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Spitting blood , the fight is on

Lucy Fisher | 22.04.2011 20:11 | Indymedia Server Seizure | Indymedia | Other Press | Repression | Liverpool | World

Just over a week till go till indymedia UK is due to be closed down but apparently the fighting continues -

Dear Mayday collective,

You seem to have a problem understanding the nature of decision making.
The fork was agreed by everyone, including you, at the last Indymedia UK
meeting. After a decision has been made, you no longer have the option
to block it. That's the whole point of making decisions.

You could make a new proposal or suggest an amendment to the decision.
However any proposal that would entail the fork not happening on 1st May
2011 will most likely be blocked.

To be very clear here, the option to keep Indymedia UK running as it is
does not exist. Our failure to work together during the past year is
exactly what brought us to the point of ending the Indymedia UK project.

At this point, you have two choices:

1) We all go ahead with the fork, and try to keep things as painless as
possible. Everyone gets to go back to doing some reporting of radical
news instead of arguing on email lists.

2) You, the Mayday collective, or group A, can pull out of the
agreement. In that case we, Be The Media, or group B, will be able to
finally act on the decision made at the Indymedia UK meeting in London
in the summer of 2010 and set up the Indymedia UK aggregator on our
domain, indymedia.org.uk.

Everything except your active participation in the fork arrangement will
mean you are pulling out.

You have control over crucial infrastructure that belongs to Indymedia
UK. We trust you will live up to the responsibility and accountability
that comes with the privilege of being entrusted with technical access
and that you will not abuse this position of power in order to prevent
the fork. As you are still hoping to become an affiliated Indymedia, we
also trust you will adhere to the Principles of Unity.


Imc London



p.s. Please stop insinuating that Indymedia London ever wanted to shut
down Indymedia UK. Many of us have been part of this project much longer
than you. The end of the project is incredibly depressing for all of us.

We wanted to take the next step with Indymedia, we wanted the
aggregator. Just as was decided, in consensus, with no objections, at
the last Indymedia UK meeting before the split. You were the ones who
torpedoed that decision, and in the end brought Indymedia UK to its knees.

The fork is a miserable compromise that we agreed to in order to avoid
further escalation of conflicts, to spare the global network another
round of dealing with the fallout of local conflicts and to be able to
stop arguing on email lists and finally be able to spend our time doing
what we love to do: producing radical media.

Lucy Fisher

Comments

Hide the following 3 comments

Dithering.

22.04.2011 21:06

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Anarchism will never work. Instead of a leader with a clear vision, it is run by a dithering committee reducing all decision making to the lowest common denominator to keep everyone happy.

laters


Helpful?

22.04.2011 21:36

As a relative new comer to IMC, I don't see how this post will in any way help the UK collective, or whatever 'forked' collectives there end up being move forward.

Perhaps 'the fight is on' people should take it to the email lists (as many others have done and are doing). But they they might also like to reflect that language such as 'the fight is on' does not tend to lead to amicable solutions.

Me


Haha

22.04.2011 21:48

Mate,

Firstly I've sat a a whole load of meetings where hierarchical organisations are unable to organise themselves effectively.

Secondly an Anarchist society wouldn't be any where near as productivity based as capitalism.

Thirdly Anarchists are against unjustifiable power structures (you know, government, the police, capitalism, patriarchy and what not) not against leadership. Natural leadership roles take place everyday but as soon as they become irrelevant or don't represent the people they claim to lead they loose their power. It's about building communities of trust and solidarity rather than a society run by rich wankers that have no idea what it's like to work all your life for fuck all, making decisions we can do nothing to change.

Laugh