensus is done by sharing ideas and proposal,
the Consensus is not a proposition, it's a way to take decisions. Could you
precise your ideas of solutions?

2. You fix the deadline at 4th of September. What is this deadline for? Is
the expression "Peaceful coexistence" means that we can't complain anymore
for example about our "feelings" of lack of cooperation spirit and the fact
that it is not "fair" in our views that you monopolize the
"Belgium.indymedia.org" url?
You propose to meet and discuss physically. I think this is a good idea but
I don't see the purpose of a deadline (I don't think that it needs any
consensus from the global network to meet each others, it only needs a
consensus from the people coming).

3. Is it possible that you precise the subject you want to discuss of?
"Collaboration" is too vague. I propose, as a person and for example, that
we discuss the idea of sharing the "belgium.indymedia.org" url by directing
it on the automatic syndication site (see : http://besyn.buffaloimc.org/) so
that all Belgian imc's with their specificities could be considered as
Belgian (following the example of UK, Italy, Brazil, Oceania...). If you
don't agree with this kind of solution, maybe can you propose another
solution idea to discuss of what you think that will solve the Belgian
situation? I'm sure that this kind of constructive behaviour will be
appreciated and will calm the Belgian discussions.

4. Is it possible that you express your wills about a date and a place as
soon as possible for the meeting? In your collective, when would you like
that the meeting takes place? 
As a person, I will ask other Belgian imc's participants if they agree to
meet in maximum three weeks (the question of sharing url began to be
discussed before September 2003, we have no interest that the situation goes
on). For sure, I don't already know how other indymedia people in Belgium
react to your proposition of meeting and I can't promise great enthusiasm
after those years of non-constructive discussions (physical meeting in the
beginning, tons of mails, irc discussions etc...).

5. Is it possible that you express your position about an Indymedia
mediator? 
You know that there are two kind of proposition on that subject. The first
one is in favour of a local mediator who would know the Belgian dynamics in
the political and activists community. The second one is in favour of a
foreign Indymedia participant that would understand the Indymedia dynamics.
In Liege, we already discussed the idea of a local mediator but we don't
know anyone who would be helpful. We need a person that will help us to find
ideas, solutions and compromises to solve the Belgian imc's problem and we
don't find one that is not involved in your collective or in one of the
others Belgian imc's. 
We also prefer that the mediator would be an Indymedia participant because
we think that the problem is less about political differences than about the
way Indymedia is organised in Belgium. 
Maybe is it possible to find an Indymedia participant that has good
knowledge about activists dynamics in Belgium?

-----------------
Other personal request
-----------------

6. Is it possible that you express yourselves in the global mails using
another expression than "the Belgian collective"? 
It is quite difficult for foreign imc's to understand the Belgian situation
and to make the difference between "the Belgian collective"
(www.indymedia.be) and "the Belgian collectiveS" (www.indymedia.be,
liege.indymedia.org, ovl.indymedia.org, wvl.indymedia.org,
antwerpen.indymedia.org, limburg.indymedia.org). I think that a lot of
people around the world will thank us if we are able to be as clear as
possible. (Maybe could you use "the www.indymedia.be collective" expression
or any other kind of expression that you want?). 

Greetings, with hope,

Arnaud
Liege-imc participant




-----Message d'origine-----
De : imc-liege-bounces at lists.indymedia.org
[mailto:imc-liege-bounces at lists.indymedia.org] De la part de
bruno at indymedia.be
Envoyé : samedi 7 mai 2005 0:00
À : process list; imc-communication at lists.indymedia.org;
imc-be at lists.indymedia.org; imc-be-communication at lists.indymedia.org;
imc-ovl at lists.indymedia.org; imc-wvl at lists.indymedia.org;
imc-antwerpen at lists.indymedia.org; imc-liege at lists.indymedia.org;
imc-bxl at lists.indymedia.org
Cc : process list
Objet : [Imc-liege] PROPOSAL: Consensus in Belgium (deadline: September 4th,
2005)

nederlands onderaan

[en]

hi all,

We understand that there is no consensus in the process list on the
disaffiliation, requested by imc-belgium by imc-liege & imc-ovl.
Moreover, several IMC's blocked the proposal of imc-liege.
We therefore send this proposal to all belgian IMC's with a deadline of
4 months (Saturday 4 september)
so that all IMC's in Belgium have the time organise meetings to discuss
it.

We feel that are two options to reach consensus.

1. We try to figure out how we can work together (with or without
mediation).

This search implies that none of the IMC's imposes its proposals,
vision, ... on the others and that we all accept the idea that reaching
consensus within a network is not an issue of a majority imposing its
vision on a minority (whether we count IMC's, people involved in
IMC's, ... ).

This might imply the need for a mediator as long as it is clear that
such a mediator should by no means be seen as "judge". The Belgian
collective prefers a local mediator as we feel that it would create
better chances to make people talk & listen to each other. But we
feel that this might also be done without a mediator.

It should be noted that there never have been any meetings between all
IMC's in Belgium.

2. Peaceful coexistence

Some people (it is not clear if they speak for themselves or for
their collective) clearly stated that they feel that it does not make sense
to try to talk and reach consensus. The Belgian collective wants to make
clear that it prefers the first option and would find it rather sad if
it would be impossible to talk to each other. But if people feel it is
better to continue on separate ways we can live with this. We feel that
such a choice should not exclude collaboration whenever possible and maybe
in a later stage reviewing that choice to come back to the first option.

There is of course a third option but we feel that it should be
excluded.

Each IMC in Belgium could start/continue to campaign within the
international network to try to win other IMC's for its vision.  We
could start/continue to claim each other's url, ask for disaffiliation of
each other, etc.  We could start/continue to publish articles /
e-mails / wiki-pages, ... that should proof the malfunctioning of other
IMC's in Belgium, ...

This has never been he option of the Belgian collective. We also
understand that
most people and collectives in the network feel uncomfortable with the idea
to judge an other IMC. We therefore would like to exclude this option.

Some practical proposals:

# Timing

We propose a deadline of 4 months to enable all IMC's to organise
meetings, ... to discuss it.  We propose such a long time because we have
noticed that some IMC's did not organise a meeting for more than one year,
so it might take some time & energy for some to do this. If all IMC's
can take a
stand in shorter time, we can move on faster.

If there is no reply from an IMC within those 4 months we assume that
the second option (peaceful coexistence) is the way to go.

# The autonomy of each IMC implies the possibility that not all IMC's in
Belgium take the same stand on this proposal. It should be clear that
no IMC can block other IMC's from working together, but also that such a
coalition (sorry for the name) can not impose its will to other
autonomous IMC's.

# Communication

For the moment there is no place were all Belgian IMC's can freely
communicate with each other.  We therefore propose the use of the
imc-be-communication list and invite people from other IMC's in Belgium
to be a co moderator.

best,
/bruno
- liaison imc-belgium

__________________________________

[nl]

hallo allemaal,

We merken dat er geen consensus is rond het voorstel van imc-liege en
imc-ovl
om imc-belgium uit het netwerk te zetten. Bovendien blokkeerden
verschillende IMC's het voorstel van imc-liege.
Daarom sturen we onderstaand voorstel naar alle Belgische IMC's, en
stellen we hiervoor een deadline voor van 4 maanden
(op zaterdag 4 september 2005), zodat alle IMC's voldoende tijd hebben
om het te bespreken.

Volgens ons zijn er twee manieren om een consensus te bereiken.

1. We proberen uit te zoeken op welke manier we kunnen samenwerken (met
of zonder mediation).

Deze zoektocht impliceert dat geen van de imc's zijn voorstellen, visie,
... oplegt aan de andere en dat we aanvaarden dat consensus bereiken
geen kwestie is van een meerderheid die zijn visie oplegt aan een
minderheid (of we nu het aantal collectieven tellen, of het aantal
mensen die betrokken zijn bij een IMC, ...)

Mogelijk is hiervoor de hulp van een bemiddelaar nodig, zolang het maar
duidelijk is dat deze bemiddelaar geen 'rechter' is. Het Belgium
collectief verkiest een lokale bemiddelaar, omdat dit volgens ons de
kans vergroot dat mensen met elkaar praten en naar elkaar luisteren.
Maar we denken dat dit evengoed mogelijk is zonder bemiddelaar.

Het moet gezegd dat er tot nu toe nooit een vergadering plaats had met
alle IMC's in België.

2. Vreedzame coëxistentie

Sommige mensen lieten al weten (het is niet duidelijk of ze dat op
persoonlijke titel dan wel in naam van hun collectief deden) dat het
volgens hen geen zin heeft om in overleg een consensus proberen te
bereiken. Het Belgium collectief zou willen duidelijk maken dat we de
eerste optie verkiezen en het jammer zouden vinden als het onmogelijk
zou zijn om met elkaar te praten. Als mensen er echter voor kiezen om
apart verder te gaan, kunnen we daarmee leven. We vinden dat deze optie
de mogelijkheid tot samenwerking niet uitsluit. Eventueel kunnen we die
keuze later evalueren en er toch voor kiezen om voor de eerste optie te
gaan.

Uiteraard is er nog een derde optie, die volgens ons echter moet
uitgesloten worden.

Elk IMC in België zou campagne kunnen gaan voeren voor zichzelf en
proberen andere imc's in het netwerk voor zich te winnen. We zouden
kunnen beginnen/verder gaan met elkaars url op te eisen, beginnen/verder
gaan met pogingen elkaar uit het netwerk te zetten, ... We zouden kunnen
beginnen/verder gaan met artikels te schrijven, wiki's op te zetten,
nieuwslijnen vol te posten, ... die moeten bewijzen hoe slecht de andere
IMC's het wel doen.

Dit is nooit een optie geweest van het Belgium collectief. We merken ook
dat de meeste mensen en collectieven liever niet oordelen over andere
IMC's. Daarom zouden we deze optie liever uitsluiten.

Enkele praktische voostellen:

#Timing:

We stellen een deadline voor van 4 maanden (tot zaterdag 4 september) om
alle IMC's in België de kans te geven dit voorstel te bespreken. We
stellen zo'n ruime deadline voor omdat we merkten dat sommige IMC's
gedurende meer dan een jaar geen vergadering organiseerden. Het is dan
ook mogelijk dat dit tijd en energie kost. Als alle IMC's sneller een
standpunt kunnen innemen, kunnen we sneller vooruit.

Als er binnen die 4 maanden geen antwoord is van een IMC, nemen we aan
dat de tweede optie (vreedzame coëxistentie) de te volgen weg is.

#De autonomie van elk IMC impliceert dat het mogelijk is dat niet alle
IMC's in België hetzelfde standpunt innemen. Het moet duidelijk zijn dat
een IMC andere niet kan tegenhouden om samen te werken, maar ook dat
zo'n 'coalitie' (excuses voor de term) haar wil niet kan opleggen aan
andere autonome IMC's.

#Communicatie

Op dit moment is er geen plaats waar alle Belgische IMC's vrij met
elkaar kunnen communiceren. Daarom stellen we voor om de
imc-be-communication hiervoor te gebruiken en nodigen we mensen van 
andere IMC's in
België uit om deze lijst mee te modereren.

best,
/bruno
- liaison imc-belgium
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