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26/02/2006 Human trafficking movie screeningI'm reluctant to give a negative review to the screening we attended of a local film about human trafficking, a.k.a. modern day slavery. But this was a surprisingly disappointing event.
The film, I Just Keep Quiet, was jointly created by the Refugee Women's Alliance (ReWA) and the Seattle Police Department and was depressingly uninfomative. I'm not sure what the broader goal of the film is, and how varied the intended audiences may be for it, but I was very much expecting it to inform me about the extent of the problem in our local area. Stuff like, "In eastern Washington, X% of farms have been discovered using slave labor", or "In the past 2 years, Seattle Police have raided X brothels and discovered N women and children in sexual slavery".
Instead, it featured emotional testimonials - very moving - from a few silhouetted individuals who have been rescued. One from child labor, one from forced prostitution, another from enslavement as a housekeeper. It featured cheap looking "enactments" of trafficking situations that just looked like low-end America's Most Wanted footage. None of it seemed particularly local, except the interviews with local activists & police which were typically shot in highly recognizable areas of Seattle.
In post-screening Q&A, one audience member asked what individual citizens can do to help with this terrible problem. The moderator's answer was something along the lines of "start a bookclub" to help inform others about it. I mean, seriously, what?? That's the best recommendation you can come up with to a theater full of people who are ready for action? Sure, she pointed out that this is almost always an organized crime situation and very dangerous for ordinary people to start poking their noses into, but there ought to have been a better answer than a bookclub.
For example, and this was off the top of my head that night, we should be raising awareness about our role in the demand side of the economic machine that encourages these monstrous abuses.
I have no idea how to begin with any of this! Surely, for years I have been playing an unconscious role in exploitation of others. I'm ready to question my choices but I don't know how to find out whether the apples I eat were picked by slave labor. I don't know which of my clothes may have been constructed by exploited children and where to find clothes that aren't. I'm very open to doing my part to reduce whatever I'm doing that creates the demand that sets the stage for modern-day slavery. Maybe it's not so clear what to recommend right now; this is a huge problem that has only recently really come to light and its scope is probably unknown.
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