Malibu’s Creative Visions Foundation hosted its June Sundowner last week, helping to raise visibility for the fight against sexual violence and human trafficking. The well-attended event featured drinks, music and creative activism.
Summer is here again in Malibu, bringing with it long days, warmer nights and the return of a favorite tradition — Creative Visions Foundation’s monthly Sundowners.
Sundowners, springing from the African tradition, are a community gathering with drinks, music, light refreshments and a coming together of creative minds from all over the LA area and beyond. Sundowners are a way for the foundation to showcase some of the “creative activism” it supports, while giving local creatives a chance to mix and mingle and enjoy music and drink.
The June 15 event featured a film project the Creative Visions Foundation (CVF) helped sponsor through its Creative Activist Program. The film, “Be Relentless,” is, in the words of CVF, “a binational, bilingual, feature-length documentary that follows Norma Bastidas on her journey to break the Guinness World Record for the longest triathlon by swimming, biking and running 3,762 miles from Cancún, Mexico to Washington, D.C.”
Bastidas, at the age of 47, completed the triathlon as a way to raise awareness about sexual violence and human trafficking. Bastidas, a single mother who herself is a survivor of human trafficking, attended the evening event and spoke about the film and her experience.
“I need to break the cycle … and that’s why I need to run,” Bastidas described. “It was the power of saying, ‘I will not stay silent.’”
June’s Sundowner was a lively, full-capacity event filled with people of all ages, but when Bastidas took the microphone to tell her story, every eye was trained on the athlete when she discussed her entry into activism.
“Sometimes it’s not a choice, it’s a responsibility,” she described, “and I’ll tell you — I did not want the responsibility, because I was terrified.”
She added that she began the challenge when her son was 11 years old — the same age she was when she fell victim to sexual violence the first time — and she felt she had to set an example to give him strength.
Speaking on behalf of other survivors of sexual violence and human trafficking, she said, “We were not broken. It was something that happened to us, not who we were.”
Bastidas described that when she first began her journey of education, human trafficking was a taboo subject that made most people too uncomfortable to discuss, but she said her journey coincided with greater visibility for the subject.
“My comfort shouldn’t come before somebody else’s dignity,” Bastidas said.
“Be Relentless” was filmed in spring 2014 and will appear in festivals this year. More information on the film is available at berelentlessmovie.com.
Bastidas was introduced by Brad Riley, founder of iEmpathize, an anti-trafficking group, who helped create the film. Riley encouraged the crowd to become involved in the movement against human trafficking.
“We lead the way with conversation about empathy,” Riley said. “Sympathy sounds like a good thing … but it kind of leads us to that bystander space.”
The June Sundowner also featured performances by two popular bands — Seablood, an indie folk rock sibling duo with ties to Malibu, and Tigers in the Sky, a folk-pop duo from Long Beach via Hawaii.
Music played while visitors mingled, enjoyed a sunset over the Pacific and explored the CVF headquarters, many for the first time.
The offices, located on the top floor of a building overlooking the ocean in far eastern Malibu, are filled with books, paintings and mementos, celebrating creative activism and the life and legacy of photojournalist Dan Eldon.
Dan, whose mother Kathy Eldon founded the nonprofit, was a young photojournalist employed by Reuters News Agency when he was killed in Somalia in 1993. Eldon was 22 at the time, but his artistry, passion and inspiration were enough to leave a legacy that, thanks to the work of Kathy and Dan’s sister, Amy, now live on through the CVF.
Information about CVF’s mission, programs and upcoming events can be found at creativevisions.org.
