Why Banning Arc & Freedom

Blocking (in?)Valid Imc's

• Arc & Freedom decided to block IMC Rogue because they have a consensus fallback.
  • The Ithaca IMC block made to Rogue through a regular IMC meeting. The next meeting this group's decision was blocked by members who publically stated they were doing so under heavy pressure by a clique of IMC Techs who frequent IRC http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-ithaca/2003-April/000902.html
    • Actually, I never publically stated I would block anything until it became clear we could not find consensus on how to proceed at the IMC-Ithaca meeting. I did hear from many people on IRC about the situation, but there was no "heavy pressure", it was more of a "hey, is this really what your IMC stands for?" type of feeling -- BrianSzymanski - 02 Jul 2003 )
  • Two members of IMC-Ithaca (Eric and Arc) made individual blocks which, combined with existing blocks on IMC-Process, resulted in sending the application back to new-imc where it was hoped that progress could be made where it could not on IMC-Process due to the large number of personal attacks being made amoung members of that group
  • PseudoPunk believes, "They Hijacked their own imc to have it looking like a collective block. Once it was clear it wasn't a collective block, they kept doing it solo." -- PseudoPunk - 31 May 2003

• Some have argued that these blocks were:
  • after the deadline, however Arc and Eric feel:
    • the deadline was canceled when two previous people, one previously involved with IMC-Houston and another from IMC-Rogue, made their own blocks.
    • these people were threatened with removal of the list because of their blocks and threatened with having their blocks ignored because they were not made by a block by a whole IMC
    • the block by IMC-Ithaca, and later by two of its core members, was made only when it became clear that these previous blocks were going to be ignored or the blockers coerced into stepping down
  • unacceptable. There are a lot of imc's with the same procedures.
    • many IMCs with majority-rules fallback to consensus were never accepted by new-IMC, many adopted their non-consensus decision making process without using consensus
      • How else can one "bootstrap" ? I never consensed, voted on, or even was able to express an opinion about my being a citizen of the US, but hey, it happened. "Dictatorships of the proletariat" happen - that's just a fact, and you can't whine them out of existence. At some point you have to stop talking about ideals and enter the real world. -- BrianSzymanski - 02 Jul 2003
    • in almost every IMC where majority-rules fallback is used active and productive members of the IMC have been kicked-out, often because of political beliefs, creating politically bias IMCs
• Trying to do the same with Tennessee
  • Arc's Mail
  • http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2003-May/003883.htmlThread]]

ConcernsIndividuals

• A page that collects some concerns about individuals who clearly misrepresent & abuse the NewImc Process.

Imc Ithaca New-Imc Process

• As Ironic it may sound, when Arc's imc went through the new-imc process, he was scandalized we just didn't set up a site when he requested it. Some time later he became the person who clearly defended a completely rigid & bureaucratic form of the NewImc Process
• Some Links
  • http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/new-imc/2002-February/001657.html
  • more in new-imc archives of Februari / March 2002

Arc Helping Local Imc's through Process

• Will come soon.

Other Working Groups that feel the Same

• In March 2003, The ircd Working Group (the people who take care for our irc servers), decided to throw out arc.
  • Meeting Logs
  • Mailing List (start thread)
  • Not suprisingly, this working group consists of some of the same members who supported Pseudopunk removing Arc from New-IMC
  • The ircd working group decided to reject the Principals of Unity, consensus decidion making, and even non-heirarchal organizing.
    • No, they didn't. After many hours of feeling stalled by Arc (in their opinion) non-sensically blocking things, they said enough is enough and asked him to leave. When he wouldn't leave, they tried to carry on, but it didn't work, so they consensed on just ignoring him. http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/ircd/2003-April/000110.html
  • Today three members of that group make all decidions for the ircd working group, have access to make changes to the system, and decide who can join their group in the future.
    • Interesting claim - from what I've seen they have an open mailing list and people who send suggestions are not ignored. http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/ircd/ -- BrianSzymanski - 02 Jul 2003

Proposal To kick Arc out of NewImc

• Actual Proposal

• Pseudopunk, who also made the proposal, put a 1 week deadline
  • Under this proposed decidion making process consensus would be considered to be made if nobody objected in this time
  • The decidion would be made on new-imc, under hostile social conditions, where anyone supporting Arc would likely be banned as well
  • This was done after blicero had already bypassed process by adding Rogue to the DNSzcities list without having it pass through both new-imc and imc-process, with the support of many IMC-Tech's, showing a readyness of these individuals to use their access to core Indymedia resources to force any decidion they want

• Mails who support it
  • Gekked
  • Evan
  • Boud
  • Tony
  • Changsing
  • Dragon

• Those who voiced Questions to reconsider / objections:
  • Neil
  • Jay

Eric Freedom?

• Eric did not object to Arc's banning
• No proposal was made to remove him as well
• He is viewed as a supporter of Arc by some members of IMC-Tech
• Removing him along with Arc sends a clear message: Indymedia is a autocracy controlled by a group of less than 20 techs who, through their exclusive access to core technical resources, are willing to force any network decidion
  • I agree that it was wrong for new-imc to remove Eric, however background information is crucial to understanding why this happened and how it can be prevented from happening again -- BrianSzymanski - 02 Jul 2003 :
    • There was confusion as to whether Eric and Arc were the same person
    • Many of the same people who had been upset by Eric jumping in at the last minute of the IRCD working group meeting in defense of Arc believed Eric was not getting the whole picture of what was going on, due to his living with Arc.

This Document

• Is meaningless since it's just going to be a continual cycle of re-edits between those involved to spin the facts in their favor
  • Might not be meaningless - the instances of people outright changing what the other has said have been low so far, as checking the revision history shows. -- BrianSzymanski - 02 Jul 2003
• Is meaningless because nobody but those involved read this shit
• Is meaningless because those same techs that control the network control this wiki
  • Sheer, unabated and pure paranoia. -- BrianSzymanski - 02 Jul 2003
• Is invaluable to people looking for patterns of abuse in Indymedia. Finding your feet in a groups politics is hard enough already. Indy's process is so poorly formulated, confirmed, and documented that any historical document I can wade through gives much insight. - KimCi

Last Words

• Censorship within the network will only result in moving the discussion outside the network. In the US alone there are hundreds of people involved with Indymedia, how many of them agree with your autocratic rule of network decidions? How many of them believe in consensus, open and transparent decidion making, and discussing things instead of forcing our own views through social and political pressure? Your group has made this a "win/loose" situation, and one way or another the principals of Indymedia will win. Your behavior has got to go, wether that means you changing or leaving is up to you.

• I think it is useful to extrapolate the removing of Eric and the removing of Arc in viewing these debates. I think it was right to remove Arc. I do not think it was right to remove Eric. The most obvious lesson here, to me, is that communicating over the internet is HARD, and that a positive attitude of trust must be maintained by all in order for this thing we've got here to work. I disagree with Arc's characterization of those on New-IMC creating a "win/lose" situation - I think Arc's incessant blocking shows that he is actually the source of this unfortunate situation.