Me Be The Media? We Must Go The Extra Mile

author: blues

It's fine and great that Portland Indymedia specializes in genuine grass-roots reporting. But times have changed drastically since Indymedia began. Almost the only true U.S. Indymedia sites (in the real sense) are Portland Indymena and San Francisco's Indybay.org.

However, just reporting local news seems to be a limited agenda. Just as much, we now need social justice protagonist fresh thought inquiry. Having the grass-roots social justice reports is extremely important. But this is of limited value if we neglect to continue to sharpen our ability to understand them from fresh perspectives.

For example I recently submitted a piece that appears to simply "promote" religion. It involved brauchers (syncretic German-American/American Indian Pow-Wow, plus Jesus and more) and also Idries Shah Foundation Mystical Muslim Sufism. Certainly not to convert people, but to provoke thought. Why do these people think in these ways? The point is to provoke fresh thought about the various reported incidents.

There are now about 10 ding-bat social justice _antagonist_ websites out there for every protagonist one. Creating new protagonist sites has not been very successful, perhaps since about 75% of Americans are, know it or not, social protagonists! They already know the rudimentary truth. Just providing news is not enough. The promotion of fresh perspectives has become just as relevant.

Promoting social justice protagonist fresh thought inquiry always involves pushing the envelopes.

contribute to this article

.	24.Jan.2016 12:53

workerbee3

link

I hear you and see your point. [BTW & FYI] The religious post was moved to open compost, as we await the 2016 compost folder.

You Folks Are Doing A Great Job

24.Jan.2016 14:17

blues

link

I more-or-less expect my materials to get composted sometimes. I am old and have quietly helped organize many little progressive campaigns. I have seen the vital need to analyze situations before making decisions. Prompting people to think before they decide and act creates a special kind of controversy.

Thank you so much for your response, #3! Please keep up the great work.

(I wish I really knew what happened to the Indy site in Seattle. Such a shame.)

Maybe I will re-start my "Community Survival" site; but my typing is awfully poor.

Good luck and thanks.

This remains a great website (also agree w/ "promotion of fresh perspectives")

24.Jan.2016 18:50

link

First, thank you again to everyone who has kept this site up over the years. Please don't stop doing exactly what you're already doing!

I partly agree with blues (not some of his own perspectives necessarily but....) that provoking fresh thought about the stuff most left/radical activists would "typically" be working / reporting upon, is extremely important.

Portland Indymedia, for its own example, is a global leader not just among IMCs but also independent websites more generally, in having its '9.11 investigation' topic pages. Beaucoup kudos to PDX IMC just for that.

I'm not necessarily suggesting there need to be more separate topic pages (and sure, some others might ? suggest a specific few) but - whatever might be done in terms of blues' suggested "provoke fresh thought about the various reported incidents"... seems a beneficial concept.

Thanks again to all the people who do great work to keep the site going, you're appreciated.

2016 open compost folder

06.Mar.2016 11:20

workerbee

link

We now have the Open Compost folder 2016 up and working

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/compost/compost2016.shtml

contribute to this article

add comment to discussion

regions

topic pages

genres

actions

resources

global imcnetwork:

Me Be The Media? We Must Go The Extra Mile

global imc
network: