“Secret Survivors” Documentary Screening and Q&A with Amita Swadhin

We welcome you to a screening of “Secret Survivors” (2012, produced by Ping Chong + Company) featuring Amita Swadhin. “Secret Survivors” features child sexual abuse survivors telling their stories through dramatic narrative. Swadhin is a South Asian American storyteller, activist and consultant dedicated to fighting interpersonal and institutional violence against young people. Her commitments and approach to this work stem from her experiences as a genderqueer, femme queer woman of color, daughter of immigrants, and survivor of child abuse. How do we know the full impact of human rights violations on individuals, groups, communities, and peoples? How do we ensure that the solutions to these violations include the people who are directly impacted and do not simply reflect the views and experiences of the privileged and the powerful? How can we catalyze conversations around healing? To say that strands of identity do not inform each other enforces systems of oppression, creating a culture of hate, injustice, and violence, where it is acceptable for women, queer and trans people of color to be rendered invisible and subjected to abuse.