[New-imc] Response to Jimdog's plea for reflection

[Radicale]

Hello everyone,

Jimdog, a member of Northern Indymedia, bethemedia, and the new IMC group has stated that the Mayday collective would be in breach of POU 6 if the UK network fork does not proceed on May 1st. On April 26th 12 people agreed the following Mayday statement (https://docs.indymedia.org/Local/ImcMaydayGlobalForkStatement) in an IRC meeting. The Mayday collective wishes to reiterate point 4 of this statement sent on 27th April 2011 which highlights that POU 6 has not been broken:-

"B group is claiming there was consensus on forking and going ahead with all changes on 1 May irrespective of our status at that time, we dispute this. The agreement was based on a.indymedia.org and b.indymedia.org — our understanding of the consensus was that the fork depended on us having an indymedia.org sub-domain to move to. If B group don't want an
indymedia.org sub-domain that's fine, but our position is that we do, and at the Bradford meeting we agreed to the fork on that basis."

On the contrary, if member(s) of the bethemedia collective were to take steps to archive the www.indymedia.org.uk website on May 1st in spite of the dissent of 12 people, that would be in breach of the conditions of the agreement at the Bradford meeting, and they would be breaking POU 6:-

"All IMC's recognize the importance of process to social change and are committed to the development of non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian relationships, from interpersonal  relationships to group dynamics.Therefore, shall organize themselves collectively and be committed to the principle of consensus decision making and the development of a direct, participatory democratic process] that is transparent to its membership."


There is clearly not a consensus in UK Indymedia for the site to be archived and the lists shutdown on 1st May:

- Mayday Block
 http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-process/2011-April/0422-v2.html

- Birmingham Block
 http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-process/2011-April/0421-0h.html

- Sheffield Block
 http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-process/2011-April/0424-x5.html


In Jimdog's email he states:

> I firmly believe that a wider acceptance of consensus based decision making is essential if we are ever going to see a more socially just world around us. It's also really important in the context of this application too.

Jimdog further points out that:

> a decision was reached through consensus and agreed by all present

However some aspects of the agreement have not happened (the Mayday Collective getting an indymedia.org sub-domain) so the agreement cannot proceed until they have. Although Mayday is simply requesting that the original agreement is seen through, there is a precedent for a standing agreement being blocked: at the Nottingham network meeting a website re-design was agreed but it's deployment was later blocked by UK network members including Jimdog (http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-network/2010-June/0625-ze.html).

Furthermore the global decision making guide contains:-

"Everyone's opinion counts. Everyone belongs to some kind of minority. And every minority has particular concerns or needs that want to be respected, no matter what the majority opinion. It shall be the network's aim to promote this understanding and eliminate old fashioned concepts of minority exclusion, top-to-bottom structures of decision making and bottom-to-top allocation of responsibility."

and

"If a proposal is lacking support or if debate is going into a dead end, especially when a minority group is pushing a proposal forward against majority sentiment, or if a rushed decision would mean a sacrifice to the group's integrity, a block can be proposed on the basis that pushing the proposal carelessly against the flow of the group is a violation against the principles of the group itself. In most cases this leads to an often healthy delay in the decision making process, giving everyone the opportunity to further evaluate, or sometimes to a wholly new attempt that has the collective group start over with a different approach."

https://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/DecisionMakingGuide


We hope this clarifies matters.


In solidarity,


Mayday collective
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