Everyone is a witness, everyone is a journalist. The IMC - A New Model DonÕt hate the media, be the media Indymedia First published in March 2004 for the Indymedia Growth In Africa Project V 1.0 All content is free for reprint and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere, for non-commercial use unless otherwise noted by the author. Published by Indymedia in association with Hedonist Books. The Indymedia Growth In Africa Project is sponsored by Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center. www.ucimc.org Typeset and printed in Walcot by Hedonist Press. Acknowledgements The IMC network is developing very quickly. It is possible that some of information about the network, such as contact e-mail addresses for projects or IMC mailing lists may have changed since publication. Special thanks to all the indymedia activists who volunteered their resources and energy to write the texts that form the greater part of this handbook. Especially to Dr.Blimfield who did the layout. We equally express our appreciation to C.T. Butler and his team from Food Not Bombs Publishing who put together the Guide To Formal Consensus included herein; appreciations as well to WACC from whom we copied a couple of articles about Indymedia included here as well. Particular thanks are due to Urbana-Champaign IMC who sponsored the first printing of this book for the Indymedia Growth in Africa Project, March 2004. Most of the text here is from indymedia network online resources which has been the main platform of most of indymedia documentation and activity. Some of the indymedia volunteers who wrote these texts wrote mainly for online use. The short time available to assemble this version of the handbook did not allow for adapting all these texts for print. Hope you donÕt mind that or any other shortcomings of this Handbook. SphinX - 29 Jan 2004 The Independent Media Center: A New Model Contents Page Acknowledgments 5 1) Introduction i) The Independent Media Centre - A New Model 9 ii) Frequently asked questions 15 2) Structure i) New IMC Information 28 ii) Draft Principles of Unity 33 iii) Membership Criteria 35 3) Theories i) Blue prints Seattle N30 Blueprint 37 Washington A16 Blueprint 43 Dispatch Desk Blueprint 64 ii) On Conflict and Consensus The Advantages of Formal Consensus 68 On Decision-making 72 On Conflict and Consensus 78 The Art of Evaluation 84 Roles 87 Techniques 95 Glossary 101 4) Become The Media i) Kit for preparing content for indymedia How to Write News for Indymedia 102 Guide to Do-It-Yourself media and journalism 105 ii) Articles on Indymedia Indymedia and the new net news 110 Building an international activist internet network 116 Don't hate the media, be the media 122 Indymedia: precursors and birth 126 Indymedia: who are we? 137 iii) First IMC Network Charter proposal San Francisco, April 2001 Preamble 138 1: Mission Statement and Principles of Unity 139 2: Membership Criteria 140 3: The Network 142 4: Decision-Making 143 5: The Global Spoke Council 144 6: Editorial Policies 145 iv) Example of an IMC with a well documented process: Los Angeles Independent Media Center 148 Collective DocumentsÊ Facilitation Tips 157 Sample agenda 163 Member form 165 v) Global Indymedia Overview 166 Notes 171 The Independent Media Center: A New Model Dorothy Kidd S ince its birth in Seattle in late 1999, during demonstrations against the World Trade Organization, the Independent Media Center Network has grown to over one hundred and ten autonomous centres in thirty-five countries. With half a million to two million page views a day, these multi-media sites provide an important source of counter information about struggles against corporate-led globalisation, as well as local, national and international campaigns for peace and social justice. Operating with very little cash, the Network sustains itself on volunteer labour and donations, and as importantly, news and information from its audience through Ôopen publishing.Õ The IMC was not the first network of alternative media to counter the messaging of the dominant corporate and state media; nor to support the growing international opposition to the neo-liberal agenda promoted by the WTO and other multilateral agencies. Neither was it the first to emphasize collectivist self-management, nor to work closely with social movements, or to produce information by and for those usually excluded by the dominant media. However, the scope and scale of the IMC Network surpasses these earlier media projects, minimizing many of the enormous costs and difficulties of production and distribution via its global digital platform. The IMC operates simultaneously at local, regional and international levels, via multi-media on-line and through older media channels off-line. The Network has also created new forms of participatory media-making and reception. Its innovative Open Publishing format encourages Ôpeople to become the media by posting their own articles, analyses and information to the siteÉ from any computer that is connected to the InternetÕ. Audiences can become their own news editors, using multiple networking and interactive options to select information from a wide diversity of news sources, resource links, and discussion opportunities from around the world. On my first encounter during the WTO protests in Seattle I was impressed with the IMC. As a veteran of community video and radio, IÕd say that the IMCÕs networked resource of sophisticated technology and crews, its do-it-yourself mode of media-making for news creators and readers, and its connection to a developing global social justice movement, combine to create a new watershed of autonomous communications. In this article, I will review some of their successes and failures and the challenges they face. Conjuncture of social forces and a convergence of technologies The IMC was no accident, but the result of the historical conjuncture of an emerging global social movement, and two groups of skilled workers both operating with heritages of collective intelligence, and using the new digital technologies. Since its birth in the high-tech incubator of Seattle, home of Microsoft and others, the IMC has enlisted many young, talented techies from around the world who developed their expertise in the high-tech centres and in the peer to peer networks of the Open Source movement. With sophisticated problem-solving skills, and as importantly, an ethos of collaboration, they built a digital environment featuring free software and open source code, which, in large measure, spurred the NetworkÕs rapid growth as centres everywhere could quickly share the resource1. The global tech crew remains indispensable, sharing the support and improvement of sites and the network as a whole via cyberspace, and often from day jobs in the corporate world. The Seattle IMC also drew on cross-generational and cross-craft collaboration between younger and older media activists and artists from community and micro-radio, independent video and access TV, Ôzine makers and the independent pressÕ. This initial collaboration continues in the regional video, radio and print teams, as well as the features working group, which responsible for the web-siteÕs global centre column. News producers have also taken advantage of the global distribution of consumer priced digital audio and video recorders, which are lighter, easier to use, and whose signals can be streamed instantaneously (where the bandwidth exists). As well, many centres combine the new media with older print, radio and video formats, the mainstream media for many working class and poorer communities, in both north and south. Finally, the IMC Network grew out of the emerging global social justice movement. Many IMC centres took first breath in the counter-planning to meetings of global corporate capital such as the WTO in Seattle, the G8 in Genoa, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Quebec and Brazil. A key common understanding of this new movement, as Dee Dee Halleck has noted, is that the Ôinformational/entertainment oligarchy is one of the pillars of global capitalÕ which produced a passive consumer culture, and did not address issues that challenged the status quo. Part of the new movementÕs solution to the corporate oligarchy was to recognize the utility of alternative media and the importance of new ways of communicating. Become the media The IMC Network, like many earlier alternative media, rejected the commercial media model, in which information is commodified and sold to passive audiences through the branded channels of corporate media. However, their approach was only one of two distinct media paradigms that emerged in Seattle. The other approach was best represented by the professional communicators of the international non-governmental organizations. They carefully trained a corps of communicators to speak back to power using a similar rational appeal in formal meetings and press conferences . In contrast, the IMCÕs approach paralleled the direct action in the streets. They not only wanted to publicize counter-information, but to change the relations of production and reception too. The goal was to create a very different kind of synergy between producers and audiences, as encapsulated in an early banner on the Italian site: ÔDonÕt Hate the Media Ð Become the Media.Õ The IMC promoted a do-it-yourself approach for both media producers and audiences with a minimum of gate-keeping. Instead of passive consumers of information, audiences were encouraged to actively surf the siteÕs unbounded riches of information, and act as their own news editors. Growing pains The IMC Network has grown very rapidly from the downtown Seattle shop-front in the midst of the anti-WTO mobilizations. As the wave of protests against corporate globalisation grew, so did the Network, as centres joined on their own, or with the boost of international support teams in hot spots such as Chiapas, Palestine, and Iraq. The rapid growth was also due to the dynamism of the model, which was very cheap and easily reproducible. Many centres share servers and the operating code, and the decentralized networked structure is designed so that each centre manages itself, after signing on to a common agreement with the Network, making central overhead costs minimal. This astonishing pace of development has not been without growing pains. Like many of the precursor alternative media, the IMC Network continually deals with problems of sustainability, uneven and unequal distribution of resources around the globe, attacks from hostile governments and individuals, as well as the difficulties inherent in creating and sustaining a more democratic communications model in an increasingly enclosed corporate media environment. The Network was initially propelled by the heady days of protest against corporate globalisation. The focus on days of action, dispersed around the globe, helped share the work among small, closely-knit teams working all- out for short periods. Yet this carnivalesque pace of production and dependence on individual volunteers is hard to sustain. As well, volunteers tend to represent young, white, professional class men, from countries of the North, and this remains a constant concern.2 Nevertheless the Network continues to grow, and to sustain itself through reliance on volunteers, donated computer server space, and minimal cash donations. The IMCÕs high visibility during mass protests has also made it more vulnerable to external threat. Centres have been raided by national and international security agencies in the US, Canada, Italy and Spain, and their web-sites spammed by hackers from State security forces, right-wing organizations and individuals. In advance of the meetings of the European Union in Barcelona, Spain, in 2002, the Spanish police announced they were tracking the IMC and other alternative information networks. IMC Netherlands was shut down by authorities temporarily because of a link to a German site which authorities there had closed for posting an article detailing methods for stopping trains carrying nuclear waste. Remarkably, the Network continues to morph as a result of adding new people and centres with different approaches, changes within the social movements themselves, and, in response to shifting geo-politics. The IMC still features international coverage of major counter-meetings of the WTO. The Bush regimeÕs war-making has provided another impetus as sites reported on the massive peace demonstrations around the world. Many of the centres and the global site also combine a protest focus with coverage of ongoing local, national, and international peace and social justice campaigns. Most provide links to other alternative and independent media Ôin an effort to diversify content and promote alternative media as a wholeÕ. Several have also widened their representation to include activist groups outside the white-dominated global justice movement. Although there are many difficulties coordinating efforts throughout the entire Network, other kinds of links have formed between project-based groups, or between specific regions. As well, the IMC Network has begun to play a role in the emerging international media democracy movement. Most recently, activists with IMC roots have become involved in media reform campaigns in North America, Europe and South Africa, and internationally in the lead-up to the World Summit on the Information Society. Strength in diversity The tremendous power of the convergent and networked architecture shrunk the battles over resources, but by no means eliminated them. Telephone lines, computers, Internet access and volunteer expertise and time remain unequally distributed between rich and poor, and particularly between the northern Atlantic and everywhere else. As Luz Ruiz of Chiapas Media puts it, Ômost people in Chiapas donÕt have access to water, let alone the Internet.Õ Nor do most poor people, and especially women, have the free time to volunteer. However, the NetworkÕs strength is its global reach into many different communities with a diversity of traditions of alternative media and social justice movement organizing, and there has been no shortage of resourcefulness in dealing with these challenges. For example, in Chiapas, as in many southern centres, the Internet is mostly used as a distribution conduit, with local production primarily via audiotapes and radio. In Brazil, the Internet is used primarily to gather and circulate news, which is then sent to a network of free and community radio stations. In Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo, the local crews take video documentaries back out to the communities where they were produced to foster discussion. Many Brazilian Centres also distribute printed news-sheets that are photocopied and posted on walls all over the city, because of lack of funds for printed copies . The Argentina IMC also works both on and off-line. Begun during the surge of organizing against the national government, and IMF policies, in 2001, the Buenos Aires collective coordinates shows of videos and photos, workshops on the Internet, and journalism and popular education with groups of workers, neighbourhood assemblies, and among the traditional left parties and independent political and cultural organizations. The commonerÕs burden 3 Perhaps the greatest challenge of the IMC has been to create a more accessible open and democratic communications model for the grassroots within the increasingly enclosed system of the corporate media. The IMC Network, as do all other alternative media, operate in an environment saturated with the mainstream prototypes of info-tainment, or state sponsored messaging, well-massaged in easy sound-bites. The global social justice movement and the IMC were formed partly in response to the impact of this growing corporate media presence. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to break the ties of those conventions of media use. Even if the digital access question was solved, most people still do not have the time to produce their own stories, nor to read Indymedia with the critical eye and self-motivated searching that the site demands. The IMCÕs daring experiment has been to open the communications system through the rapid admission of new member groups, the sharing of the code and the development of Open Publishing architecture. This strategic decision has not been without consequences. Several sites, especially the global Israel and Palestine IMCÕs, have been systematically hacked and attacked, and there is a continuing plague of racist, right-wing or hate-filled commentaries throughout the Network. As well, while the rapid open-ended development has elicited a bounty of material, the quality is very uneven. Many of the stories are written by and for other activists, with little attempt to provide background information and context. While the main plank of the strategy of openness remains, there have been some changes. Most local sites are now more closely monitored, with articles ranked. As well, a Newswire Working Group clears duplicate posts, commercial messages and moves posts to Ôhidden articlesÕ4. In response to the harassment, and also as a way to reinforce the global diversity and unity, the centre column now features stories selected from the entire Network. Each of these changes has elicited controversy, as many have argued against any new gate-keeping protocols. This trend towards selection, or at least ranking, of content, could lead to a professionalisation of news writing and editing, or to a much more peer to peer network, in which audiences are actively enlisted in ranking and curating stories. The question posed by Sheri Herndon of the original Seattle IMC, is whether the IMC crews should be editors or librarians? Conclusion As the neoliberal project has fostered the extension of corporate media world-wide, it has also created conditions of radical possibility. In four short years, the IMC has grown a world-wide information Network that provides a vital resource for the global social justice movements amidst the encroaching global corporate enclosure of media. This qualitative shift from a praxis of media ÔalternativesÕ grew from the collective intelligence of old and new media producers and artists, who shared their technologies and techniques. The IMC prefigures a form of Ôautonomous communications,Õ which is not only independent of the ownership of global corporations and governments, but also of the logics and languages of the mainstream stenographers to power.5 The challenge of the global IMC is to develop a global communications commons by extending the Network throughout all the regions of the world and deeper into the communities. While protest-based news will continue to fire up both producers and viewers alike, the Network needs also to develop more long-term relations with ongoing social justice movements and communicators. This will necessarily require much more development of the Network through global decision-making as well as collaborative work among other constituencies on a local, regional and global basis. Frequently Asked Questions What is Indymedia? Distilled from our mission statement: Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate telling of truth. There are currently about over fifty Independent Media Centers around the world. Each IMC is an autonomous group that has its own mission statement, manages its own finances and makes its own decisions through its own processes. To learn more about each IMC, visit its web page. You will find links to IMC web sites on the left column of the main Indymedia page - http://www.indymedia.org Most of the information below answers questions that site visitors frequently ask about "indymedia.org", an organization of independent media activists from around the world who are working to coordinate international independent media projects. The indymedia.org group manages an international Indymedia page and coordinates technical and editorial policy issues that affect all IMCs that are associated with the Indymedia network. How did the IMC project get started? Indymedia is the collective effort of hundreds of independent media makers from around the world who are dedicated to providing a forum for independent reporting about important social and political issues. Several hundred media activists, many of whom have been working for years to develop an active independent media through their own organizations, came together in late November, 1999 in Seattle to create an Independent Media Center to cover protests against the World Trade Organization. The Seattle IMC provided coverage of the WTO through both a printed publication called "The Blind Spot" and the first IMC web site. The web site received almost 1.5 million hits during the WTO protests. In February of 2000 a small IMC formed in Boston to cover the Biodevestation Convergence, and a larger one came together in Washington D.C. to cover the A16 protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. After that request from local groups interested in forming their own IMCs started to pour in. There are now over one hundred local Independent Media Centers around the world and more are on the way. You will find a list of local IMCs on the left column of the www.indymedia.org site. What are Indymedia's long-term goals? That's a big question, one that every Indymedia organizer would likely answer in a different way. Indymedia endeavors to empower people to become the media by present honest, accurate, powerful independent reports. One vague long-term goal would be to foster and facilitate the development of as much independent media as possible around the world. Some come to their Indymedia organizing with a deeper goal, to enable people, while they're "becoming the media", to realize they can take control of other aspects of their lives that they previously left up to 'experts' or 'professionals.' On a practical level, some who are involved with Indymedia are working toward the development of national and/or international television or radio networks, and others are working toward the establishment of an international independent regular newspaper and others projects that will assure the public has access to independent news reports. How is Indymedia associated with the 'anti-globalization' movement? While Indymedia is not a conscious mouthpiece of any particular point of view, many Indymedia organizers and people who post to the Indymedia newswires are supporters of the "anti-globalization" (alternative globalization, anti-corporatization) movement. Corporate media often describe those who protest so-called "free trade" conferences and agreements as being "anti-globalization", ostensibly against the process of breaking down national borders to create what pro-globalization economists claim will be a more profitable world. This misrepresents the reality of the international movement for social justice, which advocates not the "free trade" of powerful governments (trade that allows goods and services to flow across national borders, often in a way that allows producers to move their manufacturing plants to countries where they can pay workers a pittance), but "fair trade" that opens borders to goods and people as a way of sharing the earth's natural and manufactured resources in a way that will benefit all. Today's social justice activists are not against globalization of community, justice and resources, they protest the economic globalization coordinated by the powerful few that results in their profiting from the work of the majority of the world's population. They sometimes prefer to call themselves "alternative globalization" activists, or those who are against the increasing corporatization of society and culture. What draws many of these activists to Indymedia? Perhaps people who protest the power multinational corporations, faceless international financial institutions and inaccessible governments have over their lives found encouragement in Indymedia's news wire, which encourages them to present their own account of what is happening in the world. People participating in protests that question the very tenets of corporate domination of their lives understand why their issues are unlikely to receive honest consideration in the corporate-owned media. Activists planning an alternative globalization/anti-corporatization event can assure a safe space for presenting non-corporate news by forming a local IMC to provide coverage of the event, or posting news to the site of a local IMC that currently exists. If each IMC is autonomous, how do you make global Indymedia decisions? Indymedia is currently developing a global decision-making process that will enable all IMCs to make decisions that affect the whole network. The current proposal is for Indymedia to form a "global spokescouncil" that will confirm decisions on global Indymedia issues that local IMCs have made through their own decision-making processes. When this process develops, you will find information about it on the Indymedia sites. If you would like to be involved in developing the spokescouncil idea or working on other Indymedia process issues you may subscribe to the imc-process@indymedia.org e-mail list through the http://lists.indymedia.org page. If you've been involved in Indymedia for a while and would like to participate in the decision-making working group, the group that's focussing attention and work on developing the a global decision-making process, subscribe to imc-dmwg@indymedia.org through the lists page. Do you really organize via the Internet? Yes. While people in local IMCs organize face-to-face, many IMC projects have international involvement and discussion about them happens primarily through e-mail lists. You may view the archives of all Indymedia e-mail lists by going to http://lists.indymedia.org, clicking on the name of the list you would like to explore, and clicking on the link that takes you to the archive of that list. Another collaborative resource is the Indymedia Twiki (http://docs.indymedia.org), a content management system which basically works like an open-access website. Sometimes people who are organizing Indymedia projects "meet" on-line in chat rooms on the Indymedia IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server (http://irc.indymedia.org) to communicate in real time. Some international IMC working groups, such as the Imc-Print team, have weekly IRC meetings. What is the address/phone #/fax # of Indymedia's office? Believe it or not, the Indymedia has no central office, and therefore we have no address, phone number or fax. That said, many Indymedia centers have offices. You can find Indymedia contact information for local IMCs at www.indymedia.org/contact.php3. What is the www.indymedia.org newswire? Why are there sometimes hate-filled articles on the newswire? The www.indymedia.org newswire works on the principle of "open publishing", an essential element of the Indymedia project that allows independent journalists and publications to publish the news they gather instantaneously on a globally accessible web site. The Indymedia newswire encourages people to become the media by posting their own articles, analysis and information to the site. Anyone may publish to the newswire, from any computer that is connected to the Internet, by clicking the 'publish' link on the www.indymedia.org page and following the easy instructions. Indymedia relies on the people who post to the Indymedia newswire to present their information in a thorough, honest, accurate manner. While Indymedia reserves the right to develop sections of the site that provide edited articles, there is no designated Indymedia editorial collective that edits articles posted to the www.indymedia.org newswire. An Indymedia 'Newswire Working Group' has formed to keep track of what's been posted and clear the newswire of duplicate posts, commercial messages, and other posts that don't fit within Indymedia's editorial guidelines. Soon you will be able to contact the Newswire Working Group via e-mail to voice your opinions about the articles it has chosen to remove from the front page of the newswire. All articles moved from the front of the newswire will continue to remain publicly accessible through the "editorial administration" and the "hidden articles" areas of the Indymedia site, which you can reach through the "publish" link. You will soon find the current Indymedia editorial guidelines at the top of the page you reach after clicking the "publish" link. If you disagree with the content of a particular article that someone has posted on Indymedia, you may comment on the article through the "add your own comments" link at the bottom of each post. Can you tell me more about "open publishing"? For more information about open publishing, check out Indymedia tech volunteer Matthew Arnison's essay on the topic at http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~matthewa/catk/openpub.html. Will you post my article/story/etc.? If you are convinced your own story is of international relevance, then please publish your story to the Indymedia newswire by clicking on the "publish" link on the www.indymedia.org page and following the easy instructions. If you send your story to the imc-editorial list or any other e-mail list people on those lists will most likely ask you to post the story yourself. If you think your own story is more appropriate for residents of a city/region/country or people interested in that city/region/country, then it would be better to post to the appropriate local IMC newswire by going to the local site (click the local IMCs link on the left column of the www.indymedia.org site to find it), pushing the "publish" button and following the instructions. This way people who live in the locality and can act on your information or agree or disagree with it are more likely to read your posting than if you post it at the www.indymedia.org newswire. Why isn't Indymedia covering such and such event/issue/topic? Indymedia provides a public forum for independent journalists and media organizations to post their own articles about myriad issues, but doesn't determine what those independent journalists cover. If you want to see more coverage of an issue, post more stories about the issue and encourage other newswire readers to do the same. Where do I send my press releases? Please e-mail press releases to pressreleases@indymedia.org. How do I get something featured in the center column of the www.indymedia.org site? If you think your article or issue has global relevance and would therefore be interesting for people to read as a feature on www.indymedia.org, please send your feature idea to the features working group at www-features@indymedia.org. Ideas sent to that group will most likely become features if you present them along with proposed text in the format of most www.indymedia.org features, with several suggested links, preferably to articles on Indymedia sites, and with an image to use with the feature. How do I search the Indymedia sites? You should be able to search the local IMC sites by using the search function found at the top left of every local IMC page. The search function on the www.indymedia.org page itself is often unbearably slow. One suggestion is to search the Indymedia site using an outside search engine such as Google.com. Use the advanced search function to search for articles only on the www.indymedia.org site. Should I believe news I read on Indymedia? Should you believe news you read on CNN.com? All reporters have their own biases; governments and massive for-profit corporations that own media entities have their own biases as well, and often impose their views on their reporters (or their reporters self-censor to conform their own biases to those of their employer). You should look at all reports you read on the Indymedia site with a critical eye, just as you should look at all media before you in a discerning manner. Of what are you "independent"? No corporation owns Indymedia, no government manages the organization, no single donor finances the project. Indymedia is not the mouthpiece of any political party or organization. People involved with Indymedia have a wide variety of political and personal viewpoints. Anyone may participate in Indymedia organizing and anyone may post to the Indymedia newswires. Political parties or organizations may choose to publish articles on the Indymedia newswires, but in doing so they invite public debate about their positions from any reader of the site; any reader may respond by publishing his/her comments alongside the post in question. True, many Indymedia organizers and people who post to the sites have political opinions that fall along the left side of the political spectrum, yet each individual chooses his/her own level of involvement; there's nothing in any Indymedia mission statement that declares people who are involved must be of any particular mindset, as long as they do not work contrary to the values espoused in Indymedia's mission statement. How do I form an IMC? You will find some information about how to form an IMC in your area on the http://newimc.indymedia.org. You will also find some advice about how to put together an IMC at the http://process.indymedia.org site. Indymedia is currently working to make its instructions for building an IMC and the information provided on the Process site more complete and explicit. Once you have read the information on those sites and explored the other Indymedia sites to get a good idea of what IMCs do, send an e-mail to the New-IMC working group (new-imc@indymedia.org) to tell the group about your interest in forming an IMC. Someone from the working group will contact you with detailed information about how to go about forming an IMC. Though each local IMC is an autonomous organization, there are several simple things each local IMC must do before the Indymedia global group opens its local indymedia.org domain, such as develop a mission statement and editorial policy and assure the Indymedia global group that it is ready to put substantial effort into building a sustainable Independent Media Center. Are you "activists" or "journalists"? Some would say "activists," some would say "journalists", some would say both. Each Indymedia reporter/organizer must make this distinction for him/herself. Having a point of view does not preclude Indymedia reporters from delivering truthful, accurate, honest news. Most, if not all, local IMCs, have explicit policies to strongly deter reporters from participating in direct actions while reporting for Indymedia. There's a problem with my article/press release/story/etc. How do I fix it? Send an e-mail to www-newswire@lists.indymedia.org including the URL of the article in question. Because the IMC is a volunteer-run organization, our volunteers work diligently to assist with hundreds of e-mail requests. We ask that you please only ask for assistance when there is a substantial problem. How many hits do the Indymedia sites get? That's a difficult question to answer. Indymedia sites are spread across many servers and we do not log IP addresses as a way of protecting the privacy of our visitors. This makes creating any concrete logging and traffic information. Indymedia is an activist network and not a dot.com which is dependent on traffic numbers to provide to investors. We work to keep our servers up with a shoestring budget and tracking visitor numbers isn't that important. During times of great traffic (for example, during the week surrounding the Genoa G8 protests, during which Indymedia sites received an estimated 5 million page views), various servers mirror Indymedia content and share traffic, making accurate statistics nearly impossible to accumulate. During the first days of the US/UK invasion of Iraq some Indymedia sites such as Indymedia Italia received about half a million page views a day. When we aren't covering a major action the main www.indymedia.org site generally gets around 100,000 page views a day as of April 2003. We do not have any firm numbers on Indymedia traffic for the network, but a good guess would be that Indymedia as a whole has between 500,000 and 2 million page views a day. How do you pay for all this stuff? Indymedia funds all of its activities through donations from people like you. If you would like to support Indymedia financially you may do so through the web page you will find by clicking the 'support indymedia' link at the top of the www.indymedia.org web page. Indymedia supports its entire technical structure on an incredibly minimal budget - only a couple thousand US dollars so far, as opposed to the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that power the corporate media. Loudeye.com donates substantial server space, especially for hosting multimedia files. How do I donate money? If you would like to make a tax deductible donation to Indymedia you may do so through our fiscal sponsor, Jam For Justice. You may send a cheque made payable to 'Jam for Justice' to: Independent Media Center 1415 Third Avenue Seattle, WA 98101 Attn: Indymedia Network. Please write "Indymedia Network" in the memo area of your cheque. Indymedia can use all the financial help it can get. Right now we're waiting to distribute all money donated to the global IMC until we develop a global decision-making process. Until we do so, donations sent explicitly for the global network will wait in our bank account until that happens. You may donate directly to local IMCs and/or IMC projects, each of which should have its own decision-making process and will therefore be able to use your money. You can also donate online via paypal using a credit card. The finance decisions about money you donate are made by the imc-finance working group. How do I donate other things? If you're interested in donating equipment or anything to a local IMC, please contact that IMC directly by pursuing the contact information you find through its web site. If you are interested in donating server space to the network please contact imc-tech@indymedia.org. If you are interested in donating anything else to the network, please e-mail us at donate@indymedia.org. I want to work for indymedia, and I want to become involved in Indymedia global organizing. Where do I send my resumŽ? Much Indymedia global organizing happens though communication on e-mail lists. You will find our lists at http://lists.indymedia.org. Indymedia currently doesn't have the money to pay anyone, even for the hundreds of hours of work they've done for the network. However, you may certainly be involved in organizing any of Indymedia's associated IMCs and/or international projects. You may do so by communicating with the current organizing groups through e-mail lists you will find at http://lists.indymedia.org. For an overview of which lists are most essential to join to become involved in Global Indymedia organizing, take a look at the Global Indymedia Overview at the end of this book.. I want to volunteer for indymedia, how do I get involved? First go to http://volunteer.indymedia.org and fill out the form. That will get a message to a local IMC about your intent to volunteer for them. You should also contact the follow the link on the left column of the www.indymedia.org site to get to the web site of the IMC closest to you and contact them directly just to be sure they know to contact you. If you would like to be involved with global Indymedia efforts, you may do so by joining each project's e-mail list through the http://lists.indymedia.org page. For example: Indymedia process discussions: imc-process@indymedia.org Developing Indymedia editorial policy: imc-editorial@indymedia.org The Indymedia translation team: translation@indymedia.org The tech team: imc-tech@indymedia.org The print team: imc-print@indymedia.org You may also view the archives of each Indymedia e-mail list at http://lists.indymedia.org. If you would like to volunteer to work on a project that currently doesn't have an e-mail list, please send an e-mail to help@indymedia.org to find out how to connect with people who are already working on that project, or to find out how to initiate the project yourself. How do I join/unsubscribe from Indymedia e-mail lists? You can join/unsubscribe to Indymedia e-mail lists through http://lists.indymedia.org. How do I find technical help? You may access the imc-tech FAQ at http://process.indymedia.org/tech/FAQ.php3. How do I open an e-mail list on the Indymedia server for my IMC to use? If you're interested in opening an e-mail list for your IMC project send your request to listwork@indymedia.org with a description of the list and why you want to set it up. You or someone else you know should be prepared to be the list administrator - don't worry, it's an easy thing to do. If you would like to open an e-mail list to facilitate organizing your group that's discussing forming an IMC, e-mail new-imc@indymedia.org first, to let the new-imc working group know your plan, then contact listwork@indymedia.org. Where do I find published stories about Indymedia? You may find some stories written about Indymedia at http://www.indymedia.org/stories_imc.php3. So many have been written lately that we're losing track. A search through your favorite web search engine (using an 'advanced search' function to tell the search engine not to return results from any indymedia.org domain), will yield a lot of exciting articles. I want to interview someone at Indymedia for an article/report/media piece/school paper. How do I find the right person? If you would like to interview someone from a local IMC or specific project please contact that IMC/project directly. If you would like to interview someone at IMC-global please e-mail help@indymedia.org. Please let us know your deadline. We will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Please understand that Indymedia is a volunteer-run organization and we have a hard time fulfilling all requests. How can I get in touch with people in local IMCs? Each IMC should have contact information available on its web site, though every IMC replies to e-mail at a different pace. You may contact the Indymedia tech team by sending an e-mail to imc-tech@indymedia.org. You may contact people who are working on Indymedia editorial issues by mailing imc-editorial@indymedia.org. You may contact the people working on Indymedia process issues by e-mailing imc-process@indymedia.org. You may contact the translation team by e-mailing translation@indymedia.org. You may contact the IMC print team through imc-print@indymedia.org. What languages does indymedia.org use? There are local IMCs that publish, or are planning to publish, in languages such as English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Flemish, Swedish, Finnish, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic. So far most global Indymedia discussions take place in English, but the Indymedia Translation Team is working to change that. If you would like to join the translation team to help make this possible, join the translation@indymedia.org e-mail list through the http://lists.indymedia.org page. We have also initiated discussions about facilitating international Indymedia communication by using Esperanto. I want to use this article for something. May I? All original content posted to Indymedia is free for reprint and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere, for non-commercial use, unless otherwise noted by author. If you have questions about whether you may publish a particular article please contact the article's author directly. For more information about open content licenses visit: http://www.opencontent.org. I'm having problems listening to/viewing things posted on the Indymedia sites. How can I get help? Indymedia has provided links to some of the programs you can use to listen to/view things at http://www.indymedia.org/help.php3. Follow those links to receive support from the companies that produce the programs, as they will be able to answer specific questions much better than the Indymedia tech team. Do you have tee shirts or other promotional materials? Indymedia global doesn't have tee shirts or other promotional material available right now. The Seattle (http://seattle.indymedia.org) and Washington DC (http://dc.indymedia.org) IMCs both apparently have tee shirts. Please contact them through their web sites. The site isn't working/my article won't publish/everything is really slow. How do I get help? Indymedia is a 100% volunteer network with few resources. Our tech volunteers do an extraordinary job keeping the technical aspects of the web sites flowing. Sometimes, especially during high traffic times, the site is not able to handle all the traffic. We wish we could suggest something other than 'try back in a little while,' but unfortunately that's all we can recommend. If you have technical abilities or server space to offer that would definitely help. Please contact the IMC tech team: imc-tech@indymedia.org. Can I post to all the IMC newswires or e-mail lists with the touch of one button? No. The site is set up to encourage you to post or e-mail your information to the specific newswire/e-mail list that it concerns. What kind of audio/video/print projects do you have? There are hundreds of videographers scurrying about the globe who currently take video for Indymedia sites and projects. Some of them communicate via the video@indymedia.org e-mail list. Every month FreeSpeech TV (http://www.freespeech.org) collects video segments from Indymedia videographers around the world into the 'Indymedia newsREAL.' You can find out more about that project through http://satellite.indymedia.org. The European IMCs also produce a monthly video newsreal (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/EuropeanNewsReal) of activist news. Many IMCs have their own radio projects, and several of them broadcast regularly on the Internet. Find out more about IMC radio projects through http://radio.indymedia.org and/or join the conversation at imc-audio@indymedia.org. Many IMCs have their own print publications, so check local IMC sites to follow along with their adventures in real life print. There is an international imc-print team; they organize via the imc-print@indymedia.org list and through the http://print.indymedia.org site. Every week the IMC-Print team produces a two page PDF (printable file) summary of Indymedia news, which you should print, copy and distribute in your community. How do I get footage from Seattle/Washington/Prague/Genoa? If you're interested in the IMC videos from Seattle, Washington or Genoa, contact Seattle (seattle.indymedia.org), Washington D.C. (dc.indymedia.org) and Italy (italia.indymedia.org) respectively. If you'd like information about the Prague video you can find it at http://praguevideo.indymedia.org. How do I get Indymedia news off the computer and into the hands of people in my community? Print the Print team's weekly PDF (http://print.indymedia.org), copy it and distribute it in your community. You may also print articles from the Indymedia site by clicking the 'print this article' link at the top of the article. Encourage your community radio station to broadcast IMC audio project productions (http://radio.indymedia.org). Organize a screening of the Indymedia newsREAL (http://satellite.indymedia.org) and/or screen any Indymedia video. TELL PEOPLE ABOUT WHAT YOU SEE ON THE IMC SITES. When's the next protest? Though Indymedia itself doesn't plan protests, Indymedia ally http://www.protest.net provides a calendar of upcoming protests and other events. Can you link to us? You may suggest your link to Indymedia through the http://www.indymedia.org/links.php3 page. Please understand that Indymedia volunteers are incredibly busy and haven't been able to maintain our links page too well as of late. You may most definitely link to any Indymedia site from your web site. Why is the background of the site too dark? It hurts my eyes. People on the imc-presentation@indymedia.org working group have heard many complaints that the black background and white text makes reading the site difficult for some people. They have also received many positive comments about the way the site looks. As of now they have made the decision to stay with the current look of the site. If you really have a hard time reading articles with the black background, try clicking the 'print article' link at the top of each article. This will transform the article into a printable version ' white background with black text ' that should be easier to read. Why are upcoming events for Mexico listed in Latin America and not North America? Yes, Mexico is in North America, but it's also in Latin America. The socio-political context of organizing a major protest in Mexico is distinctly a Latin American political process. Another reason to put it in Latin America is in Spanish the name 'northamericano' is used to refer to people from the US and Canada, and not Mexicans. Culture and geography don't always line up. We could change 'North America' to be called 'Anglo America' but then where would be put protests in Quebec, which, along with Haiti, and French Guyana are 'Francophone America'? To say nothing of the Surinamese and the category of Dutch America. There is no perfect way to organize these things. Also putting protests under Latin America means it has more prominence rather than getting buried under a sea of US based protests. Can I syndicate indymedia? What RSS and XML feeds for Indymedia content do you provide? Yes, we have many RSS feeds and other XML format feeds of Indymedia content. You can read all about it and find the URLs at www.indymedia.org/syndication.php3. Is Al-Muajaha the Baghdad Indymedia Center? This is an often asked question. For a full history of the Al-Muajaha media activist project please read this email. The Al-Muajaha group is not an official Indymedia center because they have started but not finished the new-imc process. Many Indymedia activists have been working to support the Iraqi media activists who have formed Al-Muajaha. The supporters have a mailing list, imc-iraq-supporters@lists.indymedia.org which you can join if you are interested supporting Indymedia efforts in Iraq and Al-Muajaha. It is our hope that Al-Muajaha will finish their application and join the Indymedia network. Until that time they are an organization which is being supported by the Indymedia network but not formally part of the network. What if the answer to my question isn't in this document? If the above frequently asked question file hasn't answered your question, you may contact us at help@indymedia.org. Please understand that Indymedia is an all volunteer project and sometimes there are hundreds of messages to go through each day. We will try to get back to you as quickly as possible. Thank you. Chapter 2 - Structure New IMC Information INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION T he New IMC information page has been set up to help YOU1 learn more about the Indymedia Network. This site is put together and kept up to date by various members of the network, but primarily by the New IMC working group. Our hope it that this information will introduce you to an overview of Indymedia but also to what to expect from the New Imc Process. This working space is ever evolving and is the first step towards understanding not only Indymedia values and the common ground that enables us to be a network, but also a bit about how the network itself works and what that means for each local IMC. Please have your local collective or the group of people interested in joining the Indymedia Network read over the draft document So you want to start an IMC? before filling out this form. If you have questions, you can send email to the new-imc mailing list. We know that the process can be confusing for newcomers and we're trying to make it as open and transparent a process as possible. Please remember that we are all volunteers who work in indymedia and often are busy with our local IMCs as well. NETWORK OVERVIEW - THEORY AND PRACTICE The strength of the IMC as a concept comes directly from its organizational structure; namely, a decentralized network of autonomous collectives whose shared resources allow for the creation of a social and digital infrastructure that is independent of state and market forces. It is our intention as a media movement to build out this structure so that, on the one hand, we have local IMC's throughout the world that are autonomous in their decision making while, on the other hand, we are united in a network form of organization that allows for collaboration on a level previously reserved for state and corporate interests. To the extent the network is effective in challenging abusive systems of power is directly related to our ability to create decentralized structures. It is our ability to be flexible and simultaneously united that has proven effective. However, it cannot be understated that in order for collaboration to occur network wide, there needs to exist a set of guidelines and a process by which we all agree to work. Quite frankly, it is necessary to resist any efforts by a local collective, for example, that wishes to develop a non-participatory, top-down structure, or would like to create a corporation out of a local IMC. To this end, we have developed guidelines for network participation in the form of two crucial documents: the Principles of Unity and the Criteria for Membership. These documents, in a sense, are a pact amongst media activists that allow for the network to exist. It is under these assumptions that we are united yet autonomous. NEW IMC PROCESS - HOW IT WORKS So that you can know what to expect, here's a brief description of the current process that the New IMC Working Group follows. Because we're all humans and we rely on our diverse communication styles, this is not designed to be a perfect science, but rather to be democratic, transparent and flexible. This process has been evolving as we continue to improve the process and to incorporate helpful feedback from participants. Please feel free to ask any questions you have that will help you through this process. You can either email the list or contact any of the people who have sent you either the general information or tech information. 1. Pre-organizing: the first step is to talk with people in your community and try to get the sense if there is interest in forming an IMC. 2. Look at the documents linked at this site (see below). 3. When you think you're really ready to do some good organizing, fill out the form at the bottom of this page. 4. Open a mailing list: newlist.indymedia.org 5. O - R - G - A - N - I - Z - E !!!! 6. With your forming collective, write a mission statement (see below) and editorial policy, maybe contact imc-tech@indymedia.org at this stage. 7. When you're really ready, and only when you're ready, reply to each of the membership criteria points one by one, and send to new-imc@indymedia.org. 8. Your new-imc contact proposes your site to http://newlist.indymedia.org and if no one blocks within 3 days, this is passed to http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-process/ If no one blocks there within 7 days, you become part of the network and are put on the cities.inc list once your web site is ready. 9. The fun begins. Get involved in the global lists and Indymedia discussions and decisions. Offer to work with other IMCs from your area or elsewhere around the world. Do good work. 10. Change the world, for the better of course. We wouldn't expect anything less. PROVISIONAL IMC NETWORK DOCUMENTS These are the documents that you will receive once you have sent in the form and introduction on http://newimc.indymedia.org. The Principles of Unity and the Membership Criteria are the documents that we ask your collective to carefully review, comment on and send back to the New-IMC list. You should take your time reviewing these documents. This is not a casual step. You are becoming a member of an international network. And while we operate in a decentralized, non-hierarchical way, we are also part of a network that shares resources, solidarity and support. Hopefully these documents will give you a good idea of what Indymedia is all about. \ Introductory letter \ Global Indymedia Overview \ Draft of Principles of Unity \ Draft of IMC Membership Criteria \ These documents also available in other languages. See: http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/DocumentsTranslation IMPORTANT BACKGROUND DOCUMENTS These background and general information documents are useful for any new IMC collective and can be a resource for a long time. \ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) http://process.indymedia.org/faq.php3 \ Index of IMC Process Planning Posts http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/ \ IMC Contact Page http://www.indymedia.org/contact.php3 \ Most recent IMC Summary (tech and non-tech) http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-summaries/ \ http://process.indymedia.org/ for a good idea of IMC "process" (this only scratches the surface) \ http://internal.indymedia.org/ the site for IMCers talking to each other \ IMC Blueprints for Events http://docs.indymedia.org/twiki/bin/view/Global/ SeattleN30Blueprint TECH SIDE OF THINGS If you would like to see what may be involved in maintaining a site, please refer to: \ Active Software (www.active.org.au) for information about the software that started it all. \ http://tech.indymedia.org for those more tech focused. \ Indymedia Technology Options Site (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/) - If you want to know about all the different programs and software packages that have been developed to run and support indymedia sites and what you can choose for your IMC then check out this site. \ The Global IMC-Tech collective (imc-tech@indymedia.org) can help provide you with servers and software setup or get you connected with people who can help you. Don't think you're on your own, we're here to help. If you have techies then we could use your help too. REGIONAL TECH CONTACTS \ East Coast US - Deanna (deanna@indymedia.org) \ West Coast US - Andy (nonoboy@peak.org) \ South America - Pietro (pietro@indymedia.org) NEW IMC FORM After your collective reviews the above information, please fill out the form below and answer the following questions. NOTE: All information entered in this form will be publicly archived at http://lists.indymedia.org/. Please provide only information that can be made public. We'd like your group to draft up a statement or essay or short story (any style you'd like) that expresses why you are interested in starting an IMC in your city or region and why you want to join the indymedia network. Later in the process, when we send the application on to the IMC-Process list, we will ask for an introduction to your IMC. You can have this serve both purposes. Or you can revise it for both purposes (nothing is set in stone - we're hopefully always evolving this process and improving it). Doing this will help us better evaluate your request. A short essay will tell us much more about your ideas for participating in the IMC network than just the form. This should be written with the approval of the collective who wants to start up an IMC. There is an example reproduced in Chapter 4 of this guide which can also be seen at http://la.indymedia.org/LA_IMC_Docs_001.html The form provided on http://newimc.indymedia.org asks you for the following information: New IMC Application Form Proposed Name of new IMC City State/Province Country Contact Name (required) Email (required) Phone Technical Contact Name Email Phone Supporting Groups Regional Focus Issue Focus Event Focus Critical Dates? What kind of resources can you contribute, in terms of server/bandwidth/technical and organizing skills? What kind of outreach have you done to bring together a diverse group of people? Please write an introductory statement about why you want to participate in the Indymedia Network (see above). Send It! Principles Of Unity THIS IS THE CURRENT DRAFT OF THE PRINCIPLES OF UNITY1. The following document is a draft of the Principles of Unity for the entire IMC network. This document was based on principles culled from 18 months of at large interaction on the IMC Process list serve. Those principles were discussed and debated among approximately 70 IMC members from around the world at the Press Freedom Conference in San Francisco on April 27-29, 2000. A working group was formed to present the draft document to all of the local IMC's for feedback. Although this version is in English, the document has been sent to translations and other languages will be posted as soon as they are available2. If you have a specific language request, please let us know. We are hoping to reach network-wide consensus on this document by mid-July. In order to do that, we ask that one spokesperson from each local IMC facilitate this effort by presenting this document to their group, gathering feedback and reporting that feedback to us (e.g. one spokes from IMC Boston sends one email to the Unity list with concerns, objections or suggestions raised by that local). PLEASE SEND ALL CONCERNS, OBJECTIONS OR SUGGESTIONS TO IMC-UNITY@INVITRO.CAT.ORG.AU This document is a work in progress and an attempt to state the basic principles for which we all stand. As such, please take time in your local meeting to read, debate and discuss it. All bracketed items are part of the priciples of unity but have been specifically identified as in need of further definition, clarification and "wordsmithing." Please feel free to contact the working group with any questions. We welcome and look forward to your input. PRINCIPLES OF UNITY 1. The Independent Media Center Network (IMCN) is based upon principles of equality, decentralization and local autonomy. The IMCN is not derived from a centralized bureaucratic process, but from the self-organization of autonomous collectives that recognize the importance in developing a union of networks. 2. All IMC's consider open exchange of and open access to information a prerequisite to the building of a more free and just society. 3. All IMC's respect the right of activists who choose not to be photographed or filmed. 4. All IMC's, based upon the trust of their contributors and readers, shall utilize open web based publishing, allowing individuals, groups and organizations to express their views, anonymously if desired. \\see appendix: Open Publishing document --> still in proposal phase, at this address: http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/ public/imc-communication/2001-April/001707.html http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/ imc-communication/2001-April/000874.html 5. The IMC Network and all local IMC collectives shall be not-for-profit. 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, [they] 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. 7. All IMC's recognize that a prerequisite for participation in the decision making process of each local group is the contribution of an individual's labor to the group. 8. All IMC's are committed to caring for one another and our respective communities both collectively and as individuals and will promote the sharing of resources including knowledge, skills and equipment. 9. All IMC's shall be committed to the use of free source code, whenever possible, in order to develop the digital infrastructure, and to increase the independence of the network by not relying on proprietary software. 10. All IMC's shall be committed to the principle of human equality, and shall not discriminate, including discrimination based upon race, gender, age, class or sexual orientation. Recognizing the vast cultural traditions within the network, we are committed to building [diversity] within our localities. Indymedia . Global . Membership Criteria IMC MEMBERSHIP CRITERIA - DRAFT1 Each IMC and Global Working Group is expected to: a. Agree in spirit to the NIMC Mission Statement and Principles of Unity, http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/PrinciplesOfUnity b. Have a committed membership substantial enough to sustain a functional IMC, c. Have open and public meetings (no one group can have exclusionary "ownership" of an IMC), d. Work toward developing a local Mission Statement or Statement of Purpose. Network Mission Statement may be adopted or used on an interim basis, e. Establish and publish an editorial policy which is developed and functions through democratic process, and with full transparency, f. Agree to the use of Open Publishing as described in the NIMC Editorial Policy [editorial collective comments: "We did agree that the term "Open Publishing" was one that is still being defined by the Global Network Collective, and we would wait and see what the results were before rewriting this criteria], g. Adopt a decision-making policy that is in alignment with consensus principles which include open, transparent and egalitarian processes, h. Have a spokesperson(s) willing and capable of participating in the global decision-making process and meetings as a rotating liaison/representative, with a clear understanding of the responsibilities that come with this role, i. Participate in the key IMC Network Communication Methods that pertain to the health and vitality of the Network and that contribute to the work of the IMC. Assure that at least one person from your local IMC participates at any given time on the IMC-Communications list, j. (NOT FINALIZED): Have no official affiliation with any political party, state or candidate for office (comments: but individual producers have freedom to do whatever they like and local IMCs can "feature" stories about various political parties and initiatives), k. IMCs shall in no way engage in commercial for-profit enterprises. [We could add: The IMCN is committed to the decommercialization of information and will disassociate from any local IMC that decides to become a for profit media corporation.] l. Display a ((i)) logo on your website and literature. m. Include the IMC Network Current & Cities List on your site, preferably on the front page. NETWORK MEMBERSHIP 1. Network Membership is open to any group that accepts the above criteria for membership. In the case of several requests from the same city or region, we will encourage them to meet and work together. 2. Network Membership in the NIMC will be confirmed by the New IMC Working Group, which is accountable to IMC-Process and ultimately to the NIMC decision-making process. DEFINING OUR TERMS For clarity and precision, we need to define our terms more carefully so there is less room for misunderstanding. Also explains how we as a culture (the IMC culture) use these terms. \ NIMC = Network of Independent Media Centers \ Open = means that diverse people and groups are welcome to attend and that no attempt is made to exclude people based on their sex, race, gender, class, age, ability or religion. \ Official affiliation = still being worked on \ IMC Network Communication Methods = international email lists, IRC discussions and logs, phone calls and conference calls, and face-to-face meetings. \ Local version = acknowledges the many variations of the name and the logo that will occur depending on the language and culture of the local IMC. Chapter 3 - Theories Indymedia . Global . BluePrints T he first couple IMCs to get started wrote up blueprints of how they organized themselves. These blueprints have been a valueable tool in explaining the pratical and ideological basis for setting up a functional imc to cover an action. Much of the docs.indy project and best pratices section of this site are devoted to extending the information found in these initial blueprints. Indymedia . Global . Seattle N30 Blueprint How to Make an Independent Media Center Ð Blueprint Document The Big Lessons Allow Enough Lead-time... Communications is critical, and for phone lines you have to rely on the phone company. Of course, before you order phone lines, you need a space to have them in. Have backups: other spaces, lines from other phone companies, cell phones, cellular modems, borrow a neighbors lines, whatever. Have multiple people staying on it. Inducting New People Lots of people show up to help, often at the last minute or in the middle of the big event. If you donÕt have a well thought out way to bring them up to speed, they will seem like a nuisance. Well-written documents, like an introduction and overview of the operation and lists of specific instructions and contact people, will help things flow a lot better. Also, make good use of your whiteboards and introduce new people to them. Lots of Whiteboards This helps with many aspects of communication. Cover the walls with them. They are the ground on which the shared information base of the organization takes shape. Meetings happen around them, harried volunteers refer to them when theyÕre on the phone, people pick up messages from them. Functional Areas How was the IMC organized? What was the decision making structure? The IMC has made much use of consensus-based decision making. This is not a process that people just get through intuition. It helps to spell out how it works and remind people as needed. Some work is required to make it a smooth functioning part of the culture of the organization. See the next chapter for a good, detailed description of the consensus process. In Seattle, we have at times approached this ideal, but we are not all fully up to speed on how it works. How did the local and visiting people share responsibilities? In early meetings, say two months before the WTO, there was structure only of time (weekly meetings of all involved), not of people. As tasks came up, people would volunteer for them. At the next meeting, they would report back on their progress. In part this was a sorting time. People would show up, attracted to something about the project. In the excitement of the moment, theyÕd volunteer to do something. At the next meeting, they either felt excited because theyÕd done something or theyÕd feel embarrassed that they hadnÕt. Since there wasnÕt a lot of gratifying discussion to be had without actually doing anything, there was natural self-selection of those who would do stuff and those who really didnÕt want to or have the time. Early meetings had a facilitator and note taker, and sometimes a time keeper. We always made an agenda, and even though we routinely blew past our time allotments, it helped to keep track. Meetings were generally long, like three hours or more. It didnÕt seem realistic to shorten them, what with the difficulty of pulling everyone together. About a month before the big event, we started developing structure. The people who were most plugged in and doing the most work naturally stayed after meetings and got together outside of the regular meeting times to discuss things. They became the self-appointed core group. This is a weird step for those of us used to critiquing power structures, but itÕs a natural one. It was mainly uncomfortable to those on the fence between marginal involvement (the people who are generally happy to have someone else take the lead) and solid involvement. It was an on-going problem for those who were seen as too aggressive, too passive, or too self-centered to work well in a tight group. As things progressed, people in the core group kept an eye out for others who showed follow-through, energy, and availability and drafted them into the core group. All this was done in an ad-hoc way. There simply wasnÕt time to create or deal with a more formal structure. Folks were generally ok with the informality, though some were unhappy with how it was executed. The core group made most decisions, generally by consensus of whoever was present. People taking a lead role in a certain area were expected to make decisions about that area, and were expected to use their own judgement about what decisions needed the core groupÕs involvement. Again, there wasnÕt time to spell this out and it worked alright without being formalized. (ItÕs really amazing how much you can do without a formal structureÉ) Getting Things Done There was a huge number of things to get done before the WTO started. At meetings, it was hard to prioritize them so we generally didnÕt. We had big lists of things to do, which people kept adding to, and people would sign up to get them done. We tried to watch for important items that werenÕt getting done and bring those up with greater urgency. As we got closer, we increasingly asked for people to "bottom line" something (we used this phrase a lot), to do whatever was necessary to make sure it happened, even if that just meant passing it off to someone else and then checking with that person to make sure it happened. The message was, "Here Ð take the ball and run with it. Do what you need to do, including getting other people to help you, but make sure it gets done Ð no excuses!" If the people who canÕt or donÕt really want to do much have already dropped away, then most people respond pretty well to this pressure. How did you bring newcomers up to speed in the midst of chaos?Ê What do you recommend we do? Get as much on paper as you can ahead of time.Ê Have plenty of copies to be able to hand people.Ê Document your aims, procedures, concerns, and whom to contact about what issues.Ê Have much of this up on whiteboards as well, especially contact info. Any advice on how to integrate the folks who will be coming here for [an event] - both organized production groups and unaffiliated people with camcorders? Most of the video coordination for Seattle, involved planning with folks coming from out of town.Ê For whatever reason, there weren't a whole lot of local video folks involved ahead of time, other than videographers who planned to shoot the event.Ê So email was a huge tool in planning who was bringing what equipment, etc.Ê It was really just me and a handful of folks doing all the logistics of setting up the production space and figuring what types of systems would for actually getting footage out to the world.Ê I think that if we had had more time (we had about six weeks to pull it all together) it could have involved a lot more local folks.Ê But in general, Seattle is not a hotbed of videoactivism. If we had had more time, we could have trained people in logging, editing, and shooting, so there could have been a more organized local effort. Ê As it was, a lot of the pre-WTO discussions revolved around how we were going to decide who got access to the edit gear and what that meant in terms of our goal to see indy media produced by those who don't traditionally get access to the tools of production.Ê Expertise had to be the deciding factor for access to gear, and that meant that a lot of local folks weren't involved.Ê Our goal to produce a half-hour video every night was also very ambitious, and in many ways limiting.Ê It meant that timelines were so tight we didn't have the luxury of letting people noodle around on the edit systems, editing their own stuff. In your case, I would recommend that you set your sights a little more realistically. Maybe have the goal of producing one big video over the course of the whole week, and in addition to that- have a web site from which you are streaming video clips of events as they happen. Start now by getting folks trained in editing and logging, so that when the event happens, people can be signed up for shifts to log footage and edit short clips for the web site. In terms of organizing videographers, both those from Seattle and those from out of town, we tried to have a system in place that was simple for everyone. We had a two-page "affiliate sign-up" form which included our mission statement and all the operating rules and guidelines of the IMC.Ê Everyone had to sign on to that form, in order to get an IMC id badge, which folks wore all week.Ê Some folks were adverse to wearing a badge, but it was a good way of knowing that people knew what it meant to be an affiliate of the IMC.Ê And it ended up winning a lot of trust in the street - in many cases the only videographers allowed in to the ranks of those engaged in direct action were those folks with IMC press badges.Ê In addition to the affiliate form we also had a several page videographer info packet.Ê It included tips for good shooting, a map of downtown Seattle, copies of field logging forms (we really encouraged folks to log in the field), and the forms that we used for tracking tapes as they came in to the edit studio.Ê This form included all their contact info, a release they signed giving us permission to use their footage in the video we were producing, and a little tear-off receipt with the tape number on it, so they could retrieve their tape after we had dubbed it.Ê All tapes that came into the edit studio were dubbed to Beta SP and logged before they were returned to videographers.Ê If we had had time to train loggers, the whole process would have gone much more smoothly, and more people would have been able to participate.Ê So this system worked for all videographers, local or otherwise. How did the IMC deal with security issues (physical and online)? We could read on the indymedia web site that FBI is putting pressure on the contributors of the web site. Have there been any attacks in independent web site servers? How can we protect ourselves? We put a lot of energy into physical security and little into web security. For physical security, we found one guy with some experience doing that kind of work who agreed to set up and run the security aspect. People who came to the IMC who wanted to work with us had to sign in and become "members". This involved reading and agreeing to a statement of principles, including that their work would be shared with the world over the web for free, and that any subsequent income they may derive from their work (e.g., someone wants to buy a negative) they will split 50/50 with the IMC. In addition, each person had to give local contact information and show us a picture ID. Some of us were concerned that people would be uncomfortable with this, and one in fact was irritated by it, but we generally felt it was a good thing and emphasized that this was not a casual undertaking, and that it involved mutual trust. There was also some problem with people wanting to come for some quick thing (e.g., to use the bathroom) and not wanting to become members just for that. The general answer was that this was not a space for casual users. Sometimes, though, it made sense to let someone come in without signing up, and then we had them escorted by someone who was a member. Members had badges they wore around their necks at all times while in the space. There were people at the front door checking badges 24 hours a day. We felt it was important that the space feel controlled at all times. There was a lot of tension, a lot of activity, and many people have expensive equipment. The last thing they needed was more worries about who might have wandered in off the street. It wasnÕt easy to find people to staff the space adequately through the night. We had some ideas about minimal staffing levels, but some of the minimal jobs got combined in a pinch. Software For some high-level thoughts on how to do webcasting, see Matthew's essay on the topic, "Crazy Ideas for Webcasting." http://cat.org.au/cat/webcast.html We heard Free Speech provided the web server?Ê How did this work? Actually, the IMC bought it, kept it in Seattle for a while, and then sent it down to Boulder where Free Speech is still baby sitting it for us.Ê It worked well, usually. Ê The nice thing about the internet is that people can do most work remotely, though when a server crashes, you sometimes need someone physically there to re-boot it. How did the IMC deal with software licensing issues? We used free software for the operating system (Linux), the web server (Apache), and the database (PostgreSQL).Ê This refers to the server.Ê For general use within the IMC, we used MS stuff (Windows 95 or NT, Word, Internet Explorer, etc.).Ê This being a Microsoft town, it's not hard to scrounge up copies of these things, especially if you're willing to use older versions. Which software do we need to be able to make contributions from home, work, and put them on the web site? You need software to prepare your contribution (scanner SW for photos, word processor for text, audio or video editors, etc.).Ê Once you're stuff is ready, all you need is a web browser and an internet connection. What kind of database do we use?Ê Do we need a lot of investment or is there a lot of ready to use stuff? There is a lot of software and a lot of people already in place. There is a fledgling volunteer web site up that has a technology section with several useful pointers to get you started. You can reach it on http://indymedia.ragingweb.net/tech.php. What are the details on the phone line / modem / DSL connections? Getting the DSL in place took the longest lead-time. Getting enough phone lines was a close second. Get started on these as soon as you can! The phone companies can putz around for weeks on this stuff. We had a single DSL serving the place, and that was adequate for all out internal web use (some browsing and lots of posting of articles and audio) and the web site. The framework of the web site was hosted at the IMC, using the one DSL, but all the "rich content" (audio and video (photos?)) was hosted at another facility. For this we were fortunate to receive a last-minute donation from encoding.com (now loudeye.com) of lots of server space and huge bandwidth (> 100 Mb/s). For the time being streaming images are of low quality, we have the idea of overcoming this by making short news bulletins (one minute), which should be downloadable at better quality We see that most web sites also propose to sell the videos on tape. Does this work? It has worked well for the Seattle IMC - much. What support did you have for people getting photos up on the web site? We had essentially no support for photographers. We never got the donated scanner working during the WTO, so if anyone got pictures on the site, it was through their own efforts. This was silly, and is not recommended. Scanners are cheap, though you'll want someone around to help with minor image editing (eg, cropping, resizing, changing color depth). Digital cameras are better still, as you leave out the developing step. Indymedia . Global . Washington A16 Blueprint The Washington DC Independent Media Center to cover the World Bank/IMF protests, April 16 & 17, 2000: Evaluation, Recommendations for other IMCs HOW IT STARTED T he DC-IMC was a temporary autonomous zone to the nth degree. About two months before A16 a couple dozen independent media makers, some of whom had been involved in the Seattle independent media center, started to e-mail each other about the possibility of there being an IMC in DC. Many of those conversations involved the possibility of finding someone to initiate a core group of DC organizers who would move the process forward by having regular planning meetings in town to make things happen. Unfortunately no one from outside DC could find anyone in DC who would take on that role. About six weeks before A16 one enthusiastic indymedia organizer (okay, it was me, Jay) went down to DC to a general meeting of the Mobilization, the group that was organizing the protests, to try to find someone who would organize in DC, and hooked up with the Mobilization's Media Working Group. People there understood the importance of having an IMC but didn't have time to organize it themselves. People outside of DC were still enthusiastic about the possibilities and began to organize through the imc-dc@indymedia.org e-mail list. I and Eric Galatas started gathering the media-producing interests, equipment needs and equipment offers of those who were planning to be in Washington. Eric kept track of the expanding list of promised supporters and encouraged people to step forward and become leaders of the media teams -- tech, video, audio, photo, print. Luckily a bit more than a month before A16 Mike Eisenmenger and/or Joan Sekler contacted Eddie Becker with whom they had organized before and inspired him to take a role. He communicated with Eric, Jay and some of the other organizers over e-mail and we all decided that the most important thing to do was find a good space for the IMC and lay phone lines. All else would have to come when people arrived from outside town. Over the month before A16 people stepped forward to coordinate the media teams. Eddie volunteered to coordinate the video group (some of whom had already been communicating since Seattle), Jade Paget-Seekins volunteered to coordinate the audio, Leslie Howes stepped forward for print, Evan Henshaw-Plath to head the web team. We had a hard time finding a photo coordinator but eventually Heidi Reijm and Ali Tonak volunteered (Adam Green from DC became involved upon Eddie Becker's urging and stepped into a coordinator role as A16 grew closer). There were also a couple others who stepped up to coordinate parts of the project. Mansour Jacobi decided to come to DC to work on the tech side. Adam Stenftenagel volunteered to put together a database that would help us coordinate who was coming and who was bringing what equipment. Jeremy Simer volunteered to coordinate translation of the print team's work. Eric took a general coordinating role, as did I. David Russo stepped forward in DC to help with facilities and equipment. Rachel Rinaldo and Robert Wyrod agreed to facilitate the web video team. Lisa Sousa said she would coordinate outreach. Each of the main teams tech, print, video, audio, photo, outreach started organizing on its own e-mail list as A16 grew closer. There was little formal decision-making process on the IMC-DC list, or on the individual teams' lists, but each group moved forward according to a general consensus process. Communication was good on some of the lists, such as imc-tech and imc-audio, but there wasn't as much communication on others. At points list volume, especially for the general coordinators, was overwhelming and that led some to retreat from e-mail. About three weeks before A16 the coordinators shared a massive conference call. Jay facilitated. There were at least 12 people on the line. It worked as well as you can imagine a 12 person conference call could work. Through it each team coordinator let the others know what his/her team was planning and then we cut the conversation to a handful of people who talked with Eddie about his search for a good space for the IMC. More on that later. The IMC-DC's organizers were all individuals who came to represent either themselves or the organizations with which they work to varying degrees. Some of the coordinators came from organizations like Freespeech TV, Protest.net, Paper Tiger TV, the Direct Action Media Network, Whispered Media, Big Noise Films, etc. Freespeech TV and Protest.net donated server space to the IMC's web site. There were similarly loose relationships between the IMC and other, non-media organizations; a lot of people came representing a lot of groups but when they came to the IMC they generally worked together. There were so many tasks to fill and even with the overwhelming number of people we had in the IMC over the course of the week we didn't have enough people to fill all the roles. Throughout the weekend anyone who wanted to assume any task was able to step up and "bottom-line" that part of the project. With a few exceptions the people who volunteered to "bottom-line" something did so. In the cases where the people who promised to work didn't do so the IMC didn't do quite a good enough job of realizing that we needed someone else to step up to fill that role. DECISION-MAKING PROCESS The DC-IMC was a collectively organized project that ran on principles of consensus. This organizing structure was INEXTRICABLY BOUND to the success of the IMC. The non-hierarchical process encouraged every media maker to contribute his or her best work, and to participate as much as s/he desired. Two weeks before A16 a few organizers came to Washington. Jade arrived, then Jay, then Evan, Leslie and Jeremy. About a week before A16 the main space opened up and we started to organize there. That's when Adam came, and Arthur who did a tremendous amount of facility organizing, and Jay from PaperTiger TV (Jay with the beard). We decided to have two meetings a day one general meeting each evening and one "spokescouncil" meeting each morning. Each general meeting was a consensus-based meeting with two facilitators (gender parity). Each "spokescouncil" meeting included team coordinators and/or empowered team representatives. Both meetings had decision-making power. At the general meetings we had to reach consensus among everyone present, at the coordinators' meetings only the empowered reps were allowed to participate in the consensus (though everyone else in the room was allowed to be part of the discussion). At the general meetings coordinators introduced themselves so their team members would know to whom they should go if they had concerns. The coordinators brought those concerns to the spokescouncil meetings. This decision-making process worked quite well. The team coordinators worked well together and made decisions with relative ease. The first few general meetings lagged (for reasons to be discussed below) but when a decision was on the table the facilitators were able to ease it through. Both spokescouncil and general meetings were open to all. THE IMC and the MOBILIZATION The Mobilization for Global Justice's Media Working Group (the protest group's press liason) and the IMC group shared space and facilities though each was autonomous. Though the IMC-DC would have preferred to get its money from sources other than the Mobilization, that didn't seem to be a possibility. A couple weeks before A16 Eddie Becker and Laura Jones from the Mobilization proposed a joint budget to the Mobilization spokescouncil. The Mobilization okayed the budget. The week before A16 Jay negotiated with the Mobilization and the Media Working Group about budget specifics. The Mobilization ended up giving the IMC approximately $12,000 as a seed grant, cutting the IMC loose from its funding process. The Media Working Group continued to have to answer to the Mobilization for its funding but the IMC was on its own. Relations between the IMC and the Mobilization were good. An empowered IMC representative went to each of the Mobilization's spokescouncil meetings. The IMC space and the Mobilization's convergence space weren't close so few Mobilization people who weren't associated with the IMC or the MWG dropped by. Originally the IMC planned to have our sign-up desk in the Mobilization convergence space but that space proved to be too hectic so the IMC moved its registration desk to the IMC building. The IMC tried to have a representative at the convergence space at all times but that didn't happen, especially after the police closed the Mobilization's convergence space on Saturday, April 15. The evenings before A16 and A17 members of the Mobilization's direct action group came by the IMC and gave some information about the Mobilization's action plans (though the information wasn't exhaustive). Though the IMC and the Mobilization had different sets of walkie talkies, the original plan was for each to monitor the other's activities. When the IMC's walkie talkie system flopped (to be discussed below) the IMC was unable to monitor most of the Mobilization's communications and they didn't monitor ours. BUDGET Before coming to DC we realized how little money the IMC-DC was going to have and decided we'd have to have a "no debt" budget. Basically we were planning to not spend anything, if possible we'd get everything donated and voila, we wouldn't have to spend a cent. Of course we realized that wasn't going to fly, but we got lucky when the Mobilization agreed to help us get going. The Mobilization group gave approximately $12,000 in a seed grant. All they asked in return is that the IMC would share facilities with the Media Working Group and that we would produce a ten minute version of our video production for them to distribute. In addition to the Mobilization's donation, throughout the week we gathered about $1400 in donations at the registration table and through the sale of video footage. I was the budget manager in DC. Before I came to DC I bought an accordion file holder and marked the files "bank information," "incoming," "we owe" and "we paid." I kept careful records on whatever we had coming in (we asked for a donation of $10 from everyone who registered and received, over the course of the week, about $1000), what receipts we had to reimburse and what we had already reimbursed. Every time we received or wrote a check I made a copy of the check and stapled it to a copy of the receipt, indicating when and to whom we paid a reimbursement. Of course I encouraged everyone to get a receipt for every purchase, large and small. I kept a running tally of what we had in the account. I suggest the budget manager of any future IMC set up the bank account as soon as possible. We had our account open on the 9th but didn't get the Mobilization's check until the 12th. Because ours was a new checking account the check didn't clear until the 15th. When the team coordinators got to DC we all began to worked together to assure that everyone had what they needed in the budget. During A16 I asked that everyone who was going to make an expense clear it through me first, either individually or, preferably, through their team coordinator who would come to me with the request. Throughout the week I didn't have to turn down any requests. Had I felt the need to turn down a request I would only have done so after getting consensus from the team coordinators. The IMC ended up spending about $8,000 over the course of the A16 week. Yes, we were under budget. We've reimbursed most of our budgeted expenses though new, valid expenses, such as costs to make and distribute the video, have arisen and believe me, we won't be under budget for long. The budget is available on request from me at jay@tao.ca. The Direct Action Media Network acted as the 501c3 group for the IMC-DC. EQUIPMENT/FACILITIES What equipment did we have in DC and what should we have had? This is an essential question to answer in a blueprint document. I can answer questions about the spaces we had available but not about equipment. I'm going to try to get DC team coordinators to write up specific lists of what we have and what we needed. If you're reading this blueprint and need to know this information please feel free to e-mail the coordinators to ask (e-mails listed on page 62). Space: The main IMC-DC space was a warehouse called Studio 66. It used to be an underground party spot and now houses an art gallery in the large room as well as a TV production studio and artists' studios upstairs. Eddie was able to find "the Gallery" through his friends in the DC art/performance scene. We rented the Gallery from April 6 to April 19 for $2000. We paid $750 to upgrade the studio's DSL line and laid two banks of phone lines (contact Eddie ebecker@cni.org for specifics on the phone system). There were some good things and bad things about the Gallery: Good: It was a cool place to have an independent media center, as it had that "alternative" feel. The people who managed the space were willing to work with us throughout the time we had it to handle our technical needs, including upgrading their facilities. Even though there were a ton of people in it, for the most part we were able to have room for everyone in there. For the most part. Bad: The studio was in an area of DC that wasn't particularly close to either the protest zone or the Mobilization's convergence space. Eddie tried to find a better location but couldn't. We had to share the space with the art gallery, meaning we had to move around our equipment to accommodate gallery hours, and we also had to vacate the premises almost entirely on Friday April 14 for a pre-scheduled party. That was a total pain in the butt. We had to be careful of, and make room for the art. We couldn't hang whiteboards on every wall, for example. The space was open and there was a lot of sound reverberation. The space was therefore very loud. Fortunately there was an elevator shaft that doubled as a quiet radio room. The Media Working Group had to rent a studio space upstairs at a point because the big room was too loud for them to make phone calls. The IMC made due through the good and the bad, because we had to. Of course the recommendation in the future is for the IMC group to find a perfect space for its general area, one that is close to the protest zone and the protesters, one that is large enough for everyone to gather and feel like one big group but that also accommodate more intimate work areas, perhaps separated by movable partitions. Also, having a space nearby the protest zone or the protester's convergence area would allow the IMC to make computer terminals available to protesters to post first-person impressions to the web site. The Biltmore Space: A DC web site "architect" donated use of his basement web studio as an off-site editing facility. He very kindly upgraded his systems for us and we were able to do some audio editing there throughout the weekend. The Alley Space: On A16 the photo team used a photo studio reasonably nearby the protest zone for its negative scanning and photo posting. That worked quite well. DCTV: On A16 there was a video tape transfer facility available, also fairly close to the protest zone, for use by the video team. However, the video team did not take full advantage of the facility. The 9th Street Clubhouse: There was a sleeping space a couple blocks from the Gallery. This was a good space for 15 or so organizers who planned to spend most of their time at the Gallery to sleep. It came in handy and was a cool place to stay, even though the shower wasn't ready until nearly the 16th. The Mansion: This was a sleeping space in a neighborhood relatively close to the Biltmore space but far from the Gallery. Eddie had anticipated that this space would be in better condition than it was by A16. It wasn't exactly a great place to stay, though some IMC volunteers, especially video producers, stayed there. Suggestions: Having a large, general space for both gathering and production was exciting because we felt united as a group. However, perhaps having production facilities off site would have enabled more people to do better work. SET UP In retrospect, the days before A16 were a fun, productive time in which organizers who arrived early were able to develop close bonds with each other before the masses arrived. At the time, set up felt like an exhausting period of 'round-the-clock guesswork. We actually had a difficult time setting up the IMC-DC because there were so many people coming from so many places at so many different times with so much equipment. The recommendation, of course, is for your IMC to borrow enough equipment from local activists, non-profits, unions and technology-for-social-change programs that you'll have at least the basics of a network set up when people come. Then you wouldn't have to keep changing the setup every time someone new arrives. Unless you can get tables and chairs donated right away by a church group or union hall you should consider renting them so you have enough when people come they're pretty cheap. Try to get a sense before you start of how much cable you're going to need, and how many network cards, and how many power strips, etc. KEEP RECEIPTS so you can return everything at the end of the week. One other strong recommendation is to strongly, strongly encourage media team coordinators to arrive as far in advance as possible. The time coordinators who came early had to make plans and get to know each other was INVALUABLE. The closer to A16 a coordinator arrived, the more difficult a time s/he had in getting into the swing of things, both with the equipment s/he needed and organizationally. COMMUNICATIONS The IMC-DC's communication system consisted of land lines, cell phones and walkie talkies. Land lines. There were two groups of land lines coming into the Gallery, one for the IMC and another for the Media Working Group. Karl, a friend of Eddie's, generously hooked up the telephones and loaned the IMC a phone switching system. There were four lines available for the MWG and three for the IMC. The MWG needed all their phone lines and the IMC pretty much maxxed out our phone use too, especially when people started calling in actions from the street. There was a dedicated fax line for the MWG and another for the IMC, which the radio team used for phone interviews. Hooking up the land lines took a while, and getting long distance set up on the lines was nearly impossible. The suggestion to future IMCs is to start doing that as soon as possible. We ended up enabling long distance on the MWG's phones but they were unable to use it for most of the time, so their long distance bill ended up being quite low. (I'm personally not sure if we had voicemail on the IMC phones, and if so I don't know what our system was for checking it, if we had one.) Cell phones: The IMC bought eleven cell phones for DC and future use by other independent media centers, at least any that exists in a place where Sprint PCS service is available. We initially hoped to buy refurbished telephones from a Sprint dealer in the suburbs but that turned out to be a bust. We ended up buying most of our phones from the Sprint PCS store downtown, which was more expensive but more reliable. One problem was that the Direct Action Media Network had no credit history (we've just been an "official" group for a few months) so Sprint wouldn't allow the group to put telephones on its bill. Therefore we had to have individuals put the phones on their credit cards. In the Sprint system each individual is limited to having 5 phones under his/her name. We signed each of the phones up for a $75 plan, some of them for 1000 minutes of long distance and some for 2000 minutes of local use. We weren't clear enough about which phones were local only, so some people used the local phones for long distance calls. We distributed the cell phones among the team coordinators and printed up quarter page phone lists so every reporter would have the contact numbers. The phones were useful but we did have problems with the phones not working at times due to network congestion and other factors that effect connection quality. After A16 we immediately put the phones on "vacation" to save on service plan charges. Walkie talkies In order to allow the coverage teams to communicate with the IMC and with each other we rented a walkie talkie/radio system, 10 radios and a base station, from BearCom. Unfortunately the IMC building was too far away from the protest zone and the convergence space for the walkie talkies to reach. We would have been able to make the system work had we thought ahead to buy or rent a proper antenna, but we didn't. Contact Devin sunbird@thefoundry.org with specific questions about the walkie talkies, why they didn't work and what we can do next time to make them work. REGISTRATION People planning to come to DC were able to register on-line through "signup.indymedia.org" through Adam Stenftenagel's database. The database asked for contact information and what equipment they were going to bring. We originally thought we would be able to turn the database into a way to organize who was covering which story, but that didn't work due to the chaos and lack of equipment. Adam set up his database at the IMC a couple days before A16 and we were able to register everyone who came through. More than 800 names were in the database by A18 (some were duplicates but most weren't). Everyone who signed up received a printed IMC press pass (without photo) that had a number on the back that corresponded to his/her number in the database. The registration desk kept running out of press passes and plastic holders so we had to keep running out to the office supply store to allow everyone to have a pass. The first IMC press passes were not effective in getting IMC reporters across police lines. We devised a system to make photo passes for people who were going to do coverage in the streets. That system didn't get up and running until A17. We understand that police were more inclined to consider people with photo badges "official press". One suggestion would be to have a database system for registering individuals on-site, making two kinds of passes available one non-photo access pass, which most people would get so they could have access to the IMC space, and a photo pass for those who plan to do street coverage. The photo pass should be available behind the registration desk so reporters can get one as soon as they register. WELCOME PACKET The first few DC-IMC general meetings were long, primarily because we didn't have our welcome/orientation packet together until A15. Because there was no orientation material we had to explain everything to everyone at each meeting, which took up a lot of time. The recommendation is to have a welcome packet available from the first day people show up. What should the welcome packet include? 1 \ A general intro of the IMC, its principles, its decision-making structure (collective? Consensus), etc. \ Information about each space, including sleeping spaces. \ Phone number of IMC, cell phone numbers of coordinators, legal team phone number, medical phone numbers \ Directions around the city from the IMC to the protest zone, from the IMC to the sleeping spaces, from the IMC to the convergence space, etc. These should be public transport and driving directions. Also include recommendations for cheap/veggie/24 hour food. \ Legal information: what to do if you're arrested, how to ask questions of protesters without getting them in legal trouble. \ Medical information: what to do in case of tear gas, pepper spray and other problems. \ A calendar of the week's events. \ Background information about the overarching issues and why people are protesting. \ Specific information for each team: each team's licensing/copyright agreement, each team's necessary info (such as where to go for photo developing for the photo team), each team's particular editorial/publishing process IMC "POSTCARD" In DC the IMC printed a very well-designed, glossy "postcard" with the IMC's contact information that our reporters passed out to anyone and everyone they saw in the field who had a camera or witnessed something that would have been interesting for a first-person report. Reporters also carried the cards so they'd have the IMC's contact information themselves. We printed 5,000 of them and gave them all out. Contact Rupert (dnrusso@earthlink.net) for a template of his excellent design. SECURITY The IMC-DC didn't have a consistent physical security coordinator, which led to security being quite lax. Most of the time the IMC had a volunteer watching both the front and the back door, though few had real security training. Physical security should be a major priority for future IMCs. VOLUNTEERS The IMC-DC group found integrating new volunteers into the mix fairly difficult. People who came wanting to be part of a particular media team were able to plug in fairly quickly to whatever system (or lack of system) that team had developed. We had a more difficult time integrating people who came simply to volunteer. Of course there were many places to volunteer security, registration, couriers, etc. We unfortunately didn't have anyone who was regularly available at the registration desk to introduce people to the IMC and figure out how to fit them into the system. The recommendation is to have a volunteer coordinating team that will always have a representative at the front desk, someone who can welcome newcomers and explain the IMC to them. The best case scenario would be that people could spend time volunteering then participate in ongoing trainings to learn how to make their own media. TRAINING There was a good deal of informal training that happened at the IMC-DC but there was no formal training program. The recommendation would be to have a training director who would organize ongoing trainings before and during the event to assure that people are familiar with the available equipment and techniques. OFFICE SUPPLIES As you'll see in the budget, the IMC-DC spent a lot of money on office supplies. We also had a lot of office supplies left over at the end, some of which we bought because we didn't know what supplies were available (such as several staplers). The recommendation is for there to be a person in charge of knowing what office supplies are needed and what are available in the IMC building. COPIERS Recommendation: get someone, perhaps a labor union or a non-profit group, to donate a WORKING photocopier to the IMC. In DC we had three copiers in the IMC at various points but two broke and the other could only handle a single page at a time. FAX MACHINES Test your fax machine before the busiest days begin, and make sure you have an extra print cartridge handy. In DC we had a broken fax machine and another that ran out of ink. Bad. COURIERS In DC we tried to hook up with the Mobilization's bike courier team to shuttle coverage back and forth between reporters in the field and the IMC, but that didn't work. We did use IMC volunteers with cars to shuttle people back and forth. This system would have gone better had the radio communication equipment worked. The suggestion is to have a courier team coordinator who will work with the dispatch/assignments team to be in constant communication with the reporters. SAFTEY OF REPORTERS Be sure to make medical and legal information available to all reporters who are going out into the field. Make sure each reporter has a copy of the important IMC phone numbers, as well as a legal support number. In DC we printed stickers with the important phone numbers so people could put them on their clothes and encouraged people to write legal support numbers on their arms. Let the reporter know that s/he should remember his/her IMC badge number for use if s/he is arrested, is participating in jail solidarity, and gets to call the IMC. Before reporters go into the field they should check in with the assignments/dispatch team so the dispatchers know, in general terms, where the reporters are. If reporters are arrested or injured, SUPPORT THEM. Make sure to have first aid equipment available in the IMC and perhaps some gas masks/vinegar/saline solution to enable reporters to handle pepper spray/tear gas. DEALING WITH THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA The IMC is "a story" in and of itself, at least according to the mainstream media; any IMC will no doubt have mainstream media crawling all over it trying to twist the phenomenon in whatever way serves them. In DC the mainstream media were most interested in visiting the week before A16 in order to get their stories ready in time for A16 itself. Our outreach coordinator, Lisa, came on the 13th so Jeremy and Jay (with the beard) served as interim outreach coordinators. They handled all mainstream media requests to do stories about the IMC until Lisa came. The DC-IMC developed a few rules for how to handle the mainstream media: a) We tried to get mainstream media to schedule times to come to the IMC so we could let everyone know they were coming. If they just showed up at the door we asked them to come back in an hour if possible so people could know they'd be coming. If possible, we tried to clear a scheduled mainstream media visit through a general meeting. b) All mainstream media doing articles on the IMC had to register as mainstream media we gave them special little badges to wear while they were in the IMC c) Someone from the outreach team accompanied mainstream media at all times when they were in the IMC d) Everyone, not just mainstream media, had to ask permission of anyone who was going to be in the range of their cameras before they could take a photo or shoot video. We actually got some decent coverage in the mainstream media, especially from local stations and internet-based publications. A tip: Print up a poster-sized IMC logo, with the web site address beneath it, to put as the backdrop for anyone who is being interviewed on TV. There were a couple of independent/alternative film crews that asked if they could do coverage of what was happening in the IMC. We decided their level of access in our general meetings on a case by case basis. The concept of how to relate to the mainstream media in other ways is more complicated. Should the IMC try to feed coverage to the mainstream? Is getting some IMC coverage into the mainstream media a "success?" That's a question for each IMC to ask and answer on its own. The media teams should all discuss that though, before the actions begin what happens if the mainstream media want to buy some coverage? Will we sell it? How much from the sale should go to the IMC? The Seattle IMC had media makers give back 50% of what they made in selling coverage. In DC each media team made its own policy, or at least was allowed to. Some didn't. ASSIGNMENTS/DISPATCH As A16 came closer the general meetings turned in assignment meetings. At the end of each general meeting those who were planning to do coverage the next day signed up on a big sheet of butcher paper to cover particular stories. Not all people who were planning to do coverage showed up for the assignment meetings though. The night before A16, after the general meeting, there was a big assignment meeting to determine coverage for the next day. Media teams developed around the direct action protesters' action plan to divide the city into "pie slices." Some media makers connected with direct action affinity groups but most didn't. The assignment coverage was confusing and connecting media teams with "pie slices" didn't work too well. The next night we attempted to break reporters into issue-based teams but that didn't work too well either. We need to develop a better system for assigning coverage teams to areas or issues. When the radio communication system broke down the IMC lost a substantial amount of its ability to dispatch media teams. The dispatch system was therefore incredibly confusing at first. In the spirit of collective initiative, those who volunteered to work on the dispatch system developed the mess into a viable system within a day. The dispatch team copied large maps of the city so they could track the protesters. Once we were able to get a telephone line near the dispatch area we were able to get telephone calls from the field and mark the protesters' movements on the big maps with post-it notes. The assignment team from the IMC worked with the Media Working Group which was also getting tips from the protesters on where they were going and what they were doing. The recommendation is, of course, to assure a working a walkie talkie or cell phone communication system. FOOD For three days the IMC-DC was able to get free food from the Seeds of Peace group that was serving at the Mobilization's convergence space. When police shut down the convergence space that arrangement didn't work anymore. For the most part people arranged their own food but there were several times when the IMC bought food and brought it in for everyone. The recommendation is that if the IMC buys food you should collect donations before going out to purchase the food or else you'll be stuck with a food bill, despite asking for donations afterward. PRESS CONFERENCE Upstairs from the IMC part of the Gallery was a TV production studio, Planet Vox, that had a fiber optic cable installed on April 15 in order to be able to broadcast live-to-satellite from their facility. They offered use of it to the IMC for a live press conference. The Media Working Group was especially excited about the possibility for having a live-to-satellite press conference and presented the idea to the Mobilization, which agreed to provide four speakers for a Sunday afternoon, April 16 press conference. The IMC coordinators talked about the possibility of having the conference and realized having it would be a tremendous inconvenience but reached consensus on taking advantage of the opportunity. Having the conference meant clearing out most people from the IMC during peak production hours on A16. The video team volunteered to put together a five minute edited version of some of the coverage they had gathered to kick off the live broadcast, and a couple individual editors consolidated use of the video-ready computers for much of the day to produce that piece. The press conference itself was exciting. Jeff Perlstein from the IMC was the "MC" and spoke about independent media before introducing the four Mobilization speakers. Several mainstream media film crews came to the IMC to ask their silly mainstream media questions. Mobilization speakers were "on message" and were able to respond freely and coherently to the mainstream media's questions. The press conference gave the movement a valuable chance to set the agenda for coverage; many media outlets, including CNN, pulled down the feed. It was also a way to promote the IMC itself through the video clips, Jeff's introduction and the big Indymedia.org posters we had printed and put on the wall behind the speakers. On the other hand, clearing out the IMC during the peak production time was difficult and in a sense counter-productive, allowing the mainstream media to have a several hour jump on putting out their coverage. The press conference was both a good thing and a frustrating one. MEDIA TEAMS/COVERAGE Every independent media maker had to decide for him or herself the appropriate level of "professionalism" that s/he desired in his/her personal productions. The DC media teams held themselves to the highest professional standards and each produced quality material. Though people no doubt discussed these matters, we did not have meetings to talk about whether IMC reporters should consider themselves "activists" or "media" or both. Should an IMC reporter who is also a protester wear his/her press badge in a blockade? These are essential issues to discuss, yet in DC we deferred judgement on these issues to each individual. As for the tenor of coverage, the IMC DC tried to coordinate issue-based coverage teams before A16 in order to encourage reporters to do work about the IMF and World Bank themselves, not just the protesters. That wasn't a very successful program, though media makers did produce a substantial amount of contextualizing information throughout theA16 week. There was also an attempt to get coverage from the Global South about the effects of the IMF and World Bank in their countries. That program was somewhat more successful, though most articles posted to indymedia.org were still of the "protesters vs. police" variety. A recommendation would be to start conceiving coverage very far in advance of an event and doing a lot of background reporting before the actions begin so there can be context available for the protest coverage (other, upcoming IMCs are already doing that type of advance work). Another suggestion would be for the reporters who arrive in advance to take some time to interview the "experts" provided by the protest group's press liasons. "Experts" don't tell the whole story but they can provide some context. Also, the reporters themselves were not very diverse racially none of the organizers of the IMC were. We as an independent media movement have to actively pursue involvement from communities that will be able to speak to different shades of economic and racial prejudice again, upcoming IMCs in Los Angeles and Philadelphia seem to be doing this kind of essential outreach. Each of the media teams printed its own document about licensing issues and had its own policy about who would own what part of the coverage and how they would cut the IMC in if they were able to sell it. For more information on each team's agreement contact the team leaders (e-mails below). THE PRINT TEAM In DC the print team produced two editions of "Blind Spot." They had intended to produce three but there were some problems with their desk top publishing equipment; they had some internal difficulties as well. At a point we conceived the possibility of printing the Blind Spot on newspaper, but we were not able to do so, so we photocopied the publication. At points we had at least three photocopiers in the IMC but two broke and one could only handle a single sheet at a time. The two local Kinkos were closed (police pressure? Fear of riots?) so we had to copy the issues at a Kinkos fairly far away. We printed 1,000 copies of each, if I'm not mistaken. Each edition came out in the afternoon/evening, one on the evening of A16 and the other on the afternoon of A17. When they were printed we sent reporters out to the protest zone to distribute them. We had intended to produce pdf versions of the Blind Spot for distribution on-line and to translate them into several languages PHOTO TEAM In our coordinators discussions on e-mail before A16, those who had been involved in Seattle realized that the Seattle IMC had given somewhat short shrift to still photographs, even though they are very powerful and practical to post on the web. The coordinators decided to encourage the DC photo team to post as good images as possible to the indymedia.org news wire. The photo team in DC arranged for two one-hour photo places to do bulk, therefore reasonably cheap, photo processing for IMC photographers. This worked well, but one photo shop was in the protest zone and police restricted access, thereby trapping some developed rolls of film. The photo team had a negative scanner at the Alley Studio which they used on A16. During A17 they used a computer and a flatbed scanner in the IMC. The photo team had four or five photographers "on assignment" throughout the protest time to assure the IMC would get coverage at every large event. The IMC paid for developing for those photographers (and film too?). All other photographers paid for their own film and developing. The photo team may considering developing photo exhibits based upon A16 to show in galleries. THE RADIO TEAM The radio team in DC did a good job of getting audio news from the streets. They did live interviews with protesters, recorded interviews and seminars about the World Bank and IMF and were able to put a regular stream of audio clips up to the indymedia.org web site. They also produced five days of daily audio wrap ups (five minutes each). A dozen or so radio stations in the US broadcast the radio team's daily wrap ups. KPFA and the Canadian Broadcast Corporation aired some live interviews with indymedia reporters, Democracy Now aired an indymedia audio montage and about 30 stations around Australia aired the daily wrap ups after an Australian broadcaster put them up on a satellite. THE VIDEO TEAM The video team came into DC having produced several hours of excellent, powerful coverage of the Seattle WTO protests. The producers who had worked together in Seattle to put together four days of coverage to go up to satellite, 1/2 hour each day, decided to not pursue that frantic pace in Washington. They realized that too few people watched the daily coverage to make the exhausting work worth the trouble, but that tens of thousands of people have seen the Seattle videos in screenings after the WTO protests. They also realized that the 1/2 hour segments lost a bit of quality because of the rush to produce them, but that later, more edited versions of the Seattle coverage were better. The video producers decided to gather coverage throughout A16 by transferring it from the videographers' cameras onto digital tapes and bring those tapes (about 50 hours worth) to New York City to edit an hour-long video to be aired on satellite on April 21. They called this video "Breaking the Bank", and it'll be coming soon to a video screening near you. The editing process in New York was apparently intense and incredibly successful. Though some aspects of the video team worked well, and the "Breaking the Bank" video is being well received, there were some difficulties within the video group during A16. Eddie Becker had volunteered to be video coordinator but was overwhelmed with his facilities work so he had to step back from that task. That left somewhat of a gap in the video group. The web-video team was not able to post video clips to the indymedia site for part of the weekend because there was not enough equipment available for group use. Some videographers even felt a skills-based and gender-based bias against them while in DC. (These aren't fun things to bring up, but they happened.) There are many issues to work through for future IMC projects and with more communication the video team will no doubt be able to solve any problems it may have had in Washington. THE WEB TEAM The whole world was watching Indymedia.org during A16. The news wire again proved itself an exciting and inspiring experiment in new world independent media. As there were in Seattle, there were discussions about whether or not there should be an editorial policy for the news feed. The web team did develop and employ the capacity to feature articles on the front page of the indymedia.org site though the editorial policy was somewhat fuzzy. The question of whether/how to edit newswire content is still open and indymedia.org will likely develop a coherent policy toward that issue in the future. Over the days surrounding A16 the indymedia.org web site got over a million hits. In addition, more than 700 site visitors watched the live webcast of the press conference held in the IMC on A16. Micah Anderson gathered the following stats on some of the more interesting domains that accessed the web site: # Some of the interesting domains of accesses that accessed the DCIMC A16 web site Most Interesting and relevant to DC: 546 worldbank.org 33 imf.org 157 US Trade Representative's office (ustr.gov - this is Charlene Barschefsky's office ) 61 South African government (gov.za) 664 US senate (senate.gov) 19 Superior court of DC (http://www.dcsc.gov/ ) # Some of the interesting domains of accesses that accessed the DCIMC A16 web site (cont.) Most Interesting and relevant to DC (cont.) 52 Pentagon (pentagon.mil) 864 DC government (dcgov.org) Interesting Companies 1510 microsoft.com 6 monsanto.com 8 nike.com 7 gap.com News Agencies 103 nytimes.com 35 coxnews.com 134 latimes.com 11 msnbc.com 4 cnbc.com Other Governments 94 UK gov (suffolkcc.gov.uk, devon-cc.gov.uk, edinburgh.gov.uk, and gsi.gov.uk) 35 parliament people in New Zealand (these appear to be two distinct people: Margaret Turner and Kate Deberry) 274 Australian government (gov.au) 42 Philidelphia gov (phila.gov) 301 Canadian Government US Government agencies 11 FCC (fcc.gov) 196 EPA (epa.gov) 740 National Institute of Health (nih.gov) 1482 Department of the Treasury (treas.gov) 325 US patent office (uspto.gov) 233 federal reserve bank (frb.gov) 1319 National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (noaa.gov) 372 US census bureau (census.gov) 1848 US department of labor employment and training administraion (doleta.gov) 12 Federal Bureau of Prisons 212 Department of Transportation (dot.gov) # Total accesses from of accesses various parts of the net 7975 .fr (france) 10635 .uk (UK) 120377 .edu 177897 .com 228069 .net 10971 .gov accesses 977 .mil accesses CLEAN UP What happens after the actions are over? Of course there will be a lot to clean up. I dragged 21 boxes of office supplies and notebooks and pens and other stuff back home with me after the IMC closed. Rupert and Chris from DC have boxes of clothes that people left behind. People should all consider staying a couple days after the actions are over for pure clean up purposes. However, the more important reason that people should consider staying is that after most actions are over, is that there will still be people (perhaps IMC reporters) in jail and/or in the hospital. IMC reporters, especially, should appreciate the fact that activists need support well after the protests are over. RECOMMENDATIONS/CONGRATULATIONS The DC IMC was an exciting, invigorating place to be during the exciting, invigorating A16 protests. The independent media movement is GROWING and getting stronger as we speak. We are building a viable alternative institution that is built upon a solid foundation of collective organizing. We are building independent media that represents us and the way we want to see the world work. That's pretty cool. Of course there are a lot of things we