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Who Is The UCIMC? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Kotheimer
Email: herringb (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified!) |
04 May 2005
Modified: 02:33:20 PM |
Very soon, our local Indymedia Center will be living through a lot of changes: Our current "Board of Trustees" is sitting past their term limits, and lots of new projects are right on the horizon.
It's with this in mind that I offer this first shot in the debate over what IMC Membership means. |
The current policy of dues-for-membership at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center was instituted fraudulently.
Sometime in 2001 or 2002, some working group (Finance? Space?) set an annual price and began collecting "annual membership dues" from participants. This policy went into effect before the Membership had reached consensus on the definition of "Member" in its Structure Document. The dues-for-membership model was then presented to Membership as a fait accomplit, written into the so-called "bylaws." The policy has been in place, in spite of numerous objections by IMC participants, ever since.
The best course of action to rectify this fraud would be for all money collected as so-called "Membership Dues" to be refunded to its respective donors, with a letter explaining the procedural error. This may be impossible for beurocratic or financial reasons.
Procedural error or not, the current definition of "IMC Member" as a person who pays dues (plus or minus various exceptions) is bogus for a number of reasons.
It does not reflect the actual engine of this organization--volunteership. It discourages and discredits the real work of the IMC, citizen journalism. In direct contradiction to our mission statement, it penalizes the poor. The policy discourages participation generally and discourages participation by low-income people acutely.
First and foremost, our organization needs citizen journalists. Next, the IMC movement needs creative grassroots organizers who support those citizen journalists by collecting resources and keeping their content propagating--i.e., fundraising and outreach. Volunteers need to be aware that helping to organize support for citizen journalism is in many ways as important as producing original works of independent media.
Of course, the IMC needs money to make it all happen. But to tie recognition as a participant in the decision making process of the IMC to money is contrary to the mission of Indymedia. It's a poor reflection of how our organization actually does its work. And in real-world political terms, the model is unenforceable.
=====================
I urge all supporters of the Urbana-Champaign IMC who have been paying so-called "Membership Dues" to be aware of the conflict about the definition of membership in the IMC. The conflict predates the institution of the "Membership Dues" policy, and it continues to this day.
I urge all IMC supporters to KEEP DONATING as they have been doing. In fact, I urge you to DONATE MORE if you can, but to refuse to consider such a donation a payment of "Membership Dues."
I urge all of the IMC's Working Groups to think about ways to make fundraising a part of their own work, and about ways to extend participation in the Indymedia movent to the poor.
Dues-For-Membership is THE WRONG MODEL for any Independent Media Center, especially the Urbana-Chamapign IMC. In the coming weeks, I'll be presenting several models which would work better. |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Re: Who Is The UCIMC? |
by Joe Futrelle
futrelle (nospam) shout.net (verified) |
Current rating: 0
04 May 2005
|
As a point of information, the Prairie Green Party is based on exactly this dues-paying model.
Since one of our "Ten Key Values" is grassroots democracy, the dues can be waived for anyone for any reason. Otherwise we'd be limiting our membership to people who can pay dues, which is anti-democratic.
In practice, the dues policy in our bylaws does not discourage participation at all, it just helps us collect money from people who are willing and able to pay and don't request a waiver.
In fact, people who are considering joining the party rarely bother to read the bylaws; they just show up to a meeting, and the membership steward hands them a membership form and asks for the dues. AFAIK we don't turn people away who don't pay. And except for the membership steward, none of us wastes our time worrying about who filled out the membership form and who didn't; we're too busy trying to run campaigns.
I see no reason the IMC couldn't operate this way with a similar policy. What matters to people is not what an optional donation is called in the bylaws, but whether or not they are encouraged to participate in decision-making. If that's not happening, there's a bigger problem than the bylaws.
http://www.prairiegreens.org/org/bylaws.html |
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The "Fraud Part," for Philip |
by Paul Kotheimer
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
04 May 2005
|
Hi, Philip:
You seem to have misunderstood my position on what the "fraud" part of the current situation is.
I assert that the current Dues-For-Membership policy was *instituted* fraudulently--by that, I mean that, back in 2001 or 2002, some Working Group usurped power over IMC structure which is reserved for the Membership as a whole. I call that "fraudulent." And the money collected since then, I call "collected fraudulently."
Otherwise, thanks for your comment. |
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Re: Who Is The UCIMC? |
by Joe Futrelle
futrelle (nospam) shout.net (verified) |
Current rating: 0
04 May 2005
|
Paul, fraud is deception for personal gain. Regardless of how illegitimate the process of adopting the policy may have been, the authors of the policy in no way defrauded the people making donations, since the people paying dues got exactly what the policy said they would get--membership, and the IMC as a whole benefitted--not just the people responsible for the membership policy.
It wouldn't address the problem to refund people's money unless their support of the IMC was somehow contingent on the membership policy having been arrived at appropriately--a dubious claim for which I am a counterexample because I donated my money to the IMC to benefit the community, not to enforce the IMC's parlimentary procedure.
Why demonize the authors of the policy? Surely you can convince people to support an alternative policy on its merits. |
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Re: Who Is The UCIMC? |
by MightyModerate
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
04 May 2005
|
Joe might want to double check what fraud is...
From Websters online dictionary:
Main Entry: fraud
Pronunciation: 'frod
1 a : DECEIT, TRICKERY; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : TRICK |
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Just a Few Facts |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 May 2005
|
This is a subject that Paul has brought up in different forms over the last several years at membership meetings. In fact, as best I can recall right now (I'll have more time for the detailed research needed to fully address thsi next week) there was NO definition of membership in the IMC Structure document prior to the April 2004 membership meeting.
At that meeting, the following definition was added.
"U-C IMC membership is defined as:
* Paying dues of $25-50
* Making an in-kind material donation approved by the finance group.
* If paying for membership is a hardship, a person can request a smaller membership fee or no fee - from a working group. Working groups must communicate new members to the membership coordinator or finance group. [exact wording of this bullet point to be decided by steering]
* Membership is annual."
Paul has at various times offered a series of somewhat shifting rationales about what he was actually proposing and what his expectations were in passing it. These have always been unclear and most people at first thought it was merely a semantic change. Many people may still think that is what is at work here, but it seems that is not the case.
After the extensive and somewhat heated discussion that was percipitated in part by my wanting to get to the bottom of what Paul really wants, I asked Paul after this April's GMM what was his actual objective was, since this was still not clear to me. Thinking I perhaps had misundertood the implications of what he had explained, I asked if what he really meant was that every person in the world was, by the definition he seemed to offer at the GMM, a member of UC IMC. His reply was, "Yes."
This will obviously create some problems, unless a non-member will now be defined as an extra-terrestrial being. First of all, mailing out something like 5 billion membership renewal letters is going to be an expensive proposition. Hell, we have trouble serving our better-defined membership right now as it is, let alone trying to communicate with the entire population of the Earth every six months, which we are required to do by the same Structure document, since there was no proposal offered to waive that requirement. Maybe we should put up a membership sign in front of the IMC like the famous McDonald's sign, with a spinning display showing "This many members served
5,465,795,381".
The Structure document also contains several clauses that explicitly give certain privileges to members by differentiating them from non-members. So Paul's conception of IMC membership, at least what he told me after the GMM, is really at odds with both the intent and the plain language of the Structure document. None of Paul's various proposals have offered anything to deal with the obvious contradictions his conception of membership would create within the Structure document, although one would certainly expect any proposal of such significance would have been carefully vetted beforehand to resolve such problems, instead of creating still more issues and contradictions, if the best interests of the IMC as a whole were being taken into consideration.
Furthermore, since the definition of membership was not in the Structure document to begin with, it is a bit disingenuous to claim that somehow the GMM's authority was usurped several years previous to the membership definition being added. By this standard, every decision made by every working group in the last six months would be subject to being reopened at the next membership meeting. This is simply not provided for either within the spirit or the substance of the Structure document.
In fact, the original membership definition was arrived at after the usual process. It was first discussed at the appropriate working group level, in this case the Finance group. Then their recommendation was forwarded to Steering for final action, where it was consensed to and approved pending objection from any absent spokes. At this remove, I don't recall whether or not there were any missing spokes, but if there had been, they would have had until the next Steering meeting to raise them. Hearing no objections, the proposal was passed, fully as legitimately as any decision made that is not specifically reserved to the GMM.
Since there was no existing definition of membership in the Structure document, there was no power to be previously claimed as being reserved to the GMM that was somehow not addressed. Whether such a definition should be in there is a different matter, but it just wasn't previously to being added in April 2004.
Paul states: "The policy has been in place, in spite of numerous objections by IMC participants, ever since..." which as you can see doesn't fully reflect the process that has occurred. In fact, as someone who has attended 96%+ of the Steering meetings the IMC has ever had, this subject has AFAIK, never been placed back on the agenda of the responsible bodies, either the Finance group or the Steering group, where the decision was made originally.
Instead, Paul has brought forward several different proposals at GMMs without any of the needed pragmatic preparatory work to begin seeking consensus, something which is hard to do sometimes in groups of 5 or 6 and a much bigger problem when you are dealing with 30 or 40 people with a number of other issues to consider in two hours.
He finally got what is in the Structure document now put in April 2004, as I noted above. This is itself is somewhat at odds with tradition at the IMC, where we generally respect the autonomy of working groups and only deal with issues above that level when they cannot be resolved there.
It is somewhat troubling to see Paul using the GMM to attempt get something he was not willing to work with those involved in the policy to achieve consensus on. He has also so far not brought the outstanding issues he is concerned with back to either Steering or Finance. I guess he would rather fire a "shot" across the bow. That's a cool approach if you're the Coast Guard, but somewhat troubling and counterproductive for achieving consensus at an IMC.
As it says on the Membership page in the Info Docs:
http://www.ucimc.org/mod/info/display/membership/index.php
"UCIMC membership dues are the bulk of the funding that makes the UCIMC possible. Without the financial support of our membership the UCIMC simply would not exist. Membership is annual and the dues are sliding scale donation of $25-$50 per year. An in kind material donation that has been approved by the finance working group may also be used for annual membership. However, no person will be refuse membership because of an inability to pay. Anyone may request that the UCIMC waive all or part of the IMC membership donation by talking to any working group of the UCIMC."
It is also a fact that the Finance group NEVER turned down anyone -- or requested any supporting documentation of need -- in the era when it approved all no-donation memberships. All a person had to do was ask and we would approve it. I suppose if someone pulled up in chauffered limo and asked that their membership donation be waived, we might ask some questions, but the IMC has, like in most of our activities, never expected payment from anyone for the services we offer -- we would simply like you to consider that.
Financial consideration is definitely not a requirement of IMC membership. It never has been. Under the previous policy, the Finance group handled all such requests discreetly, so that anyone in such a position could be assured that their financial situation did not become public knowledge. Now, people do not have full confidentiality in applying to have IMC donation waived.
This would be a problem, but what has actually happened is that nobody much worries about even bothering to ask someone if they would like to become a member. Working groups are the core of the IMC and without them bringing in new members, whether they can afford a donation or not, it impacts the organizatiion as a whole. It undermines keeping lists for contacting members, as required in the Structure document, as well as contacting them for other IMC-related business, including -- much as Paul may find this disturbing, perhaps -- the ocassional fundraising letter.
Now Paul wants to basically just forget about any practical definition of membership, so it should be little wonder that a number of people have issues with the approach that he is suggesting to further move away from any discernable definition of membership. There are also a number of other issues than fundraising involved in this, but I'll leave those for a more appropirate time and place to bring up.
I can assure you that I hate having to raise funds as much as probably anyone does. But until the revolution -- or we get some sugar daddy who'll give us funding with no strings attached -- we need to do it. Being asked once a year to renew one's membership is hardly the moral and institutional crisis that Paul seems to feel it is. And it is certainly not "fraud" and it is disturbing to me that, with all the possibilities for dialogue and reaching consensus available at the IMC, Paul has chosen instead to paint this issue in a ridiculous light that plays fast and loose with the facts. Even more strangely, for an issue that has been going on for so long, this is the first time he has ever made such a charge, which leads me to somehwat question his goals here. We don't have a statute of limitations on reopening old business, but one wonders if we should when a complaint about something that happened four years ago suddenly pops up like this.
Without regular income from those members who can afford it, it adds a special burden to those raising other funding for the IMC. Granting agencies often inquire as to the other support an organization receives. Having a large membership looks nice (and even that is going to be hard to accomplish is membership is so devalued that it is no longer even a matter of making a claim to be a member) on paper, but is likely to raise questions about how much it is doing to support itself if few are contributing.
I am sure Paul means well in some fashion and no one has an issue with raising utopian ideas at the IMC. The problem is that we have expenses that simply cannot be met with having a change jar set on the front counter and a ethic and a structure that presumes that no one will ever be asked to contribute.
In the end, "From each according to their means and to each according to their needs." Nobody ever said, "Don't bother asking that fundamental question in the first place"... at least until now. |
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Re: Who Is The UCIMC? |
by prairie apples
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 May 2005
|
"As a point of information, the Prairie Green Party is based on exactly this dues-paying model."
Because the UC-IMC _is_ the Prairie Green Party. |
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Road Apples to You |
by Dose of Reality
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 May 2005
|
It is pure and utter BS to claim that the IMC _is_ the Green Party.
The IMC is composed of a diverse range of people with widely varying political opinions. There are Democrats, Greens, socialists of various stripes, anarchists, and even the occasional Republican who are members and IMC activists. As a 501c3 organization, the IMC does not engage in partisan politics.
What scares conservatives is that in Urbana, the left is working hard to work together. This scares the bejesus out of them, because opinion polling and other evidence has consistently shown that the Amerrican public supports progressive ideas considerably to the left of what what electoral results often end up giving us in the way of publci policy.
If progfressives work together, it will be the end of conservative domination of the politcal scene. The IMC provides a model of how to do just that, which is what has trolls like "prairie apples" flinging their dung out of their cage.
The Green Party meets at the IMC, but pays the prevailing rate just like anyone else who wants to reserve a meeting room. |
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Re: Who Is The UCIMC? |
by Joe Futrelle
futrelle (nospam) shout.net (verified) |
Current rating: 0
05 May 2005
|
> the UC-IMC _is_ the Prairie Green Party
The IMC doesn't illegally give the Greens money, if that's what you're insinuating.
If you just mean that we have similar politics and some members in common, sure--you may be interested to know in that case that the News-Gazette _is_ the Republican party. |
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Re: Who Is The UCIMC? |
by an unheard voice
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
06 May 2005
|
"The IMC is composed of a diverse range of people with widely varying political opinions."
You can have widely varying politcial opinions, but you just can't express them....
by the way, where is the new building |
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