[New-imc] New IMC Northern England

[mark]

Hello there.

I'm Mark (IRC: marker) and I'm the contact person named on the new-imc
form for imc-northern. My friend Jimdog posted the new-imc form. I'm
sending this message to respond to some of the points raised on this
list by chrisc. I have tried to subscribe without success, so I do hope
one of you good moderators will let the message through.

> The region that the proposed Northern England IMC covers,
> the North of England [1] includes the urban areas around
> Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool, which have a combined
> population of over 3.5 million and which are covered by 3
> regional IMC UK sites:
> 
>  * http://sheffield.indymedia.org.uk/
>  * http://manchester.indymedia.org.uk/
>  * http://liverpool.indymedia.org.uk/

Of note, none of these sites (or imc-uk as a whole) seem to be under the
editorial or technical control of a functioning collective, as far as I
can tell. Whilst imc-northern is not seeking to detract from these sites
in any way, we think that as a real collectively-run media centre, we
shouldn't be held back by their existence.

> There has however been almost no attempt from the Northern
> IMC activists at having any dialoge with or involvement
> from existing Indymedia activists from these cities,

That is untrue. Perhaps chrisc's assumption that if he didn't know about
it, it hadn't happened says something about the (informal) hierachical
way in which imc-uk is currently organised?

Not only have we spoken to many current indymedia activists from these
cities (for example, at this event
http://hacktivista.net/hacktionlab/index.php/HacktionLab_2009/01 where
Jimdog and I got lots of encouragement for what we were doing from other
UK IMCistas), but also with former IMCistas who live in these cities,
who've said that they would be very interested in getting involved with
indymedia again were it not for the dysfunctionality of imc-uk. We are
trying to meet their needs by setting up a new imc that will be open to
them.

> in
> fact the Northern IMC has been using outreach material
> which some have considered to be hostile towards UK
> Indymedia [2].

Criticism is a necessary part of change and development in groups. It's
unfortunate that a small number of people miss this opportunity for
growth by interpreting it as hostility. I've changed some of the wording
in the outreach material (we haven't used that particular document yet)
to make it more explicit that it isn't just our collective that have a
critique of imc-uk; it's coming from right across our political
communities. It's based on the answers people give us when we ask why
they didn't write an indymedia report about their latest action. We
acknowledge their views in our outreach material so we can explain how
we're responding to what they want.

> There has been some discussion about this on UK lists [3]
> but there doesn't appear to be a consensus, at this stage,
> about the way forwards, several activists have suggested
> that a UK IMC network meeting is needed.

The last uk network meeting was hosted by us. None of the people
suggesting another meeting came to that one (except chrisc, for part of
it). So yes, it would be nice to have a network meeting, but that's no
reason to delay setting up imc-northern. It is actually needed right now.

I do hope that this addresses chrisc's comments sufficiently, but if
further discussion is needed please get back to me.

Cheers,
Mark

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