Brad Rahr 4/18/2013 Professor Wright

Plan of Action

The issue of human trafficking is widespread and hard to stop. With the limits imposed upon police in order to not infringe on anyones rights, they struggle to maintain intelligence that may lead to arrests. With the underground prostitution rings throughout the world, it is hard to pinpoint the sources of these crimes. And with prostitution being made legal in states like Nevada, we scratch our heads and wonder where peoples sense of respect for human life went. But what about Florida? And what about Orlando? Are we taking steps to ensure that these heinous crimes are being stopped? The answer is actually a yes. Interestingly enough, Orlando is still the second largest city in the United States when it comes to human trafficking. Florida is the third largest state in the United States for human trafficking behind Texas and California. So what is going wrong? Why isnt this being stopped all together? Personally, I believe it is the lack of knowledge of the public. I have talked to hundreds of people around campus and when I read them the statistics, they are astounded. So we need to do something to raise the awareness of the general public. State legislators are aware and fighting for it, but if the people do not know about it, how can anything pass?

There are a couple of things that I plan to do. One is to increase the use of social media in order to bridge the gap between word of mouth and technology. With people spending most of their time on Facebook and Twitter as it is, it should not be too hard to gain their attention. My plan is to start reaching people through the mediums of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. It will begin with YouTube and what will happen here will be spread to the other mediums to spread the word. When it comes to the social media and video production, it is here that I will use my rhetorical strategy of Identification. In these videos I must make it clear that these women caught in prostitution are people just like you and me. I have to 1) gain the attention of my audience by addressing them. I can show them the statistics of Orlando sex trafficking (how it is the second largest city, number of prostitutes, where they come from) and how this affects them. They have to see that it matters to them. I can ask them whether or not they would want their child caught in prostitution and show them a little girl that actually is. Then I have to 2) Make the girls caught in slavery seem normal. So at first I have to bring the concept of the girls down to the audience level and then show them how they are people. I can appeal to their dreams, how they had goals in life, certain things like that. Much like Invisible Children and their creative efforts to raise awareness for the Ugandan conflict and of the warlord Joseph Kony, I will seek out creative artists to make videos that will catch the attention of the public. With having many friends in the film industry and in the drama industry, I will attempt to make videos that show the horrible crimes we see here locally in Orlando and in Florida as a whole. After the videos are made, pages and groups will be made on Facebook and Twitter in order to reach a larger

audience. From this we will seek to gain funds from donations to support organizations in the fight against human trafficking like International Justice Mission and Florida Abolitionist Society. Here we will tackle the public awareness and the freedom that the organizations have to fight this issue. Another thing that we can do is to get the attention of the lawmakers and the governmental authorities that have the power to tighten the grip of the law on the criminals. Currently, IJM is mailing Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio in order to gain the support of the government. As I said before, some lawmakers like Senator Rubio are aware and have joined the fight against human trafficking. But Senator Nelson remains unconvinced of the issue. It is not necessarily that he is against it, but that he sees other things to be more important. We just have to show him the severity of the issue. So our next plan will be to utilize the attention we have gained through social media and aim it at the lawmakers in hopes that it will reach the Governor. Our goal is to mail letters every single day to the offices of our Florida officials in order to convince them that the state of Florida backs the call of the local organizations to fight this issue. With time hopefully the authorities will be convinced and help us to fight by implementing more stringent laws when it comes to foster care (where a large percentage of children are trafficked), to the punishments of convicted traffickers, and prostitution in general. Hopefully this will happen in order for us to use my third plan. My third and final plan is what makes the cake. So far we have gained the attention of the public, gained the support of the government, and had laws changed in order to catch the criminals and find the victims. One thing we need is a way to integrate the victims back into society after they have been rescued. Being trafficked creates a

huge problem in a persons heart and mind. They have gone through an extremely traumatic experience and have most likely lost the trust for any other person. We see this with prostitutes when they will not trust the organizations like Florida Abolitionist Coalition when they are trying to rescue them. They fear being caught and punished for it. There are a couple of things that need to be taken into consideration here when thinking of the practicality of my plan. The first thing is that these things are absolutely connected and without one component, all of them will fail. When it comes to getting the attention of the public, we must get people who start a movement. Without them there is nothing we can do. After this it will lead us to getting the attention of lawmakers and then to reforming the counseling programs. It is also important to recognize that after the first step reaches an effective level (enough people) then everything will happen simultaneously. These things are not one after the other necessarily but the laws will be changing while the counseling centers are established while more and more people are joining us and the movement is gaining ground. What we need is the promise to the victims to treat them not like criminals but like people who have been abused. If the victims will trust us then we will have the ability to help them. To do this I want to establish a network of counseling centers committed to helping victims of human trafficking with their integration back into society. This will have to be a smooth transition, or as smooth as something like that can be, in order for the victims to feel safe and willing to trust. With these three steps in one big plan, I think we will finally see a reduction in our human trafficking issue. Utilizing the influence of the community, the authority of

the law, and the help of people who care, I believe we can end this travesty and restore peace to peoples lives.