[IMC-Process] Online form: Proposed new IMC! (Belarus)

[nasty at riseup.net]

Submitted by: Nastia Nekazakova <nasty at riseup.net> on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 @ 5:45:29 am (-0800)

Client Variables
----------------

HTTP_USER_AGENT:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20050105 Debian/1.7.5-1

Online Form Fields
------------------

proposed_imc_name:
Belarus

proposed_imc_url:
belarus.indymedia.org

current_url:
imc-by.hardcore.lt

city:


state:


country:
Belarus

contact_name:
Nastia Nekazakova

contact_email:
nasty at riseup.net

contact_phone:


tech_name:
Dmitry Borodaenko

tech_email:
angdraug at riseup.net

tech_phone:
available on request

focus:
regional_focus

critical_dates:


supporting_groups:
Navinki, FAB, BAF, MLUG, 375crew, BrainActive, others

introductory_statement:
There is no open publishing resource that could be used as a common
ground and communication medium by Belarusian activist groups, and
without it, most communication goes through personal contacts, limiting
the reach of our actions. One more problem is that many of the groups
lack necessary technical resources to set up or actively maintain their
own website. The principles of openness and non-discrimination are an
absolute requirement for such common ground to be recognized and
actively used. We are ready to maintain these principles on our site,
and to help bring together different activist groups and communities.

resources:
There are people with sysadmin experience who are willing to
contribute some of their time to the Indymedia Network.

We expect that at least in the beginning all of our organizing
skills will be spent on running and promoting Indymedia Belarus.

outreach:
We used our personal contacts to spread the word and to invite
everyone interested to participate. We have run workshops at the
Belarusian Social Forum (http://navinki.net/bsforum , most content
is in Russian and Belarusian) and the \"No Culture Without
Subculture\" festival (http://www.eyfa.org/subculture) to get more
people involved. We cooperate with the local Free Software
community. Local activists know about the ongoing work to start
Indymedia Belarus, many groups expressed interest in participating,
and some are already involved with the Indymedia Belarus collective.

identity_makeup:
We place no limitations on participants, we value individuals as
they are, without prejudices or classifications. Our collective is
gender-balanced, sexual minority groups are not yet present but have
already expressed interest in participation. Notably
under-represented are poorer social layers such as peasants, and
ethnic minorities such as Roma people, due to their virtually
non-existent access to technology.

steps_represent_diversity:
We are going to pay great deal of attention to making Indymedia
materials available for people with limited access to computers and
Internet. In particular, we plan to issue a printed outlet with
Indymedia materials. We will be actively looking to expand IMC
collective, and we will make our internal processes as transparent
as possible, to make it easy for newcomers to join. We believe that
as the outreach of the Indymedia Belarus grows, so will the size and
internal diversity of its collective. 

steps_involve_new_workfields:
Libertarian education will be one of the major focuses of our work,
it should help with the transfer of knowledge to those who want to
learn. We will use scheduled rotation of roles to reduce effects of
specialization. We will not create special positions: all members of
the collective should be able (and encouraged) to take any role.