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Parent Article: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly: "What's the Matter with Indymedia?" |
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Hidden with code "Duplicate post" |
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Re: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly: "What's the Matter with Indymedia?" |
by Jennifer Whitney
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
28 Jul 2005
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Thank you for reposting my article Sascha, I’m excited to see the debate this is generating. I have one clarification, and a few responses:
This article on Indymedia was originally published in LiP Magazine’s “Constructively Negative” Sacred Cow issue this summer, with the title "Make Media, Make Real Trouble: What's Wrong (and Right) With Indymedia." (I prefer the original title, but also trust AlterNet to edit according to their audience.) But back to LiP - please go out and buy the magazine (better yet - subscribe), support independent print media, and in doing so you’ll get to read lots of smart critique and analysis of things ranging from gender-essentialized feminism, the organic foods industrial complex, the problems with gay marriage (and gay assimilation), and more. I was very pleased that AlterNet chose to pick up the piece, particularly given its length, and I also want to be sure that LiP gets credit for publishing it first.
Thanks to Sean for the remarks on the creation of and opposition to the US Indymedia site – that definitely adds another dimension to my understanding of that. In Ana’s defense, we were discussing the matter in the context of talking about issues of anonymity, and she definitely never suggested that everyone in opposition to the site was anonymously opposing. I didn’t ask her much more about the controversy, so I take the blame for any inaccuracies and omissions on that matter, and I very much appreciate hearing more about it from you.
In response to Pdximcista, I would like to respond to a few things.
First: I am glad to get feedback from someone from Portland about the article, and I’m glad that you found some of the article useful and even valuable. I hoped that would be the case, and I also expected (and hoped) that my piece would provoke debate. I hoped it not because I hoped it would piss people off or carry on a (nonexistent) vendetta that you seem to think I have. No, I hoped it because I believe in and love and support independent media and therefore feel it my responsibility not only to publish with independent magazines, websites, and newspapers, but also to challenge those media outlets to become better, more effective, and, as I said, more threatening to the status quo. Hopefully I met that goal with this piece.
Second: Regarding the editorial policy on free speech vs. fascist speech, Pdximcista says that I made a false claim that there had been an editorial policy against fascistic postings in 2001 when Volksfront was using the site for their own organizing efforts. I made no such claim – in her/his own quotation of my piece it shows the present tense used: “Portland HAS a similar policy….” (emphasis added).
As for the antifascists who yelled at the IMC collective, I can assure Pdximcista that the people in my group were not among the yellers. But more importantly, I think it interesting that the IMC group was willing to continue allowing posts which promote much worse crimes than yelling and name calling, rather than listen to the IMC’s actual community (ie: not the boneheads but the locals who read and used the site) and recognize that this was clearly an issue that inflamed passions and that even if some of our allies were “rude,” or “offensive,” that we had some important points.
Then, there is the fact that it took a couple of months (and I don’t know how many exactly, I’m going on Pdximcista’s statement here) to assess the issue and create the policy. Let me say that again – it took months for Portland IMC to decide whether or not they wanted to ban known neonazi organizations from using their website to recruit new members and publicize fascist events. In practice, this delay meant that the boneheads were able not only to advertise for their event, but also to post news items about their victorious and successful gathering (their words, not mine), and to gloat that we antifascists had failed to prevent them from gathering. This slow response to our requests and demands also meant that many people, including not only antifascist groups but also Jews and people of color, decided to withdraw their support from Portland Indymedia, since it had shown its willingness to tolerate organized hate speech, which I personally consider much more “rude” and “offensive” than any yelling that any individual antifascist might have done.
It is also a sad (though fairly common) story that Portland Indymedia didn’t respond until someone came, all the way from another country, to talk about the same issue. Frankly, I believe that many of us locals also made “passionate and thoughtful arguments” that Pdximcista credits as the reason the Brit got through where we lowly locals were unable to. Why was the opinion of this single foreigner, from a country with a completely different analysis on and relationship to race than ours, so much more highly considered than that of many long-term Portlanders? “What’s the definition of an expert?” my buddy from that same antifascist group likes to ask, “Whoever comes from farthest away.”
Third: Pdximcista first quotes me:
"Though that level of fascist material has not been seen on the site recently, it is unclear if this is due to the nazis going back underground or due to a policy shift at Portland Indymedia."
and then says:
“The reason it is unclear is because the author made no effort to find out…. It is shoddy journalism to give readers the impression that the Portland policy is vague, or not applied.”
It is simply not true that I made no effort to find out. I didn’t need to talk to anyone in the Portland collective to do such research: My “shoddy journalism” consisted of spending countless hours reading Portland Indymedia’s archives, both around the incidents in 2001, and in the years since. I happen to know that there has been less overt nazi activity, thanks in large part to those “rude and offensive” antifascist groups doing some effective work. And in reading the hidden posts, I didn’t find a lot of nazi material, so it seems that an overall decrease in nazi activity has had much to do with the changes in the Portland IMC site.
I did find, as I mention quite clearly in the article, several posts (ostensibly) by, and by fans of, the known fascist Lyndon LaRouche. This, to me, makes it unclear if Portland Indymedia is really following its own editorial policy against fascist postings, and Pdximcista, in her/his welcome critique, notably failed to comment on these examples I offered.
Fourth: Regarding the Mississippi Delta, rather than accept the self-admittedly “broadly defined” idea of a “delta region” offered by the National Parks Service, let’s look at how Merriam-Webster defines the word “delta”: their website says a delta is (in addition to all the stuff about Greek letters and triangles) “the alluvial deposit at the mouth of a river.” Britannica.com says a delta is a “low-lying plain composed of stream-borne sediments deposited by a river at its mouth.”
Besides all of those “incorrect ‘facts’” I’m accused by Pdximcista of having in my article, let’s discuss this on another level. I am from Louisiana, lived there for 17 years, have actually visited the delta, grew up 5 miles from the Mississippi River (well north of the actual delta, so I know the difference intimately) and know people who are currently working to save that unique and beautiful bit of marshy landscape, that is triangular shaped, and lies at the river’s mouth. Friends of mine who are from the delta would be appalled to know that some people in far away Portland are trying to say that the delta extends up to Memphis. It doesn’t. The river basin, sure, of course it does, the river basin covers around 40 percent of the lower 48 states, but calling a river basin a “delta region” is obfuscating, it’s muddling, it’s confusing.
I would recommend in future redrawings of regions and borders, that instead of spending 15 hours with Wikipedia, that folks spend much less time with a good geographer, and/or someone from the region being redrawn.
And finally, though I certainly found it odd to have Pdximcista telling me what my article is “supposed to be about,” I must say that it is not “clear” that I have or ever had a grudge against Portland IMC. Despite not getting a single response from anyone in Portland Indymedia who I contacted for this article, (which, honestly, reflected my experience three and a half years ago) I think I have been quite fair in my assessment of Portland as not only having some serious problems, but also doing a lot of great work to get technical and security support to other collectives, particularly in the global South. I would have gone into greater depth on this had I received a response.
Again, thanks to all of you, especially to Pdximcista, for your feedback, criticisms, praise, and most excitingly, for discussing and debating issues I think are important to the further development of not just Indymedia, but all independent media. |
