-- participatory democracy - everyone taking an active role in transforming their world, with equal rights in playing this role;
-- the freedom of expression - or everyone's right to say what they want about what matters to them;
-- the freedom of information - not just free access to it, but the power to create it ourselves;
-- the democratization of elitist technologies and expertise - so that anybody can have access to them.
We are against:
social injustice, politicians who pretend to represent the interests of "the people," the alignment of the "mass" media with political and financial interests, and the resignation and passivity induced by the consumerist industry.
Indymedia Romania mission:
Indymedia Romania operates according to collectively agreed-upon editorial and decision making policies, based on a commitment to openness as a way to bring about the active participation of as many people as possible, ensuring maximum transparency.
The Indymedia Romania project is maintained by a team that manages the site from a technical point of view, updates and applies the editorial policy, and is responsible with various communication (moderates the public discussion list, answers emails, etc.).
Our guiding principles include:
1. Creating a media resource to influence social change:
In order to solve the problems with which we are faced as a society, we need venues of information and action, of collaboration and exchange of ideas. Indymedia is a project that can facilitate the dissemination of information and the collaborations necessary in mobilizing for economic and social justice. As an alternative to the conventional media, Indymedia focuses on moving the emphasis onto what is usually excluded or trivialized in the existing mass media.
2. Promoting do it yourselfism:
Since we are a project based on shared work and collaboration, we wish to prevent the division of labor with its usual hierarchization. As long as people expect someone else - an "expert" - to do the work for them, the general atmsphere is going to be one of passivity. We believe in the necessity of helping each other, not by producing for other people those things that they don't know how to do, but rather through a mutual passing on of knowledge and techniques.
In practice, we promote open publishing as a form of electronic democracy that allows visitors who come to the Indymedia website to put their own opinions, texts and stories on the site and become active participants of the network. We encourage the use of free software as a real alternative to Microsoft's monopoly.
3. Encouraging new forms of cooperation:
-- reciprocity and cooperation instead of privatization and competition,
-- the promotion of inclusive decision-making mechanisms and of self-organization,
-- the promotion of non-institutionalized social links between various people and activist groups in Romania and other countries.
Global Indymedia history:
The Independent Media Center, IMC or Indymedia for short, (http://www.indymedia.org) was started by alternative media groups in 1999 in order to provide coverage of the protests in Seattle by the people who were involved. Since the mass media serves the interests of governments and money, it was judged necessary to give everyday people the power to produce their own media. After 1999 hundreds of local IMCs were started around the world and they've produced websites, newspapers, radio stations and documentary videos. Each local IMC is independent but also part of a decentralized, global organization which makes it possible to collaborate on a scale that was previously reserved only for state and corporate interests. Global Indymedia is made up of thousands of people on different continents who use e-mail to coordinate projects, meetings, and campaigns, and to bring an international magnifying glass to local events.
Started as a project in February 2003 and with official status as part of the global network since July 2004, Indymedia Romania (IMC-Romania) is a group that supports: social justice, human rights, minority struggles, feminism, ecology, media freedom and the non-commercial uses of information technology. We believe that all people have the right to adopt an active role in social change.