Composition in Two Genres
My pieces are about the horrible condition’s children have to go through via child labor. The purpose of my writing is to get the readers more aware of the horrid conditions children younger than I must go through daily to “provide” for their families. My purpose is to allow the reader to understand they no matter how we claim we hate the condition they are living through; we are the ones enabling it via the purchase of well know slave manufactured items. Not do I want to allow my reader to have active knowledge of the situation at hand but have an impact by not buying such products.
The audience has a significant impact on what I say or how I carry across my topics. For the poetry, my audience was younger compared to that of the speech. The idea of carrying across the message using poetry is the fact that young adults come across a lot of information in their day to day life, worse than good. To have a longing impact on their lives, carrying across that uncomfortable information in a rhythmic way not only keeps the importance and severity of the situation, it also allows easier remembering of the issue.
For the speech I was aiming at the people who could make a legislative and companywide difference, people like politicians and CEO’s of the companies involved. My purpose is to be an informative and emotion fueled representative of the children that are suffering. Allowing them to feel what I can only imagine what the children go through while carrying across coherent point. Not to the point of bashful but enough for them to feel enough guilt for this situation has gone on for so long. The purpose of the speech is to carry such a message in a dignified way and allow proper explanation of the issue. The use of many sources and examples allow for credibility and the formal tone gets across the information in a non-bashing way. It allows the people receiving the information to feel targeted but not in a malicious way. Hopefully it would allow for greater discussion and work on the issue.
Speech
All protocols observed, Good Afternoon. “Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves,” wise words from none other than Abraham Lincoln. Slavery was a staple of this nation’s economy. The idea of dehumanizing a group of people for the sake of profit proliferated for centuries until we had to fight for such systems to be ended. Has it really ended though? The blatant, large scale slavery practice has been terminated as far as the US is concerned, however has the US complete stopped with the use of slave labor. No, it is still very much apart of our society. For this speech I will be focusing on child labor especially in the chocolate industry and how large corporations take advantage of these people to incur profit.
The more things change, the more they remain the same. No longer are we shipping these people out of their countries to work on our plantations, we have now “improvised”, allowing them to stay in their own nations and suffer. According to International Labor Organization (ILO), “Modern slavery occurred in every region of the world. Modern slavery was most prevalent in Africa (7.6 per 1,000 people), followed by Asia and the Pacific (6.1 per 1,000) then Europe and Central Asia (3.9 per 1,000).” “One in four victims of modern slavery were children. Some 37 per cent (5.7 million) of those forced to marry were children. Children represented 18 per cent of those subjected to forced labor exploitation and 7 per cent of people forced to work by state authorities. Children who were in commercial sexual exploitation (where the victim is a child, there is no requirement of force) represented 21 per cent of total victims in this category of abuse.” You may be asking yourself, “What does that have to do with the US though?” It has everything to do with the United States.
One of the largest sectors for this exploitation of children is the chocolate industry. “It is said that an estimated 1.8 million children are currently working in cocoa plantations. Children, between 10 to 15 years old and often younger, are used as slaves to pay off their family’s debts and being forced to do hazardous work.” (TheWorldCounts). Companies utilize this, free labour in order to maximize profit and to meet the ever growning demand of consumers. How do you think products shipped from Africa are selling for so cheap. Without the hassle of things such as “livable wages” and “human rights”, companies can sell you that bar of chocolate for as cheap as you like. Who cares about the starving families and abused children if you can indulge in the chocolate goodness for little over pocket change.
Ladies, Gentlemen, People of the audience, this retrograde way of carrying out business has gone on for too long. According to amnesty.org, “Agrupación de Fabricantes de Aceites Marinos (AFAMSA), Colgate-Palmolive, Elevance Renewabe Sciences, The Kellogg Company (Kellogg’s), Nestlé and Reckitt Benckiser are sourcing palm oil from refineries where the palm oil has been directly supplied or, at the very least, been mixed with palm oil produced on plantations where there are severe labour rights abuses.” Palm oil is a key ingredient for the production of chocolate and people, children are being put through these conditions in order to maintain profits. Conditions such as these:
A child’s workday typically begins at six in the morning and ends in the evening. Some of the children use chainsaws to clear the forests (Lamb). Other children climb the cocoa trees to cut bean pods using a machete. These large, heavy, dangerous knives are the standard tools for children on the cocoa farms, which violates international labor laws and a UN convention on eliminating the worst forms of child labor (Kirkhorn).
according to Christina Lamb, award winning British journalist, “A child’s workday typically begins at six in the morning and ends in the evening. Once they cut the bean pods from the trees, the children pack the pods into sacks that weigh more than 100 pounds when full and drag them through the forest Aly Diabate, a former cocoa slave, said, “Some of the bags were taller than me. It took two people to put the bag on my head. And when you didn’t hurry, you were beaten.”
Children that should be in school, learning and retaining information that could lead them to successful life, are being forced to do this menial labor. According to the Cocoa Barometer (2018), A yearly in-depth overview of the Cocoa sector, A farmer’s daily income 0.78 cents a day. A fully working adult is working a quarter of what the livable wage for the country is. Children even get less.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a very real issue that affects vey real people. People with just as much ambition and aspiration as you do or had. Who wants a fair chance at life? One unbounded and uncontrolled. One able to be elevated. One… free. I urge you of the government, to put stricter and more impactful policies on companies that have been found using forced labor. I also urge members of the audience to let your voices be heard. Speak for the voiceless, bring awareness to the issue at hand and pressure the ones with the power to do good, to do so.
Poetry
For our cause
From sunrise to sunset the work rages on,
A Father and a Mothers, a daughter and a son,
Toiling away in the plantain for ages,
Suffering and toiling for unliveable wages.
Akin to centuries ago working for the motherland,
Using dangerous tools that bruise our hands,
Work to death for our sakes is admirable,
Clothes and food prices to be kept reasonable.
How bad can it be they are getting paid?
Allowed to go home without being caged,
Working children aren’t anything new,
To provide for their family instead of going to school,
How bad can it be if they are getting paid?
To provide for
their family with the unliveable wage.
Pain
The pain I have in my heart,
Out scales the ones I feel physically,
Knowing that I will be pushing carts,
Until I reach in the cemetery.
The pain of knowing your goals are nothing more than a pipe dream,
The pain of chopping pods directly down their seams,
The pain of knowing that I can’t become a doctor or captain of a soccer team,
The pain of knowing the source of the pain is closer than it seems.
Working for the sake of outside earnings,
Barely feeding myself and my young siblings,
Labouring for the land of the free so that the costs fits,
Within the means
of their budget and their profits.
Promises
So I can get a better life?
I can provide for my family.
Get away from all this strife?
Reach places that I can’t see?
You promise to take me there,
So, I can pay off this debt,
Only a few years in this field,
And this promise will be kept.
You promise that the work,
Will all end one day,
16 hours daily of groundwork,
Only for a little pay.
You promised you would allow me to soar,
Further than my imagination could dream,
But now I am only sore,
Only an imagination it would seem.
White Noise
Protest the treatment of the children of far,
Being overworked, underfed and restricted from education,
We finally care about something outside of our nation,
Then we get hungry and buy a Hershey’s bar.
The sound without substance is like white noise.
Annoys them at first but ignored soon after,
Hate the idea of suffering over laughter,
But second guessing after what stopping it would employ.
Consuming chocolate with change is one of my joys,
Or buying a cheap name brand shirt for one of the boys,
Buying some shoes for my daughter and one of the toys,
Still enabling the ignored suffering like the perpetual white noise.
Raflection
Reflecting on the Two genres, my hardest choices were revolved around how to carry out my work in a fashion which people of the audience could relate to. How to carry out my message in an impactful way? It started with the selection of the two genres. I was wondering if it would be easier just select the same audience for the two genres. Then I thought of it from the perspective of someone trying to make a difference with the project. Although keeping it to the same audience would be easier, it would not reach the range of people I initially wanted to reach. So, I branched into the two genres I have now, speech and poetry. To be honest, I do have experience in both speech and poetry so the choice came at the back of that, however I believe with that experience it could make the message more enticing. Via the two genres, I had leeway to expand my audience range between a younger and older audience. Not only that, I was able to address to the people who had their hand in the running of the whole slavery operation.
With a speech, it could be addressed at people in charge, people of power such as politicians, and even everyday people looking to make a change in the world. My first barrier came in presenting myself in an emotive but coherent way. I wanted to come across strong with my points but not accusatory. Wanted to make my points impactful but not like just loud speaking and barking. I was troubled by how I could maneuver myself in a way that could get the results I wanted. With time, I believe I found a way to achieve all those things.
The process for the composition was very different that the research essay. First of all, it allowed for greater freedom of expression. Not really being bound to a specific way can be exhilarating but also kind of scary. Not sure whether you are making a mistake and having a sense of unknown to what your doing. They also differ as with the composition you already have your information. It allows for greater time to come to the creativity aspect and allows for me as the artist to be more impactful to what I do.
The rhetorical practices I found myself doing was trying to view it as a person who didn’t know about the issue. I tried to see myself as uneducated on the matter and see how I could make the matter digestible for a new reader. I also allowed a friend of mine to read and give impact on the matter. It allowed for the result to hopefully be better than It was going to be originally.
