Indy Media Watch

The following appeared on Oklahoma Indymedia:

THE THEFT OF OUR IMC
by San Francisco Bay Area IMC

It is with much sadness and urgency that we inform the greater indymedia community about the ongoing crisis within the San Francisco Bay Area IMC.

Open Letter to the Global Indymedia Network
San Francisco Bay Area IMC

It is with much sadness and urgency that we inform the greater indymedia community about the ongoing crisis within the San Francisco Bay Area IMC.

Open Letter to the Global Indymedia Network from SF Bay Area IMC
San Francisco Bay Area IMC



Open Letter to the Global Indymedia Network from SF Bay Area IMC
San Francisco Bay Area IMC,
It is with much sadness and urgency that we inform the greater indymedia community about the ongoing crisis within the San Francisco Bay Area IMC.

Open Letter to the Global Indymedia Network from SF Bay Area IMC

Introduction

It is with much sadness and urgency that we inform the greater indymedia community about the ongoing crisis within the San Francisco Bay Area IMC.

I think they're stuck on repeat. Are you following it so far?

Previously, we had attempted to resolve internal conflicts among group members by engaging in formal mediation, which ultimately resulted in an official split of the group into two and a list of specific actions upon which each side agreed. This letter is being sent out only after these agreements have not been respected by the new SF IMC collective that has split from us.

Trouble in paradise. The SF crew have split into distinct groups (read the article for copious history) and the accusations are now flying:

List of violations of the mediation agreement by the new sf.indymedia.org group:

1. The sf.indymedia.org group has refused to put up a blurb and links about the split as agreed to during mediation.

2. The sf.indymedia.org group failed to switch the DNS for indybay.org until over a month after the mediation agreement.

3. Before the indybay.org DNS was eventually switched over, a member of sf.indymedia.org pointed indybay.org to a non-existent IP address, causing many people to stop using indybay.org.

3. Immediately after the mediation was over, a member of sf.indymedia.org withdrew half of the money from the imc checking account, and then refused to negotiate the price for stickers and t-shirts advertising the sf.indymedia.org web site address. According to the agreement, the groups would split the money in the bank account after sfbay was reimbursed for the mutually agreed upon price for the stickers and t-shirts, and sf.indymedia was reimbursed for pieces of equipment that sfbay wanted to purchase.

4. The sf.indymedia.org group has deleted the SF-IMC email list and the Enemy Combatant Radio (ECR) email list without warning, before anyone had the chance to back up three and a half years of work and contacts contained in the lists' archives.

5. The sf.indymedia.org group has gone against the agreement by redirecting aliases to their new email addresses.

List of actions by the new sf.indymedia.org group that violates the indymedia Principles of Unity

1. Members of the linefeed.org server (which now hosts sf.indymedia.org, other IMCs and activist websites) have sabotaged local activist websites hosted by them that were connected to indybay.org.

2. The sf.indymedia.org group has been repeatedly hiding and deleting legitimate posts to their newswire by local activists whom they see as being connected to indybay.org.

The end result of all of this is that techies with positions of power, and a personal vendetta within an IMC collective, have effectively hijacked complete control of the website from the rest of the collective.

We believe that the behaviors displayed by the members of the new sf.indymedia group/linefeed.org are offensive and unacceptable, and that they have abused their powers as tech people within the IMC network to manipulate and bully others to get their way.

Proposed Resolution

We, the undersigned, request the following from the global tech working group and other IMCs in the network:

1. The ownership of the indybay.org domain should be handed over to the current members of indybay.org immediately, and

2. sf.indymedia.org should immediately put up texts and links about the split on their website as they should have already done as part of the agreement.

If both of the above requests are not met immediately, then we ask that:

1. The new sf.indymedia.org's status as an IMC should be revoked, and

2. The current members of the new sf.indymedia.org should be denied access and control to the sf.indymedia.org domain, and

3. in the event that the new sf.indymedia.org group should lose control of their domain, that it be handed over to the current members of indybay.org instead of being destroyed, since it is an established community resource, and

4. the money that paid for the mediation should be refunded to the current members of indybay.org.

We also request that all IMC websites update their links to the San Francisco Bay Area as http://www.indybay.org.

We are hereby challenging the legitimacy of the new sf.indymedia.org group for violating its own Principles of Unity by their abusive and intimidating behaviors.

We want to stress that we believe this is an urgent, criminal matter that is in the interest of the entire Indymedia network. What has happened here with the SF Bay Area IMC seems to be quite unprecedented within the history of the IMC Network, and we hope that we can depend on the support from all IMCers to help resolve this conflict and maintain accountability within the indymedia network.

None of this of course, will affect content will it?