Open Letter: Rochester Indymedia Splits with TV Dinner & Metro Justice (circa 2007)

At a recent meeting, the Rochester Independent Media Center (also known as R-IMC or Rochester Indymedia) decided to begin working independently from the Metro Justice's Task Force TV Dinner. After many years of fruitful collaboration, we believe it's in the best interests of both groups to begin working separately.

The Rochester Independent Media Center (R-IMC) began in the spring of 2002 after a group of activists met to discuss ways to address disinformation in the corporate media and to work on building an alternative media project in Rochester. The group decided to join the global Independent Media Center movement, a decentralized
network of collectively run, autonomous media outlets.

Soon after, the group joined forces with TV Dinner, a Task Force of Metro Justice that had been producing an activist-oriented cable access show since 1987.  TV
Dinner had a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts (NYSCA) for running community-based video workshops and purchasing media equipment.

The partnership was natural as both parties wanted to create local, independent and alternative media. It gave R-IMC access to video equipment, office space, and video training. At the same time, TV Dinner received as influx of energetic volunteers to help produce the show and run workshops.

It worked very well for a number of years, but over time many of the benefits have lessened and several drawbacks have emerged.

1. The video equipment purchased through the NYSCA grant is currently underutilized by the R-IMC collective and the community at large. Beyond the NYSCA video workshops, R-IMC video producers are not using the TV Dinner video equipment. In addition, most of the equipment is the property of Metro Justice, since it was bought using NYSCA funds through TV Dinner. For the few things we do use, R-IMC would rather have a sense of ownership than feel like we're borrowing from another group.

2. Some R-IMC members were spending a lot of time and energy doing work demanded by the organizational structure of TV Dinner and Metro Justice. This had the effect of diverting their energy from Indymedia. For the last few years, the R-IMC members have been in charge of re-writing and re-applying for the NYSCA grant, and have been attending mandatory Metro Justice meetings as the TV Dinner liaison.

3. The underlying nature of the organizational forms of Rochester Indymedia and Metro Justice are at odds. Different goals and assumptions produced the two organizations and those differences are being reproduced in everyday life.

For example, all IMC collectives agree to a set of principles that form the social and
organizational foundation for Indymedia. Principle number six states that:

"All IMC's recognize the importance of process to social change and are committed to the development of non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian relationships, from interpersonal relationships to group dynamics. Therefore, shall organize themselves collectively and be committed to the principle of consensus decision making and the development of a direct, participatory democratic process that is transparent to its
membership."

Our experience with Metro Justice has been that it views itself as an umbrella under which other progressive activities in the Rochester area take place.  In this model,  Metro Justice  sees itself determining the strategies and tactics for all under its umbrella. It seems that at this time, the organizers and the board  of Metro Justice
are attempting to tighten up control over task forces and limit their autonomy. This has been felt at TV Dinner and has convinced the collective at R-IMC to make this change. We believe that collaborative activities achieve the best results when all
the groups involved share power equally.

This is a good time to make this change because a new TV Dinner working group has come together to produce shows that focus on Metro Justice campaigns. The group took video shooting and editing classes at Rochester Community Television and have begun meeting independently since the completion of the classes this summer. This means that there will be new faces to step up and renew TV Dinner after the split.

The partnership between TV Dinner and Rochester Indymedia played a significant role in getting our young organization off the ground.  It has been a pleasure working with and learning from TV Dinner members.

We look forward to the time where there is an active TV Dinner group, regularly putting out shows to compliment Metro Justice's work as well as a revitalized Indymedia focusing on radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth.