As the WMC Communications & Administrative Coordinator, Rebekah Spicuglia has combined her dedication to progressive values with her background in film and television production to create and advocate for inclusive, effective media. In addition to her role as News Brief editor, Rebekah writes for the WMC website and blog, oversees media production, manages interns, and coordinates outreach and program logistics.

After graduating from UC Berkeley with a Bachelor's degree in Mass Communications, Rebekah joined the Media Field Strategy Team at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), where she contributed to the research and development of GLAAD's Media Essentials guide and worked extensively on the 2006 Announcing Equality project—a national, comprehensive survey of newspaper policy on publishing same-sex wedding announcements—raising awareness about LGBT issues and encouraging people to share their stories in a visible way.  

Rebekah is also a musician, mother, and an active member of the feminist mamasphere -- supporting moms as a powerful political force.

Print This

Discuss This

Trade—A Film Brings Sex Trafficking Home by Rebekah Spicuglia

October 5, 2007

Last weekend the movie Trade opened in theaters across the country, bringing home its message that sex trafficking, a growing international crisis for women and children, is flourishing within U.S. borders.

The film had premiered September 19 at the United Nations, an unusual event, said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “When a film tackles a theme as pressing and powerful as this one, a subject that requires the world’s immediate attention, there is no better venue than the United Nations,” he told the audience. “There is no better platform to raise awareness and call for action.”

Based on actual events, Trade tells the story of Veronica, a young Polish woman, and Adriana, a 13-year-old Mexican girl, who are caught up in an international sex trafficking scheme to bring them to New Jersey and auction them off to the highest bidder.  Kevin Kline plays a Texas police officer who helps Adriana’s brother track them. The film is sometimes difficult to watch, as Kevin Kline acknowledged in a press conference: “The movie is gut-wrenching and alarming and disturbing, as it is meant to be."

Trade makes it clear that traffickers do not operate in a vacuum. Theirs is a complex and determined industry, enslaving both women and children through coercion, violence, and drugs. It is painfully apparent in the film that there are often moments when everyday people could intervene—but choose not to. The UN secretary general called on viewers to take action, raise awareness, and hold governments accountable. “Human trafficking is a crime that strips people of their rights, exploits people’s dreams of a better future, robs people of their dignity,” he said. The premiere was a benefit to support the anti-trafficking work of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the international human rights organization, Equality Now.

“Making and promoting Trade, literally around the world, has been the most gratifying thing I've done in movies,” said Rosilyn Heller, its producer. “The audiences have loved and truly appreciated it not only for its message but for its impact as a film.” A longtime feminist, Heller traveled to Albany with the New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition to lobby the state legislature and help pass New York’s first ever anti-human trafficking act, signed into law in June 2007 (see A Massive Effort Pays Off).

Additional screenings were held in advance of opening weekend, one hosted by New York City’s local chapter of the National Organization for Women. At that event, NOW-NYC President Sonia Ossorio emphasized that trafficking is a part of the local economy, and described how individuals could make a difference by, for example, appealing to publications to stop publishing ads for unlicensed “massage parlors.” She also identified glaring inequities that the state law fails to address—for example, the prosecution and deportation of victims while “johns” face only a fine and are permitted to expunge the crime from their records.  

“Art can change people’s minds,” said producer Rosilyn Heller. The organizing effort goes on: five percent of the opening week box office receipts from Trade will go to support anti-trafficking work around the world.