Indymedia UK, the rise of the independents
Ben | 24.06.2009 09:16
As the demise of the UK Indymedia site continues I am encouraged and inspired to see the regional collectives and users forming their own sites away from the dead controlling hand of the discredited UK collective (or what's left of it)
First we had Bristol, a new vibrant Indymedia site that broke away from the UK group as they saw the beginning of the end, then we had the London people who recognised how an Indymedia site that was truly representative of its users was the future and now we have IMC Northern a fantastic well planned and executed breakaway IMC that has showed once again how the main UK Indymedia site has become irrelevant to the progressive activist community.
Last year Indymedia UK nearly imploded over the sickening Atzmon affair when a known Holocaust denier and anti Semite was protected and supported by a single IMC admin against the wishes of just about everybody, an admin who used the decision making process to block the legitimate attempts to show this nasty bit of work the door. Three other admins simply walked away from the UK collective unable to work with somebody whose hatred of Jews dominated his every post and editorial decision. Since then further admins have left and started the new Indymedia London which as gone from strength to strength. It is noticable how they have prevented the involvement of certain UK admins from being involved with Indy London - a lesson to all new collectives.
Later revelations about how Indymedia IP logging how been used in the prosecution of SHAC accused were purged from the Indymedia records and all discussion was blocked with reports and posts either removed or edited. But not before the world saw how important to the case detailed Indymedia records had been, the whistle blower who revealed this was quickly removed from the collective and identity taken over by the remaining admins so that a series of posts supposedly written by him could be put up with him admitting his 'guilt'. An attempt a revisionist history that fooled nobody.
Now Indymedia Northern, formed by a group who resented the Stalinist control of the Southern based, centralised, all powerful clique who resisted all attempts to share editorial control. IMC Northern is a beacon to all who aspire to an Indymedia system that is for the people by the people not by an anti-Semitic controlling misogynist group of self elected power freaks.
As the central collective sees their power and control sap away they have tried to block the establishment of the Northern collective by communication with the main world Indymedia site asking them not to be allowed to use the Indymedia name, they have refused to establish a link form the UK main site, they have slandered the originators on both Indymedia and other forums and now in a last ditch attempt to exert control have begged for a meeting to try and get them to change their minds. The Northern collective recognising this desperate last attempt have quite rightly ignored them.
Long live an Independent Indy
Last year Indymedia UK nearly imploded over the sickening Atzmon affair when a known Holocaust denier and anti Semite was protected and supported by a single IMC admin against the wishes of just about everybody, an admin who used the decision making process to block the legitimate attempts to show this nasty bit of work the door. Three other admins simply walked away from the UK collective unable to work with somebody whose hatred of Jews dominated his every post and editorial decision. Since then further admins have left and started the new Indymedia London which as gone from strength to strength. It is noticable how they have prevented the involvement of certain UK admins from being involved with Indy London - a lesson to all new collectives.
Later revelations about how Indymedia IP logging how been used in the prosecution of SHAC accused were purged from the Indymedia records and all discussion was blocked with reports and posts either removed or edited. But not before the world saw how important to the case detailed Indymedia records had been, the whistle blower who revealed this was quickly removed from the collective and identity taken over by the remaining admins so that a series of posts supposedly written by him could be put up with him admitting his 'guilt'. An attempt a revisionist history that fooled nobody.
Now Indymedia Northern, formed by a group who resented the Stalinist control of the Southern based, centralised, all powerful clique who resisted all attempts to share editorial control. IMC Northern is a beacon to all who aspire to an Indymedia system that is for the people by the people not by an anti-Semitic controlling misogynist group of self elected power freaks.
As the central collective sees their power and control sap away they have tried to block the establishment of the Northern collective by communication with the main world Indymedia site asking them not to be allowed to use the Indymedia name, they have refused to establish a link form the UK main site, they have slandered the originators on both Indymedia and other forums and now in a last ditch attempt to exert control have begged for a meeting to try and get them to change their minds. The Northern collective recognising this desperate last attempt have quite rightly ignored them.
Long live an Independent Indy
Ben
Comments
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Thanks for the vote
24.06.2009 10:00
If anyone wants to get involved with building the new site, drop us a line at imc-northern-contact at lists.indymedia.org or even better come along to the next meeting in scarborough on 5th July.
Unfortunately, IMC Northern feels that the UK experiment has failed, because of poor relationships with the groups Indymedia was set up to represent and internal disagreements amongst Indymedia activists about how things should be done. It has been very hard to organise a single output medium (the UK website) amongst a network of people who weren’t actually working in a single collective. This has lead to a deterioration in quality and a general apathy towards Indymedia in this country which is not felt in other areas around the world. As a result of these problems, some local groups have already left to form autonomous IMCs. We want to join this exodus from IMC-UK to make something better for our region.
As many of you will be aware, we are going through a massive period of change at the moment. We have merged the former Leeds/Bradford and York IMC's into the Northern Indymedia collective, drafted the New IMC form that we will shortly be sending out to the global network, created a new collaboration space at
JimDog* - ~imc northern~
e-mail:
imc-northern-contact at lists.indymedia.org
Fantastic
24.06.2009 10:09
It will be interesting to see how this spreads perhaps a further break down into small local community based IMC sub-units allowing people to view and understand real local news is the future in the same way we have staff newspapers in hospitals ?
The United Kollectives are dead, long live the autonomous IMC’s
The future and the past
24.06.2009 11:50
The excellent article in Shift magazine entitled "On Indymedia and Climate Camp" detailed all of this back in December last year and illustrated it perfectly but rather predictibly the moderators of IMC chose to attack Shift rather than address the points made.
Other posts on forums like Socialist News and Libcom which have tried to help and offer advice are dismissed by IMC insiders as "disinformation", indeed the claim of a secret co-ordinated disinformation campaign by shadowy Jewish funded groups that IMC never quite seems to identify has now become a common way to shut off debate and discusion of the route that IMC has taken. Proof of the old saying that "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutlely is illustrated all to well in the editorial and moderator collective, an elite grouping that rejects any attempt of outsiders to join, which punishes all dissent with expulsion and whose control of the IMC UK site has become absolute with regretable and predictable consequences. The old accountable public lists where discussion of editorial decisions was undertaken have become closed password controlled sanitised nothings where objections and opposing voices are blocked and newcomers not welcomed.
The rise of sites like London, Bristol and now North are part of the new IMC a fresh approach to citizen reporting and activist news where the contributors control the content, the editorial policy and most of all the site. To me it is the future not just of the IMC experiment but of news gathering and reporting for the next generation, I wish them well and look forward to contributing to IMC North when it is up and running.
One of the early mods
Any bets ?
24.06.2009 12:00
How quickly it is hidden ?
Which admin hides it ?
What excuse is used ?
How much it is edited after hiding ?
I will start the ball rolling ----- Hidden by 3pm UK time, either Roy or Chris hides it, the excuse will be 'disinformation' (that was an easy one!) and they will edit the email and web details so they lead to dead websites and non existent email addresses. Any other offers ?
Grub
New IMC's
24.06.2009 12:04
Repsect to all involved
Good to see
Does this make us weaker or stronger
24.06.2009 12:11
Sammy in Brighton
IP Logging
24.06.2009 12:16
SHAC
Homepage:
http://www.shac.net
IP Logging
24.06.2009 12:16
SHAC
Homepage:
http://www.shac.net
sigh
24.06.2009 12:53
indy for the uk went wrong about three years ago when the old collective lost some of the key people from the early days and three people in particular took over much of the daily moderation, it was from that time that the majority of the problems have grown. bristol indymedia with its modification of the open publishing approach is very much the future. make everybody register and stop them posting without id then all these stupid claims of disinfo can be quickly seen for the smokescreen they are. they get none of this crap on bristol indymedia but then they dont get a daily diet of jews are in my soup as well like here which is probably why the current admins don't like the idea !
i understand that unique visitors to indy uk is at an all time low, i'm not surprised but lets remember that this is not a lost project with the right people doing the admin it can be saved. in the short term however i agree that regional indys are probably better.
The alan parsons project
I.P. logging and recording
24.06.2009 12:59
Just interested
New Indy in the North
24.06.2009 13:09
I have been reading the notes by people like JimDog and others and I find it really inspirational to see people standing up and taking a stand over issues they feel strongly about. I am sure the organisers of the new site knew the Indymedia UK team would hit back hard and I'm sure they recognised they would get slagged off but that didn't stop them and I admire them for that.
More power to you all the Northern Indymedia team
Northern lass
I have many examples of what is wrong
24.06.2009 13:13
Ashley
e-mail:
ashley.stockton at tiscali.co.uk
Keep fighting
24.06.2009 13:56
Red Rocket
@ sammy in brighton
24.06.2009 15:17
on the streets
IMC Northern
24.06.2009 15:32
Greetings from Northern Indymedia
This is an open letter to grassroots activists in the North of England from the Northern Indymedia collective, also known as the Independent Media Centre of Northern England or IMC Northern.
What is Indymedia supposed to be?
For those who are unsure of what the Indymedia project is, here’s a very brief run-down.
Indymedia was founded in Seattle in 1999 to provide independent and accurate coverage for activists who would be protesting at the WTO summit. The failings of the mainstream media were as obvious then as now – vested interests with elite groups, corporate ownership and corrupt professional journalism meant that groups such as yours may never have their campaigns represented in an accurate way if at all.
By using open publishing newswires where anyone can easily publish their news and collectively run, non-heirarchical local media centres, Indymedia has spread across the world and is now in it’s tenth year of providing a media voice for activists.
In this country, there are many IMC’s (independent media centres) across the country, organised into what is called the United Kollectives (UK). This was an experimental way for local activist news to reach a national audience and so inspire others to take action. The closest UK IMC’s to your group were until recently IMC Leeds/Bradford and IMC York, which have now merged into IMC Northern.
What have been the limitations of IMC-UK?
Northern IMC have asked ourselves why so many of the radical actions and initiatives we hear about through our friends go unreported on imc-uk, of which our old website was part. More to the point, we asked lots of local activists like yourselves. Despite its achievements, not many of you were happy with the way imc-uk works and we’ve listened to a great deal of criticism and ideas for how it could be better.
These are the things that you said you wanted, but didn’t get from imc-uk:
A website that’s easier to upload photos, video and files to
An open collective that you can get involved in
A transparent, consensual process
Training on how to write reports
Regular face-to-face meetings
Less centralisation / being told what you can & can’t do by people you’ve never met
A calendar where you can publicise events yourself
Editorial open-mindedness
Some of us have put a lot of effort into trying to get these things to work within the existing imc-uk structure (we even hosted a meeting for the UK indymedia network last October). Unfortunately we’ve not been able to make much progress, because there isn’t a functioning collective process. It’s not a decision we’ve taken lightly, but we’ve decided that the time has come to set up our own autonomous IMC that can deliver what you want. This is a route that’s already been taken by imc-scotland, imc-bristol and imc-london.
How we’re going to change things
To re-establish trust and participation in the Indymedia project in this region is a serious challenge. Thankfully, much of the hard work has already been done. For the last year, the newly reformed imc Leeds/Bradford collective have been working to build an effective media centre which can provide coverage for groups such as yours.
Through regular meetings, skillshares and outreach work talking to various groups in this region, we have reached a point where we can begin to take more confident steps in a positive direction. Primarily, this means moving away from the UK and all the baggage it carries, towards a truly autonomous independent media centre which puts the local activists and groups we provide coverage for at the very heart of the process at every stage. We are reorganising ourselves as “IMC Northern,” a deliberately vague term so as to include anyone in tiny areas as much as in the big cities in the region. By “tagging” your articles when you publish in our newswire you will be able to provide your locality, no matter how remote, with your own local newswire alongside regional and global news, with your own web address to direct people to.
The new site we are building will allow campaign groups to have their own area of the site to collaborate on news articles and events announcements. It will be easy to upload photos and videos to the site of actions and posters for events. Also, we will always be open in our process and ready to listen to any ways we can improve our coverage.
How you can help
Above everything else, the most important part of this process is you. We are sending this email to invite you to get involved (as an individual or a group) and help to build a resource which is to the benefit of all grassroots activists in our region, whether campaigning for animal liberation, radical social change, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, disability rights, climate activism, anti-militarism or anything else which will make our world a better place. We exist solely to give you a louder voice.
The main way you can help us is by writing reports for the newswire of actions and campaigns you are involved in, no matter how small. We are particularly interested in giving a voice to those who wouldn’t get any coverage elsewhere.
Also, we are a collective and so if you would like to get more directly involved with imc Northern (all of the current members are activists with other campaigns as well) there are a number of ways you can do this. You will find our main collaboration tools at we.riseup.net/imc-northern and you could join our low volume mailing list at
And finally…
To end on a very practical note, we are happy to announce the Northern Indymedia Art Uncompetition. We’d like people to send us graphics we could use on the new site, particularly a logo and a banner (those are the bits at the top of each page). For the logo, we’d like it to reflect a positive aspect of northern culture married with the “(((i)))” symbol. For the banner, it might be a collage of photos from actions (help yourself from the old website), an original piece of graphic art, or whatever you want really. It’s an uncompetition because nobody loses – everyone’s ideas will be valued – and as everything submitted to us has to be free for others to re-use, we might end up with a mash-up of different submissions. Send your ideas to the email address below.
In solidarity
IMC Northern
Jen Claptrap
Re the IP logging and recording
24.06.2009 15:41
"All the web servers that are used for the UK Indymedia web site are set up not to log IP adresss"
The reality is that IP logs are indeed kept and the log file is currently on the traven server however it is protected by a password that only selected members of the kollective have access to. Each of these people has made a sword statement that they will never hand over their password to the police or other agent of the state.
I do not think this is acceptable but then I am no longer allowed access to the system because I made the mistake of speaking out about this issue.
ex admin
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