Humanity

It's 9.26pm by my watch and I have wasted yet another day filled with unproductivity and exercise.  To balance my couch-bound day (and to make myself look/feel a little less lazy) I did go for a run and participated in African dance at the Center-City Park.  It had live drums, which is always necessary for this type of dance because the drum beats are the conductor.  It was pretty great - but I'm sure I looked nuts.  I tried some of the moves in front of my mirror when I got home and, sure enough, I looked way out of my element.  It was fun nonetheless.  Next week is yoga - ya'll should come!

This concept of humanity has been on my mind since Friday night when I watched a film with my friend about the topic of human trafficking.  It was a theatrical film in that it consisted of scripts, actors, and sets, but the plot was realistic and harshly (yet perhaps accurately) depicted the stories of human traffickers and those who are trafficked.  One of the women in the film, who had been sold into a brothel by a man she was dating, said something that has stuck with me.  She talked about how her and the other girls had seen their humanity ripped away from them.  They had experienced pure humiliation, oppression, and suppression and had violent acts committed against them.  These things demoralized them and deteriorated their feeling of being human.  Without humanity, what were they? Just objects.

So often this is what happens in the midst of oppression.  The demoralizing manipulation of the powerful on those without control.  And it's just so disgusting that someone would take away the one thing that makes her human, the one quality which separates her from the rest of the world, just to make money, to have power, to feel in control.  The human trafficking industry is so big - it's very alarming.  There are so many people involved, transnationally, which make it continue day in and day out.  How do they not see their sisters, mothers, or daughters in the faces of those that they violate?  Because, after all, these women and girls are not machines, but are humans with the ability to hope, aspire, and dream.