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.