"I've been gassed more times than I can count now, sprayed with pepper spray. Seen children, old women, and anyone else you can imagine, brutalized, a girl shot between the eyes with a rubber bullet…people lying on the ground losing consciousness in clouds of gas, running blind and vomiting if they can." - Anonymous, Seattle, Nov. 29, 1999
"Please pass on this info. We have to get the truth out there, and I'm giving you eye-witness accounts that I'm sure are not on the news out there." - John Gerken, Seattle, Dec. 03, 1999
Together, these two statements by Seattle WTO protesters on Nov. 30, 1999, illustrate the true spirit of "Indymedia," an international media movement painfully, but miraculously, birthed over the three days that protesters kept the World Trade Organization from meeting. The first statement is a piece of the story ignored by the major media networks; the second is ad hoc assembly instructions for a grassroots media movement.
For many, the story of Seattle has ballooned to near-epic proportion, but it is hard to exaggerate the impact it had. While it marked a significant moment of unity for human rights, environment, labor and social justice activists, it also found its voice in a generation of young, idealistic non-journalistic journalists. For the first time, first-hand accounts, photographs and video footage-which didn't match what the mainstream news was reporting-were available for digestion almost instantaneously over the Internet. The world watched and was appalled.
Here in the Twin Cities, many activists reveled in a post-Seattle excitement unmatched before or since. Locals who were in Seattle came home knowing that Minneapolis was fertile soil for an Indymedia movement of its own. They began to make calls, send e-mails and set up meetings. But, like for Seattle with the WTO meeting and Boston with the Bio-Devastation conference, it took a local event to get the Twin Cities Independent Media Center off the ground. That event was the protest against the conference of the International Scientists for Animal Genetics in July of 2000. As Jeremy David Stolen, an early TC-IMC organizer recounts, "Eight months after Seattle, corporate-municipal Minneapolis was terrified that the lively resistance that met the WTO in November [of] 1999 might visit the City of Lakes during the ISAG conference, and responded by creating a quasi-police state downtown. A portion of Nicollet [Ave.] was cordoned off with concrete barriers and chain link fence, and activists were unconstitutionally stopped and questioned on the street."
For those protesting, the need for an outlet for their words and images was dire. Stolen recalls, "The corporate media was filled with lies, mis-characterizations, and unexamined assertions from law enforcement. The FBI-spread claims about a poisonous substance allegedly found in a McDonalds near downtown, for example, were repeated on TV with little if any fact-checking, and the raid on the Sisters Camelot house was also not investigated thoroughly." Many also decried the local media for never addressing why they were protesting in the first place. Without a request from anyone in Minneapolis, Seattle IMCers set up the Twin Cities IMC Web site (minneapolis.indymedia.org), using their own as a template. Stolen guesses the Seattle IMC noticed the surge in reports and footage from the ISAG protest posted on the global IMC Web site (www.indymedia.org) and realized that the Twin Cities needed their own forum. The first article posted on the TC-IMC site was entitled "Jackboots roll Minneapolis" and featured a female police officer pepper-spraying a photographer at point-blank range.
"I was the first person in town to contact the tech team in Seattle and a geek there gave me the login and password," said Stolen. He changed the Web site's color scheme from pink to blue and called a meeting. Two dozen people showed up to the first meeting, and, although Stolen says that the site was neglected during the fall of 2000 when he and others were busy with Ralph Nader's presidential campaign, the Web site has been the biggest online hub for Twin Cities activist information ever since.
Today, Indymedia here and around the world is trying to prove that it wasn't just a flash in the Internet's fickle pan. To do this, they must look backwards to their predecessors, to the current state of media-burdened by a rapidly consolidating market-and plan for the future with a revolutionary vision of media by and for people, not advertisers and politicians. They must also answer tough questions of outreach, organization and strategy.
HISTORY
The first Indymedia organizers in no way took credit for its ideology. The ideological framework for Indymedia was built in the mid-nineties, outside of the United States, far away from the privilege that usually paints North American activist groups. The indigenous people of the Mexican State of Chiapas started an Internet war in 1994 to tell the North American Free Trade Agreement they'd had enough. They claimed that NAFTA and other tools of capitalist globalization had systematically stripped them of their land, language and cultural heritage and pride. Calling themselves Zapatistas, after Emiliano Zapata, advocate of land reform and indigenous rights in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the rebels moved into the hills of Chiapas and began a guerilla war that continues on today.
In 1996, the Zapatistas, led by Subcomandante Marcos and widely recognized by their distinctive black-ski-mask-and-machine-gun imagery, held the first International encuentro (Gathering) For Humanity and Against Neo-Liberalism. Four years before Seattle broke, thousands were gathering to strategize against capitalist globalization. The conference sprouted several communications wings, including the Direct Action Media Network and TAO Communications, both of which continue to have a strong presence on the Web. But until Seattle, there was no network of local chapters linked globally.
Much of Indymedia's backbone can be traced to the Zapatista influences: "We have a choice," wrote Subcomandante Marcos. "We can have a cynical attitude in the face of media, to say that nothing can be done about the dollar power that creates itself in images, words, digital communication of power, but with a way of seeing the world, of how they think the world should look. We could say, well, 'that's the way it is' and do nothing. Or we could simply assume incredulity: we can say that any communication by the media monopolies is a total lie. We can ignore it and go about our lives. But there is a third option that is neither conformity, nor skepticism, nor distrust: that is to construct a different way-to show the world what is really happening-to have a critical world view and to become interested in the truth of what happened to the people who inhabit every corner of this world."
Naomi Klein, Canadian journalist and author of No Logo, was a critical alternative voice during the anti-capitalist globalization protests. She wrote, "This is the essence of Zapatismo [the Zapatista's political ideology] and explains much of its appeal: a global call to revolution that tells you not to wait for the revolution, only to stand where you stand, to fight with your own weapon. It could be a video camera, words, ideas, hope-all of these, Marcos has written, are also weapons. It's a revolution in miniature that says, 'Yes, you can try this at home.'"
Jeff Perlstein, director of the Seattle IMC, also credits Marcos, along with many others: "...the IMC didn't just come out of nowhere. You read it everywhere from Radio Venceremos to Liberation News Service in the sixties here in the states, to the Zapatista's use of the Internet in '94 and since then, a project called Counter Media that I was involved with in '96, which was, again, a citizen's media initiative."
In the Twin Cities, alternative, grassroots media has also flourished. In Minneapolis in 1970, Hundred Flowers, an anti-Vietnam War underground paper was published weekly by Ed Felien, the publisher of Pulse. In the 1980s, the Arise! Newspaper emerged from the Mayday Bookstore, and continues on today as a quarterly journal by the Arise! Bookstore collective. In the 1990s, local anarcho-punk activists produced the internationally known Profane Existence magazine, reporting on the global punk resistance movement.
CURRENT STATE OF MASS MEDIA
Today the mainstream media suffers from the same ills it did five, ten years ago, and it is getting worse. The Big Media issue of The Nation (Jan. 7-14) reported the latest facts on corporate media consolidation. In a foldout center section, they carefully map out the Big Ten, and their various inbred offspring. Today, the ten are AT&T (Warner Bros.); Sony (Columbia); AOL/Time Warner (Time, Life, People, AOL, Warner Brothers w/AT&T, the Atlanta Braves); Bartelsmann (Lycos, Random House, Double Day, McCalls); Liberty Media Corporation (Seventeen, Ticketmaster, Sprint, Discovery Channel); Vivendi (Houghton Mifflin, Universal Studios, A&M, Motown); Viacom, Inc. (Paramount, MTV, CBS, UPN, Showtime); General Electric (NBC, AMC, GE, New York Knicks); Walt Disney Company (Disney World/Land, ABC, Touchstone Pictures, ESPN); and the News Corporation (Fox, TV Guide, HaperCollins, NY Post).
What that means for those of us who consume media-almost everyone-is that the corporate interests residing within each empire are tempering our information. John Slade, a Twin Cities labor organizer and IMCer sees this as one of the best reasons to work towards a new, do-it-yourself style media. "The things that bias the mainstream media, the fact that it is owned by large corporations and relies on advertising, and the fact that, to get to a certain point, it requires that you spend years sucking up to people and profs at the university and show that you know the way things are," he says.
Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, authors of "Manufacturing Consent," were some of the first to point out how both corporate affiliations and advertising taint reporting. Chomsky, a well-known political critic, often talks about systems of filtering that regularly keep writers from stepping out of bounds. Stories are edited, writers are censored, and if they don't catch on fast, they find themselves filtered from a job. He writes, "There are all sorts of filtering devices to get rid of people who are a pain in the neck and think independently. Those of you who have been through college know that the educational system is very highly geared to rewarding conformity and obedience; if you don't do that, you are a troublemaker."
Mike Hersch writes about the same idea in the American Politics Journal: "Professional reporters who tell the ugly truth about right-wingers lose their professional status, while those who attack unions, environmentalists, poor people, minorities, and liberal and moderate Democrats prosper."
Using a similar critique, the TC-IMC has made a conscious decision to not rely on any advertising in their print publication, the Free Press. "We talked about advertising a bunch, and there have been people who have said, 'Well, can we take ads from, say, Extreme Noise, can we take ads from the hemp store, can we take ads from Arise?' says Slade. Quoting Adbusters magazine, he calls advertising "pollution of our mental space."
"I think an advertising-free zone is something that people need, though they may not understand why they need it," says Slade. "It's just so refreshing for folks." But without advertising, the IMC and Free Press, with weighty printing costs, must survive on donated resources, time, work and money of supporters. Jennifer Leibenow, a TC-IMCer says, "Those who are involved are aware that they are unpaid, other than [through] karma or whatever other gratification they get from having that freedom of speech. I don't think that any of us consider this our job."
THE FUTURE
The future of the Indymedia movement is inextricably linked to its structure, its strategy and its vision. In the year following Seattle, Indymedia mushroomed and received much attention, even being nominated for a "Webby" award. Today, IMCs have sprouted up in almost every major city in the United States, and many outside. Many have community computer labs and some, including the Twin Cities, have regular and irregular newspapers, but all have busy Web sites, networked amongst each other to share information, articles and visuals. The global site, for example, pulls the best of each local site to feature on their site. (An easy way to find a city's IMC is to substitute the city name for "www" in www. indymedia.org. For example: minneapolis.indymedia.org or dc.indymedia.org.)
The Twin Cities has thoroughly covered such events as Mayday 2000 and 2001 and the Minnesota Biotech meeting in November of 2000; sponsored video showings of Indymedia films like "This is what democracy looks like," a documentary about the Seattle WTO protests; and printed two editions of the Free Press, covering global and local events. This month, they celebrate the Twin Cities Free Press' one-year anniversary. Above all, the TC-IMC has created a venue for online communication among activists in the Twin Cities.
As a media tool, the Web is a good fit for Indymedia for its immediacy and global reach, as well as its low overhead costs, but leaves technophobes and poor communities with no Web access out in the cold, a problem known as "the digital divide." Some IMCs have worked to bridge the gap by letting the online aspect act merely as a means to move media, and ask local facilitators to distribute it via high-tech (Internet streaming, etc.) and low-tech (newsprint, radio) means.
Indymedia is built on the notion that everyone should have a chance to speak and its structural pedestals are what separate it from other alternative media. All Indymedia decisions are made using the method of consensus, where even one "nay" can halt a room full of "yays" in its tracks. This method is used to encourage discussion and compromise, as well as guaranteeing a voice for each participant. However, when the TC-IMC had to "uninvite" a member who, in Slade's words, was "being abusive and dishonest," the consensus would have been messy if the member in question had attended that meeting. "We would have been in consensus except for that one person."
Even alternative magazines like In These Times, The Nation and almost any other publication around today (the Pulse included) have a hierarchy of jobs, as well as rules that mean some can publish and others can't. Indymedia calls into question whether alternative media can truly revolutionize the media sphere when they replicate the hierarchical structures of any mainstream paper, as well as asking the old journalism philosophy questions of "What are standards?" and "Can there really be bias-free reporting?" "The theory is that everyone can publish and can write, but not necessarily have access to outlets to share within the community," says Leibenow. "Anyone from a professional journalist to a totally deranged radical can publish something on the news wire." This "open publishing" means that the reader must decide whether they will believe it, question it or do further research and they can post any comments they have at the end of each article. "That's the other cool thing about the newswire," says Leibenow. "It allows readers to participate in this 'transparent process' of publishing, where everyone can see everyone else's comments. The person may or may not decide to go make and edit their posts."
Chris Baden, a relatively new contributor to TC-IMC, seconds Leibenow. "It's kind of up to the reader to decide whether they believe it or not. I don't see a lot of difference between corporate newspapers and tabloid newspapers. I mean, what's the truth?"
It's easy to haggle over the big philosophical questions about truth, but the IMC has already had its share of blatant falsehoods. In the latest incident, an Indymedia site incorrectly stated that the videos shown on CNN of Palestinians celebrating the Sept.11 attack was actually from ten years ago. Quickly proven to be false, the rumor turned some off from Indymedia permanently. "I know Indymedia are a bit ad hoc, but I will certainly never go to their site for news again," posted one disgruntled reader. "That Sept. 11th Palestine incident totally destroyed any faith I had in them and any trust I will have in them again."
"My mom has read stuff on the newswire and said it loses credibility when there's some guy saying they planned the whole 9/11 stuff," says Slade. "And I say, 'A) it is open publishing, and B) if it wasn't open publishing it would have to be really, seriously filtered.' People are used to, even though they may not know it, highly filtered news."
VISION
So where to now? Slade lists his top goals as to "have a regularly updated Web site, have a quarterly or more often Free Press that has a vaguely stable funding source, and have a growing IMC." Leibenow looks to other IMCs, who have already acquired their own space for computer labs and workshops on things like equipment usage, how to give an interview and how to educate people about being critical.
In the same Big Media issue of the Nation, Robert McChesney and John Nichols, authors of "Rich Media, Poor Democracy," praise Indymedia. "These Indy Media Centers take advantage of new technology to provide dissident and alternative new stories and commentary; some, by focusing on local issues, have become a genuine alternative to established media at a level where the alternative can and does shift the dialogue." However, they point out a need for this movement to grow both in scope and professionalism.
"As important as this work is," they write, "there are inherent limits to what can be done with independent media, even with access to the Internet. Too often, the alternative media remains on the margins, seeming to confirm that the dominant structure is the natural domain of the massive media conglomerates that supposedly 'give the people what they want.'" In the same vein, are the people coming to the Web site and reading the paper those who already know?
These are the questions that Indymedia must answer before they can expand their critical and important voice. |
