There’s a new film about human trafficking touring cinemas in the US that I want to recommend: Call and Response, in which the stories of the 27 million people currently in labor bondage are illustrated with graphic hidden camera footage and intercut with interviews and musical performances by the likes of Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, and Emmanuel Jal.
It’s a powerful film, in which interactions with the victims of trafficking speak for themselves. Talking heads such as Nicholas Kristof, former U.N. Ambassador John Miller, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and actor Ashley Judd make the case that there are more people in slavery today than at the time of the abolition movement and outline the relationship between the arms and drug trade and the buying and selling of people. Human trafficking, bonding labor, and sexual slavery are vastly profitable businesses, and so the question of supply and demand is obvious. And you don’t need to look far for this horror, for even people who serve in your favorite restaurants may be subject to the oppression of not being able to make their own choices.
The film does not prescribe particular forms of action, instead inviting the audience to ‘open source’ activism through dialoguing with others on its Web site and supporting organizations that are working to free slaves and end human trafficking. Perhaps the most important philosophical statement in the film is the suggestion that nostalgia for freedom movements of the past will get us nowhere. Only when people of passion and action get more committed to ending modern slavery than the slave owners are to perpetuating it will there be hope that a new abolition movement can succeed.
Dr Cornel West says in the film that the only thing that slaves have is their voice and their bodies. Call and Response is a powerful attempt at representing the power and dignity in the words and faces of the oppressed. It deserves attention.
