Answers to Membership Criteria
a. Agree in spirit to the NIMC
MissionStatement and
PrinciplesOfUnity,
:: We remind you that most of us come from the italian indymedia
node experience, so we well know the various network principles and
policies and we agree with them.
b. Have a committed membership substantial enough to sustain a
functional IMC
:: Actually our collective is constituted by 23 persons. Each one
have experiences in and knowledges of ICT, journalism, photo and
video making. Most of us have managed, until november 2006, the
old Tusacny category on the italy.indymedia.org site, so, borne out
of years of experience, we think we are quite able to maintain a new
node.
c. Have open and public meetings (no one group can have exclusionary
"ownership" of an IMC)
:: We live in different cities around Tuscany, we have different
political point of view (though we all fights for themes like
ecology, antifascism, antisexism, animal rights, antimafia,
individual and collective rights and internationalism) and we are
activists in different groups and associations. We have in mind to
organize meetings and workshops in places where anybody interested
might partecipate. We are also planning to organize such an
"indyTour" all over Tuscany and tech workshop to share (among us and
with other people too) technical information on how indymedia works
and on how a project of independent information could work.
d. Work toward developing a local Mission Statement or Statement of
Purpose. Network Mission Statement may be adopted or used on an
interim basis
:: We have already discussed and written such document.
that will be sent to you together with this one.
e. Establish and publish an editorial policy which is developed and
functions through democratic process, and with full transparency
:: We agree with the democratic process and the transparency; the
policy should be the same as the old Italy node, with some tweaks.
We have written a "policy document" that you'll recieve together with
this
one. Moreover we will publish all our documents on our new web site
as soon
as it will be on line.
f. Agree to the use of Open Publishing as described in the NIMC
Editorial Policy [editorial collective comments: "We did agree that
the term "Open Publishing" was one that is still being defined by the
Global Network Collective, and we would wait and see what the results
were before rewriting this criteria]
:: We are planning to use a CMS with this feature in our future web
site. Moreover we consider Open Publishing the core of an indymedia
project.
g. Adopt a decision-making policy that is in alignment with consensus
principles which include open, transparent and egalitarian processes
:: We agree with this kind of decision-making policy, and we actually
have
been using it even in the old local Tuscan Indymedia group. We agree
with the
consensus principles.
h. Have a spokesperson(s) willing and capable of participating in the
global decision-making process and meetings as a rotating liaison/
representative, with a clear understanding of the responsibilities
that come with this role,
:: Some of us are already enrolled on some global network mailing
lists, and someone will soon subscribe the imc-process mailing list.
i. Participate in the key IMC Network Communication Methods that
pertain to the health and vitality of the Network and that contribute
to the work of the IMC. Assure that at least one person from your
local IMC participates at any given time on the [[http://
lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-communication][IMC-
Communication]] list,
:: Someone will soon subscribe the imc-communication mailing list.
j. Have no official affiliation with any political party, state or
candidate for office (comments: but individual producers have freedom
to do whatever they like and local IMCs can "feature" stories about
various political parties and initiatives),
::None of us is directly involved in political party activities, none is
nor has been candidated for office, so that our group is completely
free from
every kind of parties influence.
k. IMCs shall in no way engage in commercial for-profit enterprises.
[We could add: The IMCN is committed to the decommercialization of
information and will disassociate from any local IMC that decides to
become a for profit media corporation.]
:: Our collective is self-managed and self-financed.
l. Display a "local version" of the IMC "i" logo on your website and
literature.
:: We will do it in our future web site and in our printed documents.
m. Include the IMC Network current "Cities List" on your site,
preferably on the front page.
:: We have written this in the mission statement too.