Svetlana's Journey

I just got home from being at an event at Cal State Fullerton: Human Trafficking, Modern Day Slavery in Southern California

The power of film once again. From Lilya 4 Ever to Trade (coming in August '07) to Svetlana's Journey, I am glad that the power of story can still move me.

I exited the large room before the crowd started the question/answer period so that I could let the effect of the movie settle more deeply. I am not about to waste the emotion. I don't want to get over it.

Funny that I hadn't remembered them until tonight. I had seen numerous young girls like this one before. Before I had seen any film. I thought back to the day we entered the juvenile girls prison in Melitopol, Ukraine. It was 1994, yet I realized only today who I had met. I had seen some of these same girls. I have met these young children who had their lives stripped from them. They had been incarcerated for all manner of violent crimes. But who had taught them? Who had created the circumstance for their desperate acts?

So much around us to numb us. Yet I won't forget them. I won't brush them aside. I thought of them. My memory of them froze them in time, yet they live on. Have any of them survived? Are any of them living free; a life worth living?

I'm sorry I didn't understand, maybe a mercy for me. But an injustice for them. What could I have done then? Nothing. But now it has served it's purpose through memory and it's serving a purpose for others like them. The thread of justice began to be spun in me from a very long time past. A thread that can never break. It must never break.

So we are writing our protest. We are writing the vision to fuel the new movement of abolition. I may be still at times, but I will never be silent again.

I invite you to join us.

www.onevoicetoendslavery.com/arts.html