COMBATING MODERN SLAVERY

Despite the fact that slavery still exists globally and is a major issue on four continents, many people are unaware of just how prevalent it is. There are approximately 27 million or more people who are entrapped in real slavery, meaning that they are unable to walk away due to threat of violence. That is double the number that existed during the entire Atlantic Slave Trade.

The look of modern slavery is a depressingly familiar sight: people forced to work in dangerous and demeaning conditions and who are often subjected to abuse, such as whippings. The highest concentration of slavery exists in South Asia, where there are approximately 5 million or more people who are enslaved. South and Central America, as well as Africa, also have high numbers of people who are enslaved, with numbers between 500,000 to 5 million. Even in North America and Europe, there exists situations of slavery, with numbers of up to 500,000 people who were discovered to have been enslaved. The only countries in the entire world where there are no reported/discovered situations of slavery are Iceland and Greenland.

It is frightening to note that the majority of slave laborers are forced to corrode the natural environment by destroying the coastal ecosystems in South Asia, cutting down trees in the Amazon of South America, ravaging forest areas in West Africa, and mining and spreading mercury around in Ghana and the Congo. There is a harrowing connection to be made to what is happening to the environment and what is happening to human rights.

There are multiple factors that are involved, which are not necessarily causal, but they are supporting. These factors include:

1. Population explosion - The world went from 2 billion to more than 7 billion people in the last 50 years.

2. Extreme poverty and vulnerability caused by civil war, kleptocratic (exploitive) government, climate change, natural disasters, etc.

3. Corruption (especially police corruption.)

In regard to the final factor of corruption, one fact that stands out as a primary contributing factor to an area becoming problematic for slavery is the absence of the rule of law. Where there is no fear of impunity, ruthless individuals and companies feel free to use violence against vulnerable people to force or manipulate them into slavery. The most common means of manipulation and trickery that has been reported by people who had become victims of slavery is being asked if they "wanted a job." The victims are poor people who are desperately lacking food and medicine for their families, and despite their suspicions, they feel they have no choice. When they try to leave the situation, the hammer comes down, and they realize they are trapped.

One thing that is remarkable about modern slavery, as opposed to historical slavery, is the complete price collapse of human things. In some places, such as India and Nepal, a slave can be bought for as little as $5 or $10. Once they are used up, they are considered disposable. Considering the fact that slavery is considered to be an endless supply, and that there is global demand for it, there is little surprise that business programs - particularly private equity - have an interest in exploiting this situation.

I feel that the first and primary way of combating contemporary slavery is to become informed and to confront denial that slavery does not exist or is not that big of a problem. People, including myself, should get curious, do their research, and contribute to global awareness of modern slavery. I believe that the greed and competitive nature of capitalist countries, which is fed by excessive consumerism, contributes to the epidemic of slavery. The constant need for cheaper laptops, computers, smartphones, jewels, clothing and the like means that global businesses selling these commodities are going to be looking for cheaper ways of harvesting and resourcing the materials for them so that they can still make a profit. They will continue to cut costs by using cheap labor from exploited human beings.

Goodbye to 2015

This year has been like no other. There were several events that happened which have changed my life and me as a person.

The biggest and foremost of those is that I went through a break-up of the most significant relationship I've ever had up until now with a man who probably had more influence on me than anyone, second only to my father. It was heartbreaking, and I'm still not completely over it, but looking back, I think I probably made the best decision for my own personal progress and for his. I arrived at a point where I felt like a sponge; I was no longer able to replenish and feel good about myself, so that when squeezed under pressure, I could disseminate refreshment and support for others, while also pursuing my own goals and self-development. Instead, I was starting to dry out and worried that if those circumstances continued, I would no longer be of benefit to anyone, including and especially myself. I made mistakes in that relationship, but I can honestly say I gave it my best in my own flawed way. I tried to provide a nurturing and affectionate environment for him at home and supported him professionally, emotionally, and financially. I made sure he could get to his jobs, important meetings and events, arranged my own work time-off around his children's school vacations, opened our home for them to stay comfortably with us during the summers and long breaks, including shortly after Katrina when their school was destroyed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (his ex-wife, her husband, and their kids stayed with us a few days, too), helped them get things for school (more recently in 2014, when I helped his oldest daughter with her sorority fees while she attended one semester of college here), and helped pay off a 2009 car that he now has free and clear. I left my home state of Mississippi for the first time in my life and followed him here to Georgia. Now I'm still here, and he's gone back to Mississippi. We are still kind and supportive of one another, personally and professionally. We have limited contact with each other via messaging, and none on Facebook, since I blocked us from seeing each other's profiles, which also won't allow us to even see each other's comments and likes on other people's posted activities. I have some regrets about this, because I miss seeing his colorful and humorous posts, but I felt that this was a necessary step in order to move forward and not dwell in the past. I worried about causing uncomfortable situations on either side if we continued to try holding onto our friendship that way, so I cut "the Gordian knot", so to speak. It was too hard not to get sentimental on social media and tag him when photos of our old life together resurfaced, even if it was just of our cats or us being on movie sets. I want to be respectful and understanding of his new girlfriend's possible sensitivities and allow him to move on, even if it causes me a little pain when I reflect on what aspects could've been better in our own relationship. We both have learned and grown a lot in the relationship we shared, and neither of us wants to make the same mistakes with our new partners that we made with each other. One of the most bittersweet things he's ever told me when we shared a sentimental moment right before ending things one year ago was "you've made me a better man...for someone else." He's lost a lot of weight, gotten his finances more under control, helps the new lady fix things around her house, helps with her children, and seems to be making her happy, so I'm proud of him for that and for knowing that I helped him to get there and to be that kind of man. I'll always be grateful for all of the things I've learned from him and shared with him, including the culinary arts, the entertainment industry, developing stories, making movies together, our foodie adventures, and our pets. I'll miss his humor, intelligence, creativity, and passion for life. One of the greatest and most unique connections we had stemmed from the fact that he was a Filipino, adopted from a United States' military base, having been the love child of an American helicopter pilot hired to film scenes flying helicopters in the iconic film Apocalypse Now and who had an affair with a beautiful and intelligent Filipino woman. I like to imagine that his father was one of the pilots in the famous "Ride of the Valkyries" scene. I wonder what he would think about his son growing up and going into the film industry and having so much knowledge about it. My father was also based in the Philippines during the Vietnam War and had a Filipino girlfriend of his own. He had lots of interesting stories to tell me as a child about his experiences there, which were fairly exotic for a man who grew up in rural Mississippi during the late 1950s/early 1960s. Not only was his biological father a pilot, but his adoptive father as well, which is something I share with them, being an aspiring pilot myself. We both always thought it was interesting that he ended up pursuing a career in the entertainment industry, that I pursued aviation, and that because of our mutual passion for theater and film, our paths converged, and we found each other. There is truly no one else in the world like him; he has a personality that's larger than life. I think I'm always going to feel a void for no longer having him as a constant companion, like he had been for 10 years. We had a bond that was strongly forged, and I'm going to strive to remember the good and loving things, while adjusting and moving on from the bad. We started off as friends, and I'm going to miss my best friend, even if for now we are no longer able to be so. The love and relationship we shared was epic, and it was a personal odyssey of sorts for us both.

I am now in a new relationship with someone who is starkly different but also shares some similarities. He doesn't have quite the same avid interest for cooking, epicurean adventures, or the working bits and parts of the entertainment industry, but he shares my passion for aviation (has made a career out of working on the avionics of the most sophisticated jets in the world), and he loves animals. We also discovered some unique connections of our own. For instance, his birthdate is 4/15, which is also the birthdate of my personal hero: the quintessential icon of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci. His grandparents originate from Pietrelcina, Italy, where they were acquainted with Padre Pio, a friar of the Capuchin Order, later venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church. Due to his grandparents' acquaintance with Padre Pio, he considers Pio to be his personal saint. My own grandparents are from Naples, which is very close to the small town of Pietrelcina. My favorite monkey is the capuchin. I saw a picture of him on Facebook holding a capuchin monkey while he was in Honduras, and when I told him the little monkey he was holding was a capuchin, with the same name as the friar order of his saint, he thought it was a sign. While not Catholic myself, most of my mother's family is. He's very gentle, polite, and organized, which is a great influence on a butterfly like me. He's fairly quiet but incredibly attentive. I can just mention having an interest in something (like playing with a tiger or visiting a great estate), and he makes it happen. He doesn't procrastinate. He helped me get my funding in order so that I could study at a university full-time, and honestly, I don't know that I would be able to maintain a 4.0 GPA, while also resuming my flight training after two years and being a research assistant to a professor, if I didn't have his grounded example to help anchor me so that I could focus. I'm going to make a concentrated effort this year to qualify for scholarships. I asked my talent agent to put me on auditioning hiatus for the first time in probably 7 years, so that I could work on one thing at a time, and since I'm in school, I want to aim my silver bullets on target, rather than trying to shoot at multiple things at once, scattered like buckshot, and ending up with mediocre results.

This past September, after nearly two years of dealing with a noticeable scar down the front of my nose (the result of an accident I got into in mid-November 2013, which broke my nose in two places and lacerated my right eyelid), I finally got a scar revision procedure done which has virtually removed the appearance of the scar. Seriously, the doctor did a fantastic job. He did a double-stitch, underneath and on top of the scar, so that there is only a faint line, which even I can barely see without close inspection. I think that by the time it heals completely, around this upcoming April or May, it's going to look pretty good, considering that you can't get rid of a scar completely. This is probably about as good as it's going to get. I haven't done anything about the right eyelid, which isn't prominent but doesn't exactly match the left. I'd rather use the money for other things. A close associate of mine asked me over a year ago what did I learn about myself after that accident, and after a moment of reflection, this is what I told her: "that I'm not as vain as I thought I was." At the time of the accident, with my face bloodied, cut, and broken, I resigned myself to the idea that my face was probably changed forever, and yet, I was still able to walk around the emergency room in Birmingham with a sense of humor and even made some of the nurses laugh when I joked about dressing up for Halloween a little late in the year. Being an actress and occasional print model, I sort of felt a professional obligation to be attentive to maintaining my looks, but I'm no longer nearly as obsessive as I once was. I get regular hair trims, manicures, pedicures, and try to eat well and stay active, but my looks get the least priority when it comes to my personal investment. They're not guaranteed, and whether due to an accident or advancing age, they're not going to last forever. I'm much more excited about developing my mind, knowing more about the world, and accomplishing things than I am about being the prettiest girl in the room. Due to subjective opinion and personal tastes, I was never going to be the prettiest girl in the room to some people but always will be to others. By the way, the dear wonderful lady (and someone I consider to be a personal benefactress) who asked me that important personal question was also directly responsible for setting me up with one of the most propitious meetings of my career up to this point, which I will discuss a little in the next paragraph.

This past August, I had one of the biggest opportunities of my life in Burbank, California, which actually took several years to build towards. I'm refraining from going into details about it just yet, because I want to see how it develops over this next year, but I think if I continue to work hard and stay in touch, something may come out of it. I'm trying to stay courageous, diligent, and positive, without banking too much on any one thing, so that I won't get disappointed or feel like a failure if things don't work out the way I imagine. There are several things I'm setting up for this year that I hope will come to fruition in 2017, if I can be patient and let things happen in due time. Although I'm not currently auditioning as much, I did finally set up a professional website and business page on social media in order to show myself as someone who is serious and invested in my career, wherever it leads me. I didn't think it was the right time before, but now after having had several movies screened at big festivals and released for distribution, it seemed appropriate. Once you start getting autograph requests from strangers in other countries, it kind of makes sense to have more of a professional presence online to direct people to.

I think that this past year was one for closure, and this new one will be for rebuilding. I'm going to try my hardest to stay positive, focused, and on target. There are some former friendships that have waned but others that are showing promise and are continuing to bud, so I'm going to keep my sights on those, learn what I can from the ones that drifted, and try not to let the same things happen to the current and newer ones, as much as is within my power and control. I am grateful for the close acquaintances who remained friendly and impartial to both my ex and me while we were in the relationship and after we broke up. They have proved themselves to be not only thoughtful and wise but also classy and kind. I will always remember them for it, and I think so will he.

I hope that this new year of 2016 proves to be as auspicious for others as it seems it may be for me. Cheers and good tidings to all of you!

Hannah