DataCenter is collaborating with Creative Interventions and Generation Five on a National Story Collecting Project to collect stories from people who have participated in a successful community-based intervention to interpersonal violence including domestic violence, sexual abuse and child abuse. Success is defined as an intervention that ended or reduced violence or was otherwise satisfying to the survivor of abuse, and whose intervention was not primarily dependent on the police or other public system.
Based in Oakland, CA, Creative Interventions helps communities end and prevent family, intimate partner and other forms of interpersonal violence through community accountability strategies. Generation Five is a national organization working to end child sexual abuse through community organizing. Initiated and led by Creative Interventions, the National Story Collecting project is part of Generation Five’s Transformative Justice project, working to evolve community-based alternatives to end violence by supporting community and social transformation of conditions that collude in and perpetuate violence.
The goals of this community-based research include documenting and sharing stories from many diverse cultures and situations of abuse, learning from these stories about what can make these interventions successful, and increasing community capacity to end violence using resources within social and community networks. DC has provided support in creating the methodology and tools for the project, and will also help in compiling and analyzing data.
To participate in the National Story Collecting Project as a story teller or story collector or to get more information, contact Creative Interventions at stories@creative-interventions.org or tel: 510.452.8595. For more information about the project, see www.creative-interventions.org.
Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s crusade to crack down on sideshows and open-air drug markets has reached new lows. In an attempt to make Oakland safer the Mayor, with the support of most of the City Council, has stepped up efforts at harassing motorists and youth of color through Operation Impact. According to Sitara Nieves, Critical Resistance National Development Organizer, the operation is “a policing program where the Oakland Police Department, the California Highway Patrol, and Alameda County Sheriff’s Department pool their resources to lock down an entire neighborhood for a few days, stopping drivers and confiscating their cars for minor infractions like broken tail lights or loud music…” Critical Resistance is working on a campaign to stop Operation Impact, and has launched an East Oakland cop watch to document police abuses and organize to stop Operation Impact. The DataCenter has helped by working with Critical Resistance to get information on the number of cars the Oakland Police Department and City Attorney’s Office have seized and the amount of money they’ve collected through car auctions.
For over a year Books Not Bars “Alternatives for Youth” campaign has been fighting in Sacramento and all over California to close down the eight notorious youth prisons in the California Youth Authority system. After years of stories of youth dying while in custody and being subjected to cruel punishments and inhumane searches, Books not Bars has started organizing families with youth in the CYA and allies in a campaign to close the prisons and open local rehabilitation centers and expand community-based alternatives in their place. The DataCenter has helped with research on juvenile arrest trends and possible county alternatives to CYA incarceration.