Belonging Together: The Making of Justice and Art

“What does poiesis have to do with slavery?”

Shadow of Monique Villa, CEO of
Thomas Reuters Foundation. Photo: Deborah Espinosa

That is how internationally renowned artist Anish Kapoor began his 14-minute keynote address during the 2014 Trust Women’s conference recently held in London. The conference, which puts "the rule of law behind women’s rights," gathered advocates and activists focused on solutions to women’s economic empowerment, including women’s access to land and financial services, as well as on the global fight against modern slavery. A short video captured the breadth of issues covered. Notable speakers included two Nobel laureates, Muhammad Yunus and Kailash Satyarthi, CEOs of many major corporations and NGOS, and survivors of the slave trade.  

The Trust Women two-day gathering was highly cerebral, sometimes academic, and always stimulating. It also was visually compelling.  Each theme was introduced with a 2- to 3-minute multimedia piece, including Women and Finance, Access to Land, and Slavery and the Supply Chain. (All of Trust Women conference videos are available here.)  

We learned that 35.8 million people are working in slave-like conditions around the world in violation of their human rights on a daily basis.  We were challenged to consider whether the supply chains of goods we use everyday include forced labor or debt bondage, including considering the human rights abuses necessary to sustain "fast fashion."

We were also encouraged to consider how responsive cities are to women's needs, including safety, particularly given their typically greater reliance on public transport for going to work and taking care of child and household responsibilities.

And for me, a women's land rights practitioner, of utmost interest was the panel on the issue of women's access to land, which Trust Women aptly described as the "biggest challenge to women's empowerment."   

So imagine my surprise when, amidst this dialogue, sculptor Anish Kapoor took the podium. “What does poiesis have to do with slavery?", he asks. I wasn't familiar with the term “poiesis,” but I imagined it referred to poetry. Later, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that poiesis is actually a much broader concept dating back to Ancient Greece — more like "a making” or the "making of art.”
    

No doubt Mr. Kapoor's words meant many things to many people.  For me, his words caused my soul to soften. I had steeled myself for a day on the global slave trade, and there he was opening a part of me that I’d purposefully locked down.

The artist and advocate in me heard him liken the making of art to acts in pursuit of justice — and that the time is now.   

“Does my making have truth?  Or is it that belief and therefore beauty is something that lies in the future?  Is it something that is always out of reach? . . .  Freedom and beauty are the future — only possible because of what we do next."

Kapoor continued:

Mr. Anish Kapoor speaking at the Trust Women
Conference on November 19, 2014.  Photo: Deborah Espinosa

The oppressed, as we all know, are asked again and again to wait for the right time to press for change.  Right time?  What is this right time? 

Always in the future.  The right time for respect and dignity is always in the future. . . . 

Time and courage and beauty are now. I’m linking them together because I think they belong together. . . .  Rights are dreamed of as if they belong in the future. But rights, as we all know, depend on what we do next."

Mr. Kapoor's full speech is available here.

Thank you Mr. Kapoor and Thomas Reuters Foundation for uniting our efforts to make the world replete with justice with the our making of art. They belong together for me, too.

Celebrities Join Forces for "Real Men" Campaign Against Sex Trafficking

The latest Hollywood cause, spearheaded by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, is, apparently, child sex trafficking. Although you wouldn't know it from the series of lighthearted videos they hope will turn viral (one of the ads was posted on Funny or Die). Various celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Sean Penn, and Jamie Foxx star, showing how "real men" behave, with the tag line: "Real men don't buy girls."

Now it's not my wish to disparage an obviously well-intentioned political campaign, especially when it aims to take on a serious issue like human trafficking and sexual slavery. It is estimated that two million children are enslaved in the sex industry globally. According to the U.S. Department of Education, human trafficking occurs in all 50 states.

But what seems obvious to me is that the ads are meant to earn a laugh first and question a male viewer's manhood second. Is this really sending a message to end sex slavery? A man who prefers to "buy a girl" is not any less than a man -- he's a pedophile. And what about the young boys who can equally fall victim to sexual slavery?

Just as discomforting to me is how little the celebrity spokespersons from this foundation seem to understand the complexity of human trafficking. According to the website demiandashton.org (DNA):

DNA hopes to help abolish modern day slavery, deter perpetrators and free the many innocent and exploited victims. We are committed to forcing sex slavery out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Call me pessimistic, but somehow I don't think creating a hit video on "Funny or Die" is going to achieve such lofty goals. And when I read in the news about severe public funding cuts being made to women's shelters and rehabilitation centers for victims, I wonder just how much of those thousands to millions of dollars spent on ads could have gone toward donations to social programs. But then again I guess donations aren't as sexy as producing an ad featuring Justin Timberlake.

Kutcher recently told CNN: "Sex trafficking is an elastic trade. If you can raise the price for sex you can actually reduce the demand. As you reduce the demand that raises the price.
"[That means] you can, ultimately, put it out of business, and the way to do that is by attacking the demand because the supply is endless."

Actually, Kutcher couldn't be more off point. I'm not sure the former "Punk'd" host is familiar with global sex tourism, but it serves as a major boon to communities worldwide, especially in places like Thailand, proving that those seeking underage sex will seek it out, no matter the cost.

Let's hope this new celebrity endeavor actually donates generously to the victims it seeks to fight for...and that we aren't just being "punk'd."

Slaves by Another Name Clear of Charges in NY

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Sex Trafficking: A Reality for Hungary, Europe, and the World

Before I left for Paris in 2009 to study at the Sorbonne and run the 33rd Paris marathon to celebrate my own physical health and ascension from a challenging childhood to a healthy young woman, I returned to my home state of Pennsylvania and ran my old childhood route. I ran for two hours and could feel my almost 30-year-old body morph back into that determined eight year-old-girl who was already witnessing too much violence, swearing I would travel the world and help ignite positive change. The same hills of my childhood seemed so small that day, and as I ran onward I found myself in an open cornfield swathed in golden sunlight. I just stood there. So strong. So free.

While in London yesterday running along the River Thames, I stopped to breathe the biggest sigh of relief, because I felt like for the first time in some months I had my own safety back. Viable threats to my body and to harm have been decreased by rigorous follow ups, reminders, and DNA tests; even after I was told an escalation of harm to me would be more helpful to the law. I leaned over the bridge and just thought, “I’m an athlete, a writer, and if it’s this hard for me, what about women who actually work in the sex industry, much less those who are trafficked?”

For the past year, I have been following the work of Andrea Matolcsi who joined MONA Foundation for the Women of Hungary, a gender equality NGO, in late 2008. MONA is one of the founding members of the Hungarian Women’s Lobby, which is a member of the European Women’s Lobby. Andrea is the project coordinator of the Development of Interdisciplinary Cooperation in Hungary to Support the Fight against Trafficking and Prostitution.

Recently, Andrea explained that some of the major shortcomings in Hungary in the field of trafficking for sexual exploitation and prostitution are legislation, victim assistance, and interdisciplinary cooperation. According to Andrea, the MONA project “developed proposals for a thorough and appropriate revision of the relevant legal–institutional framework, for the development of an institutional system that is able to care for victims, and for the initiation of prevention programs, both on a societal and an individual level, including research, public awareness-raising, education, and training programs.”

She shares MONA’s goal is to create, “as soon as possible a law as a result of which it will be less worthwhile and risk-free to pimp prostitutes, to keep a brothel, to recruit, sell or buy women and children; a law which ensures respect for victims and provides them with assistance, and also guarantees protection for those who assist them.”

In fact, in her interview with me Andrea twice cited that MONA, “considers it necessary that a legal framework is developed that does not confuse the rights of women with a right to women: one that protects the right of all women to a life free from prostitution.”

Officially completed in March 2010, MONA’s project still continues activities, and it does so during a highly relevant time, because sex trafficking numbers are growing fast. According to Rich Daly’s article Sex Traffic Rises, Along With Scramble for Solutions released on June 16 via Women’s e-News, “the State Department's annual release of trafficking figures estimated 12.3 million adults and children were trafficked in 2009, at a rate of 1.8 people per 1,000 worldwide. The Trafficking in Persons Report 2010 graded 175 nations on their efforts to combat all forms of human trafficking and found local officials were able to identify 49,105 victims of all types of trafficking, which is 59 percent more than in 2008.”

A recent Ms. Blog post, 10 Things Men and Boys Can Do to Stop Human Trafficking states: “Human trafficking is modern day slavery. It is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel another person to provide labor or commercial sex against their will, and it is one of the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world.”

Ms. Blog also cites the Polaris Project, which gives even higher statistics than the State Department. According to them, “27 million people are enslaved globally. 14,000–17,500 individuals are brought into the U.S. as human trafficking victims each year. One million children enter the global commercial sex trade every year.”

As I ran back to my London hotel, I realized again how deep my desire for safety and health in this world so I can write about and run for those who do not have the means to create it for themselves as of yet. Dana Popa’s Not Natasha, pictured here and originally published by the International Museum of Women’s Imagining Ourselves, features women who were sex trafficked in Moldova, the poorest nation in Europe. Natasha is a nickname given to prostitutes.

In February 2010, the European Women’s Lobby released From Beijing to Brussels an Unfinished Journey, which summarizes what the organization sees as a need for greater progress during an exceptionally challenged time. “Both new and persistent challenges for actors working to achieve effective equality between women and men exist at local, national, European and the global level. The most immediate and visible of these challenges is the financial and economic crisis, which has become a social crisis. The European Women’s Lobby’s strong and consistent message is that the crisis is gendered in both its nature and its effects and that, given this, it is all the more necessary to pursue and strengthen policies for the protection of women’s independence, integrity, and equality.”

Photo credit: Dana Popa