Portland Indymedia Introduces New Cities List

For this cities list, the basic idea was to make the categories more defining of an area and ultimately align indymedias that would be working through similar regional issues, instead of continuing the socio-political lines that have always defined the cities list.

The 'Projects' header has been changed to Working Groups in this incantation, as those are groups working together on particular mediums. The 'Topics' category, the newest addition to the global cities list, has remained the same. However, an upcoming topic imc, the queer imc has been added. Nothing has changed with the 'Africa' header. Instead of Asia being defined in three different categories (West, South, and East), they are now grouped under one 'Asia' header. The 'Oceania' header has also remained the same.

The most striking changes have appeared under the 'Europe,' 'Canada,' 'United States,' and 'Latin America' headers. Europe, which used to just have many imc's grouped under this header has been broken up into six different regions. This is based geographically, and all geographic information came from wikipedia.org. The headers are include: Eastern, Western, Central, Northern, Southern, and UK. It is felt that this will help readers have an idea of where they are visiting. However, it has been said that Europe is much more complex than this and the describing headers are used both as geographic and political terms in Europe.

The headers of 'Canada,' 'United States,' and 'Latin America' have disappeared. Latin America became 'South America,' 'Carribbean,' and parts of the 'Turtle Island' header. Turtle Island is a name that people indigenous to North America used to describe the continent, it is employed here as an attempt to break free from the political divides and the lines on the maps that exist. Folks that use portland indymedia, especially those from Cascadia (which is who the site is geared towards), are aware of bioregionalism. Cascadians, and users of portland indymedia, have been calling for a bioregional 'state' and with that in mind, the 'Turtle Island' part of the portland indymedia cities list has been broken up into bioregions where available and into geographic regions where information about bioregions could not be found. This is an attempt to seed the idea that it is possible to destroy the lines that divide us and break free from the state control that defines us. The information on bioregions and the grouping of Mexico, Canada, and the US together has been called into question. This is a work in progress, feedback and suggestions are welcome.

This is a brief explanation of the different headers and where the information was obtained to define things in such a way. All of the information was culled from wikipedia.org, and most specifically from the regions listed on the US Regions page. The headers used include: Appalachia, Cascadia, Great Lakes, Great North Woods, Great Plains, Inter Mountain, Mexico, Mississippi Delta, South East and South West. The ones without links were not easily definable, so they were grouped in geographical context.

This is a work in progress, suggestions are welcome. Please add your comments to this article, if you have any suggestions for ways it should be changed. Please also offer some kind of reference for why you think the change should be made. Creating this new cities list took over 15 hours of research and compilation work. Much thought was put into this, and it would be appreciated if as much thought would be taken into offering critiques.