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As the last film of their Winter 2006 film series, Dyke Community Activists honors International Women's Day with a documentary
exploring one of the most serious problems facing women in the modern world. The Day My God Died examines the growing danger
of sex trafficking and the courageous women and men who are working to stop it. The film will be screened this Saturday night,
March 11, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hearing, Speech & Deafness Center, 1609 19th Ave. (NW corner of 19th and Pine). A speaker
and discussion will follow the film, and all proceeds will be donated to groups working against the human sex trade. Admission
will be a voluntary donation of $5-$15 with more gratefully accepted and no one turned away.
Though often invisible to the public eye, the human sex trade is growing worldwide, with over 2500 women and children
sold into sex slavery every day. Though The Day My God Died exposes the horrific child sex trade of Bombay, India, sex trafficking
is not a far-away problem. Of the more than one million women and children forced into sexual servitude each year, 50,000
are enslaved within the United States.
Like other industries, sex slavery grows because there are enormous profits to be made from the trafficking of human beings.
The combination of poverty, organized crime, and corrupt political systems has allowed, and even encouraged, the transformation
of society's most vulnerable members into commodities on the world's most appalling market. Women and children are abducted
from their villages, sold by friends and family, or lured away from home by promises of marriages or jobs. They are then imprisoned
and routinely tortured into submitting to their new lives as sex slaves.
The Day My God Died was made in 2003 by Andrew Levine, who also directed the short film Witness about sex trafficking
between India and Nepal. The film uses spy cameras to expose the child sex trade in Bombay, where young girls are beaten,
drugged, and threatened into compliance. Though the film does not shrink from showing the despair and oppression of the children
forced into this life (the title is taken from the way one of the girls describes the day she was abducted into slavery),
it is saved from hopelessness by highlighting the courage of those who fight back. Alongside the picture of misery and oppression
is the powerful story of the movement to end sex slavery, where young women, barely more than children themselves, escape
their tragic fate and risk their lives to help others.
The film profiles some of the courageous members of Maiti Nepal, a network formed by women in 1993, not only to rescue
victims of sex slavery, but also to rehabilitate and advocate for them to help them begin to heal and rebuild their lives.
U.S. feminists like Eve Ensler, author of the famed Vagina Monologues, have focused public attention on sex slavery as an
international crime against women and children, and local Seattle organizations like the Refugee Women's Alliance have joined
Maiti Nepal in placing the growing problem of sex trafficking at the top of their agendas.
The members of Dyke Community Activists, organizers of this event, stress the importance of facing this rising threat
to the women and children of the world, who, because they are frequently poor and disenfranchised, are increasingly vulnerable
to ruthless sex traffickers. They invite the entire community to observe International Women's Day and Women's History Month
by uniting with women around the world to demand an end to sex slavery. Come to the film on Saturday, and visit www.maitinepal.org
to learn more about the resistance movement.
--Tina Gianoulis
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