Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center: newswire/19366

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IMCs 101: Tips for Starting an Independent Media Center	Current rating: 0
by Danielle Chynoweth (No verified email address) Address: UC-IMC	03 Aug 2004 Modified: 12:56:32 AM
A talk I gave at the Media Reform Conference (Madison, Nov 7-9, 2004) updated for the Alternative Media Festival in Indianapolis, July 30, 2004.
The Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center was founded in 2000 and is now part of a network of over 130 IMCs in over 50 countries. IMC refers to 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” (from the New IMC working group). Groups become part of the global network once they agree to the 10 principles of unity, meet criteria for membership, and their application is not denied by the global network. I say “not denied” because IMCs operate by consensus, one of the principles of unity. Consensus is reached when there are no more outstanding concerns. Other principles include: open access to information; transparency of process; the contribution of labor as a prerequisite for participation in decision making; caring for one another and sharing resources; and human equality, non-discrimination, and diversity. Let me talk moment about our media production and the criteria which drives it. Independent, community media provides its audience information on issues that affects their lives then gives them the tools to make change. In fact, I would call this an obligation of independent media. When we sit around our editorial table discussing this week's stories, we ask ourselves "is this something people can change? What are the levers of change and how can we report on them?" Our goal is to report on issues before they are decided in ways that empower listeners to get involved in the decisions. Every story has a point of view. Indymedia replaces the ruse of objectivity - which is so often used as a smokescreen for bias - with the values of fairness, honesty, accuracy, and opinion, to cite Amy Goodman's media credo. Good journalism does not claim objectivity, but is in hot pursuit of the "best available version of the truth.” By becoming a venue for subjectivity, we become a venue for suppressed stories. In indymedia, the subject wrestles the microphone away from an “objectivity” that hides the blood on its hands. Are not afraid to take a stand or provide opinion or analysis with more factual information. We also strive to: - Produce stories of local significance (in the vacuum of locally produced news) - Represent diverse voices and perspectives - Incorporate the voices of “non-experts” - Cover stories not uncovered or under-covered by the mainstream media Now let me paint a picture of IMC in Urbana. We have a storefront community center in downtown Urbana which provides meeting space, a library of books audio and video as well as our own archives, a monthly newspaper with a run of 7000, a weekly local news radio show on community radio, our production room where members can check out media equipment and use computers, a video group which produces for local public access, music and spoken word shows, an art gallery, and an open publishing website where anyone can post a story. By next Spring we plan to have purchased a building and created a larger media and arts center. We will house Radio Free Urbana - a new low power FM station by next May. Last Spring one of our sponsored projects, the Community Wireless Network, was awarded a $200,000 Open Society Institute grant, funded by the Soros foundation to develop a model network in downtown Urbana that could be repeated in Nambia and other remote parts of Africa. This summer, the city of Urbana decided to purchase equipment, join the community wireless network, and provide free internet access in our downtown, thanks to the volunteer time and efforts of the Community Wireless Project. One of our newest working groups is the Resource and Action Group of Girlz and Womyn. One of our oldest working groups – the Radical Librarians and Anarchist Archivists – recently started a “Books to Prisons” project. Other locally sponsored projects include an improvisers group and the Pauline Oliveros society. Oliveros is a composer of experimental music. This has all happened in four years. In all my twenty years of organizing I have never seen an organization grow so fast and hold together so well. Many times I have tried to capture some of the reasons for this success. Here is an incomplete list of thoughts, in the form of advice for how to start your own Indymedia effort. 1) Just start. Our local IMC had its humble beginning as a group of 15 meeting weekly in my living room starting September 24 in the year 2000. We collectivized our equipment and began reporting two days after our first meeting. Our first project was to cover local solidarity protests with the Anti-International Monetary Fund and World Bank protests in Prague. 2) Make sure the community is behind you. As media reformers, we have a long haul ahead of us. To ensure the sustainability of this movement, we must make sure that we have continued community support and that our work is not taken for granted. No more martyrs – if the community wants it, they need to fund it. We created a goal for our group that would ensure a broader commitment than ourselves to this project – we said that if we could find 10 people to commit $50 a month for one year we would open a modest space in downtown Urbana and see what we can do. We found 25 “Founding Funders” and opened in a storefront in downtown. We then signed on sustaining funders. We are now seeking to purchase a building and expand. We have made a challenge to our community – we said that once we have $50,000 in hand, we will seriously start looking for a space. Our goal is to raise $100,000. We are currently have $66,000 in the bank and are looking at a large downtown space that would become a community media and arts center with a cooperatively run café, artists studios, and office space for other local non-profits. 3) Keep it simple, decentralized, and low to the ground. We had some folks who wanted to make structure before making media. The majority of us said no. We insisted on a structure document that fit on one page – this was to prevent getting too caught up in conflict over structure and to prevent those “in the know” of some long policy document from wielding power over those “not in the know.” After 4 years our policies have grown to only 8 pages. We have an IMC handbook that details our history, policies, and process and can be read in one sitting. 4) Empower those who work, not those who just talk. We created a structure that centers around working groups – low to the ground, action-oriented groups that largely determine their own paths. Each working group sends two representatives to a weekly steering group meeting where information is shared and IMC-wide problems are addressed. Our entire membership, about 300 people, is called to meet twice a year to discuss large-scale policy changes and future directions. All decisions on all levels are made by consensus. When someone wants to get involved they join a working group. If what they want to work on is not represented in a working group, they don’t wait for permission to do work. They start their own group, which exists outside of the IMC, until they can prove their viability, at which point they can petition the IMC to become an official working group. This is an easy way to sort out the talkers from the do-ers. 5) Groups that have been shut out or misrepresented are your natural membership base. Although we come up with various plans to bring in new members, our best recruiting tool is to do good work and fill a need – those who benefit from IMC activities then get involved. Queer Folk: In 2001, when queer activists were arrested for singing to an Illinois senate committee, IMC members were there, videoing the event. The arrestees faced a potential class c misdemeanor charge that was dropped when IMC video footage proved the police lied about events. Those activists are now regularly covering their events for the IMC. Non-citizens and people of color: In May of 2002, when global justice activist Ahmed Bensouda, a Moroccan, and a neighbor of mine, was detained by the FBI and INS, brought to an unspecified location, denied the right to see a lawyer, and threatened with charges of treason, the IMC followed the story hourly online and kept its doors open 24 hours for supporters to walk in, get updates, and organize. Under the Patriot Act, the federal government was going to bring evidence against him that neither he nor his lawyer would ever hear. We tracked the situation carefully, there was an outpouring of public pressure, and they called off the secret evidence. Young Folks: Those most denied free speech and most in need of an independent space are those under 18. Us twenty and thirty-somethings simply created a music and performance venue that was not a bar. Before we knew it, every teenager in town had come through our door – they alerted us that we were the only all-ages venue in town. So we handed them the reins – our Shows working group is now primarily folks under 21. Our main audio engineer is a 14 year-old girl. Activists: When it comes to corporate media, global justice activists are probably one of the most inaccurately represented populations because they target corporate power. The hope of non-violent social justice campaigns relies on a free press. At the WTO protests in Seattle, the police started beating and gassing us 3 hours before a window was ever broken, but because the press lied, the American public swallowed the police repression as legitimate. The IMC network was born out of the necessity to cover non-violent acts of resistance to corporate controlled globalization. If they won’t cover it, we will. 6) Give folks the tools and training to report their own stories. This is a universal struggle in the Indymedia movement – how to get over the perception that we are a news outlet that reports someone else’s message for them. If you have a maid to cook for you, you don’t learn how to cook. If you elect people to represent you, you learn how to complain instead of learning the difficult work of building fair policy in a diverse society. And if we leave storytelling up to the experts, we forget how to tell our own stories. For our radio show, we have rotating coordinators who help folks through the process of making a news feature. For our newspaper, we invite a different guest co-editor every month. This way we weld a stable structure of committed volunteers with strategies for bringing new voices in. 7) Help people realize the value of their stories. As a global society, we are bloated by stories created by public relations firms and corporate media. As a global society we are starving for each others’ stories, but few people share, because they don't see themselves as story tellers. We don't realize the power of sharing stories and absolute necessity of seeking out other's stories. We all know that corporate media distorts events such as foreign policy. I hear less about how it distorts our sense of each other. How do we how “what Americans want?” or “What the world thinks?” The binoculars we have to see each other as a society are distorted; we don’t see ourselves represented through them, so we begin to believe that “we” doesn’t exist. We begin to accept a marginal status – that our concerns about clean water, peace, and civil rights are “fringe.” When I ran for city council, it was my fellow progressives who most doubted my ability to win – they had so defined themselves as “losers.” I had to turn off the pessimism of my closest allies to actually win. 8) Indymedia on a budget – practice “carrier pigeon” reporting. When you return from your travels, it probably doesn't occur to you to tape your dinner conversation and broadcast it. The Indymedia movement has put a frame around that kind of storytelling and said "this is important" - "this has power." The success of the Indymedia movement depends on everyday people realizing that, in our monoculture of information, their eyes and ears are valuable. A trip can be transformed into valuable journalism with a few pieces of equipment. Personal travel diaries can be a refreshing break from highly managed corporate drivel. The corporate media has unknowingly created fertile ground for IMC’s to flourish. With their silence on substantive issues, refusal to pay for investigative journalism, and lack of on-the-ground reports, the corporate media fails to meet people’s real need for knowledge they can do something with. Within the framework of Indymedia, ordinary “citizen journalists” fill this need. One of the things our IMC does is "carrier pigeon reporting." We keep our ears to the ground to find out when someone from the area is traveling to a protest, or overseas, so that we can train and outfit them with a mini-disc recorder and a digital camera. Our local IMC has outfitted people traveling to Palestine, the FTAA protests in Quebec, anti-war rallies in D.C. and New York, World Social Forums in Brazil, anti-biotech protests in St. Louis, to Guatemala to do human rights work, the WTO meeting in Mexico, and the million woman march this last Spring. Everywhere you travel, don’t forget to look up the local IMC – and bring copies of your recent publication with you. This is the best way to network – and its thrilling to have a welcoming place to go in many of the major cities in the world. 9) Hand ordinary people the power of the press pass. A microphone in the hand is the best free schooling opportunity there is. It is an excise to talk to anyone about anything. I work with girls who have found schooling oppressive and left that system. I give them a press pass and training and before you know it, they are in the field getting an education - calling up Anniston to interview cancer survivors in Monsanto’s superfund dump, creating hilarious satires of high school sex education class, taping the manifesto about abuses in schools that they sent to the school superintendent. My eight-year-old friend recently asked me what the difference between a Democrat and a Republican is. I offered that she and I go interview them about each other to find out and then broadcast our interviews. 10) Avoid “fiefdoms” IMCs exist to invigorate democracy in their communities, not to be someone’s personal sandbox. There are a few dynamics to be aware of: a) Some folks who have been shut out or marginalized are looking for other arenas to be “top dog.” b) Some folks make a habit of tearing down any one they see as “in power” c) Some organizations hire a staffer to get necessary work done and then members “dump” on them, they get burned out or become so central to the organization that they can’t leave. I suggest the following to avoid these dynamics: a) Honor those who do work – thank them and appreciate them. b) Make sure core people take a sabbatical, even if they don’t want one. Sabbatical means staying away from the IMC with no participation for at least several months. This way you can prevent burn out and make everyone realize that the organization can continue without a core person. c) Hierarchy is not bad. In fact your listening to my talking right now is a kind of hierarchy. What is bad is stable hierarchies. Work toward floating, changing hierarchies. d) Don’t hire a general IMC “coordinator.” If you do hire, hire very specific roles. Leave coordination to the group. Our IMC started out 50/50 men and women. In 12-18 months the IMC was entirely run by white males mostly in their 30s. They were really hard working well meaning smart committed white guys. Lots of women were leaving – some indicated a competitive environment or “male management style” made them leave. At a membership meeting I pointed to this demographic shift and asked all the core people to take a 6 month sabbatical some time in the next year. Although some felt threatened by what I said, most took a some kind of sabbatical that year. Between that and active recruiting efforts, our core is slightly more women than men, although our racial demographics still do not match the community’s. We need to find strategies for overcoming the segregation of our community. 11) Process is important Protect and promote a safe, productive environment. Do not tolerate violence, threats, or harassment. Avoid cliques. Learn and teach consensus. Learn and teach facilitation. These are art forms that we are not taught in school. Every meeting have one facilitator and one in training. Form a mediation policy. It is OK for the group to ask someone to leave the IMC. Give them clear criteria that must be met for them to return. If possible, work with them on the solution to the problem they create. 12) Don’t get caught up on issues of purity. Not everything touching the world of business, mainstream media, or government it tainted. Hold onto your integrity AND be strategic. We try to be watchdog AND octopus with our tentacles stretching into spheres of influence. Our IMC works to get stories out – and sometimes the best venue is the daily paper that goes out to 70,000 people. We have established relationships with journalists in town who we suggest stories to. We help downsized news departments by sending them photos and calling in stories live from events that they can’t send journalists to. We support underdog public officials by giving them the ability to get news of their projects out to their base of support. Avoid bigotry. Churches, public officials, journalists for mainstream outlets, local business owners are all potential allies. Once you have a set a principles, you can embrace those who embrace them, regardless of whether their life choices make sense to you or not. Speak to the humanity in everyone.
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