This year in eight grade social studies, we’ve been learning about slavery. We learned about the past, but what about now? Believe it or not, slavery is still going on. Just like the past, children are taken hostage. They are put into a sack and are taken to work. If they don’t work hard enough, they get beaten. What do they make, you might ask. Surprising enough, they make what you love. Chocolate.
Now, I know most people are sick and tired of me talking about Harry Potter. But anybody who has read the books knows that Harry is not okay with slavery. This, however, isn’t what I want to talk about. Most of you know that I’m not the only one who loves Harry Potter, there’s an entire fandom. Thousands of people are actively involved with Harry Potter. In fact, we use this power to try to make the world a better place.
The HPA, Harry Potter Alliance, has been taking stands since 2009. Their mission statement is "The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) is a 501c3 nonprofit that takes an outside-of-the-box approach to civic engagement by using parallels from the Harry Potter books to educate and mobilize young people across the world toward issues of literacy, equality, and human rights. Our mission is to empower our members to act like the heroes that they love by acting for a better world. By bringing together fans of blockbuster books, TV shows, movies, and YouTube celebrities we are harnessing the power of popular culture toward making our world a better place. Our goal is to make civic engagement exciting by channeling the entertainment-saturated facets of our culture toward mobilization for deep and lasting social change." And their latest campaign is "Not In Harry’s Name.."
Before I was talking about child slavery, well now we’re back to that. Not In Harry’s Name is our way of standing up. In 2010 Andrew Slack the CEO of the HPA sent the first letter to Time Warner about our concerns about fair trade chocolate. In his letter he said "As an organization that prides itself on bringing the message of Harry Potter into our world, the Harry Potter Alliance feels that it is imperative that there is no "indifference and neglect employed in the manufacture of chocolate bearing Harry’s name.." This statement really shows what this is about. He also went on to talk about the role of chocolate in the Harry Potter books. Chocolate in the books, while being a muggle item has many magical qualities. Chocolate brings happiness and safety after a dementor attack. He says "Chocolate ‘s use as a healing antidote to these soulless monsters represents the playful and innocent nature of the Wizarding World. It is doubtful that chocolate produced using questionable labor practices would have such positive effect, both in Harry’s world and ours.." A little more than a month later, the Harry Potter fan community got a response.
This response gave the people of the HPA high hopes, for in the letter it was stated that "I can assure you that Time Warner and Warner bros. Entertainment take seriously the issue of ethical sourcing." and "Our company is committed to ensuring equal opportunity and compliance with all applicable fair employment practices and non-discrimination laws around the world.." However, throughout 2011, several letters passed back and forth between the HPA and Time Warner, and our hopes were soon crashed. Warner Bros stated that they were happy with their current chocolate company, Behr’s Chocolate. Behr’s Chocolate received a failing grade from Free2Work based on their efforts to prevent and to address forced and child labor. November 23, 2011 we sent our last letter. This letter was about how we were disappointed with Warner Bros attempt to address and fix this problem. The letter also stated that we would give them a 2012 deadline to finally acknowledge these issues.
2012 is here, but yet no action has been taken. The HPA to take action has started this thing called Muggle Howlers. Those of you familiar with Harry Potter know that a howler is a letter that screams at you the message instead of you reading it. A Muggle Howler is a short video that anybody can do to help get Warner Bros attention. Also the HPA has a template for you to write your own letter, and a way for you to buy your own fair trade chocolate frogs.
Overall, not using fair trade chocolate is an act against humanity. Using child labor is horrible and not doing anything when you know it’s happening is even worse.
Harry Potter is about love, and how all people should be created equal no matter their family, age, race, gender, and talent. Harry Potter while being a fantasy series, manages to bring up real world issues and show people taking a stand. Warner Bros takes Harry Potter and puts it in a negative light. Using Harry Potter to pretty much promote child slavery, is a vile way of taking advantage of the fandom that won’t stand for these cruel acts.
You can learn more at
http://thehpalliance.org/action/campaigns/nihn/Credit to Andrew Slack CEO of the HPA
More Information:http://thehpalliance.org/action/campaigns/nihn/ 
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