“Trade” at the UN

Looking north along the East River from the terrace of the United Nations. Photo: DPC.

Eleanora Kennedy asked me to a screening of a new film called “Trade,” at the UN in the Trusteeship Council. “Trade” is about human slave trafficking in the world. In this country.

Frankly I didn’t want to go. I can’t take it.

But Eleanora Kennedy, whom I don’t know well, but have known for some time, told me this particular matter was very important. She also told me Kevin Kline would be there, and Sigourney Weaver, and Mira Sorvino, etc. That’s the PR part of the pitch when a committee chairman hopes to lure the media for a little word or two. Like: even if you hate the movie you’ll have something to write about (“I talked to Sigourney Weaver, and she’s very nice ... ”). Makes sense. And, an added bonus: dinner afterwards at the UN.


	Michael and Eleanora Kennedy

Around six o’clock I was feeling tired and even a little ill. I didn’t want to go; I didn’t want to see it. Would Eleanora believe me if I said I came down with something last minute? Would she think I was a flake? Would she still like me? (These things do pass through some minds, and mine’s one.) I was out the door at 7 for a 7:30 screening.

The last time I was in the UN was when I was ten years old and my fifth grade class came down from Massachusetts on a field trip to visit the new UN. The kid was profoundly impressed. By many things. The monumentality of the architecture and its newness. The colors and the woods and that everything was modern and streamlined. Then there were the guides who spoke several languages and in the hush tones when we watched one of the Councils in session. This was my first impression of world power and it has remained influential ever since. That was so long ago that now the UN is undergoing much needed refurbishment.

This is the first time they’ve screened a commercial film in the council chamber. We sat at the desks and in the chairs behind the primary chair of the representative of each country. Sigourney Weaver and her husband Jim Simpson were sitting in front of me. A few chairs down Mr. Kline was sitting with Ms. Cates. His hair is on the long side now and it makes him look a little like Geraldo if his hair weren’t so moussed. What I’m saying is, in person, Kevin Kline wasn’t all that noticeable from the rest of the crowd.

However. Eleanora Kennedy introduced me to the Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon and Madame Ban. When I was ten, the Secretary General (it was Trygve Lie at the time) was a monumental character, absent from our sight. Now I was shaking the Secretary General’s hand, and his wife’s hand. The Bans are from Korea. They were very soft-spoken and gracious. And I was very impressed.

About seven-thirty, quarter-to-eight, everyone had taken his or her seats. Sigourney Weaver spoke. Then the Secretary-General. The premiere of “Trade” was held for the benefit of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and Equality Now, an international human rights organization that works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world through action and mobilization of public pressure.

The Secretary-General was brief. Lights lowered and the film began. In the beginning of the film I was overwhelmed with very negative thoughts about the human race, to put it mildly. However, the subject demands (the actors were brilliant, and Kevin Kline looks like Kevin Kline the movie star) your attention, in exactly the same way a personal crisis or emergency demands your attention. Early into the film my anxiety level was close shaking with rage. But it’s a well made film, well told story and your emotional involvement keeps your sanity and your wits. By its climax (which is very very suspenseful and potentially terrifying), you are relieved, but you’ve been affected.

I wanted to go home after, just to get outside and relax a bit. But like a good guest I went down to the dining room set up with buffet and tables for several hundred. The room overlooks the East River, the eastern strip of Manhattan, the FDR, and Queens. New Yorkers rarely get this particular view outside.

I asked Eleanora Kennedy how she got involved in this. She told me she’s been actively involved with these UN organizations that are working all over the world to stop the kidnapping and selling of girls, boys and women into the sex slave trade. Tens of thousands are sold into slavery in this country every year. A million all over the world. And why was Eleanora inspired to participate? “Because it’s the bottom of the barrel,” she said. “It’s where the help is needed.”

I talked to Sigourney Weaver and Jim Simpson. They too are involved. They too shared my almost irrational rage and anger toward the men and women sex traffickers.

It was a big turnout with a number of luminaries, almost all of whom escaped my eye: Candice Bergen and Marshall Rose, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, James Lapine, Bijou Phillips, Queen Latifah, Ann Jones and family – Mark Ronson, Charlotte Ronson; Helena Christiansen. Mira Sorvino and Kerry Washington were at my table, as was Laurence O’Donnell, the writer/ commentator, the Weaver-Simpsons, the Kennedys. Walter Moseley came by to say hello to them. Eve Ensler, Roland Emmerich (the co-producer with Rosilyn Heller); Terry George the film director, Warren Hoge who covers the UN for the NY Times; his brother and sister-in-law, Jim and Kathy Hoge; Marco Kreuzpainer, the film’s director; Jake Gyllenhall, Gloria Steinem, Deborah Schoeneman, Chris and Priscilla Whittle, and hundreds more just like ‘em.

It really didn’t matter who anyone saw after seeing “Trade.” It stays with you, and it’s important to you that it does. And it’s a tough one. For movie addicts, it’s a tough one because it’s so well done, so powerfully done, and it keeps you hanging until the very end. I left right after I had some of the buffet. I was glad to be outside again. New York is an amazing place. It was beautiful out there in front of the great United Nations complex under a night sky illuminated by the metropolis below, and watched over by a bemused crescent moon. Taking it all in, I thought of all the people, all the lives and all the stories. And in that one building I’d just left -- a cornerstone for me, as it were, of certain ideals about humanity -- there were present, at that very moment, a great number of people who are affecting our lives profoundly, and well.

Last night over in Rose Hall in Jazz @ Lincoln Center in the Time-Warner Complex, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center held their opening night with a benefit evening. They honored C. Robert Henrikson, Chairman of the Board of MetLife, Philip K. Howard, Founder and Chair of Common Good; and tenor Robert White.

Cocktails in Rose Hall

Among those attending were Marilyn Horne, Bobby White, Sandra Rose, Joanna Rose, Elihu and Susan Rose, Charles and Susan Wadsworth, Peter Frelinghuysen, Adaline Frelinghuysen, Christina Lang Assael, Andrea de Vogel, Alexis Gregory, Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz, Barbara Erskine, Joan Tower, Lillian Vernon, Mary Libby, Lou Miano, James O’Shaughnessy, Howard and Mary Phipps, Don and Marnie Pillsbury, Annette Rickel, Ira Rennert, Horace Havemeyer, Maisie and Jamie Houghton, Philip Howard, Barbara and Harry Kamen, Shelly and George Lazarus.

Judith and Herb Schlosser

Roy Raved and wife Dr. Leff

Kevin and Laura O'Donohue

Phillip Caggiano, Todd Levaitt, and Bobby White

C. Robert Henrikson and Philip K. Howard

Bobby White, Philip K. Howard, and C. Robert Henrikson

Bruce Levingston with Rosamond Bernier and John Russell

Lauren Messing and Melissa O'shaughnessy

Dan Rose, Nancy and Richard Rubens, and Joanna Rose

Clockwise from top left: Jim O'shaughnessy, Wu Han, and Eric Kamen; Joanna Rose from the back; Annette Rickel and Norma Hurlburt; Bill Toppeta and Lisa Weber; Roses in Rose Hall.

Joe and Marie Melone with Jim and Eeda Gillen

Peter Frelinghuysen and Bobby white

Dr. James Watson, Chancellor and Dr. Bruce Stillman, President of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory held a reception last night at Doubles in honor of the 2007 Double Helix Medals dinner. Those chairs are Mr. and Mrs. Stephen M. Lessing, Dr. Arthur D. Levinson, Mr. and Mrs. Robert D. Lindsay, Mr. Sean McManus, Ms. Jamie Nicholls and Mr. Fran Biondi, Mr. and Mrs. David M. Rubenstein