URL: http://www.indymedia.org/

Saturday, November 27, 1999
By RUTH SCHUBERT 
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Demonstrators taking to the streets during next week's World Trade
Organization conference aren't relying solely on banners and marches to make
their views known.
In an effort to counter what they see as one-sided, oversimplified coverage
in mainstream media, a Seattle-based group has created a forum for
alternative views.
     For more coverage, see our WTO index.
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The Independent Media Center, tucked into borrowed space downtown, was
created to provide space and resources to journalists who wouldn't otherwise
get a lot of airtime.
"We're creating alternatives to corporate-controlled media," said Jeff
Perlstein, a co-founder of the Independent Media Center.
The goal is to offer a podium to people who have no other outlet. That broad
definition encompasses young people, people of color and those whose views
diverge from the mainstream. It also applies to people like Norman Solomon,
a media critic and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy,
who will be broadcasting commentary from Seattle.
"They're here to have their voices heard, and they're intelligent people,
even if they don't have an office on the 10th floor," Perlstein said.
The Center plans to Netcast around the clock on its Web site
(http://www.indymedia.org/) and is working with national organizations to
broadcast from Seattle. Such alternative stalwarts as the National Radio
Network and Free Speech TV are working with the fledgling Seattle
organization.
The idea for an Independent Media Center was born over Labor Day weekend, a
child of plans for WTO demonstrations.
It's a shoestring operation, running on donated equipment, space and sweat.
The physical hub is the old Glen Hotel on Third Avenue, once slated to
become an urban rest stop where the homeless could shower and do laundry.
That plan was scuttled by objections from downtown businesses three years
ago, and the space was temporarily donated to the Independent Media Center
by the owners, the Low Income Housing Institute.
With the WTO conference fast approaching, the center was a hub of activity
yesterday. Volunteers scaled ladders to decorate for a fund-raiser being
held tonight from 6 to 11 p.m.
A group of production volunteers clustered on the floor for a planning
meeting. Volunteers scurried through with fistfuls of cell phones and boxes
of cables.
All around, volunteers buzzed with announcements for the organizers:
"We've got some journalists coming from Norway. They're asking if we can
help them scan pictures."
"A woman's here to help with audio production."
The project brings together many of the more established community
organizing groups in town. To those who might accuse them of preaching to
the choir, Perlstein counters, "We're not preaching -- we're getting the
information out."
Next week's daily activities include a video satellite broadcast to
public-access stations across the country, including Channel 29 in Seattle.
An hour-long production by World Trade Watch will go to community radio
stations, including KBCS-FM, which will air half an hour a day.
"I think it's important that we look at some of the in-depth issues
surrounding the debates," said Kristen Walsh, program director at KBCS,
which does not have its own news staff. "This is a great opportunity, with
top-notch journalists coming into town and covering something that's here in
our territory."

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