Westmont Grads Work to End Slavery

A day of events at Westmont, Wednesday, Feb. 7, will focus on ending slavery and human trafficking. Westmont alum David Batstone, University of San Francisco professor of ethics, will speak in chapel at 10:30 a.m. and then sign his new book “Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade, and How We Can Fight It.”

Another Westmont graduate, Ruthi Hoffman Hanchett, gender and development specialist for World Vision International, will join Batstone for a panel discussion in Page Hall at 11:45 a.m. Greg Russinger, network co-designer/founder of Protest4 and Just One, will also take part in the discussion. Sue Penksa, associate professor of political science, will moderate the panel discussion.

The film “The Violence of Light” premiers at Westmont’s Carroll Observatory, Tuesday, Feb. 6, at 7 p.m. The film is directed by Adam Cunningham and filmed and edited by David Berg, husband of Westmont student Danielle Punches, who served as the artistic director. The film documents human trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children in the United States.

The film is co-sponsored by Westmont’s Reel Talk. All events are sponsored by The Beatitudes Society and are free and open to the public.

Batstone is the author of “Saving the Corporate Soul & (Who Knows?) Maybe Your Own,” which won the Nautilus Award for 2004 Best Business Book. For the last six years, he was executive editor of Sojourners magazine. He is also the executive editor of business magazine Motto and appears regularly in USA Today’s Weekend Edition as “America’s ethics guru.”

“Not for Sale” takes a startling look at the 200,000 people who live enslaved in the United States and the 17,500 new victims who are trafficked across our borders every year and who are sold into slave labor and prostitution. Batstone’s book chronicles a shocking investigation into the world of human trafficking and the heroes combating the global epidemic.