Unhired Hands: A Multifaceted Campaign to Address Labor Trafficking

By: Sam Epley, Richie Kovac, Abby Means, and Heather Pentecost
Wheaton College
Dr. Kornfield
Comm 253
December 13, 2013

Unhired Hands: A Multifaceted Campaign to Address Labor Trafficking

A struggling family in Mexico receives an offer for its child to get a job and education in
America. A woman from Africa seeks to get a job as a maid to provide for her family, while a
man shows up on a farm in Florida to do the same. Promises of hope, of a less burdensome
future, are broken and replaced with psychological and emotional torture. Workers face threats to
themselves and their families, along with malnutrition, sleep-deprivation, and in the end no
significant profit (Bales and Soodalter 3-5,19-20, 49-50). Welcome to the world of labor
trafficking, an abuse to human dignity and freedom. While it may seem paradoxical for
trafficking to take place in a country symbolically representative of freedom and opportunity,
these activities have a strong presence in the United States and are not being sufficiently dealt
with. Though initiative against trafficking has grown through government policies and non-profit
organization's efforts, positive results still fall embarrassingly short of the ideals America
proclaims. David Batstone says anti-trafficking enforcement since the [Trafficking Victims
Protection Act]s passage in 2000 has been tepid (Batstone 239). Kevin Bales and Ron
Stoodalter point out the reality of this comment, saying that at minimum there are around 50,000
human trafficking victims in the USA today, with between 14,500 to 17,500 coming in each year.
They report less than 1% of trafficking cases are solved each year and few traffickers go
punished. While traffickers escape justice, many of those undergoing trafficking abuse fail to
receive the justice they deserve (Bales and Stoodalter 6-7).
Using the artifacts of an open letter, social and print media, and culture-jamming stickers,
coordinated through a central website, Un-Hired Hands seeks to raise awareness of the realities
of human trafficking in the United States to American consumers between the ages of twenty-
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five to sixty-five, move them to do something about it, and after moving them, point them to the
numerous outlets that are available for them to begin engaging these evils. While addressing
general facts about trafficking, it seeks to focus specifically on labor trafficking, for far too often
people mistakenly understand human trafficking to be synonymous with sex trafficking (Brennan
139). Given thirteen years have passed since the government enacted the Trafficking Victims
Protection Act and that the present realities of trafficking as previously stated still exist, clearly
now is the time to take the issue seriously. In his essay on Dr. Martin Luther Kings Letter from
Birmingham Jail, Edward Berry argues that the letter is organized around the concept of why
the non-violent protests led by King were timely (112). Kings principles applied not only to the
racial segregation of his time, but also to the slavery of ours. He said We know through painful
experience that freedom is never freely given by the oppressor, and We must come to see, with
one of our distinguished jurists, that justice too long delayed is justice denied.
At this ideal time to combat human trafficking, Un-Hired Hands believes Americans are
the best audience to address because they are, at least in spirit, among the most freedom-loving
individuals. They are also among the most charitable in terms of caring for oppressed individuals
as evidenced by their financial giving to charitable organizations. This love of freedom and
charitable spirit, along with the fact that human trafficking threatens freedom in their own
country, should spark compassion and activate their culturally held value of liberty promotion.
We focus on an audience of twenty-five to sixty-five year old consumers as they consume
produces potentially produced by slaves and because this demographic possess apt social capital
to actually produce change in labor practices that use trafficking.
Our artifacts will prove effective because each touches on different aspects of principles
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of rhetoric and persuasion. The open letter uses a conversational, amiable, selfless tone to
provide information on trafficking to readers; it also appeals to their values by drawing on
commonplaces from their cultural codebook and shows why combatting trafficking benefits
them. Print media will provoke the emotional power of images to activate audience members,
while social media will give Un-Hired Hands an Internet presence in this Internet-based culture.
It also will, as Jiyeon Kang points out, give people a space to more freely engage in discussion
(572, 575). The pranking stickers, utilizing the effective technique of jamming praised by
Christine Harold, will be placed on consumer products to inform them about labor trafficking
(189, 207-9). Finally, our website will bring all the artifacts together, explain who we are, and
provide links to different organizations involved in fighting against human trafficking.
Strawberry Jamming (print media): Abby Means
The print media may be the first element that our audience experiences. It serves the
crucial role of creating enough intrigue in order to draw the audience to our website. For my part
of the campaign, I have produced a concept advertisement that would develop into suite of halfpage advertisements for insertion in magazines directly tied to our audience. Because our
audience is primarily consumers over 25 with purchase power, we will insert advertisements into
lifestyle magazines like Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, and food magazines like the Food
Network Magazine and Gourmet. There are two possible methods of distribution. We would like
to publish these ads if we are able, but if the funds are lacking, confederates of Unhired Hands
will be supplied with the printed pages, which they will then slip into magazines in grocery
stores, newsstands, and bookstores. The subversive nature of this act identifies it as a prank. The
idea is to shock the audience into action. Todays readers pride themselves on being culturally
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savvy, ecologically friendly, and well-informed, yet very few of them know about labor
trafficking. Readers will respond with cognitive dissonance and are more likely to act to rectify
the situation (Festinger). Working in conjunction with Sams strawberry jamming, the
advertisements depict a padlocked strawberry and will be arranged within the magazine close to
recipes. Depending on the time of the year we could also use a tomato in the image. The idea is
to make consumers aware of the fact that they really dont know whose hands picked their food.
They dont know if that person was coerced, if she/he lives in inhumane conditions; they know
next to nothing. The ad copy will state, Do you know who picked this strawberry? Are they
chained, too? Log onto www.unhiredhands.org to find out. The goal of this particular artifact is
to make consumers aware, and then to use them to pressure the big companies into transparency
and eventual compliance. Operating under Christine Harolds analysis of pranking media, our
goal is to mimic the advertisement of companies like POMwonderful. Such mimicking seeks to
undermine the rhetoric of multinational corporations(Harold 190). The goal, then, is to take an
image one would expect to see in a cooking or lifestyle magazine and manipulate it, folding
existing cultural forms in on themselves (191). We want to take predictable images and make
them unpredictable. The primary focus of advertising thusly is to make the consumer do a double
take. Then, we want the consumer to visit the website and send a form letter to the corporation.
This pranking deviates slightly from standard cultural pranking in that its not particularly
humorous; Harold writes that pranksters can be seen as comedians, as playful explorers of the
commercial media landscape. Unfortunately, its very hard to find anything comedic in the
arena of human labor trafficking. We wouldnt want to diminish the severity of the trafficking
situation by making light of it.
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A Letter to the American Public and the Un-Hired Hands Website: Richie Kovac
I wrote the letter artifact for our project, which serves as a foundation document for our
campaign. Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.s letter from Birmingham jail, it explains the
current problem of human trafficking in the United States, says why people should care about it,
gives readers tips on how to get involved in stopping it, and explains more about our
organization. A letter is a useful artifact to use to target our intended audience for a number of
reasons. For starters, the letter allows me to present information on trafficking in the United
States, which will help achieve our campaigns goal on raising awareness about the issue.
Because of the nature of letters, the information is not presented in encyclopedic way that can
easily lose peoples attentions and cause them to feel disconnected with the material. Instead, I
can present the key facts about human trafficking in a personal, conversational tone, as well as
comment on the facts as I present them; together, these techniques make the topic seem more
relevant and connected to their lives. Moreover, seeing as other forms of communication have on
average displaced letters, our audience might find the concept of using a letter as a means of
national address curious, drawing their interest. Finally, the artifact keeps in mind the prevalence
of computer and Internet use among American adults; its being available online makes it more
convenient for them to access it, which in turn gives them greater incentive to read it.
I used what Jay Heinrichs, quoting Aristotle, calls ethos, logos, and pathos argumentation
techniques to hold the readers interests when presenting them with information and to motivate
them to do something about the issue at hand (38-39). One such technique is using the audiences
code words, such as freedom, liberty, and democracy. Stuart Hall points out that each
individual has a codebook through which they construct and destruct messages (93-94, 99-103;
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qtd. in Kornfield, Encoding/Decoding). As we learned in class and as Heinrichs points out,

when a speaker uses phrases and terms from the audiences codebook when addressing it, the
speakers ethos is boosted; the audience members trust him/her, considering him/her to be one
of them (228). I also use the audiences values as the foundation of deductive logic, a logos
argument strategy (Heinrichs 140). I appeal to the fact that because Americans value liberty, they
should be against trafficking. Another method I use to bolster my ethos is disinterest; in general,
Un-Hired Hands seems to have nothing to gain from the readers action or inaction. Since our
campaign focuses largely on raising awareness, most of the call-to-actions we suggest have to
do with organizations other than ourselves. At times I also bolster my ethos by explicitly stating
when I am breaking the rules of rhetoric; it can make me appear more honest. A pathos method
I use to inform the audience and get it to act is opening the letter with stories so as to rouse its
emotions. Stories affect people; Fischers narrative paradigm says stories help create culture and
create a sense of understanding the world (Kornfield, Narrative Power). Using the opening
stories, I want to shock readers into realizing how awful human trafficking is. Finally, I use logos
by quoting important facts and statistics related to trafficking that show audience members why
they should get involved.
There are a few of weaknesses with my artifact. One is it is somewhat long, which may
make it difficult to hold readers attentions. A second is that it is hard to distribute. While the
letter is my primary artifact, I also made the website in order to promote the campaign and have
a means through which to present the letter to individuals. However, since people will only be
exposed to the letter by coming to the website and since our group has no methods other than our
culture jamming stickers and print media to encourage people to come to the site, not many
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people could end up coming across it.

Pranking Produce : Samuel Epley
Our campaign brings awareness of labor trafficking to people who either do not know
about trafficking or who wrongly assume that human trafficking equates to primarily sex
trafficking. Specifically, we identify grocery store produce as a product potentially produced by
slaves. Resultantly, these stickers directs the message towards the consumers need awareness.
Drawing from Williams work on cultural theory, we can understand a culture by the products it
produces, and likewise the cultures consumers value fresh produce as a product. Herein lies an
intersection of consumer desires and the injustice of human trafficking where jamming the
cultural message of consumerism will seek to end labor trafficking practices.
These stickers dovetail the campaign because they are easily disseminated and
proliferated by like minded consumers and other human rights activists. Every time a sticker is
placed and viewed by a consumer, cultural jamming and pranking occurs and the sticker placer
becomes an agent of change. And Harold states, The prankster performs an art of rhetorical
jujitsu, in an effort to redirect the resources of commercial media toward new ends (191). The
fake sale sticker utilizes the commercial media of sale advertisements to raise awareness of a
social justice issue, or as Harold explains stickers such as these unabashedly [appropriate] the
rhetorical tropes of branding; it taps into the language of the market (206-7).
This artifact targets the general grocery store-goer because they are susceptible
unawareness of labor trafficking. The sticker functions persuasively by drawing the consumers
attention by use of the a red color and star shape, producing a physiological tension that indicates
something special about the product (Borchers 160). The consumer will readily identify the
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commonplace terms of sale and Made in the USA as they widely appear in retail. By and
large, consumers are drawn to sale items and marketing products as sale items drives profit.
Additionally, products produced in the United States hold a greater weight in culture as it draws
upon patriotic messages of freedom and liberty. Juxtaposing these terms with the commonplace
slave forces the message beholder into an ironic contradiction; freedom loving consumers
distain threats to freedom such as slavery as they do not want to be culpable with injustices
against other humans. More likely than not, the consumer sees slavery as a thing of the past, but
when confronted with this sticker a rhetorical disjuncture occurs that shows them that slavery
indeed exists today.
Moreover, this artifact directly targets and implicates companies, whether complicity
involved or not in labor trafficking, by calling attention to industry practices that allow for labor
trafficking. These stickers bring this anti-human trafficking message close to the companies,
indicting their products as slave produced with the hope of encouraging and incentivizing the
discontinuing of unjust labor practices. By consumers calling companies to inquire about their
labor practices, companies will be convinced to meet their needs and avoid losing customers.
Overall, this artifact calls attention to labor trafficking practices potentially used by fresh
produce companies and directs the consumer to inquire about such practices with the hopes of
changing production methods.
Social Media Blitz : Heather Pentecost
In a day and age when viral trends explode and rescind within a single week, the ability
to capture a majority audiences attention concisely is an ever-sought after skill. Whether its the
luck of a catchy title, or another news event that brings internet scourers to your domain, it is
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important to take advantage of whenever your influence is at its height. To encourage this for our
campaign, I used Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to spread awareness of the
movement, or rather awareness of labor trafficking as an integral part of human trafficking.
The Instagram and Pinterest portions, under the name Unhired Hands, utilize pictures
to build empathy among viewers. Most photos are sourced from other campaigns, in an effort to
raise awareness of the important work done around the globe to prevent forced labor. Many
groups are already combatting labor trafficking, but none are extremely well-known, deepening
the need for our campaign: to advertise for other organizations, and to make their cause more
widely known and supported. Collectively, these groups can enact change and make a difference.
Twitter and Pinterest each depend on the retweeting and repinning, respectively, of a
users content. The 140 character Tweets and photo Pins must therefore be general enough to be
applicable to others newsfeeds, but captivating enough to garner interest. This applies the
theories set forth in Jiyeon Kangs article on the importance of the architecture of social media
where, a message became meaningful only when other users paid attention to, responded to, and
circulated around it (Kang 570). With the end goal of raising awareness, the hashtags
endforcedlabor and unhiredhands were utilized to maximize the recognizability of a
campaign. As most users do not change the descriptions of their Pins, the likelihood that the
hashtags will be widely spread is also increased. A few of the favorite Retweets include
#ThatAwkwardMoment when you didn't know slavery still exists. #modernslavery and
#12yearsaslave: just like trafficking today. Both utilize modern events to capture attention and
to relate more understandable story lines to the difficult issue at hand.
In order to support both the culture jamming and print media aspects of the campaign,
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these four social media sites can be used both as advertising and persuasion elements. As the
culture jamming project grows in popularity, the subsequent surge in online searches will lead
jammers to our sites more often. This also pertains to the main website, which will be the main
source of information, and will provide credibility for the other, more informal sites.
The main objective of using social media as a part of the campaign is to increase the
knowledge of and concern for labor trafficking. As January is National Human Trafficking
Awareness month, December is the perfect time to build anticipation for the upcoming events.
The holiday season also provides the ideal backdrop for the start of this campaign: our audience
of active consumers is actively consuming, they increase their charitable giving, as well as
prepare and consume large meals; most with forced-labor grown fruits.
Conclusion
Throughout this campaign, our intent has been to raise awareness of human trafficking,
specifically labor trafficking, in the U.S., and to give our audience feasible ways to act. These
include actively participating in culture jamming in grocery stores and on magazine racks, or
more passively starting the conversation with friends with the help of the open letter. Finally, we
want all participants to engage online with other activists. Awareness of forced labor is the first
step in the fight to end the atrocity, and will be the key to inspiring the consumers to act. Serious
systemic issues still need to be addressed on a large scale: immigration reform and more
aggressive legal cases against traffickers will be key in ending labor trafficking here in America.
It is our hope that our work here will raise awareness of labor trafficking to a wide audience and
move them to engage with other nonprofits, their congress people, and their neighbors. If we all
come together, working from our love for liberty as Americans, change can happen.
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Each Members Contributions

Our group had the benefit of all picking human trafficking as either our first or second
choice, so we were much more unified to begin with. The distribution of our individual
persuasive artifacts occurred naturally, with each member of the group expressing interest in one
area or another. After our first meeting, we each left with explicit steps to take. Each individual
meeting was fruitful and every member of the group has participated with an equal amount of
exuberance. Richie built the website, wrote an essay for publication in national and local
newspapers, and wrote the bulk of the introduction of the group paper. The rest of the group
helped edit the group paper introduction. Heather managed the social media for the campaign,
named it, and wrote the conclusion for the paper. Sam created the strawberry sticker and
formulated the plan of attack for the culture jamming. Abby created the print media and this
summary. Each members of the group showed an equal amount of excitement and initiative and
are all still amiable towards each other.