Indymedia Mobilizes for the Sequel to Seattle

The images were at once riveting and appalling. Police lifting gas masks and bandannas off protesters to spray pepper gas in their faces. Concussion grenades and teargas canisters exploding on crowded sidewalks. But as the massive protests against the WTO conference in Seattle startled the world last fall, these pictures weren't on network television, for the most part. They were still images on the web, or they appeared on public access cable, downloaded from a daily satellite feed. Thousands of people saw them later in screenings as part of the video "Showdown in Seattle."The organization that produced so many of those images was a fledgling group of independent journalists, media activists, and volunteers called the Seattle Independent Media Center. Their website, http://www.indymedia.org, was the place on the web for the most immediate photographs, news articles, first person reports, audio clips and more, all direct from the chaotic streets. Nearly a hundred camcorder-equipped journalists combed the demonstrations throughout the day, bringing their raw footage to the IMC's command center for logging and digitizing. Thousands of copies of the IMC's daily newsletter, "Blind Spot" were passed out at the protests, rallies, conferences, and meetings that were taking place all across the city. The IMC's daily satellite feeds were seen on television in the U.S. in over 150 cities, and were picked up by Reuters and other international news organizations. On April 16 and 17, thousands of protesters will again converge to protest corporate globalization. This time, the city is Washington, D.C., and the targets are the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And once again, camcorder, notebook, and microphone toting activist-journalists will be there to document the events and bypass the mainstream media."With the opportunities available though the Internet, fax, and satellite, we had to the opportunity to almost immediately disseminate what was taking place in an unedited way," explained Dan Merkle, a Seattle attorney who was one of the founders of the IMC. Dan Merkle and other Seattle media activists, along with any of the alternative media groups and individuals who came together to coordinate the Seattle IMC, such as Paper Tiger, Deep Dish Television, Free Speech TV the Direct Action Media Network (of which I am a member), and Whispered Media are building a DC Independent Media Center for the April 16 protests. Once again, they hope, Indymedia.org will be the indispensable website for protest news.Although the Seattle group cobbled together the IMC in a little less than two months of furious organizing, the roots of the idea go back to 1996. During the Democratic Convention in Chicago, a group called Countermedia aimed to cover protests and demonstrations on the web. Though they had limited success, the idea captivated other independent media types. In fact, one of the key Seattle IMC founders, Jeff Perlstein, was involved with the Countermedia effort. Momentum began to build for the anti-WTO protests, and Seattle-based media activists started meeting in early October, 1999 to discuss ideas for a media center. "There were about six of us that immediately dropped everything that we were doing and started working on this full time," recalled Merkle. Merkle was personally motivated by a feeling that the Seattle police would not be able to handle the protests. Moreover, he said, as an activist he felt that the mainstream media was biased toward the business community. Aware of the possibility of police overreaction, "I wanted to make sure that whatever took place was captured and disseminated to the rest of the world."The group quickly found a central space and began raising funds and reaching out to independent media groups around the country. Donations of money and important equipment resources began to arrive. By the time the protests began, the IMC had a $75,000 budget, two locations, dozens of computers and video editing equipment, mobile phones, servers, and more. Much of the crucial funds and support came from individual donors as well as local high-tech companies like Encoding.Com (now known as Loudeye Technologies). At the height of the protests, on November 30, Merkle estimated that close to 500 people were involved with the IMC. "Just to manage or direct all those people instantaneously was a huge challenge," he said. "It was a lot of chaos and a lot of energy down there." The IMC was prepared for the crush, though. There were separate committees to handle each form of media, and newcomers were quickly integrated. Most important, said Merkle, "We demanded that everybody check their anger and frustration with corporate America before they came into this project. We needed to support each other and treat each other with respect or it would all break down."Despite initial server overload, by the end of that tumultuous week, the Indymedia.org site had logged over 1.5 million hits from individual users. "It was incredibly effective because it used a combination of real, physical space, tools, equipment, and real organizing. They set up the Internet as a dissemination medium," said Evan Henshaw-Plath, a computer programmer, entrepeneur, and activist who was one of the major web coordinators for the IMC.Moreover, the site was linked from the front pages of Yahoo, OneWorld, and other high traffic news websites. According to Merkle, news organizations like Reuters, CNN, the BBC, and others all dropped by the IMC, attracted by the direct access to the protesters. For their part, activist organizers in Seattle depended on the IMC for reporting on police abuses, and for portrayals of demonstrators that were more accurate and sympathetic than those coming from mainstream sources. Kim Feicke, an organizer with the Direct Action Network, and with Art and Revolution in Chicago, said that the IMC provided DAN with their own news desk, which was "invaluable, since we didn't have that kind of space and it allowed us to keep in touch with all the other folks doing media and exchange information." Once the protests ended, the IMC distributed the satellite feeds as a five hour video series, and then edited the footage down further into the one-hour documentary "Showdown in Seattle," which has been screened all over the continent. Buoyed by their extraordinary success, the IMC plans to continue as a media center in Seattle. But now, the IMC idea has caught on, and there are IMCs planned not only for DC, but also for the Democratic and Republican conventions. The Washington, D.C. Independent Media Center will probably be a smaller-scale effort than Seattle, however. For one thing, the demonstrations are over two days, rather than a week. Moreover, Washington, D.C. seems to have far less alternative media infrastructure than Seattle. As Eric Galatas, a media activist who works for Free Speech TV and helped organize the Seattle IMC noted, the Seattle area had a substantial independent media coalition which produced many IMC organizers. The DC IMC will have a central command center somewhere close to the locations of the protests, as well as a separate space for video editing. Instead of daily satellite feeds, there will be short, edited video news clips available on the website, in addition to the articles and photos. The website will utilize the same "rewire" technology as in Seattle--a web-based form that allows anyone to post an article or a photo to the site and have it appear immediately. The end result, said Eddie Becker, a Washington, D.C. filmmaker who is helping organize the IMC, will be "a site that combines all the media to follow the event in real time." Other alternative media sites such as Protest.Net and DAMN will probably be linked to the Indymedia site--they will act as filters, editing and posting the articles and photos they choose from the Indymedia database. On April 21, a one-hour documentary with footage shot during the protests will be broadcast by satellite. Despite all the excitement, the DC IMC faces major obstacles. Time is short, and resources are limited. "The reality is that we are not a TV network, we do not own a newspaper, we might feed into a few web sites and have a satellite TV broadcast that gets a lot of instant attention, but it's up to the people who come to bring the message back to their community, to arrange with their cable provider to pull down the satellite broadcast, have a party, and show tapes," said Becker. David Price, an activist and anthropologist, was pleased with the IMC's Seattle coverage, but concerned that it did not reach a broad audience. "In some ways it was mostly preaching to the choir--given that local media outlets were doing everything in their power to not cover what was really happening, I don't know what else the IMC could have done," he noted. Eric Galatas agreed. "There's a real advantage to monopolizing all public space, including the entire communications spectrum," he argued. The journalism of the IMCs is not exactly traditional. Most of the people working with the IMC are closely connected with the activist movements they are covering. Henshaw-Plath calls it "a different form of media that is alternative, independent, democratic, and participatory." Any protester can come to the IMC and write down their account of how they were tear-gassed and post it on the web for the world to see. That directness may appeal to audiences tired of pundits and fluffy news. "As more and more people learn that alternative visions of reality are out there, the kind that have an impact on the food they eat, the air they breath, what we're calling independent media today will make the dinosaur media monopolies look like the ridiculouw entities that they are. How can you take some blow-dried air head on TV seriously after you've seen real stories about things that actually matter with your own eyes?" contends Galatas.Activists and independent journalists have high hopes for what the IMC can accomplish in Washington this April. David Price would like to the see the IMC find "rational, well-informed, articulate spokespeople from anti-IMF camps and give them air time to counter the endless stream of mind-numbing econo-babble that will be dribbling out from the IMF and slurped up by a press that is mostly content to reprint as 'news' whatever press release it is handed." He advised IMC journalists not to use their press credentials as shields to avoid police brutality, so that they can experience what the protesters experience. Becker believes that the IMC can focus attention on the IMF and World Bank and their policies by asking questions like "Why are so many people willing to get arrested?" and "What do the World Bank/IMF do and why do so many of their project have exactly the opposite effect than what they were intended to do?"Can the IMC repeat its triumph? Galatas thinks opposition movements like the one against coporate globalization are more important than ever. "I personally think grassroots movements are our only hope for self-determination or true democracy. Since freedom of expression and freedom of the press are also required for these goals, independent media and grassroots efforts should work to strengthen each other. Any progressive cause that believes it can win its victory playing on the existing corporate media playing field knows that the job would be infinitely easier if there were a truly democratic communications system where all voices could be heard."Rachel Rinaldo is a freelance journalist and independent video producer, aswell as a graduate student in Sociology at the University of Chicago.