Wow, life as a newby blogger can be pretty interesting. In the first week you folks made 42,700 visits to The Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head, which just about blew me away. Lots of interesting emails and comments, which I am sifting through. Here’s one:
Zack Rosen wrote about the Independent Media Center
“They seem to be by far the most exciting new social presence – internet
age organization out there.
“Their views are a bit left of me – but that’s beside the point. Yes -
they have a headless dispersed and powerful internet based media / think
tank establishment that is steadily growing in scope and resources. But
the truly revolutionary and amazing thing about IMC is their satellite
community based nodes exploding across the world faster than people can
track them. I go to school in the middle of Illinois, surrounded by
cornfields, and the IMC is behind or involved in just about every
progressive social and civic oriented happened, besides hosting regular
concerts and workshops and seminars. When I go back home to Pittsburgh for the summer, there is Project 1877: http://www.1877.org/ -
spearheaded by the brand new Pittsburgh IMC. “a community space, a haven for all people in Pittsburgh working toward progressive social change. It is a playground of ideas, actions, and connections for activist
interaction and opportunity. Project 1877 connects progressive
Pittsburghers of all classes, races, sexualities, genders, and beliefs.
We plan to provide a free school, an infoshop, an art space, a meeting
hall, a musical venue, a media and presentation hall, and a safe space
to relax and hang out.’
“The IMC is applying and experimenting with the revolutionary ideas
today’s internet age can support – and are having tremendous early
successes.
-Zack”
2 responses so far ↓
Jack Dalton // Apr 7th 2003 at 5:49 pm
Here’s another view on that beautiful head – it’s a little less enthusiastic and a bit more sceptical about your project… worth a look though. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30087.html
John Abbe // Apr 9th 2003 at 6:56 pm
I would love to see Indy Media add coverage of what i call building activities to their almost exclusively resistance coverage. I imagine a fifty-fifty design, something like what potlatch.net did a while ago with their LoveBlog and FearBlog (they showed them side-by-side), but split between building work and resistance work — and drawing connections between them! E.g. articles protesting against war could generally include pointers to articles about people doing grassroots healing & reconciliation work in war-torn countries. And vice-versa.
My list of building activities (definitely slanted toward *my* views on the world) — feel free to add your own!