The entire Indymedia editorial board wrote in [Letters, September 2] to protest my mention [Letters, August 26] of their role in the attacks against my group and others [But Can He Hack Prison, August 19], claiming, as they do to their own users, that IMC provides an “open” newswire and asserting that they protect their readers from the threat of a balanced dialogue by quarantining content rather than through outright deletion. Both parts of this claim are risible.
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While I disagree with their mission, I respect that they have a mission to protect. Their policy recognizes a need to remove content which challenges their mission and principles. But the way this has translated to practice in the ordeals our people have had with them is that they regard the publishing of ideological hit lists and violent threats, simultaneously with the removal of any protest from the people violated, to be compatible with their principles and their mission. Words like “open” and “justice” and “respect and support” for “a diversity of opinion” are clearly at odds with this.
By stepping through content IDs between the initial post and the post which responds to my deleted comments, I turned up six yellow boxes. It was an alarming discovery for me, not because I take CIMC’s claims to be “open” as genuine, but because only two of the deleted items are mine.
Justin Fleming
