Help needed :-)

I'd happily help out with Notts Indymedia, but as a working-class carnivore class-war anarchist I just don't think I'd fit in. Such a shame that you don't list socialism, or even anti-capitalism, under the issues you campaign on. Socialism's not gone away, you know...

GG

Sorry, but Indymedia is what you make it. If you contribute, your news is on the website. If you don't, than it isn't. If you help running the site, than you have a say about where the project is heading. It's all too easy to stand at the sideline and complain... If you think things could change, well propose an idea!

yeah, take that view, but you gotta be in it to win it...

I think it boils down to what people what to say, or if they have anything to report, mostly I see actvist groups playing into the hands of those they are trying to change, many large ego's, that think they are cool because they turn up to a few protests. Get out there, start making the news . It's so easy to sit behind your keyboard and moan....

fogget the internet, get on the streets, then get on the internet.

"Sorry, but Indymedia is what you make it. If you contribute, your news is on the website. If you don't, than it isn't. If you help running the site, than you have a say about where the project is heading. It's all too easy to stand at the sideline and complain..."

Been there, done that, bought the right-on T-shirt. I was very active in the peace and other movements in the 80s which started off well as mass movements but got hijacked by middle-class identity and single-issue politics and disappeared up their own morally-purist tailpipes, and looking at the list of campaigning issues on the Sumac Centre site I get deja vu. Does the centre honestly involve ordinary working-class people in struggle, or just liberal students? Can vegan animal rights activists work with burger-chomping folk from St Annes? Will a feminist against "sexist views" work with a bloke from Basford who talks about "birds" and reads the Sun? Can eco-warriors who loathe car culture work with car drivers in the Meadows? And even if they can, which I very much doubt, and even if your average St Annes/Basford/Meadows/Sneinton/etc resident would set foot in the Sumac, which I also doubt, what would they be working towards? What common ideas are there? Whatever happened to class struggle?

"If you think things could change, well propose an idea!"

Ok, how's about being explicitly anti-capitalist, for starters. Social Centres in Italy and elsewhere manage to be involved in their communities, in eco/peace/animal campaigns, *and* be radically anti-capitalist. Have you got any socialists amongst your volunteers? Do you work with class war groups in the area?

Gerry

Gerry,

I agree with you on some activists. However, i think perhaps you need to look at the big picture. I ideally would love to be specifically anarchist. I have thoughts to myself along these lines constantly and these ideas are not bad at all but there are practicalities in life. "Become the media" is Indymedias entire ethos. "Education, education, education": quote Tony Blair. Even he (the right wing idiot) recognises the importance of controlling what people are taught. If people are fed coroporate and government tripe on a daily basis (read little John Daily Mail for prime exaple of one of the most widely circulated rubbish) and educated by the media in this way there is never any hope for social justice. If you don't want to contribute anything meaningful fair enough, just stop wasting time and space on this internet and let people who understand the importance of what Indymedia are trying to do to carry on.

Pete