Minutes from Reclaim your Media Thematic Hub by blicero • Monday November 11, 2002 at 03:07 PM blicero@ecn.org

Minutes from Reclaim your Media Thematic Hub

RECLAIM YOUR MEDIA Euraction Hub 7th Nov 2002

Notes: this document composed in haste by multiple notetakers and summarised quickly after the meeting in order to facilitate further discussion, co-operation etc. The meeting took the form of a series of presentations of attendant groups' projects, gradually modified to be shorter and more focussed on practice. Discomfort was felt with the show-and-tell format, which might be avoided in future Hub workshops. The decision was made to split into interest groups (see bottom of this document for details) in order to work through the main themes thrown up by the session, and to address some not specifically raised here but thought to be important by a number of those present (again, see below for details.)

In short, it was emphasised in conclusion that the Hub is not intended to be a mini-ESF, a place for small groups to present their work, but one of activity and co-operative action. The opinion was raised that groups should focus on acting rather than representing themselves; on empowering speech rather than speaking for others. (This summary the opinion of the notetaker and not necessarily that of the whole group.)

The notes proceed chronologically through the workshop and are disjointed.

Z-Mag/Z-Net

our characteristic is trying to have our organization, our way of organizing the editorial part has to be consistent with the politics the project tries to support. We divide all the task so that each person has a mixed list of task that is similar to that of any one else and everybody feels empowered in doing different task. We think that this is a way to break the hierarchy that even in democracy can take place in spite of the equal vote and so on. So to us it was central to break down the division of labour, differently from other mainstream media. znet is compeltely different. We want to address femminism and change the structure of the movement from mainstream organizations. we have to get rid of racism and hierarchy in the movement. zmag, znet is all done in a decentralize non hierarchical way, everybody can partecipate on a equal basis.

Question about financing and growth.

A: started with private money they sell their productions now, the only exception is the website, people can donate on the web site and this worked brilliantly: subscribers get access to a BBS and a special article each morning.

comunicacio and liberinfo

a news agency that connects media and social movement to connect the alt media with the mainstrem. they are born in a political campaign against WB.Campaigns where have intervened: Genoa. Squats. Campaign against the World Bank in 2001. Jekyl & Hyde role due to the obvious risks involved with dealing with the media as anyone involved in such campaigns is aware.

Set up a site http://www.liberinfos.net. Also actions for Media Independence day on October 18th as Communic-Accion. Proposal to do two things: (a) To speak about the experience of mainstream in context of political campaigns, and then to further discuss ' liberifo'.

Descriptions will now be shortened as there is limited time in the session and there will be the opportunity to freely liase with one another later on the basis of affinity.

http://www.subtv

AK Kraak, gateway for independent television. Interest is in speaking with others from other video projects: how should it be used? Open publishing form. Not limited to the political activist sphere but seeking to touch other areas as well as such as artists, young film makers.

Gnu Global Vision

Italian project online at http://www.ngivision.org

Goal is to build up community of P2P clients that are connected with a network of FTP servers; with this network it is possible to find the archive and to download it so that anyone can pick it up from a personal computer. It is an archive divided by categories; from the website you can see the whole archive or different categories. There are currently 100 files available; the architecture is composed of FTP servers and P2P clients. Currently recommending the usage of DivX4, but are experimenting with the use of other codecs such as DivX5 (which may be too heavy on client PCs.) There are many technical obstacles to overcome currently.

The project is completely copylefted and are considering moving to an open publishing system like SubTV but have not yet achieved it. NGV is participating in the Hub TV and everyone is invited to participate ringing in materials etc.. The TV station will carry on for the entire social forum, 24 hours a day, copyleft and totally pirate. Join us.

International Solidarity Movement, Palestine

Trying to help and find the resistance for the Palestinians and to fight the occupation through non-violent activities; helping Palestinians to find the voice of resistance. How do we deal with the media? Sending reports and press releases. There is a media office which receives reports from different areas and sends out these bulletins . We also make videos and reports of what is happening; we are trying to purpose these documents legally and to disseminate them in a way which informs about what is happening. Everyone is invited to Palestine.

We send reports to the Internet through the mail list that we have, and to the press list that we have. Now the press have started to call us. Most of the time we also have video material available.

(Note today's meeting on disobedience in global war, in the hub this afternoon.)

Russian Indymedia Collective

Not solely from Russia. Also from Ukraine. The only Indymedia site working in Eastern Europe. Not focussed on big events - purposes of the site are to deal with the lack of critical media in Russia. To give non Fascist, non anti Semitic information. To bring together different activists from diverse social movements in Russia, who are not currently working together.

(Addition: most Russian media activism is with paper based publications. Not such access to video. But some internet access. Paper versions of Indymedia Russia have been made, in order to spread the idea to those without access.)

GreenPepper

4 times yearly. Environmental and social justice themes for each issue from an anti-capitalist perspective. The next issue is on migration, freedom of movement and borders. After that, water struggles around the world, pushing community struggles in the area of water and trying to promote that style of organisation as a new social form.

Future plans for a Spanish language version based in Barcelona. Also interested in coordinating a response from the World Summit on the Information Soceity.

World Summit on the Information Society

Nothing to do with alternative media projects. Could be a good place to campaign on media issues. Takes place Dec 2003 Geneva, then Dec 2005 in Tunisia. A summit in two halves equivalent to Rio, etc.

First half of the summit will take placce in a year's time but the most important debates have already started. There are regional meetings taking place right now, including a conf. in Bucharest this weekend. In Feb a meeting in Geneva which will be very important.

Involves state governments, northern and western governments, business sector, and 'civil society' - NGOS etc. and even some community radio interests. All these groups have different objectives and aims which define how they see the information society. Governments tend to focus on technology and access, its use for employment etc.; the business sector have similar interests - the spread of technology and access to it. Interests in creating a market economy and sustaining this. The problem is that the summit is organised by the ITU which is focussed on technological infastructure and has links with the business communities associated with the ITU. Unesco, more political and critical, would have been preferable.

Some aspects of early preparation are important. There is some kind of struggle going on and a desire to push community interests. This is coming from the civil society, NGOs.

What do we do about this? What could we work for in terms of this summit? Is there a campaign that we could start which would support civil society people within the conference so that more positive points are put on the agenda?

(Additional comment from worker previously inside the secretariat of the Summit who has left for 'ethica reasons'. Notes internal problems. That Southern countries are pushing for technology investment and ignoring free speech issues, etc. Also that the deadline for propsals is not yet closed. All propsals will be presented in PrepCon2 in Geneva in December. Interested parties should submit proposals before then in order to be represented at the WSIS.)

Wrapping up Comments

One topic not discussed: infrastructure and grassroots communications. E.g. Hub TV. Projects that try to think of ways of building infrastructures from the ground up. Experiments with detourning existing infrastructures and creating new ones.

This covers many issues - wireless to web radio, which tries to empower end DSL users to set up servers allowing them to share materials with others over the Net; to the building of a 'media jacket' allowing activists to have a tool which does everything they need.

The tendency to go into frontal presentations is egregious. Let us find a moment to facilitate a discussion about independent media infastructure. These thematic hubs are not about being a small version of the ESF. This is about finding a creative way of deploying your projects within the Hub space. The idea of this thematic session was to give quick presentations so that people could work out the affinities and produce activities together.

Lines are proposed on:

video, archiving, sharing;

WSIS campaign and all that goes around it- a network of alternative media that can help cover the event, etc.;

the creative use of community media infrastructures as an alternative to hierarchical representation.

Any other lines can be proposed and then worked upon. Coordinators should produce affinity groups and then post them up on the calendar.

These lines are broadly accepted by those present at the meeting.

Suggestion to meet later within different affinity groups. Notes that many interested parties are at the ESF and not at the Hub. By this afternoon they may have returned.

Proposal to talk about strategy in political communications and media campaigns... why we communicate, how we do it, and with and to whom. But is this questioning of communications practice something that should be carried across all of the strands? Should we speaking ourselves (from what position do we speak?) or empowering others to speak for themselves through development of media architectures?

The decision is made to split into groups. Are meeting tonight to ratify areas for discussion and find times to do a specific workshop. Can they be at separate times so that interested parties can be involved in each?

Once times are decided, workshops should be put on up on the calendar in the Hub space. Also send it out over the Hub mailing list. Please self-organise.

FreeDistro http://www.freedistro.org

The idea is to build a p2p fileshare commnuity around tstorage and distribution of independent materials. Have been considering available mechanisms for distribution (exisiting fileshare systems). Idea is to deliver films in different mediums (CD etc.) distributed broadly using magazines, infopoints etc. Would work with a portal which would guarantee quality and integrity of the file being downloaded.