Why looking for regional autonomy?

This page is meant to be an open space to write a collective text about regional autonomy inside the United Kollektives network, in preparation to the Sheffield meeting. Vince thought quite a lot about this topic, so he decided (well ionnek proposed him ) to write this wiki page. His intention was not to sell his idea or any other ideas: he was trying to start a meaningful debate in order to improve the network as much as possible. Following Space Bunny's idea, this text has now become a collective text rather than a personal text as was first written by Vince. The first text by Vince is always accessible via the "diff" function.

Space Bunny on seeing how long the wiki page was felt it would not work as a serious of threaded discussion with authored sections, and set about refactoring it into a collective document that wiki engenders, in a way email does not. This may go towards the breaking down of ego and may even develop a consenus of what the debate is if not the solution.

On a theoretical level, not speaking of the United Kollektives concretely, it may be supposed that the strongest type of organization is a network between autonomous parts, as it is the 'principle' behind the global indymedia network and the whole anti-capitalist movement in general. A good essay on this subject is "Autonomy: creating spaces for freedom", by Notes from Nowhere (from the book We Are Everywhere). They say:

"Autonomy is our means and our end. It is both the act of planting our 'tree of tomorrow', and that tomorrow of many different hues: rich, diverse, complex and colourful. Autonomy is freedom and connectedness, necessarily collective and powerfully intuitive, an irrepressible desire that stalls every attempt to crush the will to freedom. As the politics of escape attempts from capitalism in the North and the experience of liberated realities in the South, it is a global theme. The movements against capitalism have once again brought it to the fore, vibrant, alive and urgently needed. (...)

So when we talk about autonomy, we are not talking about or advocating afew journeys of independence; much less a withdrawal from the world into a kind of retreat. Something else entirely is happening, something rooted in this concept of autonomy as freedom and connectedness. A dynamic geometry of social struggle is emerging, fractal-like, where local autonomy is repeated and magnified within networks that overflow geographical, cultural, and political borders. (...)

Network forms of organization, such as Peoples' Global Action have been crucial to the development of global resistance and the coordination of autonomous projects within a broder framework which itself seeks to be autonomous. (...)

Though some may say the word crucial is overplayed here, as is pointed out by Space Bunny.

The nature of autonomy is necessarily different in different locations: both political philosophy and grounded practices, an aim of self-organization and the outcome of participatory democracy. (...) Yet, it will always be difficult to do justice to autonomy. For as theory and practice it is the life-blood of the movements against capitalism: as freedom and connectedness, as unity in diversity, as recognition of the other. (...)"

Also a quote by Sylvere Lotringer & Christian Marazzi, "The Return of Politics":

"Political autonomy is the desire to allow differences to deepen at the base without trying to synthesize them from above, to stress similar attitudes without imposing a 'general line', to allow parts to co-exist side by side in their singularity."

So it may be assumed we all agree with this 'new' form of organisation, although what it means concretely is very much dependent on the circumstances, as it was said: "the nature of autonomy is necessarily different in different locations".

United Kollektives

So at first sight, Vince doesn't see any reason why the United Kollektives, which was founded as a 'network of autonomous collective', should be any different from this vision. Formerly, IMC UK was mainly 'administrated' by a group of people in London. Now that many people out of London are involved in the indymedia UK network, it was decided to decentralise IMC UK into regional collectives. Though it has been observed by Space Bunny, as there never were members of IMCUK outside London before and these are new groups negociating there way to become part of IMCUK that federalization is a more correct decription. Following the above discussion, it makes sense to apply the idea of autonomy as "freedom and connectedness", and to try to allow these regional collectives as autonomous as possible, collaborating within the new decentralised UK network. Where the problem lies is on how to apply this 'theoretical principle' concretely. But before confronting this problem, let's explain why regional collectives could want to be autonomous.

A local collective is in many ways very different from a 'national' collective as the IMC UK. It works indeed on a local level, may be more community-oriented, with concrete projects with different local community groups, etc. It may decide to leave the activist ghetto and try to reach the local community through this grassroots media project which is indymedia. In any ways, the point is that it is more than plausible that different regional collectives throughout the UK have different aims, different goals, different working practices, etc. As it was said, "the nature of autonomy is necessarily different in different locations". Volunteers in the Scotland collective may decide to work in a different way than volunteers in London, and volunteers in Sheffield may decide to have a slightly different goal for their Sheffield community-based indymedia project than the goal they agreed upon for the whole IMC UK project. These differences are plausible, and shouldn't be prevented from the start. If indeed it is impossible to create a network with concrete setup that allow these differences, than we should prevent them and impose some central line, central working practices such as one feature list, etc.

Space Bunny's view is that such a network might get in way of collaboration and sharing, if it forced replication tasks within each of the collectives which could be shared. But Vince's view is that the ideal of a network is as was said above: "Political autonomy is the desire to allow differences to deepen at the base without trying to synthesize them from above, to stress similar attitudes without imposing a 'general line', to allow parts to co-exist side by side in their singularity." Vince would add to this quote in our situation that these parts must collaborate within the network indeed.

Vince strongly refuses to throw away this 'ideal' from the start. His way of thinking is the 'research' way (profesionnal deformation): let's not assume any impossibility from the start. We have an 'ideal', a goal. Let's try to find ways to implement this ideal with the concrete means we have, in our concrete situation. As long as we haven't reached a point where we are confident that it is impossible to reach this goal, or to improve the network any further towards this goal, we should continue working towards it and trying to find solutions and improvements. And clearly at the moment we haven't reached this point, as we are just starting discussing about autonomy, and only the first ideas have been proposed on how to improve the actual UK network.

However, we have already experienced some problems with the actual setup concerning regional autonomy. One much pointed to problem occured about hiding posts in the newswire, concerning the fact that hiding something from the UK newswire automatically hide it from all the regional newswires, although some regional collectives may have decided not to remove it from their newswire. In this particular case with the actual setup the whole UK decision is the only meaningful decision, as it is impossible to keep a post on a regional newswire while removing it from the UK newswire. There was also a problem with regional features that was forgotten for the moment (please fill this gap chris! :-).

Vince would like to point out though that this debate is not about these specific problems but much more on a theoretical and organisational level, as we are presently building the United Kollektives. These kind of important issues should be discussed before any decision is taken, as they will have important consequences on the whole network for quite a while.

So Vince's aim with this open space, and with the discussions he had with other UK IMCers, is just to follow the 'honest' quest of trying to improve the network. As he already said, theoretically, being autonomous is much stronger when it's part of a network. And a network is much stronger when its parts are autonomous.

Four Proposals for the newswire problem (or to improve regional autonomy on their regional newswire)

For now, Vince heard of four proposals to improve the network, actually specifically to solve the newswire problem. These are just first proposals, and are all imperfect. They all have pros and cons. This is clearly not an extensive list of proposals, and many other ideas are probably much better than these three. This is why it is important to think about this topic, which to vince, and to many other people he knows, is maybe the most important point in the UK network at the moment, as it concerns the foundation of the UK network, its proper from of organization. It is hoped to explain these ideas clearly, please edit this wiki if your idea has been deformed... comments on these proposals will be made by Vince and others Please add your opinions also, maybe adding your name to see who added it? But some may choose to refactor in spirt of wiki culture and it be noted that diffs can be used to see who made changes, and how this document has evolved from Vince's original text.

• 1) The first proposal was seeded by ana and others. The idea would be to increase the level of communication between the regional collectives, so that ambiguous decisions are dealt with better communication between regional collectives. Many editorial decisions regarding newswire ( and all comments ) and shared features should be taken through the imc-uk-features list, and every member of every regional collectives should be a member of this list, or at least check the archives often, unless a sysytem of liasion is established.

Although Vince definitely agree with the need for better communication throughout the network, he doesn't think this solution does improve the network in terms of autonomy. It indeed improves the collaboration between regional collectives, which is very good and with which Vince completely agrees. But it is another question, and this increased level of communication can still be implemented even if the collectives gain more autonomy by another mean. The problem with this solution is that it doesn't give the possibility to regional collectives to have sligthly different editorial guidelines from IMC UK due to their 'localization', or different decision processes, etc. It doesn't improve regional autonomy, and Vince sees it as the abandon of the possibility of a true network of autonomous collectives. If all the other possibilities fail or have too important disadvantages, he sees this solution as a last mean. But not as a first proposal. In a sense, he sees it as a 'centralisation' process through a decentralised network: forming regional collectives, but centralising all decisions through only one mailling list.

• 2) The second proposal heard from Zapata and others. The idea is that posts on the newswire would 'own' to the region in which it has been posted, and this region would be responsible for the post and the editorial decisions associated to it. The UK newswire would be the sum of these regional posts, plus non-regional posts that would be dealt with by UK volunteers that are not in any regional collective and regional collectives (maybe a rota system like it's been proposed already). This may imply that technically the newswire would be split into posts associated to a region and UK posts in the admin section, so that regions can do the work on the posts they own. It would probably also implies a system of layered admin, as has been proposed many times.

The first objection is merely technical: when a post has more than one region, which region owns it? These ambiguous cases could be dealt with better communication between regional collectives. For example to hide a post owned by two regions from the whole uk site, these two regions should reach concensus, i.e. the 'hider' should send an email to both regional lists. The regions would still be autonomous to hide from their site individually if the two regions decide not to hide it from the uk site, but if the two regions decide to hide they couldn't keep it on their site individually. As a result, although regions gain a certain amount of autonomy, they are not completely autonomous on their regional editorial decisions. The main problem Vince sees with this solution is that it could be a bit complicated to implement concretely; when someone hides something from its regional newswire, he would always have to look to which regions it has been sent, and then communicate with these regions, etc. But maybe it is just because we are not used to it, maybe it could be implemented very fluidly.

• 3) The third proposal is the following. We set UK technically as a region, but which is preselected for every post from the regions. So every post would still go to the UK newswire unless someone voluntarily deselct it (it also gives the possibility of regional posts that do not go on the UK newswire, as was proposed by some people). Then, every region is responsible for monitoring their own newswire, and the UK newswire is monitored independently by UK volunteers that are not in any regional collective, and by regional collectives (maybe on a rota basis again, as it's been proposed). Again, the newswires would be splitted in regional + UK newswires in the admin section so that regional collectives can effectively monitor their own newswire, and a layered admin system would probably be implemented.

This proposal gives complete autonomy to the regions over their regional newswire, while keeping the autonomy of the UK network over the UK newswire. The objection that has been given is that it increases the amount of work through the UK, as posts must now be monitored on the UK newswire independently. And as there are not that many people cleaning the newswire at the moment, an increase of workload wouldn't be appreciated. Although one may agree with that, it may be seen by some as not a very important objection. First, because implementing a rota system between regional collectives would decrease the workload on the individuals who are presently monitoring the newswire. And some suspect that giving autonomy to regions would make them more willing to collaborate through the network, as they would feel more 'part of it', as they would feel that they are the network, rather that just being a branch of a central UK platform. However, to make sure that this proposal works, regions should first have a real collective able to monitor their newswire, which is actually the case for many regional collectives but not all Vince suspects (although he doesn't really know), and regions should be willing to collaborate, which in any ways is probably a prerequisite to be part of the Mir network.

-- CiderPunx - 08 Oct 2003 A possible amendment to that proposal would be that the UK region selector would not be available to the user, but only from the mir admin bit. Comments could then be removed from the UK newswire, without being hidden from the local newswire - so as to avoid treading on the local collective's toes. Because the end user can't then post only to the UK newswire, there is no additional admin load beyond what would be going on anyway...

which leads to a fourth proposal...

• 4) (based on CiderPunx^? idea, a mix of proposals 1 and 3) We set UK technically as a topic, but only available through the admin section and not to the user, so all the posts go automatically to the UK site as it is now. The newswire is monitored as it is now, i.e. only the UK newswire is monitored using the hiding function. If an ambiguous decision arises, it is dealt with by better communication between the collectives. However, because the UK is now set as a topic, the result of this communication can be that a region decides to keep a post while the UK decides not to keep it.

As a result, the workload is not increased at all, it is exactly the same as presently. However, in ambiguous cases, regional collectives can gain their autonomy and take their own decision if they want, while communicating with other collectives, which is not possible as long as UK is not a topic. So regional collectives would not monitor their newswire separately, so same workload, but they would have the possiblity to be autonomous when need be. On a technical note, there wouldn't be any "regional feature" type anymore, as UK could be deselected from a feature so that it becomes a regional feature. That would make it much clearer, especially for topic feature, where we are always confused if it goes on the UK topic page or only regional topic page etc. Vince thinks that up to now it's the best proposal.

It has also been noted by Space Bunny that proposals 2 and 3 reenforces the idea that colectives are bound by the region in their name. Do regional collectives have a self appointed sense of duty to cover the area in their name? Rather than being collectives that work together well on collective editorial and collaborative report by fact they are able to physically engage with each other and build up trust due to geographical closeness.

Conclusion

So these are the four proposals so far, and they are all imperfect as you have seen. They do not clearly solve the autonomy problem with comments (rather than posts) though, although they might, no one has really thought about it so far. Anyway, what would be fantastic is to find new proposals, using the actual Mir setup, i.e. sharing one server, one software, one database, that would solve the disadvantages of the above proposals. It is surely possible, we just have to think about it and refuse to assume that it is impossible to create a vibrant collaborative UK network or autonomous regional indymedias...

Looking for regional autonomy does not mean giving more importance to regions vs the UK network. Autonomy is not opposite to collaboration or networking: both are complementary and are necessary to make the other one viable. Autonomy is "freedom and connectedness, unity in diversity, recognition of the other." Looking for regional autonomy is trying to improve the network and make it stronger.

Hope this text was of help, and hope you'll participate in the quest of a better solution to improve the network,

vince from the Oxford collective began this text. Space Bunny began refactoring it to give it the potential to become a collective work.

The tech aspect of Regional Autonomy.

section added by Space Bunny

One thing that the whole MIR with regional pages was sold as was a way collectives around British Isles could get a Indymedia easy access publishing web page without needing to find a server to host it. It was envisaged that this may mean a group would not need a 'tech' person as much as if they set up their own web solution as a group.

But this is not what happened close to launch of IMCUK a requirement was made of the regional collectives wanting a page that they should aquire some tech knowlege. UkMirRegionalPagesSetupHOWTO - a cvs litmus test of a group being ready. In fact ImcScotland lost all the selections it made in run up to IMCUK Mir launch as it's selection was pulled as a choice on site as it failed to aquire this tech knowledge in time to set up it pages as required.

Also soon after launch a good tech change was made that had unfortunate side effect of preventing London and Scotland updating static web pages unless they changed their templates.

The tech engagement required between regional collectives is great under IMCUK MIR. And as a result the tech engagement required by a regional collective to excercise regional autonomy within it is great, more so than running there own site.

Then regional autonomy debate has been dominated by tech considerations and understanding.

Vince would like to point out though that even if the tech engagement in Mir is important, it is definitely less than setting its own server and software. And he would also clarify that to him, starting a regional collective in the UK network means that you should help the network and not just being helped. The UK network is not just a service that provides facilities for new imcs: the UK network is a network of collectives. No one else than the regional collectives is providing any service. No one is above. So if a regional collective wants to be part of the network, it must be active in it, it must receive from it but also give to it as much as it is able to. Vince thinks that seeing the UK network as providing services is not in the spirit of a network. The United Kollektives are not a host server or a tech service; they are an indymedia network of indymedia collectives.

-- IonNec - 05 Oct 2003 added link back on top of page

-- SpaceBunny - 05 Oct 2003 started to added to doc, it is so big that I don't think is worth having threaded discussion with signed notes on wiki may as well do that with email. Though if you disagree feel free to revert.

-- SocieteLibre - 05 Oct 2003 continued Bunny's work of transforming the text, and added a comment on Bunny's tech section

-- SocieteLibre - 09 Oct 2003 added fourth proposal
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