by the imc-belgium process team - imc-belgium-process@listsSTOPSPAM.Indymedia.org
Writing this text was not an easy challenge for imc-belgium. It is the first time we speak out as a collective on the local IMCs operating in Belgium. We refrained to do so until now out of respect for the autonomy of those IMCs. Most of this text therefore speaks about imc-belgium and our vision on Indymedia.
Our vision can be very briefly summarised: We think that Indymedia has the potential to become a global, non-commercial, media network that can compete with the best wire services in the world. Imc-belgium wants to develop alternative mass media by giving a voice to social movements at large.
The conflict with the local IMCs in Belgium became part of the way we developed our vision on Indymedia and the network. During this conflict it became clear that there are different visions / approaches / ... of Indymedia within the network and Belgium. We think it is rather sad that this leads to an endless battle within and beyond the Indymedia network and instead feel the need to create spaces were IMCs can exchange experiences.
Some people tried to reduce this conflict in Belgium to a conspiracy theory of a stalinist/maoist takeover of imc-belgium. Not only is this theory by no means a reflection of the reality, we also came to think that those who are spreading this theory actually know that this is plain fiction as they now start their wild theory with: "You should really understand that this takeover is not visible itself in the content of the newswire or the features, ..." More and more do we think that this theory is used on purpose as an effective tool to avoid the real issues and to gain support within the international network.
With this text we hope to give a better understanding of the real grounds for the conflict between the different IMCs in Belgium.
Diversity is probably a point of discussion within the whole Indymedia network (and beyond). It is most certainly for imc-belgium. To handle this problem in a proper way, imc-belgium makes a distinction between:
In our mission statement we confirm that our principles are based on an anti-capitalist origine and attitude. We feel this enables us to define ourselve as a collective and the way we want to produce media. 'Anti-capitalist' is a notion that has a large definition and that can be embraced by a wide variety of people, groups, ...
We also rely on Indymedia's ImcNantesPrinciples of Unity (PoU?) to define ourselves and our way of functioning. We can only confirm that those PoU? can be used as a common ground by a wide variety of people, even if we as a collective feel the need to explicitly confirm our anti-capitalist roots.
We defined the website and our media productions as places for news coming from social movements. However, we do not say that those movements have to be anti-capitalist inspired social movements:
``Indymedia.be provides regular, trustworthy reports on all manner of events and stories happening in society. Reliable news from and information about social movements is finding less and less space within corporate media. Indymedia.be fills that void.
Independence is the most important trump card we have against a media landscape where commercialism is the norm. Because Indymedia.be exists on the support of its readers and volunteers it doesn't have to take into account the interests of share holders or advertisers.''
This approach enables us to have a large diversity of people with a large diversity of backgrounds to be involved in imc-belgium. Our mission statement does not say that people should be anti-capitalists to be involved in imc-belgium, it defines anti-capitalism as an origine of our media approach, our way of organising, ...
We do not think that the IMC should or can be claimed by one exclusive group within the movement. The need for alternative mass media giving a voice to social movements is not exclusive to radical anarchists, Maoists, union activists, ... It is a need that is large and is felt in almost all social movements.
We see open publish as a tool to build genuine alternative mass media but not as a goal as such. Open publish enables us to get more people involved, to work decentralised, ... It became an essential tool in building imc-belgium.
Still, if we would rely only on open publish, belgium.Indymedia.org would in no time become the usual ``left wing radical intellectual media outlet'', and there are plenty of those already. Therefore the Belgian imc'istas invest a lot of time and energy in organising workshops to enable more people to participate in the process of building alternative mass media.
Imc-belgium has a large editorial team that does a lot more that managing the website. We try to create physical an virtual spaces were imc'istas can discuss what they want to cover, why and how they would like to do so, ...
Imc-belgium has always operated on a national and multilingual base, this has always been an aware choice. Belgium.Indymedia.org is one of the only media outlets in Belgium where the different language communities are confronted with each other on the website and other media productions. It is for sure about the only media outlet where French & Dutch speaking people work together daily on the same media project. This multilingual approach also expresses our aversion for French & Dutch(Flemish) chauvinism.
The question of working on a national level also enables us to set up multilingual teams with people living all over Belgium. Most projects & teams (edito, process, video, audio, web/tech, ...) consist of people living in different parts of the country. Our national approach is no fiction: when we write this very paragraph there are people from Ghent, Brussels, Zottegem, Leuven in the office and on IRC we are joined by somebody from Antwerp. During meetings, in our mailing lists and on the website this diversity covers almost the whole country.
Imc-belgium does not oppose the idea of people working locally, some people actually do work together locally within imc-belgium, even if this rather occasionally, mainly to cover events. When the imc-belgium was asked to disband itself into local IMCs in 2003, this was rejected by consensus, mainly because imc'istas thought this would weaken Indymedia in belgium. Having a closer look at the dynamics of the local IMCs makes us only feel comfortable that was the right decision.
``A weblog (or blog) is a website run by one or more people which provides personal 'news', commentary and links, updated frequently, usually displayed as one paragraph after another in chronological order. Many Indymedia's are best described as collaborative 'blogs' produced by IMC editorial groups with an additional anonymous, moderated bulletin board system (BBS) called newswires.
This reality conflicts with Indymedia's broader potential: an international networked wire service of amateur, professional, and independent journalists and media producers dedicated to in-depth, on-the-ground coverage of deeply significant news and events. We believe SF-IMC and the network-at-large needs to be less about small clubs of friends running a weblog and tackle the challenges of being a global, non-commercial media network. We want to kickstart a shift towards maturing into a real media network that can compete with any of the best wire services in the world.''This statement coming from sf-imc (posted on sf.Indymedia.org in august 2004) led to a new dynamic within imc-belgium. We feel it's a pretty good expression of our own vision on creating alternative mass media, in contrast with maintaining a 'radical left wing' weblog.
We feel the best way to explain the development of our vision is to describe our history. This vision on media activism and Indymedia is not based on theoretical concepts, it is mainly based on our practice.
Inspired by imc-seattle and our own experiences, imc-belgium took off in May 2000. Right from the start we stated we wanted to build alternative mass media.
We live in a country were more than 70% of working people are member of a union and more than 50% are active in social movements. Along with that, about 80% of the Belgian population does not trust the media, and they are right.
Belgium used to have large independent media, closely linked to social movements. Although it happened a little slower then in the US, the UK or France, mostly all Belgian media are now part of / linked to the 6 global media monopolies [http://www.corporations.org/media http://www.corporations.org/media]. Public media are being forced by the government to work according to the same "rules" as corporate media, and more and more public media content is produced by corporate media companies.
Imc-belgium (through people involved in the IMC) played an active and sometimes crucial role in different movements (Belgian delegation in Prague, 019, D14, RESIST, STOPUSA, Lappersfort, ...). Sometimes this involvement was received with great enthusiasm and sometimes it led to huge debates within our collective.
This had a major effect on the way the IMC developed. It was becoming more and more a resource for activists, a place were activists had huge debates on what strategies to follow: violence vs non violence, elections vs boycott, Arab nationalism vs Islamism (and the dynamic cocktail mixing those), post-modernism (Negri, ...) vs modernism, ...
Those days we reached about 10.000 unique ip's a month. People were preaching to their own church, even though it was not such a small and a rather diverse one.
In the summer 2003 we received more and more signals that a lot of people were becoming alienated from the dynamic within imc-belgium and on the website. Yet at the same time we toured with the MediaCircus?, giving workshops to all kinds of different movements. During this tour we discovered that the need for alternative mass media was huge, but also that people did not see imc-belgium becoming such a medium, as they considered it to be activist media for convinced activists.
A bunch of Belgian imc'istas decided to put some things on hold and to go out to talk with people of different movements to see how they felt about imc-belgium's potential and to ask them about their critiques, suggestions, ...
A small group of imc'istas didn't have the patience to go through this process and left imc-belgium. They tried to force their vision upon the whole Belgian imc-community by proposing to dismantle imc-belgium: http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-process/2003-July/005008.html http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-process/2003-July/005008.html.
This led to a general assembly in september 2003 where we rediscussed and reaffirmed our mission statement.
Not only radical activists feel the need for alternative mass media.On 01.10.2003 Ford Belgium announced that they would cut 3000 jobs in their factory in Genk. Imc-belgium imc'istas went to Genk to cover the struggle of the workers in Genk. This was our first genuine encounter with union workers. They used belgium.Indymedia.org as a means to tell the world about their struggle. Articles and photo reports on belgium.Indymedia.org were printed by workers and handed out at the picket lines. Instant media activism workshops were given at the picket lines to enable people to post pictures on the website, to write stories, to voice their opinion, ...
Union leaders gave interviews to imc'istas and were glad that finally some media wanted to listen to them and tell their story (even if some imc'istas did not always agree with what they said).
We discovered in real life that not only radical activists feel the need for alternative mass media, but that most social movements feel that need.
Giving a voice to social movements at large.
Every 4 years belgian unions organise elections in factories, offices, ... About 2 million working people are able to elect their representatives in the union.
This massive democratic process is by no means an issue in corporate media as it represents everything they hate (workers organising their democratic process and electing their representatives). If mainstream media do pay attention to this process, it is to ridiculise it and to try to prove that unions do not represent working people.
Belgian imc'istas were able to participate in the whole process of those elections and were enabled to report from within. Imc-belgium was the only media outlet that gave that much room to these social elections and to give a voice to those involved. Belgian imc'istas also organised a media watch that became a real tool for union activists.
Not even one year after the 2003 elections that caused so much discussion within imc-belgium and the whole belgian activist community, we were confronted with new elections.
In the 2003 elections some imc-belgium imc'istas were candidate in several progressive alliances: RESIST & MARIA. During a general assembly before the 2003 elections imc-belgium decided that it would give a voice to all radical left wing groups participating in the elections and to those opposing elections<A NAME="tex2html1" HREF="#foot53">1. We also decided not to give a voice to the green party or the social democrats as they were in government.
With the 2004 elections things were different.
Those imc'istas who were on lists in 2003 were not in for another 'electoral adventure'. This was their personal decision yet it was certainly inspired by the debates within the collective during the summer of 2003.
As some green party members and social democrats were (and are) active in social movements we decided not to exclude them from the website. Some imc'istas went on an interview quest to have interviews with people presenting themselves in lists and having links to social movements.
The more elections came close, the more it became clear that there was real boycott in corporate media on all 'dissident' voices, so belgium.Indymedia.org became a place were all those voices had a place.
Whether we liked it or not, we also discovered that most social movements pay a lot of attention to political elections. Not only unions, but also movements like bomspotting, NGO's, ... make memorandums to politicians with their wishes for the next term. Imc-belgium became a place were social movements could express their vision, formulate their critiques and wishes in relation to politics, parliament, ...
The IMC as an empowering tool for social movements.During the spring of 2004 the nurses and all those working in healthcare (more than 200.000 people) started to prepare themselves for a long battle: they wanted better working conditions, better wages and more staff. As it is often the case, corporate media only paid attention to one side of the story, for instance that of the belgian minister of work calling the movement ``sovjets'' (as this movement also opposed privatisation of healthcare and the huge profits of the pharma business).
Imc'istas started to report on this movement right from its beginning. Not only did imc'istas report, they encouraged people to post their own reports of actions on the belgium.Indymedia.org website. This was a decentralised movement with actions in several towns and provinces. Nurses and health workers posted reports from all over Belgium. Imc-belgium became a tool for nurses and health-workers to empower and support their struggle.
http://www.Indymedia.be/news/2005/02/93813.php
The no global movement in all its diversityImc'istas from imc-belgium went to the ESF in Londen and focused on getting articles, reports, ... about and from the belgian activists and social movements in London. This resulted in a wide variety of posts, reports, ... that showed the diversity in and around the ESF in London.
http://www.Indymedia.be/news/2004/10/89210.php
Collective infrastructure to enable more people to participate.Bush's visit to Brussels (NATO & EU) in February 2005 brought together a large coalition of peace and social movements who all wanted to express that ``Bush was not welcome''. This was the first time we turned our new offices into a media center. This center was used by more than 30 people, who used the infrastructure to produce audio, video, photo and written reports. The use of this space and its infrastructure (network and some computers) made it possible for different people to participate and produce media.
Day1: http://www.Indymedia.be/news/2005/02/93167.php
Day2: http://www.Indymedia.be/news/2005/02/93297.php
Day3: http://www.Indymedia.be/news/2005/02/93612.php
Sharing resources, know-how, ... with other media activists & groupsOn 19.03.2005, about 80.000 people came to Brussels to protest the EU policies, Bolkenstein, the EU constitution, ... Imc-belgium not only organised a media center, it also shared its center, know-how, infrastructure, ... with other (belgian and european) media activists. Media activists from different european alternative media used the Indymedia center to produce and send out reports of the demonstrations.
http://www.Indymedia.be/news/2005/03/94835.php
One of the biggest remaining problems within imc-belgium is the lack of formality. There have been general assemblies without reports (the first two years). There are people working on video, audio, tech, ... but there is no 'formal' video, audio-, tech-, ... team. This lack of formality is understandable as we all hate bureaucracy, yet this lack of formality also leads to lack of transparency and makes it sometimes difficult for people to understand how they can participate. People form team, groups, ... mostly on an informal base, they meet during an assembly or in the office, and start working together on a project. There are groups of people within imc-belgium that operate in Brussels, Liege, Antwerpen, Gent, Leuven, ... This happens on an informal basis (e-mail, have a drink, ...). It will be a challenge to formalise all of this to enable more people to participate without installing a bureaucracy. This document as such can be a first step in installing some formality, as it was an exercise to reach consensus in the imc-belgium-process team on some key issues.
There are a lot more actions, activities, ... in which imc-belgium imc'istas took part and that contributed to the process of developing a vision on Indymedia and to developing imc-belgium itself. The above summation is a shortlist. It should not be understood as some mechanical process. The above summation is what we feel we learned as a collective from those experiences, most people feel they learned much much more from those moments.
We think that the conflict between the different IMCs in Belgium finds its roots in a different vision on Indymedia. This might not have not been so clear in the beginning of this conflict, but it is getting obvious now, even if this debate seems to be a taboo for the local IMCs in Belgium.
``The imc-ovl team is aware of its rather small role in the dynamics of imc-ovl. The website functions according to the open publish philosophy and is shaped by those who post on the website. The most important task and role of the collective is implying the mission and applying the editorial policy of imc-ovl and create the technical facilities to do so.'' http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ovl/2005-April/0407-a7.html http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ovl/2005-April/0407-a7.htmlA visit to ovl.Indymedia.org learns you where this approach leads: a newswire filled with copy/pastes, press releases, translations and some people using the site as their blog.
This concept of Indymedia is shared by most local IMCs in Belgium: imc'istas should refrain from reporting as much as possible, their main role should be to ``facilitate'' a website that can be used.
Imc-belgium has a team of reporters that meets regularly (in real life and IRC) to discuss what they want to cover, ... The imc-belgium-edito and imc-belgium list are used to involve a larger group of people in reporting on events, actions, social struggles, ... Before and during large events (Bush in Brussels, Bomspotting, Euromanif) imc-belgium organises briefings with the organisers. Imc'istas discuss how they want to cover the event and look for different angles, different approaches, different stories to tell, ... We look for ways to involve as much people as possible in reporting.
For imc-belgium, 'diversity' not only relates to the people involved in the IMC but also to the topics, movements, issues, ... reported on. Diversity also relates to the different possible ways of looking and covering an event. Diversity also relates to the way people participate and organise within the IMC.
Most people involved in the belgian local IMCs would be welcome within the Belgian IMC, just like most features on belgian local IMCs' websites. But it is clear that a lot of people, topics, ... in and on imc-belgium would not be welcome in and on the belgian local IMCs. Maybe we are wrong about this, yet we can only confirm that there is a larger diversity of people and topics, ... on and in imc-belgium then there is on and in the belgian local IMCs. The diversity on and in imc-belgium sometimes leads to aggressive attacks against imc-belgium in the newswires of some local IMCs.
Part of the conflict between the different IMCs in Belgium relates to how people deal with building consensus. We all make mistakes and sometimes mistakes are made collectively. It takes time and experience to enable most people to understand the mistakes they made; for a collective it only takes more time and experience to do so.
Ironically the conflict between the different IMCs was part off the process to develop our own vision in IMC. It forced the belgium-imc as well as the local IMCs to develop a vision, it forced imc-belgium to take into account criticisms formulated on and by the local IMCs. We think we have a different vision and approach of Indymedia then the local IMCs operating in Belgium. That does not mean we feel we have the right of being the one and sole real IMC. It is clear that different approaches are and should be possible within the network. Part of of this conflict is that some people want to impose there vision upon the whole IMC community in Belgium and probably also global the network. Imposing the global network to take a stand on the situation in Belgium (with deadlines / procedures / ...) is in essence forcing the network to speak out on a certain vision/approach of IMC (far beyond the PoU?).
Imc-wvl started after D14 (the EU summit in Brussels on 14.12.2001). There were different appreciations of the way we handled this summit, the media center in Cinema Nova, the website, ... During the spring of 2002 most of the belgian imc'istas were recovering from a hangover. We all invested loads of energy in D14.
In June 2002 the issue of imc-wvl was discussed for the first time during the general assembly of imc-belgium. The project was objected by some people as it was not clear whether imc-wvl wanted to be a (seperate) local imc or a local part of imc-belgium. At the time, there were different opinions about working locally.
People objected to the argument of starting imc-wvl because of differences in vision on Indymedia. They felt that would open the door for anyone who thinks differently to start their own IMC. This was called ``emotional blackmail'' by those who wanted to start imc-wvl.
Imc-wvl formally denied that the reason to start a local IMC were differences in vision. They always stated clearly that the reasons were: working locally and being more transparant to local people involved.
Most people of imc-wvl remained active in imc-belgium and we looked for ways to cooperate on several occasions. This wasn't always a smooth operation, but at least the intentions were there.
Imc-wvl became a rather dormant IMC. Their last general assembly was announced on their website and should have happened on 07.03.2004. The meeting never took place and is still anounced on the frontpage of the imc-wvl website (21.05.2005).
Already in September 2003 one of the founders of imc-wvl expressed that imc-wvl should question is existence: http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-wvl/2003-September/000816.html http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-wvl/2003-September/000816.html.
This debate was quickly burried and the IMC revived to start the first virulent attack on imc-belgium. This has been the life cycle of imc-wvl ever since. A dormant IMC that only wakes for the next attack on imc-belgium: http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-wvl/2005-April/0430-en.html http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-wvl/2005-April/0430-en.html.
Imc-ovl started off in the summer of 2003. It was supposed to become imc-vlaanderen (Vlaanderen is the Dutch speaking part of Belgium) and started off in the uttermost secrecy.
They developed a very particular vision on media activism that implies that the role of imc'istas should be reduced to managing the website, and that imc'istas should refrain from reporting. This leads to a website mostly filled with press releases and copy/pastes from other websites and IMCs.
Imc-ovl introduced an editorial policy that prohibited any post from people being active in a hierarchical organisation or movement, therefore they removed posts by union workers, Attac, NGO's, ... They changed their editorial policy as it seemed not workable.
Imc-liege started off in September 2003. As far as we can understand, it has a real dynamic. There are clearly differences in vision, approach, ... with imc-belgium that, according to us, mainly come from a different concept of diversity.
It is very hard to have any understanding about the functioning of imc-antwerpen. As far as we can understand, their last meeting took place on 10 November of 2004 with only 1 person present: Emmanuel Paulus. It seems that everybody left the collective and that the imc-antwerpen website becomes more and more the personal blog of Emmanuel Paulus.
There is a list of Indymedia projects the never took off because of different reasons: imc-brussels, imc-limburg (another province in Belgium), imc-molenbeek (a town in the Brusssels area) and MediaCircus? are all such projects. The reasons for the failure of these project are different. As we mentioned earlier, the MediaCircus? did indeed happen. It just didn't happen within the imc-network (as it was blocked).
According to some, imc-belgium is part of a Stalinist plot to gain control over all alternative media in Belgium.
It is interesting to note that this story is rather new. The origine of this story can be found in different anonymous posts on IMCs and other websites. The first time this story was used by belgian local IMCs to try to convince the international network, was in September 2004. We are not sure if the people spreading this story actually believe it themselves or if they actually know it is flat out untrue.
The way in which lists are made up to prove that certain people would be PVDA/PTB (communist party of Belgium) members, or would be linked to that party, makes us feel that people producing those lists actually know that it is plain fiction.
The notice that: ``You should really understand that this takeover is not visible itself in the content of the newswire or the features, it's a takeover on the control of the Imc and on its way of working'', only makes us feel that the authors now what they are doing.
It is interesting to note that turlututu (imc-liege), who is one of the most active promoters of this theory, never talked of this so called takeover in his ``I quit'' mail he sent out to the imc-belgium-process list: http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-August/001526.html http://archives.lists.indymedia.org/imc-belgium-process/2003-August/001526.html.
He actually speaks of ``parties''. And there is some reality in that: people with affinity for different political parties are active within imc-belgium. We know that during elections and the months before imc-liege bans every post that would favor a vote for whatever party. We feel that is playing the game of mainstream media, where most radical left wing groups have no voice, not even the more radical politicians within tradititional parties. Imc-belgium makes a clear choice to give a voice to all people involved in social movements who share our call to boycott political elections. And yes for sure some people active in the PVDA/PTB are also active in imc-belgium.
It seems that the whole story about this so-called takeover is made up on purpose, as it is an efficient way to convince people to take a stand against imc-belgium.
We are aware that there are different visions of Indymedia within the network and in Belgium. We feel that those differences should not lead to eternal battles within the network (or Belgium). The concept and spirit of Indymedia should enable us to have those differences coexisting within the same network. Rather then fighting each other it would be much more fertile to create spaces to share experiences, to learn from each other, ... This seems way more important to us than the several attempts made the last couple of months to install an Indymedia-bureaucracy and to turn the ImcNantesPrinciples off Unity into the ImcNantesPrinciples of Exclusion, as imc-paris noted.
We would also like to express our wish to create places for a positive exchange of experiences and visions. We only learned by accident about sf-imc's intentions to ``kickstart a shift towards maturing into a real media network that can compete with any of the best wire services in the world''. The inspiring project of UC-IMC's post office only came into the picture due to a flamewar on the communication list. The IMC during the ESF in London was very inspriring and we are sure it will be even better for the G8, but how can other IMCs be inspired by it if they were not in London or will not attend the G8? The same goes for the WSIS? We Seize! event in Geneva (12.03): it was a fantastic occasion to meet other media(h)ac(k)tivists, to experiment, ... but it was hardly noticed from the outside. Global mailing lists and wiki's are great tools to share and document these experiences, but it remains very much an insider thing. We think these experiences could be reported on more publicly to show the world what we are doing and how we are doing it.
As we wrote in our introduction, we think that Indymedia has the potential to become a global, non-commercial, media network that can compete with the best wire services in the world. It is this challenge imc-belgium wants to tackle the coming years. We as imc-belgium want to develop alternative mass media to spread the story of social movements as wide as possible. Along with that, we want to build an equally wide network of alternative media producers.
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