Flash mob in South Lake Tahoe brings awareness to exploitation of women

A flash mob in the middle of Heavenly Village isn't a normal occurrence, so at 2:00 p.m. February 4 when a few dozen women and children started dancing to music, people stopped and the phone cameras came out.

For the past several weeks, members of the South Lake Tahoe community have been rehearsing a dance to the music "Break the Chain" in support of "One Billion Rising", a one-day international event to bring exploitation of women, human trafficking and violence against women and girls to the forefront.

Family and friends of the dancers surrounded the "mob" with signs and posters displaying the reason for the flash mob.

Each February since 2012, people around the globe have been participating in "One Billion Rising" events and South Lake Tahoe has joined them each year. Experts say one in three women across the planet will be beater or raped during her lifetime, which equals one billion women.

While many of the One Billion Rising take place on February 14, South Lake Tahoe's event was the day before the Superbowl for a reason.

“The Super Bowl is the greatest show on Earth, but it also has an ugly underbelly,” former Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told USA Today in 2011. “It’s commonly known as the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States.”

Sex trafficking of women and children is now the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world.

This year's focus is not only on violence against women, but on human trafficking in the United States, a business that brings in $32 billion every year worldwide. California and Nevada harbor four of the FBI’s 13 highest child sex trafficking areas on the nation: San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The Sacramento region is growing due to its being a transit hub with interstates, trains, buses and airplanes, and Lake Tahoe isn't far behind.

"We rise to show we are determined to create a new kind of consciousness – one where violence will be resisted until it is unthinkable," say national event organizers.

Saturday's Tahoe event was organized by Live Violence Free.

As one of Saturday's dancers walked away from the Village, she told her friend, "I what I just did can change even one life, it was worth it."