by Saba Waheed

DataCenter has been working with Storytelling and Organizing Project (STOP), Harm Free Zone, Visions to Peace Project, and Revolution Starts at Home to develop a track at this year’s Allied Media Conference in Detroit (June 18-20, 2010).  The Creating Safe Communities track explores how to use media to develop and implement transformative anti-violence initiatives in your community.   It has a special focus on using storytelling as a tool for organizing against interpersonal violence.  The track is designed to highlight our collective responses to violence, and showcase our creative resources for self-determination, liberation, and community accountability.  Creating Safe Communities provides a space for artists, organizers and media makers involved in movements for transformative justice, community-based approaches to violence, and prison industrial complex abolition to share media-related skills and tools, as well as lessons learned in their work.  All sessions in this track reflect the belief that safety is created through personal and social transformation, not criminalization and imprisonment.  They also reflect a commitment to inter-generational organizing.   For more information, visit the Allied Media Conference website:  http://www.alliedmediaconference.org/.  And stay tuned!  We will stay in Detroit for the USSF and are planning some good stuff there too.